BEING AND TIME

Martin Heidegger

Blackwell Publishing

MARTIN HEIDEGGER

BEING AND TIME

Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson

BLACKWELL Oxford UK & Cambridge USA

This translation copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1962

First English edition 1962 Reprinted 1967, 1973, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995 (twice), 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 (twice), 2001

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JF, UK

Translated from the German Sein und Zeit (seventh edition) by permission of Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

0-631-19770-2 (pbk)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Dedicated to EDMUND HUSSERL in friendship and admiration

Todtnauberg in Baden, Black Forest 8 April 1926

CONTENTS

[Page references marked ‘H’ indicate the pagination of the later German editions, as shown in the outer margins of the text.]

Translators' Preface 13 Author's Preface to the Seventh German Edition 17

Introduction Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being H. 2 21 I. THE NECESSITY, STRUCTURE, AND PRIORITY OF THE QUESTION OF BEING H. 2 21

1. The necessity for explicitly restating the question of Being H. 2 21
2. The formal structure of the question of Being H. 5 24
3. The ontological priority of the question of Being H. 8 28
4. The ontical priority of the question of Being H. 11 32

II. THE TWOFOLD TASK IN WORKING OUT THE QUESTION OF BEING, METHOD AND DESIGN OF OUR INVESTIGATION H. 15 36 5. The ontological analytic of Dasein as laying bare the horizon for an Interpretation of the meaning of Being in general H. 15 36 6. The task of Destroying the history of ontology H. 19 41 7. The phenomenological method of investigation H. 17 49 a. The concept of phenomenon H. 27 51 b. The concept of the logos H. 32 55 c. The preliminary conception of phenomenology H. 34 58 8. Design of the treatise H. 39 63

Part One The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being

DIVISION ONE: PREPARATORY FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS OF DASEIN

I. EXPOSITION OF THE TASK OF A PREPARATORY ANALYSIS OF DASEIN H. 41 67 9. The theme of the analytic of Dasein H. 41 67

8. Being and Time

9. How the analytic of Dasein is to be distinguished from anthropology, psychology, and biology
   H. 45 71

10. The existential analytic and the Interpretation of primitive Dasein. The difficulties of achieving a ‘natural conception of the world’
    H. 50 76

II. BEING-IN-THE-WORLD IN GENERAL AS THE BASIC STATE OF DASEIN
H. 52 78

12. A preliminary sketch of Being-in-the-world, in terms of an orientation towards Being-in as such
    H. 52 78

13. A founded mode in which Being-in is exemplified. Knowing the world
    H. 59 86

III. THE WORLDHOOD OF THE WORLD
H. 63 91

14. The idea of the worldhood of the world in general
    A. Analysis of environmentality and worldhood in general
    H. 63 91

15. The Being of the entities encountered in the environment
    H. 66 95

16. How the worldly character of the environment announces itself in entities within-the-world
    H. 72 102

17. Reference and signs
    H. 76 107

18. Involvement and significance: the worldhood of the world
    B. A contrast between our analysis of worldhood and Descartes’ Interpretation of the world
    H. 83 114

19. The definition of the ‘world’ as res extensa
    H. 89 122

20. Foundations of the ontological definition of the ‘world’
    H. 92 125

21. Hermeneutical discussion of the Cartesian ontology of the ‘world’
    C. The aroundness of the environment, and Dasein’s spatiality
    H. 95 128

22. The spatiality of the ready-to-hand within-the-world
    H. 102 135

23. The spatiality of Being-in-the-world
    H. 104 138

24. Space, and Dasein’s spatiality
    H. 110 145

IV. BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AS BEING-WITH AND BEING-ONE’S-SELF. THE ‘THEY’
H. 113 149

25. An approach to the existential question of the “who” of Dasein
    H. 114 150

26. The Dasein-with of Others, and everyday Being-with
    H. 117 153

27. Everyday Being-one’s-Self and the “they”
    H. 126 163

V. BEING-IN AS SUCH

28. The task of a thematic analysis of Being-in A. The existential Constitution of the “there” H. 130 169 B. H. 134 172

29. Being-there as state-of-mind H. 134 172

30. Fear as a mode of state-of-mind H. 140 179

31. Being-there as understanding H. 142 182

32. Understanding and interpretation H. 148 188

33. Assertion as a derivative mode of interpretation H. 153 195

34. Being-there and discourse. Language B. The everyday Being of the “there”, and the falling of Dasein H. 160 203 H. 166 210

35. Idle talk H. 167 211

36. Curiosity H. 170 214

37. Ambiguity H. 173 217

38. Falling and thrownness H. 175 219

VI. CARE AS THE BEING OF DASEIN

39. The question of the primordial totality of Dasein’s structural whole H. 180 225

40. The basic state-of-mind of anxiety as a distinctive way in which Dasein is disclosed H. 184 228

41. Dasein’s Being as care H. 191 235

42. Confirmation of the existential Interpretation of Dasein as care in terms of Dasein’s pre-ontological way of interpreting itself H. 196 241

43. Dasein, worldhood, and Reality H. 200 244 (a) Reality as a problem of Being, and whether the ‘external world’ can be proved H. 202 246 (b) Reality as an ontological problem H. 209 252 (c) Reality and care H. 211 254

44. Dasein, disclosedness, and truth H. 212 256 (a) The traditional conception of truth, and its ontological foundations H. 214 257 (b) The primordial phenomenon of truth and the derivative character of the traditional conception of truth H. 219 262 (c) The kind of Being which truth possesses, and the presupposition of truth H. 226 269

DIVISION TWO: DASEIN AND TEMPORALITY

45. The outcome of the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein, and the task of a primordial existential Interpretation of this entity H. 231 274

I. DASEIN'S POSSIBILITY OF BEING-A-WHOLE, AND BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH

46. The seeming impossibility of getting Dasein's Being-a-whole into our grasp ontologically and determining its character H. 235 279

47. The possibility of experiencing the death of Others, and the possibility of getting a whole Dasein into our grasp H. 237 281

48. That which is still outstanding; the end; totality H. 241 285

49. How the existential analysis of death is distinguished from other possible Interpretations of this phenomenon H. 246 290

50. Preliminary sketch of the existential-ontological structure of death H. 249 293

51. Being-towards-death and the everydayness of Dasein H. 252 296

52. Everyday Being-towards-the-end, and the full existential conception of death H. 255 299

53. Existential projection of an authentic Being-towards-death H. 260 304

II. DASEIN'S ATTESTATION OF AN AUTHENTIC POTENTIALITY-FOR-BEING, AND RESOLUTENESS

54. The problem of how an authentic existentiell possibility is attested H. 267 312

55. The existential-ontological foundations of conscience H. 270 315

56. The character of conscience as a call H. 272 317

57. Conscience as the call of care H. 274 319

58. Understanding the appeal, and guilt H. 280 325

59. The existential Interpretation of the conscience, and the way conscience is ordinarily interpreted H. 289 335

60. The existential structure of the authentic potentiality-for-Being which is attested in the conscience H. 295 341

III. DASEIN'S AUTHENTIC POTENTIALITY-FOR-BEING-A-WHOLE, AND TEMPORALITY AS THE ONTOLOGICAL MEANING OF CARE

61. A preliminary sketch of the methodological step from the definition of Dasein's authentic Being-a-whole to the laying-bare of temporality as a phenomenon H. 301 349

62. Anticipatory resoluteness as the way in which Dasein's potentiality-for-Being-a-whole has existentiell authenticity H. 301 349

63. The hermeneutical situation at which we have arrived for Interpreting the meaning of the Being of care; and the methodological character of the existential analytic in general H. 305 352

64. Care and selfhood H. 310 358

65. Temporality as the ontological meaning of care H. 316 364

66. Dasein's temporality and the tasks arising therefrom of repeating the existential analysis in a more primordial manner H. 323 370

H. 331 380

IV. TEMPORALITY AND EVERYDAYNESS

67. The basic content of Dasein's existential constitution, and a preliminary sketch of the temporal Interpretation of it H. 334 383

68. The temporality of disclosedness in general H. 335 384 (a) The temporality of understanding H. 336 385 (b) The temporality of state-of-mind H. 339 389 (c) The temporality of falling H. 346 396 (d) The temporality of discourse H. 349 400

69. The temporality of Being-in-the-world and the problem of the transcendence of the world H. 350 401 (a) The temporality of circumspective concern H. 352 403 (b) The temporal meaning of the way in which circumspective concern becomes modified into the theoretical discovery of the present-at-hand within-the-world H. 356 408 (c) The temporal problem of the transcendence of the world H. 364 415

70. The temporality of the spatiality that is characteristic of Dasein H. 367 418

71. The temporal meaning of Dasein's everydayness H. 370 421

V. TEMPORALITY AND HISTORICALITY

72. Existential-ontological exposition of the problem of history H. 372

73. The ordinary understanding of history, and Dasein's historizing H. 372

74. The basic constitution of historicality H. 382

75. Dasein's historicality, and world-history H. 387

76. The existential source of historiology in Dasein's historicality H. 392

77. The connection of the foregoing exposition of the problem of historicality with the researches of Wilhelm Dilthey and the ideas of Count Yorck H. 397

VI. TEMPORALITY AND WITHIN-TIME-NESS AS THE SOURCE OF THE ORDINARY CONCEPTION OF TIME

78. The incompleteness of the foregoing temporal analysis of Dasein H. 404

79. Dasein's temporality, and our concern with time H. 406

80. The time with which we concern ourselves, and within-time-ness H. 411

81. Within-time-ness and the genesis of the ordinary conception of time H. 420

82. A comparison of the existential-ontological connection of temporality, Dasein, and world-time, with Hegel's way of taking the relation between time and spirit H. 428

(a) Hegel's conception of time H. 428

(b) Hegel's Interpretation of the connection between time and spirit H. 433

83. The existential-temporal analytic of Dasein, and the question of fundamental ontology as to the meaning of Being in general H. 436

Author's Notes 489

Glossary of German Terms 503

Index 524

TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

More than thirty years have passed since Being and Time first appeared, and it has now become perhaps the most celebrated philosophical work which Germany has produced in this century. It is a very difficult book, even for the German reader, and highly resistant to translation, so much so that it has often been called 'untranslatable'. We feel that this is an exaggeration.

Anyone who has struggled with a philosophical work in translation has constantly found himself asking how the author himself would have expressed the ideas which the translator has ascribed to him. In this respect the 'ideal' translation would perhaps be one so constructed that a reader with reasonable linguistic competence and a key to the translator's conventions should be able to retranslate the new version into the very words of the original. Everybody knows that this is altogether too much to demand; but the faithful translator must at least keep this ahead of him as a desirable though impracticable goal. The simplest compromise with the demands of his own language is to present the translation and the original text on opposite pages; he is then quite free to choose the most felicitous expressions he can think of, trusting that the reader who is shrewd enough to wonder what is really happening can look across and find out. Such a procedure would add enormously to the expense of a book as long as Being and Time, and is impracticable for other reasons. But on any page of Heidegger there is a great deal happening, and we have felt that we owe it to the reader to let him know what is going on. For the benefit of the man who already has a copy of the German text, we have indicated in our margins the pagination of the later German editions, which differs only slightly from that of the earlier ones. All citations marked with 'H' refer to this pagination. But for the reader who does not have the German text handy, we have had to use other devices.

As long as an author is using words in their ordinary ways, the translator should not have much trouble in showing what he is trying to say. But Heidegger is constantly using words in ways which are by no means ordinary, and a great part of his merit lies in the freshness and penetration which his very innovations reflect. He tends to discard much of the traditional philosophical terminology, substituting an elaborate vocabulary of his own. He occasionally coins new expressions from older roots, and he takes full advantage of the ease with which the German language lends itself to the formation of new compounds. He also uses familiar

expressions in new ways. Adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions are made to do service as nouns; words which have undergone a long history of semantical change are used afresh in their older senses; specialized modern idioms are generalized far beyond the limits within which they would ordinarily be applicable. Puns are by no means uncommon and frequently a key-word may be used in several senses, successively or even simultaneously. He is especially fond of ringing the changes on words with a common stem or a common prefix. He tends on the whole to avoid personal constructions, and often uses abstract nouns ('Dasein', 'Zeitlichkeit', 'Sorge', 'In-der-Welt-sein', and so forth) as subjects of sentences where a personal subject would ordinarily be found. Like Aristotle or Wittgenstein, he likes to talk about his words, and seldom makes an innovation without explaining it; but sometimes he will have used a word in a special sense many times before he gets round to the explanation; and he may often use it in the ordinary senses as well. In such cases the reader is surely entitled to know what word Heidegger is actually talking about, as well as what he says about it; and he is also entitled to know when and how he actually uses it.

We have tried in the main to keep our vocabulary under control, providing a German-English glossary for the more important expressions, and a rather full analytical index which will also serve as an English-German glossary. We have tried to use as few English terms as possible to represent the more important German ones, and we have tried not to to use these for other purposes than those we have specifically indicated. Sometimes we have had to coin new terms to correspond to Heidegger's. In a number of cases there are two German terms at the author's disposal which he has chosen to differentiate, even though they may be synonyms in ordinary German usage; if we have found only one suitable English term to correspond to them, we have sometimes adopted the device of capitalizing it when it represents the German word to which it is etymologically closer: thus 'auslegen' becomes 'interpret', but 'interpretieren' becomes 'Interpret'; 'gliedern' becomes 'articulate', but 'artikulieren' becomes 'Articulate'; 'Ding' becomes 'Thing', but 'thing' represents 'Sache' and a number of other expressions. In other cases we have coined a new term. Thus while 'tatsächlich' becomes 'factual', we have introduced 'factical' to represent 'faktsich'. We have often inserted German expressions in square brackets on the occasions of their first appearance or on that of their official definition. But we have also used bracketed expressions to call attention to departures from our usual conventions, or to bring out etymological connections which might otherwise be overlooked.

In many cases bracketing is insufficient, and we have introduced footnotes of our own, discussing some of the more important terms on the occasion of their first appearance. We have not hesitated to quote German sentences at length when they have been ambiguous or obscure; while we have sometimes taken pains to show where the ambiguity lies, we have more often left this to the reader to puzzle out for himself. We have often quoted passages with verbal subtleties which would otherwise be lost in translation. We have also called attention to a number of significant differences between the earlier and later editions of Heidegger's work. The entire book was reset for the seventh edition; while revisions were by no means extensive, they went beyond the simple changes in punctuation and citation which Heidegger mentions in his preface. We have chosen the third edition (1931) as typical of the earlier editions, and the eighth (1957) as typical of the later ones. In general we have preferred the readings of the eighth edition, and our marginal numbering and cross-references follow its pagination. Heidegger's very valuable footnotes have been renumbered with roman numerals and placed at the end of the text where we trust they will be given the attention they deserve. Hoping that our own notes will be of immediate use to the reader, we have placed them at the bottoms of pages for easy reference, indicating them with arabic numerals.

In general we have tried to stick to the text as closely as we can without sacrificing intelligibility; but we have made numerous concessions to the reader at the expense of making Heidegger less Heideggerian. We have, for instance, frequently used personal constructions where Heidegger has avoided them. We have also tried to be reasonably flexible in dealing with hyphenated expressions. Heidegger does not seem to be especially consistent in his use of quotation marks, though in certain expressions (for instance, the word 'Welt') they are very deliberately employed. Except in a few footnote references and some of the quotations from Hegel and Count Yorck in the two concluding chapters, our single quotation marks represent Heidegger's double ones. But we have felt free to introduce double ones of our own wherever we feel that they may be helpful to the reader. We have followed a similar policy with regard to italicization. When Heidegger uses italics in the later editions (or spaced type in the earlier ones), we have generally used italics; but in the relatively few cases where we have felt that some emphasis of our own is needed, we have resorted to wide spacing. We have not followed Heidegger in the use of italics for proper names or for definite articles used demonstratively to introduce restrictive relative clauses. But we have followed the usual practice of italicizing words and phrases from languages other than English

and German, and have italicized titles of books, regardless of Heidegger’s procedure.

We have received help from several sources. Miss Marjorie Ward has collated the third and eighth editions, and made an extremely careful study of Heidegger’s vocabulary and ours, which has saved us from innumerable inconsistencies and many downright mistakes; there is hardly a page which has not profited by her assistance. We are also indebted to several persons who have helped us in various ways: Z. Adamczewski, Hannah Arendt, J. A. Burzle, C. A. Campbell, G. M. George, Fritz Heider, Edith Kern, Norbert Raymond, Eva Schaper, Martin Scheerer, John Wild. If any serious errors remain, they are probably due to our failure to exploit the time and good nature of these friends and colleagues more unmercifully. We are particularly indebted to Professor R. Gregor Smith who brought us together in the first place, and who, perhaps more than anyone else, has made it possible for this translation to be presented to the public. We also wish to express our appreciation to our publishers and to Max Niemeyer Verlag, holders of the German copyright, who have shown extraordinary patience in putting up with the long delay in the preparation of our manuscript.

We are particularly grateful to the University of Kansas for generous research grants over a period of three years, and to the University of Kansas Endowment Association for enabling us to work together in Scotland.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH GERMAN EDITION

This treatise first appeared in the spring of 1927 in the Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung edited by Edmund Husserl, and was published simultaneously in a special printing.

The present reprint, which appears as the seventh edition, is unchanged in the text, but has been newly revised with regard to quotations and punctuation. The page-numbers of this reprint agree with those of the earlier editions except for minor deviations.$^1$

While the previous editions have borne the designation 'First Half', this has now been deleted. After a quarter of a century, the second half could no longer be added unless the first were to be presented anew. Yet the road it has taken remains even today a necessary one, if our Dasein is to be stirred by the question of Being.

For the elucidation of this question the reader may refer to my Einführung in die Metaphysik, which is appearing simultaneously with this reprinting under the same publishers.$^2$ This work presents the text of a course of lectures delivered in the summer semester of 1935.

$^1$ See Translators' Preface, p. 15. $^2$ Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1953. English translation by Ralph Manheim, Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1959.

BEING AND TIME

… δηλον γὰρ ως υμείς μέν ταυτα (τὴ ποτε βούλεσθε σημαίνειν ὀπόταν οἱν φθέγησηθε) πάλαι γυγνωσκετε, ημείς δè προ τούμ μεν φώμεθα, νυν δ’ ήπορή-καμεν …

'For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression "being". We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.¹

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'?² Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning² of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'Being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the Interpretation³ of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being.⁴

But the reasons for making this our aim, the investigations which such a purpose requires, and the path to its achievement, call for some introductory remarks.

¹ 'seiend'. Heidegger translates Plato's present participle ὑν by this present participle of the verb 'sein' ('to be'). We accordingly translate 'seiend' here and in a number of later passages by the present participle 'being'; where such a translation is inconvenient we shall resort to other constructions, usually subjoining the German word in brackets or in a footnote. The participle 'seiend' must be distinguished from the infinitive 'sein', which we shall usually translate either by the infinitive 'to be' or by the gerund 'being'. It must also be distinguished from the important substantive 'Sein' (always capitalized), which we shall translate as 'Being' (capitalized), and from the equally important substantive 'Siendes', which directly derived from 'seiend', and which we shall usually translate as 'entity' or 'entities'. (See our note 6, H. 3 below.)

² 'Sinn'. In view of the importance of the distinction between 'Sinn' and 'Bedeutung' in German writers as diverse as Dilthey, Husserl, Frege and Schlick, we shall translate 'Sinn' by 'meaning' or 'sense', depending on the context, and keep 'signification' and 'signify' for 'Bedeutung' and 'bedeuten'. (The verb 'mean' will occasionally be used to translate such verbs as 'besagen', sagen, heissen and 'meinen', but the noun 'meaning' will be reserved for 'Sinn'). On 'Sinn', see H. 151, 324; on 'Bedeutung', etc., see H. 87, and our note 47 ad loc.

³ Heidegger uses two words which might well be translated as 'interpretation': 'Auslegung' and 'Interpretation'. Though in many cases these may be regarded as synonyms, their connotations are not quite the same. 'Auslegung' seems to be used in a broad sense to cover any activity in which we interpret something 'as' something, whereas 'Interpretation' seems to apply to interpretations which are more theoretical or systematic, as in the exegesis of a text. See especially H. 148 ff. and 199 f. We shall preserve this distinction by writing 'interpretation' for 'Auslegung', but 'Interpretation' for Heidegger's 'Interpretation', following similar conventions for the verbs 'auslegen' and 'interpretieren'.

⁴ '… als des möglichen Horizontes eines jeden Seinsversandnisses überhaupt …'

Throughout this work the word 'horizon' is used with a connotation somewhat different from that of a horizon as something which we may widen or extend or go beyond; Heidegger, however, seems to think of it rather as something which we can either widen nor go beyond, but which provides the limits for certain intellectual activities performed 'within' it.

INTRODUCTION EXPOSITION OF THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING OF BEING

I THE NECESSITY, STRUCTURE, AND PRIORITY OF THE QUESTION OF BEING

1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being This question has today been forgotten. Even though in our time we deem it progressive to give our approval to 'metaphysics' again, it is held that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled γυγαντομαχία περίπτως οὐλας. Yet the question we are touching upon is not just any question. It is one which provided a stimulus for the researches of Plato and Aristotle, only to subside from then on as a theme for actual investigation.$^1$ What these two men achieved was to persist through many alterations and 'retouchings' down to the 'logic' of Hegel. And what they wrested with the utmost intellectual effort from the phenomena, fragmentary and incipient though it was, has long since become trivialized.

Not only that. On the basis of the Greeks' initial contributions towards an Interpretation of Being, a dogma has been developed which not only declares the question about the meaning of Being to be superfluous, but sanctions its complete neglect. It is said that 'Being' is the most universal and the emptiest of concepts. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and hence indefinable concept require any definition, for everyone uses it constantly and already understands what he means by it. In this way, that which the ancient philosophers found continually disturbing as something obscure and hidden has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such that if anyone continues to ask about it he is charged with an error of method.

At the beginning of our investigation it is not possible to give a detailed

$^1$… als thematische Frage wirklicher Untersuchung'. When Heidegger speaks of a question as 'thematisch', he thinks of it as one which is taken seriously and studied in a systematic manner. While we shall often translate this adjective by its cognate, 'thematic', we may sometimes find it convenient to choose more flexible expressions involving the word 'theme'. (Heidegger gives a fuller discussion on H. 363.)

account of the presuppositions and prejudices which are constantly reimplanting and fostering the belief that an inquiry into Being is unnecessary. They are rooted in ancient ontology itself, and it will not be possible to interpret that ontology adequately until the question of Being has been clarified and answered and taken as a clue—at least, if we are to have regard for the soil from which the basic ontological concepts developed, and if we are to see whether the categories have been demonstrated in a way that is appropriate and complete. We shall therefore carry the discussion of these presuppositions only to the point at which the necessity for restating the question about the meaning of Being become plain. There are three such presuppositions.

1. First, it has been maintained that 'Being' is the 'most universal' concept: τὸ ὑν ἐστι καθόλου μάλλοτα πάντων.¹ Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. 'An understanding of Being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends as an entity.'²¹ But the 'universality' of 'Being' is not that of a class or genus. The term 'Being' does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are Articulated conceptually according to genus and species: οὐτε τὸ ὑν γένος.¹¹¹ The 'universality' of Being 'transcends' any universality of genus. In medieval ontology 'Being' is designated as a 'transcendens'. Aristotle himself knew the unity of this transcendental 'universal' as a unity of analogy in contrast to the multiplicity of the highest generic concepts applicable to things. With this discovery, in spite of his dependence on the way in which the ontological question had been formulated by Plato, he put the problem of Being on what was, in principle, a new basis. To be sure, even Aristotle failed to clear away the darkness of these categorical interconnections. In medieval ontology this problem was widely discussed, especially in the Thomist and Scotist schools, without reaching clarity as to principles. And when Hegel at last defines 'Being' as the 'indeterminate immediate' and makes this definition basic for all the further categorical explications of his 'logic', he keeps looking in the same direction as ancient ontology,

¹ "… was einer am Seienden erfasst!"²¹. The word 'Seiendes', which Heidegger uses in his paraphrase, is one of the most important words in the book. The substantive 'das Seiende' is derived from the participle 'seiend' (see note 1, p. 19), and means literally 'that which is'; 'ein Seiendes' means 'something which is'. There is much to be said for translating 'Seiendes' by the noun 'being' or 'beings' (for it is often used in a collective sense). We feel, however, that it is smoother and less confusing to write 'entity' or 'entities'. We are well aware that in recent British and American philosophy the term 'entity' has been used more generally to apply to almost anything whatsoever, no matter what its ontological status. In this translation, however, it will mean simply 'something which is'. An alternative translation of the Latin quotation is given by the English Dominican Fathers, Summa Theologica, Thomas Baker, London, 1915: 'For that which, before aught else, falls under apprehension, is being, the notion of which is included in all things whatsoever a man apprehends.'

except that he no longer pays heed to Aristotle's problem of the unity of Being as over against the multiplicity of 'categories' applicable to things. So if it is said that 'Being' is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all.

2. It has been maintained secondly that the concept of 'Being' is indefinable. This is deduced from its supreme universality, and rightly so, if definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. 'Being' cannot indeed be conceived as an entity; enti non additur aliqua natura: nor can it acquire such a character as to have the term "entity" applied to it. "Being" cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply that 'Being' no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that 'Being' cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to Being the concept of 'definition' as presented in traditional logic, which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology and which, within certain limits, provides a quite justifiable way of defining "entities". The indefinability of Being does not eliminate the question of its meaning; it demands that we look that question in the face.

3. Thirdly, it is held that 'Being' is of all concepts the one that is self-evident. Whenever one cognizes anything or makes an assertion, whenever one comports oneself towards entities, even towards oneself, some use is made of 'Being'; and this expression is held to be intelligible 'without further ado', just as everyone understands "The sky is blue", 'I am merry', and the like. But here we have an average kind of intelligibility, which merely demonstrates that this is unintelligible. It makes manifest that in any way of comporting oneself towards entities as entities—even in any Being towards entities as entities—there lies a priori an enigma. The very fact that we already live in an understanding of Being and that the meaning of Being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again.

Within the range of basic philosophical concepts—especially when we come to the concept of 'Being'—it is a dubious procedure to invoke self-evidence, even if the 'self-evident' (Kant's 'covert judgments of the common reason')

1. . . in jedem Verhalten zu Seiendem, in jedem Sich-zu-sich-selbst-verhalten … The verb 'verhalten' can refer to any kind of behaviour or way of conducting oneself, even to the way in which one relates oneself to something else, or to the way one refrains or holds oneself back. We shall translate it in various ways.

2. 'Sie macht offenbar, dass in jedem Verhalten und Sein zu Seiendem als Seiendem a priori ein Ratsel liegt.' The phrase 'Sein zu Seiendem' is typical of many similar expressions in which the substantive 'Sein' is followed by the preposition 'zu'. In such expressions we shall usually translate 'zu' as 'towards': for example, 'Being-towards-death', 'Being towards Others', 'Being towards entities within-the-world'.

3. "die geheimen Urteile der gemeinsen Vernunft" '.

is to become the sole explicit and abiding theme for one's analytic—'the business of philosophers'.

By considering these prejudices, however, we have made plain not only that the question of Being lacks an answer, but that the question itself is obscure and without direction. So if it is to be revived, this means that we must first work out an adequate way of formulating it.

2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being

The question of the meaning of Being must be formulated. If it is a fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be made transparent, and in an appropriate way.$^1$ We must therefore explain briefly what belongs to any question whatsoever, so that from this standpoint the question of Being can be made visible as a very special one with its own distinctive character.

Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought. Inquiry is a cognizant seeking for an entity both with regard to the fact that it is and with regard to its Being as it is.$^2$ This cognizant seeking can take the form of 'investigating' ['"Untersuchen"'], in which one lays bare that which the question is about and ascents its character. Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei…]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]. In investigative questions—that is, in questions which are specifically theoretical—what is asked about is determined and conceptualized. Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the asking [das Erfragte]; this is what is really intended:$^3$ with this the inquiry reaches its goal. Inquiry itself is the behaviour of a questioner, and therefore of an entity, and as such has its own character of Being. When one makes an inquiry one may do so 'just casually' or one may formulate the

1. . . dann bedarf solches Fragen der angemessenen Durchsichtigkeit. The adjective 'durchsichtig' is one of Heidegger's favourite expressions, and means simply 'transparent', 'perspicuous', something that one can 'see through'. We shall ordinarily translate it by 'transparent'. See H. 146 for further discussion.

2. . . in seinem Dass- und Sosein'.

3. . . das eigentlich Intendierte …' The adverb 'eigentlich' occurs very often in this work. It may be used informally where one might write 'really' or 'on its part', or in a much stronger sense, where something like 'genuinely' or 'authentically' would be more appropriate. It is not always possible to tell which meaning Heidegger has in mind. In the contexts which seem relatively informal we shall write 'really'; in the more technical passages we shall write 'authentically', reserving 'genuinely' for 'genuin' or 'echt'. The reader must not confuse this kind of 'authenticity' with the kind, which belongs to an 'authentic text' or an 'authentic account'. See H. 42 for further discussion. In the present passage, the verb 'intendieren' is presumably used in the medieval sense of 'intending', as adapted and modified by Brentano and Husserl.

question explicitly. The latter case is peculiar in that the inquiry does not become transparent to itself until all these constitutive factors of the question have themselves become transparent.

The question about the meaning of Being is to be formulated. We must therefore discuss it with an eye to these structural items.

Inquiry, as a kind of seeking, must be guided beforehand by what is sought. So the meaning of Being must already be available to us in some way. As we have intimated, we always conduct our activities in an understanding of Being. Out of this understanding arise both the explicit question of the meaning of Being and the tendency that leads us towards its conception. We do not know what 'Being' means. But even if we ask, 'What is "Being"?', we keep within an understanding of the 'is', though we are unable to fix conceptionally what that 'is' signifies. We do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average understanding of Being is still a Fact.

However much this understanding of Being (an understanding which is already available to us) may fluctuate and grow dim, and border on mere acquaintance with a word, its very indefiniteness is itself a positive phenomenon which needs to be clarified. An investigation of the meaning of Being cannot be expected to give this clarification at the outset. If we are to obtain the clue we need for Interpreting this average understanding of Being, we must first develop the concept of Being. In the light of this concept and the ways in which it may be explicitly understood, we can make out what this obscured or still unillumined understanding of Being means, and what kinds of obscuration—or hindrance to an explicit illumination—of the meaning of Being are possible and even inevitable.

Further, this vague understanding of Being may be so infiltrated with traditional theories and opinions about Being that these remain hidden as sources of the way in which it is prevalently understood. What we seek when we inquire into Being is not something entirely unfamiliar, even if proximally we cannot grasp it at all.

In the question which we are to work out, what is asked about is Being—that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which

1 'zunächst'. This word is of very frequent occurrence in Heidegger, and he will discuss his use of it on H. 370 below. In ordinary German usage the word may mean 'at first', to begin with; or 'in the first instance', and we shall often translate it in such ways. The word is, however, cognate with the adjective 'nah' and its superlative 'nächst', which we shall usually translate as 'close' and 'closest' respectively; and Heidegger often uses 'zunächst' in the sense of 'most closely', when he is describing the most 'natural' and 'obvious' experiences which we have at an uncritical and pre-philosophical level. We have ventured to translate this Heideggerian sense of 'zunächst' as 'proximally', but there are many border-line cases where it is not clear whether Heidegger has in mind this special sense or one of the more general usages, and in such cases we have chosen whatever expression seems stylistically preferable.

[woraufhin] entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail. The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity. If we are to understand the problem of Being, our first philosophical step consists in not μῶθόν τυα διηγείσθαι, in not ‘telling a story’—that is to say, in not defining entities as entities by tracing them back in their origin to some other entities, as if Being had the character of some possible entity. Hence Being, as that which is asked about, must be exhibited in a way of its own, essentially different from the way in which entities are discovered. Accordingly, what is to be found out by the asking—the meaning of Being—also demands that it be conceived in a way of its own, essentially contrasting with the concepts in which entities acquire their determinate signification.

In so far as Being constitutes what is asked about, and “Being” means the Being of entities, then entities themselves turn out to be what is interrogated. These are, so to speak, questioned as regards their Being. But if the characteristics of their Being can be yielded without falsification, then these entities must, on their part, have become accessible as they are in themselves. When we come to what is to be interrogated, the question of Being requires that the right way of access to entities shall have been obtained and secured in advance. But there are many things which we designate as ‘being’ [“seiend”], and we do so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the ‘there is’. In which entities is the meaning of Being to be discerned? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take its departure? Is the starting-point optional, or does some particular entity have priority when we come to work out the question of Being? Which entity shall we take for our example, and in what sense does it have priority?

If the question about Being is to be explicitly formulated and carried through in such a manner as to be completely transparent to itself, then any treatment of it in line with the elucidations we have given requires us to explain how Being is to be looked at, how its meaning is to be understood and conceptually grasped; it requires us to prepare the way for choosing the right entity for our example, and to work out the genuine way of access to it. Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it—all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of Being for those particular entities

1 ‘Sein liegt im Dass- und Sosein, in Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im “es gibt”. On ‘Vorhandenheit’ (‘presence-at-hand’) see note 1, p. 48, H. 25. On ‘Dasein’, see note 1, p. 27.

which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his own Being. The very asking of this question is an entity's mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about—namely, Being. This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term "Dasein". If we are to formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must first give a proper explication of an entity (Dasein), with regard to its Being.

Is there not, however, a manifest circularity in such an undertaking? If we must first define an entity in its Being, and if we want to formulate the question of Being only on this basis, what is this but going in a circle? In working out our question, have we not 'presupposed' something which only the answer can bring? Formal objections such as the argument about 'circular reasoning', which can easily be cited at any time in the study of first principles, are always sterile when one is considering concrete ways of investigating. When it comes to understanding the matter at hand, they carry no weight and keep us from penetrating into the field of study.

But factically there is no circle at all in formulating our question as we have described. One can determine the nature of entities in their Being without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of Being at one's disposal. Otherwise there could have been no ontological knowledge heretofore. One would hardly deny that factically there has been such knowledge. Of course 'Being' has been presupposed in all ontology up till now, but not as a concept at one's disposal—not as the sort of thing we are seeking. This 'presupposing' of Being has rather the character of taking a look at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the entities presented to us get provisionally Articulated in their Being. This guiding

1 The word 'Dasein' plays so important a role in this work and is already so familiar to the English-speaking reader who has read about Heidegger, that it seems simpler to leave it untranslated except in the relatively rare passages in which Heidegger himself breaks it up with a hyphen ('Da-sein') to show its etymological construction: literally 'Being-there'. Though in traditional German philosophy it may be used quite generally to stand for almost any kind of Being or existence' which we can say that something has (the 'existence' of God, for example), in everyday usage it tends to be used more narrowly to stand for the kind of Being that belongs to persons. Heidegger follows the everyday usage in this respect, but goes somewhat further in that he often uses it to stand for any person who has such Being, and who is thus an 'entity' himself. See H. 11 below.

2 'faktisch'. While this word can often be translated simply as 'in fact' or 'as a matter of fact', it is used both as an adjective and as an adverb and is so characteristic of Heidegger's style that we shall as a rule translate it either as 'factual' or as 'factically', thus preserving its connection with the important noun 'Faktizität' (facticity), and keeping it distinct from 'tatsächlich' ('factual') and 'wirklich' ('actual'). See the discussion of 'Tatsächlichkeit' and 'Faktizität' in Sections 12 and 29 below (H. 56, 135).

3 . . deren faktischen Bestand man wohl nicht leugnen wird'.

activity of taking a look at Being arises from the average understanding of Being in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution$^1$ of Dasein itself. Such ‘presupposing’ has nothing to do with laying down an axiom from which a sequence of propositions is deductively derived. It is quite impossible for there to be any ‘circular argument’ in formulating the question about the meaning of Being; for in answering this question, the issue is not one of grounding something by such a derivation; it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it and exhibiting them.$^2$

In the question of the meaning of Being there is no ‘circular reasoning’ but rather a remarkable ‘relatedness backward or forward’ which what we are asking about (Being) bears to the inquiry itself as a mode of Being of an entity. Here what is asked about has an essential pertinence to the inquiry itself, and this belongs to the ownmost meaning [eigensten Sinn] of the question of Being. This only means, however, that there is a way—perhaps even a very special one—in which entities with the character of Dasein are related to the question of Being. But have we not thus demonstrated that a certain kind of entity has a priority with regard to its Being? And have we not thus presented that entity which shall serve as the primary example to be interrogated in the question of Being? So far our discussion has not demonstrated Dasein’s priority, nor has it shown decisively whether Dasein may possibly or even necessarily serve as the primary entity to be interrogated. But indeed something like a priority of Dasein has announced itself.

$^3$ The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being

When we pointed out the characteristics of the question of Being, taking as our clue the formal structure of the question as such, we made it

$^1$ ‘Wesensverfassung’. ‘Verfassung’ is the standard word for the ‘constitution’ of a nation or any political organization, but it is also used for the ‘condition’ or ‘state’ in which a person may find himself. Heidegger seldom uses the word in either of these senses; but he does use it in ways which are somewhat analogous. In one sense Dasein’s ‘Verfassung’ is its ‘constitution’, the way it is constituted, ‘sa condition humaine’. In another sense Dasein may have several ‘Verfassungen’ as constitutive ‘states’ or factors which enter into its ‘constitution’. We shall, in general, translate Verfassung as ‘constitution’ or ‘constitutive state’ according to the context; but in passages where ‘constitutive state’ would be cumbersome and there is little danger of ambiguity, we shall simply write ‘state’. These states, however, must always be thought of as constitutive and essential, not as temporary or transitory stages like the ‘state’ of one’s health or the ‘state of the nation’. When Heidegger uses the word ‘Konstitution’, we shall usually indicate this by capitalizing ‘Constitution’.

$^2$ ‘… weil es in der Beantwortung der Frage nicht um eine ableitenende Begründung, sondern um aufweisende Grund-Freileugung geht.’ Expressions of the form ‘es geht … um—’ appear very often in this work. We shall usually translate them by variants on ‘—is an issue for …’

clear that this question is a peculiar one, in that a series of fundamental considerations is required for working it out, not to mention for solving it. But its distinctive features will come fully to light only when we have delimited it adequately with regard to its function, its aim, and its motives.

Hitherto our arguments for showing that the question must be restated have been motivated in part by its venerable origin but chiefly by the lack of a definite answer and even by the absence of any satisfactory formulation of the question itself. One may, however, ask what purpose this question is supposed to serve. Does it simply remain—or is it at all—a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?

Being is always the Being of an entity. The totality of entities can, in accordance with its various domains, become a field for laying bare and delimiting certain definite areas of subject-matter. These areas, on their part (for instance, history, Nature, space, life, Dasein, language, and the like), can serve as objects which corresponding scientific investigations may take as their respective themes. Scientific research accomplishes, roughly and naively, the demarcation and initial fixing of the areas of subject-matter. The basic structures of any such area have already been worked out after a fashion in our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interpreting that domain of Being in which the area of subject-matter is itself confined. The 'basic concepts' which thus arise remain our proximal clues for disclosing this area concretely for the first time. And although research may always lean towards this positive approach, its real progress comes not so much from collecting results and storing them away in 'manuals' as from inquiring into the ways in which each particular area is basically constituted [Grundverfassungen]—an inquiry to which we have been driven mostly by reacting against just such an increase in information.

The real 'movement' of the sciences takes place when their basic concepts undergo a more or less radical revision which is transparent to itself. The level which a science has reached is determined by how far it is capable of a crisis in its basic concepts. In such immanent crises the very relationship between positively investigative inquiry and those things themselves that are under interrogation comes to a point where it begins to totter. Among the various disciplines everywhere today there are freshly awakened tendencies to put research on new foundations.

Mathematics, which is seemingly the most rigorous and most firmly constructed of the sciences, has reached a crisis in its 'foundations'. In the controversy between the formalists and the intuitionists, the issue is

one of obtaining and securing the primary way of access to what are supposedly the objects of this science. The relativity theory of physics arises from the tendency to exhibit the interconnectedness of Nature as it is 'in itself'. As a theory of the conditions under which we have access to Nature itself, it seeks to preserve the changelessness of the laws of motion by ascertaining all relativities, and thus comes up against the question of the structure of its own given area of study—the problem of matter. In biology there is an awakening tendency to inquire beyond the definitions which mechanism and vitalism have given for "life" and "organism", and to define anew the kind of Being which belongs to the living as such. In those humane sciences which are historiological in character,1 the urge towards historical actuality itself has been strengthened in the course of time by tradition and by the way tradition has been presented and handed down: the history of literature is to become the history of problems. Theology is seeking a more primordial interpretation of man's Being towards God, prescribed by the meaning of faith itself and remaining within it. It is slowly beginning to understand once more Luther's insight that the 'foundation' on which its system of dogma rests has not arisen from an inquiry in which faith is primary, and that conceptually this 'foundation' not only is inadequate for the problematic of theology, but conceals and distorts it.

Basic concepts determine the way in which we get an understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding. Only after the area itself has been explored beforehand in a corresponding manner do these concepts become genuinely demonstrated and 'grounded'. But since every such area is itself obtained from the domain of entities themselves, this preliminary research, from which the basic concepts are drawn, signifies nothing else than an interpretation of those entities with regard to their basic state of Being. Such research must run ahead of the positive sciences, and it can. Here the work of Plato and Aristotle is evidence enough. Laying the foundations for the sciences in this way is different in principle from the kind of 'logic' which limps along after, investigating the status of some science as it chances to find it, in order to discover its 'method'. Laying the foundations, as we have described it, is rather a productive logic—in the sense that it leaps ahead,

1 'In den historischen Geisteswissenschaften …' Heidegger makes much of the distinction between 'Historie' and 'Geschichte' and the corresponding adjectives 'historisch' and 'geschichtlich'. 'Historie' stands for what Heidegger calls a 'science of history'. (See H. 375, 378). 'Geschichte' usually stands for the kind of 'history' that actually happens. We shall as a rule translate these respectively as 'historiology' and 'history', following similar conventions in handling the two adjectives. See especially Sections 6 and 76 below.

as it were, into some area of Being, discloses it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry.¹ To give an example, what is philosophically primary is neither a theory of the concept-formation of historiology nor the theory of historiological knowledge, nor yet the theory of history as the Object of historiology; what is primary is rather the Interpretation of authentically historical entities as regards their historicality.² Similarly the positive outcome of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason lies in what it has contributed towards the working out of what belongs to any Nature whatsoever, not in a 'theory' of knowledge. His transcendental logic is an a priori logic for the subject-matter of that area of Being called "Nature".

But such an inquiry itself—ontology taken in the widest sense without favouring any particular ontological directions or tendencies—requires a further clue. Ontological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical³ inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains itself naive and opaque if in its researches into the Being of entities it fails to discuss the meaning of Being in general. And even the ontological task of constructing a non-deductive genealogy of the different possible ways of Being requires that we first come to an understanding of 'what we really mean by this expression "Being"'.

The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and, in so doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and which provide their foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.

Ontological research itself, when properly understood, gives to the question of Being an ontological priority which goes beyond mere resumption of a venerable tradition and advancement with a problem that has hitherto been opaque. But this objectively scientific priority is not the only one.

¹ '… als durchsichtige Anweisungen des Fragens …' ² '… sondern die Interpretation des eigentlich geschichtlich Seienden auf seine Geschichtlichkeit'. We shall translate the frequently occurring term 'Geschichtlichkeit' as 'historicality'. Heidegger very occasionally uses the term 'Historizität', as on H. 20 below, and this will be translated as 'historicity'. ³ While the terms 'ontisch' ('ontical') and 'ontologisch' ('ontological') are not explicitly defined, their meanings will emerge rather clearly. Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with entities and the facts about them.

4. The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being

Science in general may be defined as the totality established through an interconnection of true propositions.$^1$ This definition is not complete, nor does it reach the meaning of science. As ways in which man behaves, sciences have the manner of Being which this entity—man himself—possesses. This entity we denote by the term "Dasein". Scientific research is not the only manner of Being which this entity can have, nor is it the one which lies closest. Moreover, Dasein itself has a special distinctiveness as compared with other entities, and it is worth our while to bring this to view in a provisional way. Here our discussion must anticipate later analyses, in which our results will be authentically exhibited for the first time.

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive state of Dasein's Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards that Being—a relationship which itself is one of Being.$^2$ And this means further that there is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.$^3$

Here "Being-ontological" is not yet tantamount to "developing an ontology". So if we should reserve the term "ontology" for that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities, then what we have had in mind in speaking of Dasein's "Being-ontological" is to be designated as something "pre-ontological". It does not signify simply "being-ontical", however, but rather "being in such a way that one has an understanding of Being".

That kind of Being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow, we call "existence" [Existenz]. And because we cannot define Dasein's essence by citing a "what" of the kind that pertains to a subject-matter [eines sachhaltigen Was], and because its essence lies rather in the fact that in each case it

$^1$ . . das Ganze eines Begründungszusammenhanges wahrer Sätze … See H. 357 below.

$^2$ "Zu dieser Seinsverfassung des Daseins gehört aber dann, dass es in seinem Sein zu diesem Sein ein Seinsverhältnis hat." This passage is ambiguous and might also be read as: "'… and this implies that Dasein, in its Being towards this Being, has a relationship of Being.'"

$^3$ . . dass es ontologisch ist. As 'ontologisch' may be either an adjective or an adverb, we might also write: "'… that it is ontologically'. A similar ambiguity occurs in the two following sentences, where we read 'Ontologisch-sein' and 'ontisch-seiend' respectively.

has its Being to be, and has it as its own,$^1$ we have chosen to designate this entity as “Dasein”, a term which is purely an expression of its Being [als reiner Seinsausdruck].

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence—in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself. Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself, or got itself into them, or grown up in them already. Only the particular Dasein decides its existence, whether it does so by taking hold or by neglecting. The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself. The understanding of oneself which leads along this way we call “existentialiell”.$^2$ The question of existence is one of Dasein’s ontical ‘affairs’. This does not require that the ontological structure of existence should be theoretically transparent. The question about that structure aims at the analysis [Auseinanderlegung] of what constitutes existence. The context [Zusammenhang] of such structures we call “existentialiity”. Its analytic has the character of an understanding which is not existentiell, but rather existential. The task of an existential analytic of Dasein has been delineated in advance, as regards both its possibility and its necessity, in Dasein’s ontical constitution.

So far as existence is the determining character of Dasein, the ontological analytic of this entity always requires that existentiality be considered beforehand. By “existentialiity” we understand the state of Being that is constitutive for those entities that exist. But in the idea of such a constitutive state of Being, the idea of Being is already included. And thus even the possibility of carrying through the analytic of Dasein depends on working out beforehand the question about the meaning of Being in general.

Sciences are ways of Being in which Dasein comports itself towards entities which it need not be itself. But to Dasein, Being in a world is something that belongs essentially. Thus Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primordiality both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the understanding of the Being of those entities which become accessible within the world.$^3$ So whenever an ontology takes for its theme entities whose character of Being is other than that of Dasein, it has its own foundation and motivation in Dasein’s own ontical structure, in which a pre-ontological understanding of Being is comprised as a definite characteristic.

1. . . dass es je sein Sein als seiniges zu sein hat …
2. We shall translate ‘existenziell’ by ‘existentiell’, and ‘existenzial’ by ‘existential’. There seems to be little reason for resorting to the more elaborate neologisms proposed by other writers.
3. . . innerhalb der Welt … . Heidegger uses at least three expressions which might be translated as ‘in the world’: ‘innerhalb der Welt’, ‘in der Welt’, and the adjective (or adverb) ‘innerweltlich’. We shall translate these respectively by ‘within the world’, ‘in the world’, and ‘within-the-world’.

Therefore fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein.

Dasein accordingly takes priority over all other entities in several ways. The first priority is an ontical one: Dasein is an entity whose Being has the determinate character of existence. The second priority is an ontological one: Dasein is in itself 'ontological', because existence is thus determinative for it. But with equal primordiality Dasein also possesses—as constitutive for its understanding of existence—an understanding of the Being of all entities of a character other than its own. Dasein has therefore a third priority as providing the ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of any ontologies. Thus Dasein has turned out to be, more than any other entity, the one which must first be interrogated ontologically.

But the roots of the existential analytic, on its part, are ultimately existentiell, that is, ontical. Only if the inquiry of philosophical research is itself seized upon in an existentiell manner as a possibility of the Being of each existing Dasein, does it become at all possible to disclose the existentiality of existence and to undertake an adequately founded ontological problematic. But with this, the ontical priority of the question of being has also become plain.

Dasein's ontico-ontological priority was seen quite early, though Dasein itself was not grasped in its genuine ontological structure, and did not even become a problem in which this structure was sought. Aristotle says: ἡ μυχή τὰ οντα πώς εστιν. "Man's soul is, in a certain way, entities." The 'soul' which makes up the Being of man has αἱοθηνας and νόησις among its ways of Being, and in these it discovers all entities, both in the fact that they are, and in their Being as they are—that is, always in their Being. Aristotle's principle, which points back to the ontological thesis of Parmenides, is one which Thomas Aquinas has taken up in a characteristic discussion. Thomas is engaged in the task of deriving the 'transcendentia'—those characters of Being which lie beyond every possible way in which an entity may be classified as coming under some generic kind of subject-matter (every modus specialis entis), and which belong necessarily to anything, whatever it may be. Thomas has to demonstrate that the verum is such a transcendens. He does this by invoking an entity which, in accordance with its very manner of Being, is properly suited to 'come together with' entities of any sort whatever. This distinctive entity, the ens quod natum est conveniure cum omni ente, is the soul (anima). Here the priority of 'Dasein' over all other entities emerges, although it has not been ontologically clarified. This priority has obviously nothing in common with a vicious subjectivizing of the totality of entities.

By indicating Dasein's ontico-ontological priority in this provisional

manner, we have grounded our demonstration that the question of Being is ontico-ontologically distinctive. But when we analysed the structure of this question as such (Section 2), we came up against a distinctive way in which this entity functions in the very formulation of that question. Dasein then revealed itself as that entity which must first be worked out in an ontologically adequate manner, if the inquiry is to become a transparent one. But now it has been shown that the ontological analytic of Dasein in general is what makes up fundamental ontology, so that Dasein functions as that entity which in principle is to be interrogated beforehand as to its Being.

If to Interpret the meaning of Being becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary entity to be interrogated; it is also that entity which already comports itself, in its Being, towards what we are asking about when we ask this question. But in that case the question of Being is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-Being which belongs to Dasein itself—the pre-ontological understanding of Being.

II

THE TWOFOLD TASK IN WORKING OUT THE QUESTION OF BEING. METHOD AND DESIGN OF OUR INVESTIGATION

5. The Ontological Analytic of Dasein as Laying Bare the Horizon for an Interpretation of the Meaning of Being in General

In designating the tasks of 'formulating' the question of Being, we have shown not only that we must establish which entity is to serve as our primary object of interrogation, but also that the right way of access to this entity is one which we must explicitly make our own and hold secure. We have already discussed which entity takes over the principal role within the question of Being. But how are we, as it were, to set our sights towards this entity, Dasein, both as something accessible to us and as something to be understood and interpreted?

In demonstrating that Dasein in ontico-ontologically prior, we may have misled the reader into supposing that this entity must also be what is given as ontico-ontologically primary not only in the sense that it can itself be grasped 'immediately', but also in that the kind of Being which it possesses is presented just as 'immediately'. Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us—even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it has an understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in each case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we are certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this interpretation can be taken over as an appropriate clue, as if this way of understanding Being is what must emerge when one's ownmost state of Being is considered as an ontological theme. The kind of Being which belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its own Being, it has a tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards which it comports itself proximally and in a way which is essentially constant—in terms of the 'world'. In Dasein itself, and therefore in its own understanding of Being, the way the world is

1 'Besinnung'. The earliest editions have 'Bestimmung' instead.

understood is, as we shall show, reflected back ontologically upon the way in which Dasein itself gets interpreted.

Thus because Dasein is ontico-ontologically prior, its own specific state of Being (if we understand this in the sense of Dasein's 'categorical structure') remains concealed from it. Dasein is ontically 'closest' to itself and ontologically farthest; but pre-ontologically it is surely not a stranger.

Here we have merely indicated provisionally that an Interpretation of this entity is confronted with peculiar difficulties grounded in the kind of Being which belongs to the object taken as our theme and to the very behaviour of so taking it. These difficulties are not grounded in any short-comings of the cognitive powers with which we are endowed, or in the lack of a suitable way of conceiving—a lack which seemingly would not be hard to remedy.

Not only, however, does an understanding of Being belong to Dasein; but this understanding develops or decays along with whatever kind of Being Dasein may possess at the time; accordingly there are many ways in which it has been interpreted, and these are all at Dasein's disposal. Dasein's ways of behaviour, its capacities, powers, possibilities, and vicissitudes, have been studied with varying extent in philosophical psychology, in anthropology, ethics, and 'political science', in poetry, biography, and the writing of history, each in a different fashion. But the question remains whether these interpretations of Dasein have been carried through with a primordial existentiality comparable to whatever existentiell primordiality they may have possessed. Neither of these excludes the other but they do not necessarily go together. Existentiell interpretation can demand an existential analytic, if indeed we conceive of philosophical cognition as something possible and necessary. Only when the basic structures of Dasein have been adequately worked out with explicit orientation towards the problem of Being itself, will what we have hitherto gained in interpreting Dasein get its existential justification.

Thus an analytic of Dasein must remain our first requirement in the question of Being. But in that case the problem of obtaining and securing the kind of access which will lead to Dasein, becomes even more a burning one. To put it negatively, we have no right to resort to dogmatic constructions and to apply just any idea of Being and actuality to this entity, no matter how 'self-evident' that idea may be; nor may any of the 'categories' which such an idea prescribes be forced upon Dasein without proper ontological consideration. We must rather choose such a way of access and such a kind of interpretation that this entity can show itself in itself and from itself [an ihm selbst von ihm selbst her]. And this means that it is to be shown as it is proximally and for the most part—

in its average everydayness. In this everydayness there are certain structures which we shall exhibit—not just any accidental structures, but essential ones which, in every kind of Being that factual Dasein may possess, persist as determinative for the character of its Being. Thus by having regard for the basic state of Dasein's everydayness, we shall bring out the Being of this entity in a preparatory fashion.

When taken in this way, the analytic of Dasein remains wholly oriented towards the guiding task of working out the question of Being. Its limits are thus determined. It cannot attempt to provide a complete ontology of Dasein, which assuredly must be constructed if anything like a 'philosophical' anthropology is to have a philosophically adequate basis.

If our purpose is to make such an anthropology possible, or to lay its ontological foundations, our Interpretation will provide only some of the 'pieces', even though they are by no means inessential ones. Our analysis of Dasein, however, is not only incomplete; it is also, in the first instance, provisional. It merely brings out the Being of this entity, without interpreting its meaning. It is rather a preparatory procedure by which the horizon for the most primordial way of interpreting Being may be laid bare. Once we have arrived at that horizon, this preparatory analytic of Dasein will have to be repeated on a higher and authentically ontological basis.

We shall point to temporality as the meaning of the Being of that entity which we call "Dasein". If this is to be demonstrated, those structures of Dasein which we shall provisionally exhibit must be Interpreted over again as modes of temporality. In thus interpreting Dasein as temporality, however, we shall not give the answer to our leading question as to the meaning of Being in general. But the ground will have been prepared for obtaining such an answer.

1 'Und zwar soll sie das Seiende in dem zeigen, wie es zunächst und zumeist ist, in seiner durchschnittlichen Alltäglichkeit.' The phrase 'zunächst und zumeist' is one that occurs many times, though Heidegger does not explain it until Section 71 (H. 370 below), where 'Alltäglichkeit' too gets explained. On 'zunächst' see our note 1, p. 25, H. 6.

2 The ambiguity of the pronominal references in this sentence and the one before it, reflects a similar ambiguity in the German. (The English-speaking reader should be reminded that the kind of philosophical 'anthropology' which Heidegger has in mind is a study of man in the widest sense, and is not to be confused with the empirical sciences of 'physical' and 'cultural' anthropology.

3 'Zeitlichkeit'. While it is tempting to translate the adjective 'zeitlich' and the noun 'Zeitlichkeit' by their most obvious English cognates, 'timely' and 'timeliness', this would be entirely misleading; for 'temporal' and 'temporality' come much closer to what Heidegger has in mind, not only when he is discussing these words in their popular senses (as he does on the following page) but even when he is using them in his own special sense, as in Section 65 below. (See especially H. 326 below, where 'Zeitlichkeit' is defined.) On the other hand, he occasionally uses the noun 'Temporalität' and the adjective 'temporal' in a sense which he will explain later (H. 19). We shall translate these by 'Temporality' and 'Temporal', with initial capitals.

We have already intimated that Dasein has a pre-ontological Being as its ontically constitutive state. Dasein is in such a way as to be something which understands something like Being.$^1$ Keeping this interconnection firmly in mind, we shall show that whenever Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something like Being, it does so with time as its standpoint. Time must be brought to light—and genuinely conceived—as the horizon for all understanding of Being and for any way of interpreting it. In order for us to discern this, time needs to be explicated primordially as the horizon for the understanding of Being, and in terms of temporality as the Being of Dasein, which understands Being. This task as a whole requires that the conception of time thus obtained shall be distinguished from the way in which it is ordinarily understood. This ordinary way of understanding it has become explicit in an interpretation precipitated in the traditional concept of time, which has persisted from Aristotle to Bergson and even later. Here we must make clear that this conception of time and, in general, the ordinary way of understanding it, have sprung from temporality, and we must show how this has come about. We shall thereby restore to the ordinary conception the autonomy which is its rightful due, as against Bergson’s thesis that the time one has in mind in this conception is space.

‘Time’ has long functioned as an ontological—or rather an ontical—criterion for naively discriminating various realms of entities. A distinction has been made between ‘temporal’ entities (natural processes and historical happenings) and ‘non-temporal’ entities (spatial and numerical relationships). We are accustomed to contrasting the ‘timeless’ meaning of propositions with the ‘temporal’ course of propositional assertions. It is also held that there is a ‘cleavage’ between ‘temporal’ entities and the ‘supra-temporal’ eternal, and efforts are made to bridge this over. Here ‘temporal’ always means simply being [seiend] ‘in time’—a designation which, admittedly, is still pretty obscure. The Fact remains that time, in the sense of ‘being [sein] in time’, functions as a criterion for distinguishing realms of Being. Hitherto no one has asked or troubled to investigate how time has come to have this distinctive ontological function, or with what right anything like time functions as such a criterion; nor has anyone asked whether the authentic ontological relevance which is possible for it, gets expressed when “time” is used in so naively ontological a manner. ‘Time’ has acquired this ‘self-evident’ ontological function ‘of its own accord’, so to speak; indeed it has done so within the horizon of the way it is ordinarily understood. And it has maintained itself in this function to this day.

$^1$‘Dasein ist in der Weise, seiend so etwas wie Sein zu verstehen.’

In contrast to all this, our treatment of the question of the meaning of Being must enable us to show that the central problematic of all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time, if rightly seen and rightly explained, and we must show how this is the case.

If Being is to be conceived in terms of time, and if, indeed, its various modes and derivatives are to become intelligible in their respective modifications and derivations by taking time into consideration, then Being itself (and not merely entities, let us say, as entities ‘in time’) is thus made visible in its ‘temporal’ character. But in that case, ‘temporal’ can no longer mean simply ‘being in time’. Even the ‘non-temporal’ and the ‘supra-temporal’ are ‘temporal’ with regard to their Being, and not just privatively by contrast with something ‘temporal’ as an entity ‘in time’, but in a positive sense, though it is one which we must first explain. In both pre-philosophical and philosophical usage the expression ‘temporal’ has been pre-empted by the signification we have cited; in the following investigations, however, we shall employ it for another significance. Thus the way in which Being and its modes and characteristics have their meaning determined primordially in terms of time, is what we shall call its “Temporal” determinateness.$^1$ Thus the fundamental ontological task of Interpreting Being as such includes working out the Temporality of Being. In the exposition of the problematic of Temporality the question of the meaning of Being will first be concretely answered.

Because Being cannot be grasped except by taking time into consideration, the answer to the question of Being cannot lie in any proposition that is blind and isolated. The answer is not properly conceived if what it asserts propositionally is just passed along, especially if it gets circulated as a free-floating result, so that we merely get informed about a ‘standpoint’ which may perhaps differ from the way this has hitherto been treated. Whether the answer is a ‘new’ one remains quite superficial and is of no importance. Its positive character must lie in its being ancient enough for us to learn to conceive the possibilities which the ‘Ancients’ have made ready for us. In its own most meaning this answer tells us that concrete ontological research must begin with an investigative inquiry which keeps within the horizon we have laid bare; and this is all that it tells us.

If, then, the answer to the question of Being is to provide the clues for our research, it cannot be adequate until it brings us the insight that the specific kind of Being of ontology hitherto, and the vicissitudes of its inquiries, its findings, and its failures, have been necessitated in the very character of Dasein.

$^1$ ‘seine temporale Bestimmtheit’. See our note 3, p. 38, H. 17 above.

6. The Task of Destroying the History of Ontology

All research—and not least that which operates within the range of the central question of Being—is an ontical possibility of Dasein. Dasein's Being finds its meaning in temporality. But temporality is also the condition which makes historicality possible as a temporal kind of Being which Dasein itself possesses, regardless of whether or how Dasein is an entity 'in time'. Historicality, as a determinate character, is prior to what is called "history" (world-historical historizing).

"Historicality" stands for the state of Being that is constitutive for Dasein's 'historizing' as such; only on the basis of such 'historizing' is anything like 'world-history' possible or can anything belong historically to world-history. In its factual Being, any Dasein is as it already was, and it is 'what' it already was. It is its past, whether explicitly or not. And this is so not only in that its past is, as it were, pushing itself along 'behind' it, and that Dasein possesses what is past as a property which is still present-at-hand and which sometimes has after-effects upon it: Dasein 'is' its past in the way of its own Being, which, to put it roughly, 'historizes' out of its future on each occasion. Whatever the way of being it may have at the time, and thus with whatever understanding of Being it may possess, Dasein has grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself: in terms of this it understands itself proximally and, within a certain range, constantly. By this understanding, the possibilities of its Being are disclosed and regulated. Its own past—and this always means the past of its 'generation'—is not something which follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it.

This elemental historicality of Dasein may remain hidden from Dasein itself. But there is a way by which it can be discovered and given proper attention. Dasein can discover tradition, preserve it, and study it explicitly. The discovery of tradition and the disclosure of what it 'transmits' and how this is transmitted, can be taken hold of as a task in its own right. In this way Dasein brings itself into the kind of Being which consists in historiological inquiry and research. But historiology—or more precisely historicity—is possible as a kind of Being which the inquiring Dasein may

1 'weltgeschichtliches Geschehen'. While the verb 'geschehen' ordinarily means to 'happen', and will often be so translated, Heidegger stresses its etymological kinship to 'Geschichte' or 'history'. To bring out this connection, we have coined the verb 'historize', which might be paraphrased as to 'happen in a historical way'; we shall usually translate 'geschehen' this way in contexts where history is being discussed. We trust that the reader will keep in mind that such 'historizing' is characteristic of all historical entities, and is not the sort of thing that is done primarily by historians (as 'philosophizing', for instance, is done by philosophers). (On 'world-historical' see H. 381 ff.)

2 'Das Dasein 'ist' seine Vergangenheit in der Weise seines Seins, das, roh gesagt, jeweils aus seiner Zukunft her "geschieht".

3 'Historizität'. Cf. note 2, p. 31. H. 10 above.

possess, only because historicality is a determining characteristic for Dasein in the very basis of its Being. If this historicality remains hidden from Dasein, and as long as it so remains, Dasein is also denied the possibility of historiological inquiry or the discovery of history. If historiology is wanting, this is not evidence against Dasein's historicality; on the contrary, as a deficient mode of this state of Being, it is evidence for it. Only because it is 'historical' can an era be unhistoriological.

On the other hand, if Dasein has seized upon its latent possibility not only of making its own existence transparent to itself but also of inquiring into the meaning of existentiality itself (that is to say, of previously inquiring into the meaning of Being in general), and if by such inquiry its eyes have been opened to its own essential historicality, then one cannot fail to see that the inquiry into Being (the ontico-ontological necessity of which we have already indicated) is itself characterized by historicality. The ownmost meaning of Being which belongs to the inquiry into Being as an historical inquiry, gives us the assignment [Anweisung] of inquiring into the history of that inquiry itself, that is, of becoming historiological. In working out the question of Being, we must heed this assignment, so that by positively making the past our own, we may bring ourselves into full possession of the ownmost possibilities of such inquiry. The question of the meaning of Being must be carried through by explicating Dasein beforehand in its temporality and historicality; the question thus brings itself to the point where it understands itself as historiological.

Our preparatory Interpretation of the fundamental structures of Dasein with regard to the average kind of Being which is closest to it (a kind of Being in which it is therefore proximally historical as well), will make manifest, however, not only that Dasein is inclined to fall back upon its world (the world in which it is) and to interpret itself in terms of that world by its reflected light, but also that Dasein simultaneously falls prey to the tradition of which it has more or less explicitly taken hold. This tradition keeps it from providing its own guidance, whether in

1 'defizienter Modus'. Heidegger likes to think of certain characteristics as occurring in various ways or 'modes', among which may be included certain ways of 'not occurring' or 'occurring only to an inadequate extent' or, in general, occurring 'deficiently'. It is as if zero and the negative integers were to be thought of as representing 'deficient modes of being a positive integer'.

2 … das Dasein hat nicht nur die Geneigtheit, an seine Welt, in der es ist, zu verfallen and reluzent aus ihr her sich auszulegen, Dasein verfällt in einem damit auch seiner mehr oder minder ausdrücklich ergriffenen Tradition.' The verb 'verfallen' is one which Heidegger will use many times. Though we shall usually translate it simply as 'fall', it has the connotation of deteriorating, collapsing, or falling down. Neither our 'fall back upon' nor our 'falls prey to' is quite right: but 'fall upon' and 'fall on to', which are more literal, would be misleading for 'an … zu verfallen'; and though 'falls to the lot of' and 'devolves upon' would do well for 'verfällt' with the dative in other contexts, they will not do so well here.

inquiring or in choosing. This holds true—and by no means least—for that understanding which is rooted in Dasein's ownmost Being, and for the possibility of developing it—namely, for ontological understanding.

When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn.$^1$ Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand. Dasein has had its historicality so thoroughly uprooted by tradition that it confines its interest to the multiformity of possible types, directions, and standpoints of philosophical activity in the most exotic and alien of cultures; and by this very interest it seeks to veil the fact that it has no ground of its own to stand on. Consequently, despite all its historiological interests and all its zeal for an Interpretation which is philologically 'objective' ['sachliche']$, Dasein no longer understands the most elementary conditions which would alone enable it to go back to the past in a positive manner and make it productively its own.

We have shown at the outset (Section 1) not only that the question of the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one that has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite forgotten in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'. Greek ontology and its history—which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the conceptual character of philosophy even today—prove that when Dasein understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the 'world', and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated [verfällt] to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident—merely material for reworking, as it was for Hegel. In the Middle Ages this uprooted Greek ontology became a fixed body of doctrine. Its systematics, however, is by no means a mere joining together of traditional pieces into a single edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have been taken over dogmatically from the Greeks, a great deal of unpretentious work has been carried on further within these limits. With the peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology has, in its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes metaphysicae of Suarez to the 'metaphysics' and transcendental philosophy of modern times, determining even the foundations and the aims of Hegel's

$^1$ In this passage, Heidegger juxtaposes a number of words beginning with the prefix 'über-'; 'übergibt' ('transmits'); 'überantwortet' ('delivers over'); 'das Überkommee' ('what has come down to us'); 'überlieferten' ('handed down to us').

'logic'. In the course of this history certain distinctive domains of Being have come into view and have served as the primary guides for subsequent problematics: the ego cogito of Descartes, the subject, the "I", reason, spirit, person. But these all remain uninterrogated as to their Being and its structure, in accordance with the thoroughgoing way in which the question of Being has been neglected. It is rather the case that the categorical content of the traditional ontology has been carried over to these entities with corresponding formalizations and purely negative restrictions, or else dialectic has been called in for the purpose of Interpreting the substantiality of the subject ontologically.

If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about$^1$ must be dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being—the ways which have guided us ever since.

In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts by an investigation in which their 'birth certificate' is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; these in turn are given factically in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way the possible field for investigation is thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself towards the past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems. But to bury the past in nullity [Nichtigkeit] is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect.

The destruction of the history of ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of Being is formulated, and it is possible only within such a formulation. In the framework of our treatise, which aims at working out that question in principle, we can carry out this destruction only with regard to stages of that history which are in principle decisive.

In line with the positive tendencies of this destruction, we must in the first instance raise the question whether and to what extent the

$^1$… der durch sie gezeitigten Verdeckungen. The verb 'zeitigen' will appear frequently in later chapters. See H. 304 and our note ad loc.

Interpretation of Being and the phenomenon of time have been brought together thematically in the course of the history of ontology, and whether the problematic of Temporality required for this has ever been worked out in principle or ever could have been. The first and only person who has gone any stretch of the way towards investigating the dimension of Temporality or has even let himself be drawn hither by the coercion of the phenomena themselves is Kant. Only when we have established the problematic of Temporality, can we succeed in casting light on the obscurity of his doctrine of the schematism. But this will also show us why this area is one which had to remain closed off to him in its real dimensions and its central ontological function. Kant himself was aware that he was venturing into an area of obscurity: 'This schematism of our understanding as regards appearances and their mere form is an art hidden in the depths of the human soul, the true devices of which are hardly ever to be divined from Nature and laid uncovered before our eyes.' Here Kant shrinks back, as it were, in the face of something which must be brought to light as a theme and a principle if the expression "Being" is to have any demonstrable meaning. In the end, those very phenomena which will be exhibited under the heading of 'Temporality' in our analysis, are precisely those most covert judgments of the 'common reason' for which Kant says it is the 'business of philosophers' to provide an analytic.

In pursuing this task of destruction with the problematic of Temporality as our clue, we shall try to Interpret the chapter on the schematism and the Kantian doctrine of time, taking that chapter as our point of departure. At the same time we shall show why Kant could never achieve an insight into the problematic of Temporality. There were two things that stood in his way: in the first place, he altogether neglected the problem of Being; and, in connection with this, he failed to provide an ontology with Dasein as its theme or (to put this in Kantian language) to give a preliminary ontological analytic of the subjectivity of the subject. Instead of this, Kant took over Descartes' position quite dogmatically, notwithstanding all the essential respects in which he had gone beyond him. Furthermore, in spite of the fact that he was bringing the phenomenon of time back into the subject again, his analysis of it remained oriented towards the traditional way in which time had been ordinarily understood; in the long run this kept him from working out the phenomenon of a 'transcendental determination of time' in its own structure and function. Because of this double effect of tradition the decisive connection between time and the 'I think' was shrouded in utter darkness; it did not even become a problem.

In taking over Descartes' ontological position Kant made an essential omission: he failed to provide an ontology of Dasein. This omission was a decisive one in the spirit [im Sinne] of Descartes' ownmost Tendencies. With the 'cogito sum' Descartes had claimed that he was putting philosophy on a new and firm footing. But what he left undetermined when he began in this 'radical' way, was the kind of Being which belongs to the res cogitans, or—more precisely—the meaning of the Being of the 'sum'. By working out the unexpressed ontological foundations of the 'cogito sum', we shall complete our sojourn at the second station along the path of our destructive retrospect of the history of ontology. Our Interpretation will not only prove that Descartes had to neglect the question of Being altogether; it will also show why he came to suppose that the absolute 'Being-certain' ['Gewisssein'] of the cogito exempted him from raising the question of the meaning of the Being which this entity possesses.

Yet Descartes not only continued to neglect this and thus to accept a completely indefinite ontological status for the res cogitans sive mens sive animus ['the thing which cognizes, whether it be a mind or spirit']: he regarded this entity as a fundamental inconcussum, and applied the medieval ontology to it in carrying through the fundamental considerations of his Meditationes. He defined the res cogitans ontologically as an ens; and in the medieval ontology the meaning of Being for such an ens had been fixed by understanding it as an ens creatum. God, as ens infinitum, was the ens increatum. But createdness [Geschaffenheit] in the widest sense of something's having been produced [Hergestelltheit], was an essential item in the structure of the ancient conception of Being. The seemingly new beginning which Descartes proposed for philosophizing has revealed itself as the implantation of a baleful prejudice, which has kept later generations from making any thematic ontological analytic of the 'mind' ['Gemütes'] such as would take the question of Being as a clue and would at the same time come to grips critically with the traditional ancient ontology.

Everyone who is acquainted with the middle ages sees that Descartes is 'dependent' upon medieval scholasticism and employs its terminology. But with this 'discovery' nothing is achieved philosophically as long as it remains obscure to what a profound extent the medieval ontology has influenced the way in which posterity has determined or failed to determine the ontological character of the res cogitans. The full extent of this cannot be estimated until both the meaning and the limitations of the ancient ontology have been exhibited in terms of an orientation directed

1 We follow the later editions in reading 'der Seinsinn des "sum"'. The earlier editions have an anacoluthic 'den' for 'der'.

towards the question of Being. In other words, in our process of destruction we find ourselves faced with the task of Interpreting the basis of the ancient ontology in the light of the problematic of Temporality. When this is done, it will be manifest that the ancient way of interpreting the Being of entities is oriented towards the 'world' or 'Nature' in the widest sense, and that it is indeed in terms of 'time' that its understanding of Being is obtained. The outward evidence for this (though of course it is merely outward evidence) is the treatment of the meaning of Being as παρονσία or οὖσία, which signifies, in ontologico-Temporal terms, 'presence' 'Anwesenheit'. Entities are grasped in their Being as 'presence'; this means that they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time—the 'Present'.

The problematic of Greek ontology, like that of any other, must take its clues from Dasein itself. In both ordinary and philosophical usage, Dasein, man's Being, is 'defined' as the ζῶνων λόγου ἐχον—as that living thing whose Being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse. λέγειν is the clue for arriving at those structures of Being which belong to the entities we encounter in addressing ourselves to anything or speaking about it [im Ansprechen und Besprechen]. (Cf. Section 7 B.) This is why the ancient ontology as developed by Plato turns into 'dialectic'. As the ontological clue gets progressively worked out—namely, in the 'hermeneutic' of the λόγος—it becomes increasingly possible to grasp the problem of Being in a more radical fashion. The 'dialectic', which has been a genuine philosophical embarrassment, becomes superfluous. That

1. The noun οὖσία is derived from one of the stems used in conjugating the irregular verb εἶνα, ('to be'); in the Aristotelian tradition it is usually translated as 'substance', though translators of Plato are more likely to write 'essence', 'existence', or 'being'. Heidegger suggests that οὖσία is to be thought of as synonymous with the derivative noun παρονσία ('being-at', 'presence'). As he points out, παρονσία has a close etymological correspondence with the German 'Anwesenheit', which is similarly derived from the stem of a verb meaning 'to be' (Cf. O.H.G. 'wesan') and a prefix of the place or time at which ('an-'). We shall in general translate 'Anwesenheit' as 'presence', and the participle 'anwesend' as some form of the expression 'have presence'.

2. die "Gegenwart". While this noun may, like παρονσία or Anwesenheit, mean the presence of someone at some place or on some occasion, it more often means the present, as distinguished from the past and the future. In its etymological root-structure, however, it means a waiting towards. While Heidegger seems to think of all these meanings as somehow fused, we shall generally translate this noun as the Present', reserving 'in the present' for the corresponding adjective 'gegenwärtig'.

3. The phrase ζῶνων λόγου ἐχον is traditionally translated as 'rational animal', on the assumption that λόγος refers to the faculty of reason. Heidegger, however, points out that λόγος is derived from the same root as the verb λέγειν ('to talk', 'to hold discourse'); he identifies this in turn with νοεῖν ('to cognize', 'to be aware of', 'to know'), and calls attention to the fact that the same stem is found in the adjective διαλεκτοκιδος ('dialectical'). (See also H. 165 below.) He thus interprets λόγος as 'Rede', which we shall usually translate as 'discourse' or 'talk', depending on the context. See Section 7 B below (H. 32 ff.) and Sections 34 and 35, where 'Rede' will be defined and distinguished both from 'Sprache' ('language') and from 'Gerede' ('idle talk') (H. 160 ff.).

is why Aristotle 'no longer has any understanding' of it, for he has put it on a more radical footing and raised it to a new level [aufhob]. λέγειω itself—or rather νοεῖν, that simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand, which Parmenides had already taken to guide him in his own interpretation of Being—has the Temporal structure of a pure 'making-present' of something. Those entities which show themselves in this and for it, and which are understood as entities in the most authentic sense, thus get interpreted with regard to the Present; that is, they are conceived as presence (οὐσία).³

Yet the Greeks have managed to interpret Being in this way without any explicit knowledge of the clues which function here, without any acquaintance with the fundamental ontological function of time or even any understanding of it, and without any insight into the reason why this function is possible. On the contrary, they take time itself as one entity among other entities, and try to grasp it in the structure of its Being, though that way of understanding Being which they have taken as their horizon is one which is itself naively and inexplicitly oriented towards time.

Within the framework in which we are about to work out the principles of the question of Being, we cannot present a detailed Temporal Interpretation of the foundations of ancient ontology, particularly not of its loftiest and purest scientific stage, which is reached in Aristotle. Instead we shall give an interpretation of Aristotle's essay on time,¹¹ which may be chosen as providing a way of discriminating the basis and the limitations of the ancient science of Being.

Aristotle's essay on time is the first detailed Interpretation of this

¹¹… von etwas Vorhandenem in seiner puren Handchenheit …' The adjective 'vorhanden' means literally 'before the hand', but this signification has long since given way to others. In ordinary German usage it may, for instance, be applied to the stock of goods which a dealer has 'on hand', or to the 'extant' works of an author; and in earlier philosophical writing it could be used, like the word 'Dasein' itself, as a synonym for the Latin 'existenza'. Heidegger, however, distinguishes quite sharply between 'Dasein' and 'Vorhandenheit', using the latter to designate a kind of Being which belongs to things other than Dasein. We shall translate 'vorhanden' as 'present-at-hand', and 'Vorhandenheit' as 'presence-at-hand'. The reader must be careful not to confuse these expressions with our 'presence' (Anwesenheit) and 'the Present' ('die Gegenwart'), etc., or with a few other verbs and adjectives which we may find it convenient to translate by 'present'.

²¹… des reinen "Gegenwärtigens" von etwas. The verb 'gegenwärtigen', which is derived from the adjective 'gegenwartig', is not a normal German verb, but was used by Husserl and is used extensively by Heidegger. While we shall translate it by various forms of 'make present', it does not necessarily mean 'making physically present', but often means something like 'bringing vividly to mind'.

³¹ "Das Seiende, das sich in ihm für es zeigt und das als das eigentliche Seiende verstanden wird, erhält demnach seine Auslegung in Rücksicht auf—Gegen-wart, d.h. es ist als Anwesenheit (οὐσία) begriffen." The hyphenation of 'Gegen-wart' calls attention to the structure of this word in a way which cannot be reproduced in English. See note 2, p. 47, H. 25 above. The pronouns 'ihm' and 'es' presumably both refer back to λέγειν, though their reference is ambiguous, as our version suggests.

phenomenon which has come down to us. Every subsequent account of time, including Bergson's, has been essentially determined by it. When we analyse the Aristotelian conception, it will likewise become clear, as we go back, that the Kantian account of time operates within the structures which Aristotle has set forth; this means that Kant's basic ontological orientation remains that of the Greeks, in spite of all the distinctions which arise in a new inquiry.

The question of Being does not achieve its true concreteness until we have carried through the process of destroying the ontological tradition. In this way we can fully prove that the question of the meaning of Being is one that we cannot avoid, and we can demonstrate what it means to talk about 'restating' this question.

In any investigation in this field, where 'the thing itself is deeply veiled' one must take pains not to overestimate the results. For in such an inquiry one is constantly compelled to face the possibility of disclosing an even more primordial and more universal horizon from which we may draw the answer to the question, "What is 'Being'?" We can discuss such possibilities seriously and with positive results only if the question of Being has been reawakened and we have arrived at a field where we can come to terms with it in a way that can be controlled.

7. The Phenomenological Method of Investigation

In provisionally characterizing the object which serves as the theme of our investigation (the Being of entities, or the meaning of Being in general), it seems that we have also delineated the method to be employed. The task of ontology is to explain Being itself and to make the Being of entities stand out in full relief. And the method of ontology remains questionable in the highest degree as long as we merely consult those ontologies which have come down to us historically, or other essays of that character. Since the term "ontology" is used in this investigation in a sense which is formally broad, any attempt to clarify the method of ontology by tracing its history is automatically ruled out.

When, moreover, we use the term "ontology", we are not talking about some definite philosophical discipline standing in interconnection with the others. Here one does not have to measure up to the tasks of some discipline that has been presented beforehand; on the contrary, only in terms of the objective necessities of definite questions and the kind of treatment which the 'things themselves' require, can one develop such a discipline.

With the question of the meaning of Being, our investigation comes up

against the fundamental question of philosophy. This is one that must be treated phenomenologically. Thus our treatise does not subscribe to a 'standpoint' or represent any special 'direction'; for phenomenology is nothing of either sort, nor can it become so as long as it understands itself. The expression 'phenomenology' signifies primarily a methodological conception. This expression does not characterize the what of the objects of philosophical research as subject-matter, but rather the how of that research. The more genuinely a methodological concept is worked out and the more comprehensively it determines the principles on which a science is to be conducted, all the more primordially is it rooted in the way we come to terms with the things themselves, and the farther is it removed from what we call "technical devices", though there are many such devices even in the theoretical disciplines.

Thus the term 'phenomenology' expresses a maxim which can be formulated as 'To the things themselves!' It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings; it is opposed to taking over any conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated; it is opposed to those pseudo-questions which parade themselves as 'problems', often for generations at a time. Yet this maxim, one may rejoin, is abundantly self-evident, and it expresses, moreover, the underlying principle of any scientific knowledge whatsoever. Why should anything so self-evident be taken up explicitly in giving a title to a branch of research? In point of fact, the issue here is a kind of 'self-evidence' which we should like to bring closer to us, so far as it is important to do so in casting light upon the procedure of our treatise. We shall expound only the preliminary conception [Vorbegriff] of phenomenology.

This expression has two components: "phenomenon" and "logos". Both of these go back to terms from the Greek: φαινόμενον and λόγος. Taken superficially, the term "phenomenology" is formed like 'theology', "biology", "sociology"—names which may be translated as "science of God", "science of life", "science of society". This would make phenomenology the science of phenomena. We shall set forth the preliminary conception of phenomenology by characterizing what one has in mind in the term's two components, 'phenomenon' and 'logos', and by establishing the meaning of the name in which these are put together. The history of

1 The appeal to the 'Sachen selbst', which Heidegger presents as virtually a slogan for Husserl's phenomenology, is not easy to translate without giving misleading impressions. What Husserl has in mind is the 'things' that words may be found to signify when their significations are correctly intuited by the right kind of Anschauung. (Cf. his Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, part 1, second edition, Halle, 1913, p. 6.) We have followed Marvin Farber in adopting 'the things themselves'. (Cf. his The Foundation of Phenomenology, Cambridge, Mass., 1943, pp. 202-3.) The word 'Sache' will, of course, be translated in other ways also.

the word itself, which presumably arose in the Wolffian school, is here of no significance.

A. The Concept of Phenomenon

The Greek expression φαυτόμενον, to which the term 'phenomenon' goes back, is derived from the verb φαίνεσθαι, which signifies "to show itself". Thus φαυνόμενον means that which shows itself, the manifest [das, was sich zeigt, das Siechengende, das Offenbare]. φαίνεσθαι itself is a middle-voiced form which comes from φαίνω—to bring to the light of day, to put in the light. Φαίνω comes from the stem φα—, like φάς, the light, that which is bright—in other words, that wherein something can become manifest, visible in itself. Thus we must keep in mind that the expression 'phenomenon' signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest. Accordingly the φαυνόμενα or 'phenomena' are the totality of what lies in the light of day or can be brought to the light—what the Greeks sometimes identified simply with τὰ οἱντα (entities). Now an entity can show itself from itself [von ihm selbst her] in many ways, depending in each case on the kind of access we have to it. Indeed it is even possible for an entity to show itself as something which in itself it is not. When it shows itself in this way, it 'looks like something or other' ['sieht'] … "so aus wie …"]. This kind of showing-itself is what we call "seeming" [Scheinen].

Thus in Greek too the expression φαυνόμενον ("phenomenon") signifies that which looks like something, that which is 'semblant', 'semblance' [das "Scheinbare", der "Schein"]. φαυνόμενον ἀγαθόν means something good which looks like, but 'in actuality' is not, what it gives itself out to be. If we are to have any further understanding of the concept of phenomenon, everything depends on our seeing how what is designated in the first signification of φαυνόμενον ('phenomenon' as that which shows itself) and what is designated in the second ('phenomenon' as semblance) are structurally interconnected. Only when the meaning of something is such that it makes a pretension of showing itself—that is, of being a phenomenon—can it show itself as something which it is not; only then can it 'merely look like so-and-so'. When φαυνόμενον signifies 'semblance', the primordial signification (the phenomenon as the manifest) is already included as that upon which the second signification is founded. We shall allot the term 'phenomenon' to this positive and primordial signification of φαυνόμενον, and distinguish "phenomenon" from "semblance", which is the privative modification of "phenomenon" as thus defined. But what both these terms express has proximally nothing at all to do with what is called an 'appearance', or still less a 'mere appearance'.

1 '…was man "Erscheinung" oder gar "blosse Erscheinung" nennt.' Though the noun 'Erscheinung' and the verb 'erscheinen' behave so much like the English 'appearance' and 'appear' that the ensuing discussion presents relatively few difficulties in this

This is what one is talking about when one speaks of the 'symptoms of a disease' ["Krankheitsscheinungen"] Here one has in mind certain occurrences in the body which show themselves and which, in showing themselves as thus showing themselves, 'indicate' ["indizieren"] something which does not show itself. The emergence [Auftreten] of such occurrences, their showing-themselves, goes together with the Being-present-at-hand of disturbances which do not show themselves. Thus appearance, as the appearance 'of something', does not mean showing-itself; it means rather the announcing-itself by [von] something which does not show itself, but which announces itself through something which does show itself. Appearing is a not-showing-itself. But the 'not' we find here is by no means to be confused with the privative "not" which we used in defining the structure of semblance.1 What appears does not show itself; and anything which thus fails to show itself, is also something which can never seem.2 All indications, presentations, symptoms, and symbols have this basic formal structure of appearing, even though they differ among themselves.

respect for the translator, the passage shows some signs of hasty construction, and a few comments may be helpful. We are told several times that 'appearance' and 'phenomenon' are to be sharply distinguished; yet we are also reminded that there is a sense in which they coincide, and even this sense seems to be twofold, though it is not clear that Heidegger is fully aware of this. The whole discussion is based upon two further distinctions: the distinction between 'showing' ('zeigen') and 'announcing' ('melden') and 'bringing forth' (' hervorbringen'), and the distinction between ('x') that which 'shows itself' ('das Sichzeigende') or which 'does the announcing' ('das Meldende') or which 'gets brought forth' ('das Hervorgebrachte'), and ('y') that which 'announces itself' ('das Sichmeldende') or which does the bringing-forth. Heidegger is thus able to introduce the following senses of 'Erscheinung' or 'appearance':

1a. an observable event $y$, such as a symptom which announces a disease $x$ by showing itself, and in or through which $x$ announces itself without showing itself; 1b. $y$'s showing-itself; 2. $x$'s announcing-itself in or through $y$; 3a. the 'mere appearance' $y$ which may bring forth when $x$ is of such a kind that its real nature can never be made manifest; 3b. the 'mere appearance' which is the bringing-forth of a 'mere appearance' in sense 3a. Heidegger makes abundantly clear that sense 2 is the proper sense of 'appearance' and that senses 3a and 3b are the proper senses of 'mere appearance'. On H. 30 and 31 he concedes that sense 1b corresponds to the primordial sense of 'phenomenon'; but his discussion on H. 28 suggests that it corresponds to this more accurately, and he reverts to this position towards the end of H. 30.

1'… as welches es die Struktur des Scheins bestimmt. (The older editions omit the 'es.')

2 'Was sich in der Weise nicht zeigt, wie das Erscheinende, kann auch nie scheinen.' This passage is ambiguous, but presumably the 'das Erscheinende' is to be interpreted as the $x$ of our note 1, p. 51, not our $y$. The reader should notice that our standardized translation of 'scheinen' as 'seem' is one which here becomes rather misleading, even though these words correspond fairly well in ordinary usage. In distinguishing between 'scheinen' and 'erscheinen', Heidegger seems to be insisting that 'scheinen' can be done only by the $y$ which 'shows itself' or 'does the announcing', not by the $x$ which 'announces itself' in or through $y$, even though German usage does not differentiate these verbs quite so sharply.

In spite of the fact that 'appearing' is never a showing-itself in the sense of "phenomenon", appearing is possible only by reason of a showing-itself of something. But this showing-itself, which helps to make possible the appearance, is not the appearing itself. Appearing is an announcing-itself [das Sich-melden] through something that shows itself. If one then says that with the word 'appearance' we allude to something wherein something appears without being itself an appearance, one has not thereby defined the concept of phenomenon: one has rather presupposed it. This presupposition, however, remains concealed; for when one says this sort of thing about 'appearance', the expression 'appear' gets used in two ways. "That wherein something 'appears'" means that wherein something announces itself, and therefore does not show itself; and in the words [Rede] 'without being itself an "appearance"', "appearance" signifies the showing-itself. But this showing-itself belongs essentially to the 'wherein' in which something announces itself. According to this, phenomena are never appearances, though on the other hand every appearance is dependent on phenomena. If one defines "phenomenon" with the aid of a conception of 'appearance' which is still unclear, then everything is stood on its head, and a 'critique' of phenomenology on this basis is surely a remarkable undertaking.

So again the expression 'appearance' itself can have a double signification: first, appearing, in the sense of announcing-itself, as not-showing-itself; and next, that which does the announcing [das Meldende selbst]—that which in its showing-itself indicates something which does not show itself. And finally one can use "appearing" as a term for the genuine sense of "phenomenon" as showing-itself. If one designates these three different things as 'appearance', bewilderment is unavoidable.

But this bewilderment is essentially increased by the fact that 'appearance' can take on still another signification. That which does the announcing—that which, in its showing-itself, indicates something non-manifest—may be taken as that which emerges in what is itself non-manifest, and which emanates [ausstrahlt] from it in such a way indeed that the non-manifest gets thought of as something that is essentially never manifest. When that which does the announcing is taken this way, "appearance" is tantamount to a "bringing forth" or "something brought forth", but something which does not make up the real Being of what brings it forth: here we have an appearance in the sense of 'mere appearance'. That which does the announcing and is brought forth does, of course, show itself, and in such a way that, as an emanation of what it announces, it keeps this very thing constantly veiled in itself. On the other hand, this not-showing which veils is not a semblance. Kant uses the term "appearance" in this twofold way. According to him "appearances" are, in the first

place, the 'objects of empirical intuition': they are what shows itself in such intuition. But what thus shows itself (the "phenomenon" in the genuine primordial sense) is at the same time an 'appearance' as an emanation of something which hides itself in that appearance—an emanation which announces.

In so far as a phenomenon is constitutive for 'appearance' in the signification of announcing itself through something which shows itself, though such a phenomenon can privatively take the variant form of semblance, appearance too can become mere semblance. In a certain kind of lighting someone can look as if his cheeks were flushed with red; and the redness which shows itself can be taken as an announcement of the Being-present-at-hand of a fever, which in turn indicates some disturbance in the organism.

"Phenomenon", the showing-itself-in-itself, signifies a distinctive way in which something can be encountered.1 "Appearance", on the other hand, means a reference-relationship which is in an entity itself,2 and which is such that what does the referring (or the announcing) can fulfil its possible function only if it shows itself in itself and is thus a 'phenomenon'. Both appearance and semblance are founded upon the phenomenon, though in different ways. The bewildering multiplicity of 'phenomena' designated by the words "phenomenon", "semblance", "appearance", "mere appearance", cannot be disentangled unless the concept of the phenomenon is understood from the beginning as that which shows itself in itself.

If in taking the concept of "phenomenon" this way, we leave indefinite which entities we consider as "phenomena", and leave it open whether what shows itself is an entity or rather some characteristic which an entity may have in its Being, then we have merely arrived at the formal conception of "phenomenon". If by "that which shows itself" we understand those entities which are accessible through the empirical "intuition" in, let us say, Kant's sense, then the formal conception of "phenomenon" will indeed be legitimately employed. In this usage "phenomenon" has the signification of the ordinary conception of phenomenon. But this ordinary conception is not the phenomenological conception. If we keep within the horizon of the Kantian problematic, we can give an illustration of what is conceived phenomenologically as a "phenomenon", with reservations as to other differences; for we may then say that which already shows itself in the appearance as prior to the "phenomenon" as

1 '… eine ausgezeichnete Begegnisart von etwas.' The noun 'Begegnis' is derived from the verb 'begegnen', which is discussed in note 2, p. 70, H. 44 below.

2 '… einen seienenden Verweisungsbegzug im Seienden selbst …'. The verb 'verweisen', which we shall translate as referr or 'assign', depending upon the context, will receive further attention in Section 17 below. See also our note 2, p. 97, H. 68 below.

ordinarily understood and as accompanying it in every case, can, even though it thus shows itself unthematically, be brought thematically to show itself; and what thus shows itself in itself (the 'forms of the intuition') will be the "phenomena" of phenomenology. For manifestly space and time must be able to show themselves in this way—they must be able to become phenomena—if Kant is claiming to make a transcendental assertion grounded in the facts when he says that space is the a priori "inside-which" of an ordering.

If, however, the phenomenological conception of phenomenon is to be understood at all, regardless of how much closer we may come to determining the nature of that which shows itself, this presupposes inevitably that we must have an insight into the meaning of the formal conception of phenomenon and its legitimate employment in an ordinary signification.—But before setting up our preliminary conception of phenomenology, we must also define the signification of λόγος so as to make clear in what sense phenomenology can be a 'science of' phenomena at all.

B. The Concept of the Logos

In Plato and Aristotle the concept of the λόγος has many competing significations, with no basic signification positively taking the lead. In fact, however, this is only a semblance, which will maintain itself as long as our Interpretation is unable to grasp the basic signification properly in its primary content. If we say that the basic signification of λόγος is "discourse", then this word-for-word translation will not be validated until we have determined what is meant by "discourse" itself. The real signification of "discourse", which is obvious enough, gets constantly covered up by the later history of the word λόγος, and especially by the numerous and arbitrary Interpretations which subsequent philosophy has provided. λόγος gets 'translated' (and this means that it is always getting interpreted) as "reason", "judgment", "concept", "definition", "ground", or "relationship". But how can 'discourse' be so susceptible of modification that λόγος can signify all the things we have listed, and in good scholarly usage? Even if λόγος is understood in the sense of "assertion", but of "assertion" as 'judgment', this seemingly legitimate translation may still miss the fundamental signification, especially if "judgment" is conceived in a sense taken over from some contemporary 'theory of judgment'. λόγος does not mean "judgment", and it certainly does not mean this

1 Cf. Critique of Pure Reason², 'Transcendental Aesthetic', Section 1, p. 34. 2 On λόγος, 'Rede', etc., see note 3, p. 47, H. 25 above. 3 '… Vernunft, Urteil, Begriff, Definition, Grund, Verhältnis.'

primarily—if one understands by "judgment" a way of 'binding' something with something else, or the 'taking of a stand' (whether by acceptance or by rejection).

λόγος as "discourse" means rather the same as δηλοιν: to make manifest what one is 'talking about' in one's discourse. Aristotle has explicated this function of discourse more precisely as ἀποφαινεσθαι. The λόγος lets something be seen (φαίνεσθαι), namely, what the discourse is about; and it does so either for the one who is doing the talking (the medium) or for persons who are talking with one another, as the case may be. Discourse 'lets something be seen' ἀπό … that is, it lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about.

In discourse (ἀπόφανους), so far as it is genuine, what is said [was geredet ist] is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in what it says [in ihrem Gesagten], makes manifest what it is talking about, and thus makes this accessible to the other party. This is the structure of the λόγος as ἀπόφανους. This mode of making manifest in the sense of letting something be seen by pointing it out, does not go with all kinds of 'discourse'. Requesting (εὐχή), for instance, also makes manifest, but in a different way.

When fully concrete, discoursing (letting something be seen) has the character of speaking [Sprechens]—vocal proclamation in words. The λόγος is φωνη, and indeed, φωνη μετὰ φαντασίας—an utterance in which something is sighted in each case.

And only because the function of the λόγος as ἀπόφανους lies in letting something be seen by pointing it out, can the λόγος have the structural form of σύνθεσις. Here "synthesis" does not mean a binding and linking together of representations, a manipulation of psychical occurrences where the 'problem' arises of how these bindings, as something inside, agree with something physical outside. Here the συν has a purely apophantical signification and means letting something be seen in its togetherness [Beisammen] with something—letting it be seen as something.

Furthermore, because the λόγος is a letting-something-be-seen, it can therefore be true or false. But here everything depends on our steering clear of any conception of truth which is construed in the sense of 'agreement'. This idea is by no means the primary one in the concept of ἀλληθεία. The 'Being-true' of the λόγος as ἀλληθεειν means that in λέγειν as ἀποφαινεσθαι the entities of which one is talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be seen as something unhidden (ἀλληθε)s;

1. offenbar machen das, wovon in der Rede "die Rede" ist.
2. von dem selbst her, wovon die Rede ist.

that is, they must be discovered.1 Similarly, 'Being false' (ψεύδεσθαι) amounts to deceiving in the sense of covering up [verdecken] : putting something in front of something (in such a way as to let it be seen) and thereby passing it off as something which it is not.

But because 'truth' has this meaning, and because the λόγος is a definite mode of letting something be seen, the λόγος is just not the kind of thing that can be considered as the primary 'locus' of truth. If, as has become quite customary nowadays, one defines "truth" as something that 'really' pertains to judgment,2 and if one then invokes the support of Aristotle with this thesis, not only is this unjustified, but, above all, the Greek conception of truth has been misunderstood. Aισθησις, the sheer sensory perception of something, is 'true' in the Greek sense, and indeed more primordially than the λόγος which we have been discussing. Just as seeing aims at colours, any αισθησις aims at its ιδια (those entities which are genuinely accessible only through it and for it); and to that extent this perception is always true. This means that seeing always discovers colours, and hearing always discovers sounds. Pure νοεῖν is the perception of the simplest determinate ways of Being which entities as such may possess, and it perceives them just by looking at them.3

This νοεῖν is what is 'true' in the purest and most primordial sense; that is to say, it merely discovers, and it does so in such a way that can never cover up. This νοεῖν can never cover up; it can never be false; it can at worst remain a non-perceiving, ἀγνοεῖν, not sufficing for straightforward and appropriate access.

When something no longer takes the form of just letting something be seen, but is always harking back to something else to which it points, so that it lets something be seen as something, it thus acquires a synthesis-structure, and with this it takes over the possibility of covering up.4 The 'truth of judgments', however, is merely the opposite of this covering-up, a secondary phenomenon of truth, with more than one kind of foundation.5 Both realism and idealism have—with equal thoroughness—missed the meaning of the Greek conception of truth, in terms of which only the

1 The Greek words for 'truth' (η αλληθεία, τὸ αλληθείς) are compounded of the privative prefix δῆ ('not') and the verbal stem -αλθ- ('to escape notice', 'to be concealed'). The truth may thus be looked upon as that which is un-concealed, that which gets discovered or uncovered ('entdeckt'). 2 Wenn man … Wahrheit als das bestimmt, was "eigenentlich" dem Urteil zukommt… 3 … das schlicht hinsehende Vernehmen der einfachsten Seinsbestimmungen des Seienden als solchen." 4 'Was nicht mehr die Vollzugsform des reinen Seenlassens hat, sondern je im Aufweisen auf ein anderes rekurriert und so je etwas als etwas sehen lässt, das übernimmt mit dieser Synthesisstruktur die Möglichkeit des Verdeckens.' 5 … ein mehtfach fundiertes Phänomen von Wahrheit. A 'secondary' or 'founded' phenomenon is one which is based upon something else. The notion of 'Fundierung' is one which Heidegger has taken over from Husserl. See our note 1, p. 86, on H. 59 below.

possibility of something like a ‘doctrine of ideas’ can be understood as philosophical knowledge.

And because the function of the λόγος lies in merely letting something be seen, in letting entities be perceived [im Vernehmenlassen des Seienden], λόγος can signify the reason [Vernunft]. And because, moreover, λόγος is used not only with the signification of λέγειν but also with that of λέγουμενον (that which is exhibited, as such), and because the latter is nothing else than the ἐπποκελμένον which, as present-at-hand, already lies at the bottom [zum Grunde] of any procedure of addressing oneself to it or discussing it, λόγος qua λέγουμενον means the ground, the ratio. And finally, because λόγος as λέγereumov can also signify that which, as something to which one addresses oneself, becomes visible in its relation to something in its ‘relatedness’, λόγος acquires the signification of relation and relationship.

This Interpretation of ‘apophantical discourse’ may suffice to clarify the primary function of the λόγος.

C. The Preliminary Conception of Phenomenology

When we envisage concretely what we have set forth in our Interpretation of ‘phenomenon’ and ‘logos’, we are struck by an inner relationship between the things meant by these terms. The expression “phenomenology” may be formulated in Greek as λέγειν τὰ φαίνουμενα, where λέγειν means ἀποφαίνεσθαι. Thus “phenomenology” means ἀποφαίνεσθαι τὰ φαίνμενα—to let that which shows itself beseen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself. This is the formal meaning of that branch of research which calls itself “phenomenology”. But here we are expressing nothing else than the maxim formulated above: ‘To the things themselves!’

Thus the term “phenomenology” is quite different in its meaning from expressions such as “theology” and the like. Those terms designate the

1 Heidegger is here pointing out that the word λόγος is etymologically akin to the verb λέγειν, which has among its numerous meanings those of laying out, exhibiting, setting forth, recounting, telling a tale, making a statement. Thus λόγος as λέγereumov can be thought of as the faculty of ‘reason’ (‘Vernunft’) which makes such activities possible. But λόγος can also mean τὰ λέγereumov (that which is laid out, exhibited, set forth, told); in this sense it is the underlying subject matter (τὰ νποκελμένον) to which one addresses oneself and which one discusses (‘Ansprechen und Besprechen’); as such it lies ‘at the bottom’ (zum Grunde) of what is exhibited or told, and is thus the ‘ground’ or ‘reason’ (‘Grund’) for telling it. But when something is exhibited or told, it is exhibited in its relatedness (‘in seiner Bezogenheit’); and in this way λόγος as λέγereumov comes to stand for just such a relation or relationship (Bezziehung und Verhältnis). The three senses here distinguished correspond to three senses of the Latin ‘ratio’, by which λόγois was traditionally translated, though Heidegger explicitly calls attention to only one of these. Notice that ‘Beziehung’ (which we translate as ‘relation’) can also be used in some contexts where ‘Ansprechen’ (our ‘addressing oneself’) would be equally appropriate. Notice further that ‘Verhältnis’ (our ‘relationship’), which is ordinarily a synonym for ‘Beziehung’, can, like λόγος and ‘ratio’, also refer to the special kind of relationship which one finds in a mathematical proportion. The etymological connection between ‘Vernehmen’ and ‘Vernunft’ should also be noted.

objects of their respective sciences according to the subject-matter which they comprise at the time [in ihrer jeweiligen Sachhaltigkeit]. 'Phenomenology' neither designates the object of its researches, nor characterizes the subject-matter thus comprised. The word merely informs us of the "how" with which what is to be treated in this science gets exhibited and handled. To have a science 'of' phenomena means to grasp its objects in such a way that everything about them which is up for discussion must be treated by exhibiting it directly and demonstrating it directly.$^1$ The expression 'descriptive phenomenology', which is at bottom tautological, has the same meaning. Here "description" does not signify such a procedure as we find, let us say, in botanical morphology; the term has rather the sense of a prohibition—the avoidance of characterizing anything without such demonstration. The character of this description itself, the specific meaning of the λόγος, can be established first of all in terms of the 'thinghood' ['Sachheit'] of what is to be 'described'—that is to say, of what is to be given scientific definiteness as we encounter it phenomenally. The signification of "phenomenon", as conceived both formally and in the ordinary manner, is such that any exhibiting an entity as it shows itself in itself, may be called "phenomenology" with formal justification.

Now what must be taken into account if the formal conception of phenomenon is to be deformalized into the phenomenological one, and how is this latter to be distinguished from the ordinary conception? What is it that phenomenology is to 'let us see'? What is it that must be called a 'phenomenon' in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground.

Yet that which remains hidden in an egregious sense, or which relapses and gets covered up again, or which shows itself only 'in disguise', is not just this entity or that, but rather the Being of entities, as our previous observations have shown. This Being can be covered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and no question arises about it or about its meaning. Thus that which demands that it become a phenomenon, and which demands this in a distinctive sense and in terms of its ownmost content as a thing, is what phenomenology has taken into its grasp thematically as its object.

$^1$ … in direkter Aufweisung und direkter Ausweisung …

Phenomenology is our way of access to what is to be the theme of ontology, and it is our way of giving it demonstrative precision. Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible. In the phenomenological conception of "phenomenon" what one has in mind as that which shows itself is the Being of entities, its meaning, its modifications and derivatives.$^1$ And this showing-itself is not just any showing-itself, nor is it some such thing as appearing. Least of all can the Being of entities ever be anything such that 'behind it' stands something else 'which does not appear'.

'Behind' the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else; on the other hand, what is to become a phenomenon can be hidden. And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology. Covered-up-ness is the counter-concept to 'phenomenon'.

There are various ways in which phenomena can be covered up. In the first place, a phenomenon can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered. It is neither known nor unknown.$^2$ Moreover, a phenomenon can be buried over [verschüttet]. This means that it has at some time been discovered but has deteriorated [verfiel] to the point of getting covered up again. This covering-up can become complete; or rather—and as a rule—what has been discovered earlier may still be visible, though only as a semblance. Yet so much semblance, so much 'Being'.$^3$ This covering-up as a 'disguising' is both the most frequent and the most dangerous, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially stubborn. Within a 'system', perhaps, those structures of Being—and their concepts—which are still available but veiled in their indigenous character, may claim their rights. For when they have been bound together constructively in a system, they present themselves as something 'clear', requiring no further justification, and thus can serve as the point of departure for a process of deduction.

The covering-up itself, whether in the sense of hiddenness, burying-over, or disguise, has in turn two possibilities. There are coverings-up which are accidental; there are also some which are necessary, grounded in what the thing discovered consists in [der Bestandart des Entdeckten]. Whenever a phenomenological concept is drawn from primordial sources,

$^1$ 'Der phänomenologische Begriff von Phänomen meint als das Sichzeigende das Sein des Scienden, seinen Sinn, seine Modifikationen und Derivate.'

$^2$ 'Über seinen Bestand gibt es weder Kenntnis noch Unkenntnis.$^4$ The earlier editions have 'Erkenntnis' where the latter ones have 'Unkenntnis'. The word 'Bestand' always presents difficulties in Heidegger; here it permits either of two interpretations, which we have deliberately steered between: 'Whether there is any such thing, is neither known nor unknown', and 'What it comprises is something of which we have neither knowledge nor ignorance.'

$^3$ 'Wieviel Schein jedoch, soviel "Sein".'

there is a possibility that it may degenerate if communicated in the form of an assertion. It gets understood in an empty way and is thus passed on, losing its indigenous character, and becoming a free-floating thesis. Even in the concrete work of phenomenology itself there lurks the possibility that what has been primordially 'within our grasp' may become hardened so that we can no longer grasp it. And the difficulty of this kind of research lies in making it self-critical in a positive sense.

The way in which Being and its structures are encountered in the mode of phenomenon is one which must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenology. Thus the very point of departure [Ausgang] for our analysis requires that it be secured by the proper method, just as much as does our access [Kugang] to the phenomenon, or our passage [Durchgang] through whatever is prevalently covering it up. The idea of grasping and explicating phenomena in a way which is 'original' and 'intuitive' ["originären" und "intuitiven"] is directly opposed to the naiveté of a haphazard, 'immediate', and unreflective 'beholding'. ['Schauen'].

Now that we have delimited our preliminary conception of phenomenology, the terms 'phenomenal' and phenomenological can also be fixed in their signification. That which is given and explicable in the way the phenomenon is encountered is called 'phenomenal'; this is what we have in mind when we talk about "phenomenal structures". Everything which belongs to the species of exhibiting and explicating and which goes to make up the way of conceiving demanded by this research, is called 'phenomenological'.

Because phenomena, as understood phenomenologically, are never anything but what goes to make up Being, while Being is in every case the Being of some entity, we must first bring forward the entities themselves if it is our aim that Being should be laid bare; and we must do this in the right way. These entities must likewise show themselves with the kind of access which genuinely belongs to them. And in this way the ordinary conception of phenomenon becomes phenomenologically relevant. If our analysis is to be authentic, its aim is such that the prior task of assuring ourselves 'phenomenologically' of that entity which is to serve as our example, has already been prescribed as our point of departure.

With regard to its subject-matter, phenomenology is the science of the Being of entities—ontology. In explaining the tasks of ontology we found it necessary that there should be a fundamental ontology taking as its theme that entity which is ontologico-ontically distinctive, Dasein, in order to confront the cardinal problem—the question of the meaning of Being in general. Our investigation itself will show that the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. The λόγος

of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of a ἐρμημενευ, through which the authentic meaning of Being, and also those basic structures of Being which Dasein itself possesses, are made known to Dasein's understanding of Being. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates this business of interpreting. But to the extent that by uncovering the meaning of Being and the basic structures of Dasein in general we may exhibit the horizon for any further ontological study of those entities which do not have the character of Dasein, this hermeneutic also becomes a 'hermeneutic' in the sense of working out the conditions on which the possibility of any ontological investigation depends. And finally, to the extent that Dasein, as an entity with the possibility of existence, has ontological priority over every other entity, "hermeneutic", as an interpretation of Dasein's Being, has the third and specific sense of an analytic of the existentiality of existence; and this is the sense which is philosophically primary. Then so far as this hermeneutic works out Dasein's historicality ontologically as the ontical condition for the possibility of historiology, it contains the roots of what can be called 'hermeneutic' only in a derivative sense: the methodology of those humane sciences which are historiological in character.

Being, as the basic theme of philosophy, is no class or genus of entities; yet it pertains to every entity. Its 'universality' is to be sought higher up. Being and the structure of Being lie beyond every entity and every possible character which an entity may possess. Being is the transcendens pure and simple.$^1$ And the transcendence of Dasein's Being is distinctive in that it implies the possibility and the necessity of the most radical individuation. Every disclosure of Being as the transcendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (the disclosedness of Being) is veritas transcendentalis.

Ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct philosophical disciplines among others. These terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its object and its way of treating that object. Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein, which, as an analytic of existence, has made fast the guiding-line for all philosophical inquiry at the point where it arises and to which it returns.

The following investigation would have been possible if the ground had not been prepared by Edmund Husserl, with whose Logische Untersuchungen phenomenology first emerged. Our comments on the preliminary conception of phenomenology have shown that what is essential in it

$^1$ 'Sein und Seinsstruktur liegen über jedes Seiende and jede mögliche seiende Bestimmtheit eines Seienden hinaus. Sein ist das transcendens schlechthin.'

does not lie in its actuality as a philosophical 'movement' ['Richtung'].

Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology only by seizing upon it as a possibility.

With regard to the awkwardness and 'inelegance' of expression in the analyses to come, we may remark that it is one thing to give a report in which we tell about entities, but another to grasp entities in their Being. For the latter task we lack not only most of the words but, above all, the 'grammar'. If we may allude to some earlier researchers on the analysis of Being, incomparable on their own level, we may compare the ontological sections of Plato's Parmenides or the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Aristotle's Metaphysics with a narrative section from Thucydides; we can then see the altogether unprecedented character of those formulations which were imposed upon the Greeks by their philosophers. And where our powers are essentially weaker, and where moreover the area of Being to be disclosed is ontologically far more difficult than that which was presented to the Greeks, the harshness of our expression will be enhanced, and so will the minuteness of detail with which our concepts are formed.

§ 8. Design of the Treatise

The question of the meaning of Being is the most universal and the emptiest of questions, but at the same time it is possible to individualize it very precisely for any particular Dasein. If we are to arrive at the basic concept of 'Being' and to outline the ontological conceptions which it requires and the variations which it necessarily undergoes, we need a clue which is concrete. We shall proceed towards the concept of Being by way of an Interpretation of a certain special entity, Dasein, in which we shall arrive at the horizon for the understanding of Being and for the possibility of interpreting it; the universality of the concept of Being is not belied by the relatively 'special' character of our investigation. But this very entity, Dasein, is in itself 'historical', so that its own-most ontological elucidation necessarily becomes an 'historiological' Interpretation.

Accordingly our treatment of the question of Being branches out into two distinct tasks, and our treatise will thus have two parts:

Part One: the Interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the explication of time as the transcendental horizon for the question of Being.

Part Two: basic features of a phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology, with the problematic of Temporality as our clue.

Part One has three divisions

1. the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein;
2. Dasein and temporality;
3. time and Being.$^1$

Part Two likewise has three divisions:$^1$

1. Kant's doctrine of schematism and time, as a preliminary stage in a problematic of Temporality;
2. the ontological foundation of Descartes' 'cogito sum', and how the medieval ontology has been taken over into the problematic of the 'res cogitans';
3. Aristotle's essay on time, as providing a way of discriminating the phenomenal basis and the limits of ancient ontology.

$^1$ Part Two and the third division of Part One have never appeared.

PART ONE THE INTERPRETATION OF DASEIN IN TERMS OF TEMPORALITY, AND THE EXPLICATION OF TIME AS THE TRANSCENDENTAL HORIZON FOR THE QUESTION OF BEING

DIVISION ONE PREPARATORY FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS OF DASEIN

In the question about the meaning of Being, what is primarily interrogated is those entities which have the character of Dasein. The preparatory existential analytic of Dasein must, in accordance with its peculiar character, be expounded in outline, and distinguished from other kinds of investigation which seem to run parallel (Chapter 1.) Adhering to the procedure which we have fixed upon for starting our investigation, we must lay bare a fundamental structure in Dasein: Being-in-the-world (Chapter 2). In the interpretation of Dasein, this structure is something 'a priori'; it is not pieced together, but is primordially and constantly a whole. It affords us, however, various ways of looking at the items which are constitutive for it. The whole of this structure always comes first; but if we keep this constantly in view, these items, as phenomena, will be made to stand out. And thus we shall have as objects for analysis: the world in its worldhood (Chapter 3), Being-in-the-world as Being-with and Being-one's-Self (Chapter 4), and Being-in as such (Chapter 5). By analysis of this fundamental structure, the Being of Dasein can be indicated provisionally. Its existential meaning is care (Chapter 6).

I EXPOSITION OF THE TASK OF A PREPARATORY ANALYSIS OF DASEIN

9. The Theme of the Analytic of Dasein We are ourselves the entities to be analysed. The Being of any such entity is in each case mine.$^1$ These entities, in their Being, comport themselves towards their Being. As entities with such Being, they are delivered over to their own Being.$^2$ Being is that which is an issue for every such entity.$^3$ This way of characterizing Dasein has a double consequence:

10. The 'essence' [“Wesen”] of this entity lies in its “to be” [Zu-sein]. Its Being-what-it-is [Was-sein] (essentia) must, so far as we can speak of it at all, be conceived in terms of its Being (existentia). But here our ontological task is to show that when we choose to designate the Being of this entity as “existence” [Existenz], this term does not and cannot have the ontological signification of the traditional term “existentia”；ontologically, existentia is tantamount to Being-present-at-hand, a kind of Being which is essentially inappropriate to entities of Dasein's character. To avoid getting bewildered, we shall always use the Interpretative expression “presence-at-hand” for the term “existentia”，while the term “existence”，as a designation of Being, will be allotted solely to Dasein.

The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not 'properties' present-at-hand of some entity which 'looks' so and so and is itself present-at-hand; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that. All the Being-as-it-is [So-sein] which this entity possesses is primarily Being. So when we designate this entity with the term ‘Dasein’, we are expressing not its “what” (as if it were a table, house or tree) but its Being.

2. That Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being, is in each case mine. Thus Dasein is never to be taken ontologically as an

$^1$ 'Das Seiende, dessen Analyse zur Aufgabe steht, sind wir je selbst. Das Sein dieses Seienden ist je meines.' The reader must not get the impression that there is anything solipsistic about the second of these sentences. The point is merely that the kind of Being which belongs to Dasein is of a sort which any of us may call his own.

$^2$ 'Als Seiendes dieses Seins ist es seinem eigenen Sein überantwortet.' The earlier editions read ‘… seinem eigenen Zu-sein …’

$^3$ See note 2, p. 28, H. 8 above.

instance or special case of some genus of entities as things that are present-at-hand. To entities such as these, their Being is 'a matter of indifference'; or more precisely, they 'are' such that their Being can be neither a matter of indifference to them, nor the opposite. Because Dasein has in each case mineness [Jemeinigkeit], one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it: 'I am', 'you are'.

Furthermore, in each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in each case mine [je meines]. That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it 'has' this possibility, but not just as a property [eigenschaftlich], as something present-at-hand would. And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only 'seem' to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic—that is, something of its own—can it havelost itself and not yet won itself. As modes of Being, authenticity and inauthenticity (these expressions have been chosen terminologically in a strict sense) are both grounded in the fact that any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness. But the inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify any 'less' Being or any 'lower' degree of Being. Rather it is the case that even in its fullest concretion Dasein can be characterized by inauthenticity—when busy, when excited, when interested, when ready for enjoyment.

The two characteristics of Dasein which we have sketched—the priority of 'existentia' over essentia, and the fact that Dasein is in each case mine [die Jemeinigkeit]—have already indicated that in the analytic of this entity we are facing a peculiar phenomenal domain. Dasein does not have the kind of Being which belongs to something merely present-at-hand within the world, nor does it ever have it. So neither is it to be presented thematically as something we come across in the same way as

1. . . als Vorhandenem'. The earlier editions have the adjective 'vorhandenem' instead of the substantive.

2. 'gleichgültig'. This adjective must be distinguished from the German adjective 'indifferent', though they might both ordinarily be translated by the English 'indifferent', which we shall reserve exclusively for the former. In most passages, the latter is best translated by 'undifferentiated' or 'without further differentiation'; occasionally, however, it seems preferable to translate it by 'Indifferent' with an initial capital. We shall follow similar conventions with the nouns 'Gleichgültigkeit' and 'Indifferenz'].

3. 'Und weil Dasein wesenhaft je seine Möglichkeit ist, kann dieses Seiende in seinem Sein sich selbst "wahlen", gewinnen, es kann sich verlieren, bzw. nie und nur "scheinbar" gewinnen. Verloren habenkann es sich nur und noch nicht sich gewonnen haben kann es nur, sofern es seinem Wesen nach mögliches eigenliches, das zugehen sich zugehen ist.' Older editions have 'je wesenhaft' and 'zueigenes'. The connection between 'eigentlich' ('authentic', 'real') and 'eigen' ('own') is lost in translation.

4. . . dass Dasein überhaupt durch Jemeinigkeit bestimmt ist.'

we come across what is present-at-hand. The right way of presenting it is so far from self-evident that to determine what form it shall take is itself an essential part of the ontological analytic of this entity. Only by presenting this entity in the right way can we have any understanding of its Being. No matter how provisional our analysis may be, it always requires the assurance that we have started correctly.

In determining itself as an entity, Dasein always does so in the light of a possibility which it is itself and which, in its very Being, it somehow understands. This is the formal meaning of Dasein's existential constitution. But this tells us that if we are to interpret this entity ontologically, the problematic of its Being must be developed from the existentiality of its existence. This cannot mean, however, that "Dasein" is to be construed in terms of some concrete possible idea of existence. At the outset of our analysis it is particularly important that Dasein should not be Interpreted with the differentiated character [Differenz] of some definite way of existing, but that it should be uncovered [aufgedeckt] in the undifferentiated character which it has proximally and for the most part. This undifferentiated character of Dasein's everydayness is not nothing, but a positive phenomenal characteristic of this entity. Out of this kind of Being—and back into it again—is all existing, such as it is.$^1$ We call this everyday undifferentiated character of Dasein "averageness" [Durchschnittlichkeit].

And because this average everydayness makes up what is ontically proximal for this entity, it has again and again been passed over in explicating Dasein. That which is ontically closest and well known, is ontologically the farthest and not known at all; and its ontological signification is constantly overlooked. 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",$^1$ this applies not only to the ontical and pre-ontological opaqueness of Dasein but even more to the ontological task which lies ahead; for not only must this entity not be missed in that kind of Being in which it is phenomenally closest, but it must be made accessible by a positive characterization.

Dasein's average everydayness, however, is not to be taken as a mere 'aspect'. Here too, and even in the mode of inauthenticity, the structure of existentiality lies a priori. And here too Dasein's Being is an issue for it in a definite way; and Dasein comports itself towards it in the mode of average everydayness, even if this is only the mode of fleeing in the face of it and forgetfulness thereof.$^2$

$^1$ 'Aus dieser Seinsart heraus und in sie zurück ist alles Existieren, wie est ist.' $^2$ Auch in ihr geht es dem Dasein in bestimmter Weise um sein Sein, zu dem es sich im Modus der durchschnittlichen Alltäglichkeit verhält und sei es auch nur im Modus der Flucht davor und des Vergessens seiner.' For further discussion, see Section 40 below.

But the explication of Dasein in its average everydayness does not give us just average structures in the sense of a hazy indefiniteness. Anything which, taken ontically, is in an average way, can be very well grasped ontologically in pregnant structures which may be structurally indistinguishable from certain ontological characteristics [Bestimmungen] of an authentic Being of Dasein.

All explicata to which the analytic of Dasein gives rise are obtained by considering Dasein's existence-structure. Because Dasein's characters of Being are defined in terms of existentiality, we call them "existentialia". These are to be sharply distinguished from what we call "categories"—characteristics of Being for entities whose character is not that of Dasein.$^1$

Here we are taking the expression "category" in its primary ontological signification, and abiding by it. In the ontology of the ancients, the entities we encounter within the world$^2$ are taken as the basic examples for the interpretation of Being. Noeiv (or the λόγος, as the case may be) is accepted as a way of access to them.$^3$ Entities are encountered therein.

But the Being of these entities must be something which can be grasped in a distinctive kind of λέγειν (letting something be seen), so that this Being becomes intelligible in advance as that which it is—and as that which it is already in every entity. In any discussion (λόγος) of entities, we have previously addressed ourselves to Being; this addressing is κατηγορείσθαι.$^4$ This signifies, in the first instance, making a public accusation, taking someone to task for something in the presence of everyone. When used ontologically, this term means taking an entity to task, as it were, for whatever it is as an entity—that is to say, letting everyone see it in its Being. The κατηγορείσθαι are what is sighted and what is visible in such a seeing.$^5$ They include the various ways in which the nature of those entities which can be addressed and discussed in a λόγος may be

$^1$ 'Weil sie sich aus der Existenzialität bestimmen, nennen wir die Seinscharakteres des Daseins Existenzialien. Sie sind scharf zu trennen von den Seinsbestimmungen des nicht daseinsmässigen Seienden, die wir Kategorien nennen.$^2$

$^3$ '… das innerhalb der Welt begegnende Seinde.' More literally: 'the entity that encounters within the world.' While Heidegger normally uses the verb 'begegen' in this active intransitive sense, a similar construction with the English 'encounter' is unidomatic and harsh. We shall as a rule use either a passive construction (as in 'entities encountered') or an active transitive construction (as in 'entities we encounter').$^3$

$^3$ 'Als Zugangsart zu ihm gilt das voeiv bzw. der λόγος.' Here we follow the reading of the earlier editions. In the later editions, 'Zugangsart', which is used rather often, is here replaced by 'Zugangsort', which occurs very seldom and is perhaps a misprint. This later version might be translated as follows: 'voeiv (or the λόγος, as the case may be) is accepted as the locus of access to such entities.' On voeiv and λόγος see Section 7 above, especially H. 32-34.$^4$

$^4$ 'Das je schon vorgängige Ansprechen des Seins im Besprechen (λόγος) des Seienden ist das κατηγορείσθαι.'

$^5$ 'Das in solchem Seen Gesichtete und Sichtbare …' On 'Sehen' and 'Sicht' see H. 147.$^2$

determined a priori. Existentialia and categories are the two basic possibilities for characters of Being. The entities which correspond to them require different kinds of primary interrogation respectively: any entity is either a "who" (existence) or a "what" (presence-at-hand in the broadest sense). The connection between these two modes of the characters of Being cannot be handled until the horizon for the question of Being has been clarified.

In our introduction we have already intimated that in the existential analytic of Dasein we also make headway with a task which is hardly less pressing than that of the question of Being itself—the task of laying bare that a priori basis which must be visible before the question of 'what man is' can be discussed philosophically. The existential analytic of Dasein comes before any psychology or anthropology, and certainly before any biology. While these too are ways in which Dasein can be investigated, we can define the theme of our analytic with greater precision if we distinguish it from these. And at the same time the necessity of that analytic can thus be proved more incisively.

10. How the Analytic of Dasein is to be Distinguished from Anthropology, Psychology, and Biology

After a theme for investigation has been initially outlined in positive terms, it is always important to show what is to be ruled out, although it can easily become fruitless to discuss what is not going to happen. We must show that those investigations and formulations of the question which have been aimed at Dasein heretofore, have missed the real philosophical problem (notwithstanding their objective fertility), and that as long as they persist in missing it, they have no right to claim that they can accomplish that for which they are basically striving. In distinguishing the existential analytic from anthropology, psychology, and biology, we shall confine ourselves to what is in principle the ontological question. Our distinctions will necessarily be inadequate from the standpoint of 'scientific theory' simply because the scientific structure of the above-mentioned disciplines (not, indeed, the 'scientific attitude' of those who work to advance them) is today thoroughly questionable and needs to be attacked in new ways which must have their source in ontological problematics.

Historiologically, the aim of the existential analytic can be made plainer by considering Descartes, who is credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry by his discovery of the "cogito sum". He investigates the "cogitare" of the "ego", at least within certain limits. On the other hand, he leaves the "sum" completely undiscussed, even though it is regarded as no less primordial than the cogito. Our

analytic raises the ontological question of the Being of the “sum”. Not until the nature of this Being has been determined can we grasp the kind of Being which belongs to cogitationes.

At the same time it is of course misleading to exemplify the aim of our analytic historiologically in this way. One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an “T” or subject as that which is proximally given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal content [Bestand] of Dasein. Ontologically, every idea of a ‘subject’—unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character—still posits the subjectum (ὑποκειμου) along with it, no matter how vigorous one’s ontical protestations against the ‘soul substance’ or the ‘reification of consciousness’. The Thinghood itself which such reification implies must have its ontological origin demonstrated if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the unreified Being of the subject, the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person. All these terms refer to definite phenomenal domains which can be ‘given form’ [“ausformbare”]: but they are never used without a notable failure to see the need for inquiring about the Being of the entities thus designated. So we are not being terminologically arbitrary when we avoid these terms—or such expressions as ‘life’ and ‘man’—in designating those entities which we are ourselves.

On the other hand, if we understand it rightly, in any serious and scientifically-minded ‘philosophy of life’ (this expression says about as much as “the botany of plants”) there lies an unexpressed tendency towards an understanding of Dasein’s Being. What is conspicuous in such a philosophy (and here it is defective in principle) is that here ‘life’ itself as a kind of Being does not become ontologically a problem.

The researches of Wilhelm Dilthey were stimulated by the perennial question of ‘life’. Starting from ‘life’ itself as a whole, he tried to understand its ‘Experiences’1 in their structural and developmental inter-connections. His ‘geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie’ is one which no longer seeks to be oriented towards psychical elements and atoms or to piece the life of the soul together, but aims rather at ‘Gestalten’ and ‘life as a whole’. Its philosophical relevance, however, is not to be sought here, but rather in the fact that in all this he was, above all, on his way towards the question of ‘life’. To be sure, we can also see here very plainly how limited were both his problematic and the set of concepts with which it had to be put

1 ‘Die “Erlebnisse” dieses “Lebens” …’ The connection between ‘Leben’ (‘life’) and ‘Erlebnisse’ (‘Experiences’) is lost in translation. An ‘Erlebnis’ is not just any ‘experience’ (‘Erfahrung’), but one which we feel deeply and ‘live through’. We shall translate ‘Erlebnis’ and ‘erleben’ by ‘Experience’ with a capital ‘E’, reserving ‘experience’ for ‘Erfahrung’ and ‘erfahren’.

into words. These limitations, however, are found not only in Dilthey and Bergson but in all the 'personalitic' movements to which they have given direction and in every tendency towards a philosophical anthropology. The phenomenological Interpretation of personality is in principle more radical and more transparent; but the question of the Being of Dasein has a dimension which this too fails to enter. No matter how much Husserl$^{11}$ and Scheler may differ in their respective inquiries, in their methods of conducting them, and in their orientations towards the world as a whole, they are fully in agreement on the negative side of their Interpretations of personality. The question of 'personal Being' itself is one which they no longer raise. We have chosen Scheler's Interpretation as an example, not only because it is accessible in print,$^{11}$ but because he emphasizes personal Being explicitly as such, and tries to determine its character by defining the specific Being of acts as contrasted with anything 'psychical'. For Scheler, the person is never to be thought of as a Thing or a substance; the person 'is rather the unity of living-through [Er-lebens] which is immediately experienced in and with our Experiences—not a Thing merely thought of behind and outside what is immediately Experienced';$^{1v}$ The person is no Thinglike and substantial Being. Nor can the Being of a person be entirely absorbed in being a subject of rational acts which follow certain laws.

The person is not a Thing, not a substance, not an object. Here Scheler is emphasizing what Husserl$^{1v}$ suggests when he insists that the unity of the person must have a Constitution essentially different from that required for the unity of Things of Nature.$^1$ What Scheler says of the person, he applies to acts as well: 'But an act is never also an object; for it is essential to the Being of acts that they are Experienced only in their performance itself and given in reflection.'$^{v1}$ Acts are something non-psychical. Essentially the person exists only in the performance of intentional acts, and is therefore essentially not an object. Any psychical Objectification of acts, and hence any way of taking them as something psychical, is tantamount to depersonalization. A person is in any case given as a performer of intentional acts which are bound together by the unity of a meaning. Thus psychical Being has nothing to do with personal Being. Acts get performed; the person is a performer of acts. What, however, is the ontological meaning of 'performance'? How is the kind of Being which belongs to a person to be ascertained ontologically in a positive way? But the critical question cannot stop here. It must face the Being of the whole man, who is customarily taken as a unity of body,

$^{1}$ … wenn er für die Einheit der Person eine wesentlich andere Konstitution fordert als für die der Naturdinge.$^2$ The second 'der' appears in the later editions only.

soul, and spirit. In their turn "body", "soul", and "spirit" may designate phenomenal domains which can be detached as themes for definite investigations; within certain limits their ontological indefiniteness may not be important. When, however, we come to the question of man's Being, this is not something we can simply compute by adding together those kinds of Being which body, soul, and spirit respectively possess—kinds of Being whose nature has not as yet been determined. And even if we should attempt such an ontological procedure, some idea of the Being of the whole must be presupposed. But what stands in the way of the basic question of Dasein's Being (or leads it off the track) is an orientation thoroughly coloured by the anthropology of Christianity and the ancient world, whose inadequate ontological foundations have been overlooked both by the philosophy of life and by personalism. There are two important elements in this traditional anthropology:

1. 'Man' is here defined as a ζῶν λόγον ἐχον, and this is Interpreted to mean an animal rationale, something living which has reason. But the kind of Being which belongs to a ζῶν is understood in the sense of occurring and Being-present-at-hand. The λόγος is some superior endowment; the kind of Being which belongs to it, however, remains quite as obscure as that of the entire entity thus compounded.

2. The second clue for determining the nature of man's Being and essence is a theological one και εἶπεν ο Θεός. ποιήσωμεν ἀνθρωπον κατ' εικόνα ημετέραν και καθ' όμολωσιν—"faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram et similitudinem!" With this as its point of departure, the anthropology of Christian theology, taking with it the ancient definition, arrives at an interpretation of that entity which we call "man". But just as the Being of God gets Interpreted ontologically by means of the ancient ontology, so does the Being of the ens finitum, and to an even greater extent. In modern times the Christian definition has been deprived of its theological character. But the idea of 'transcendence'—that man is something that reaches beyond himself—is rooted in Christian dogmatics, which can hardly be said to have made an ontological problem of man's Being. The idea of transcendence, according to which man is more than a mere something endowed with intelligence, has worked itself out with different variations. The following quotations will illustrate how these have originated: 'His praeclaris dotibus excelluit prima hominis conditio, ut ratio, intelligentia, prudentia, judicium non modo ad terrenae vitae gubernationem suppeterent, sed quibus transcendet usque ad Deum et aeternam felicitatem.' "Denn dass der mensch sin ufs se hen hat uf Gott und

1 Reading 'errechnet'. The earliest editions have 'verrechnet', with the correct reading provided in a list of errata.

sin wort, zeigt er klarlich an, dass er nach siner natur etwas Gott näher anerborn, etwas mee nach schlägt, etwas zu zugs zu im hat, das alles on zuyfel darus flüsst, dass er nach dem bildnus Gottes geschaffen ist'.x

The two sources which are relevant for the traditional anthropology—the Greek definition and the clue which theology has provided—indicate that over and above the attempt to determine the essence of 'man' as an entity, the question of his Being has remained forgotten, and that this Being is rather conceived as something obvious or 'self-evident' in the sense of the Being-present-at-hand of other created Things. These two clues become intertwined in the anthropology of modern times, where the res cogitans, consciousness, and the interconnectedness of Experience serve as the point of departure for methodical study. But since even the cogitationes are either left ontologically undetermined, or get tacitly assumed as something 'self-evidently' 'given' whose 'Being' is not to be questioned, the decisive ontological foundations of anthropological problematics remain undetermined.

This is no less true of 'psychology', whose anthropological tendencies are today unmistakable. Nor can we compensate for the absence of ontological foundations by taking anthropology and psychology and building them into the framework of a general biology. In the order which any possible comprehension and interpretation must follow, biology as a 'science of life' is founded upon the ontology of Dasein, even if not entirely. Life, in its own right, is a kind of Being; but essentially it is accessible only in Dasein. The ontology of life is accomplished by way of a privative Interpretation; it determines what must be the case if there can be anything like mere-aliveness [Nur-noch-leben]. Life is not a mere Being-present-at-hand, nor is it Dasein. In turn, Dasein is never to be defined ontologically by regarding it as life (in an ontologically indefinite manner) plus something else.

In suggesting that anthropology, psychology, and biology all fail to give an unequivocal and ontologically adequate answer to the question about the kind of Being which belongs to those entities which we ourselves are, we are not passing judgment on the positive work of these disciplines. We must always bear in mind, however, that these ontological foundations can never be disclosed by subsequent hypotheses derived from empirical material, but that they are always 'there' already, even when that empirical material simply gets collected. If positive research fails to see these foundations and holds them to be self-evident, this by no means proves that they are not basic or that they 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 describing of some primitive stage of Dasein with which we can become acquainted empirically through the medium of anthropology. Everydayness does not coincide with primitiveness, but is rather a mode of Dasein's Being, even when that Dasein is active in a highly developed and differentiated culture—and precisely then. Moreover, even primitive Dasein has possibilities of a Being which is not of the everyday kind, and it has a specific everydayness of its own. To orient the analysis of Dasein towards the 'life of primitive peoples' can have positive significance [Bedeutung] as a method because 'primitive phenomena' are often less concealed and less complicated by extensive self-interpretation on the part of the Dasein in question. Primitive Dasein often speaks to us more directly in terms of a primordial absorption in 'phenomena' (taken in a pre-phenomenological sense). A way of conceiving things which seems, perhaps, rather clumsy and crude from our standpoint, can be positively helpful in bringing out the ontological structures of phenomena in a genuine way.

But heretofore our information about primitives has been provided by ethnology. And ethnology operates with definite preliminary conceptions and interpretations of human Dasein in general, even in first 'receiving' its material, and in sifting it and working it up. Whether the everyday psychology or even the scientific psychology and sociology which the ethnologist brings with him can provide any scientific assurance that we can have proper access to the phenomena we are studying, and can interpret them and transmit them in the right way, has not yet been established. Here too we are confronted with the same state of affairs as in the other disciplines we have discussed. Ethnology itself already presupposes as its clue an inadequate analytic of Dasein. But since the positive sciences neither 'can' nor should wait for the ontological labours of philosophy to be done, the further course of research will not take the form of an 'advance' but will be accomplished by recapitulating what has already been ontically discovered, and by purifying it in a way which is ontologically more transparent.

No matter how easy it may be to show how ontological problematics differ formally from ontical research there are still difficulties in carrying out an existential analytic, especially in making a start. This task includes a desideratum which philosophy has long found disturbing but has continually refused to achieve: to work out the idea of a 'natural conception of the world'. The rich store of information now available as to the most exotic

and manifold cultures and forms of Dasein seems favourable to our setting about this task in a fruitful way. But this is merely a semblance. At bottom this plethora of information can seduce us into failing to recognize the real problem. We shall not get a genuine knowledge of essences simply by the syncretistic activity of universal comparison and classification.

Subjecting the manifold to tabulation does not ensure any actual understanding of what lies there before us as thus set in order. If an ordering principle is genuine, it has its own content as a thing [Sachgehalt], which is never to be found by means of such ordering, but is already presupposed in it. So if one is to put various pictures of the world in order, one must have an explicit idea of the world as such. And if the 'world' itself is something constitutive for Dasein, one must have an insight into Dasein's basic structures in order to treat the world-phenomenon conceptually.

In this chapter we have characterized some things positively and taken a negative stand with regard to others; in both cases our goal has been to promote a correct understanding of the tendency which underlies the following Interpretation and the kind of questions which it poses. Ontology can contribute only indirectly towards advancing the positive disciplines as we find them today. It has a goal of its own, even if, beyond the acquiring of information about entities, the question of Being is the spur for all scientific seeking.

II

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD IN GENERAL AS THE BASIC STATE OF DASEIN

12. A Preliminary Sketch of Being-in-the-World, in terms of an Orientation towards Being-in as such

In our preparatory discussions (Section 9) we have brought out some characteristics of Being which will provide us with a steady light for our further investigation, but which will at the same time become structurally concrete as that investigation continues. Dasein is an entity which, in its very Being, comports itself understandingly towards that Being. In saying this, we are calling attention to the formal concept of existence. Dasein exists. Furthermore, Dasein is an entity which in each case I myself am. Mineness belongs to any existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. In each case Dasein exists in one or the other of these two modes, or else it is modally undifferentiated.

But these are both ways in which Dasein’s Being takes on a definite character, and they must be seen and understood a priori as grounded upon that state of Being which we have called “Being-in-the-world”. An interpretation of this constitutive state is needed if we are to set up our analytic of Dasein correctly.

The compound expression ‘Being-in-the-world’ indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon. This primary datum must be seen as a whole. But while Being-in-the-world cannot be broken up into contents which may be pieced together, this does not prevent it from having several constitutive items in its structure. Indeed the phenomenal datum which our expression indicates is one which may, in fact, be looked at in three ways. If westudy it, keeping the wholephenomenon firmly in mind beforehand, the following items may be brought out for emphasis:

First, the ‘in-the-world’. With regard to this there arises the task of inquiring into the ontological structure of the ‘world’ and defining the idea of worldhood as such. (See the third chapter of this Division.)

1 ‘Zum existierenden Dasein gehört die Jemeinigkeit als Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Eigentlichkeit und Uneigentlichkeit. Dasein existiert je in einem dieser Modi, bzw. in der modalen Indifferenz ihrer.’

Second, that entity which in every case has Being-in-the-world as the way in which it is. Here we are seeking that which one inquires into when one asks the question 'Who?' By a phenomenological demonstration$^1$ we shall determine who is in the mode of Dasein's average everydayness. (See the fourth chapter of this Division.)

Third, Being-in [In-sein] as such. We must set forth the ontological Constitution of inhood [Inheit] itself. (See the fifth chapter of this Division.) Emphasis upon any one of these constitutive items signifies that the others are emphasized along with it; this means that in any such case the whole phenomenon gets seen. Of course Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein$^2$ which is necessary a priori, but it is far from sufficient for completely determining Dasein's Being. Before making these three phenomena the themes for special analyses, we shall attempt by way of orientation to characterize the third of these factors.

What is meant by "Being-in"? Our proximal reaction is to round out this expression to "Being-in 'in the world'", and we are inclined to understand this Being-in as 'Being in something' ["Sein in …"]. This latter term designates the kind of Being which an entity has when it is 'in' another one, as the water is 'in' the glass, or the garment is 'in' the cupboard. By this 'in' we mean the relationship of Being which two entities extended 'in' space have to each other with regard to their location in that space. Both water and glass, garment and cupboard, are 'in' space and 'at' a location, and both in the same way. This relationship of Being can be expanded: for instance, the bench is in the lecture-room, the lecture-room is in the university, the university is in the city, and so on, until we can say that the bench is 'in world-space'. All entities whose Being 'in' one another can thus be described have the same kind of Being—that of Being-present-at-hand—as Things occurring 'within' the world. Being-present-at-hand 'in' something which is likewise present-at-hand, and Being-present-at-hand-along-with [Mitvorhandensein] in the sense of a definite location-relationship with something else which has the same kind of Being, are ontological characteristics which we call "categorial": they are of such a sort as to belong to entities whose kind of Being is not of the character of Dasein.

Being-in, on the other hand, is a state of Dasein's Being; it is an existentiale. So one cannot think of it as the Being-present-at-hand of some corporeal Thing (such as a human body) 'in' an entity which is present-at-hand. Nor does the term "Being-in" mean

$^1$ Here we follow the older editions in reading, 'Ausweisung'. The newer editions have 'Aufweisung' ('exhibition').

$^2$ … Verfassung des Daseins … The earliest editions read 'Wesens' instead 'Daseins'. Correction is made in a list of errata.

a spatial ‘in-one-another-ness’ of things present-at-hand, any more than the word ‘in’ primordially signifies a spatial relationship of this kind.¹ ‘In’ is derived from “innan”—“to reside”,² “habitare”,“to dwell” [sich auf halten]. ‘An’ signifies ‘I am accustomed’, “I am familiar with”, ‘I look after something’.² It has the signification of “colo” in the senses of “habito” and “diligo”. The entity to which Being-in in this signification belongs is one which we have characterized as that entity which in each case I myself am [bin]. The expression ‘bin’ is connected with ‘bei’, and so ‘ich bin’ [I am] means in its turn ‘I reside’ or “dwell alongside” the world, as that is familiar to me in such and such a way.³ “Being” [Sein], as the infinitive of ‘ich bin’ (that is to say, when it is understood as an existential), signifies “to reside alongside …”, “to be familiar with …”. “Being-in” is thus the formal existential expression for the Being of Dasein, which has Being-in-the-world as its essential state.

‘Being alongside’ the world in the sense of being absorbed in the world⁴

¹ Reading ‘innan—wohnen’. As Heidegger points out in his footnote, this puzzling passage has its source in Grimm’s Kleinere Schriften, Vol. VII, pp. 247 ff., where we find two short articles, the first entitled ‘IN’ and the second ‘IN UND BEI’. The first article begins by comparing a number of archaic German words meaning ‘domus’, all having a form similar to our English ‘inn’, which Grimm mentions. He goes on to postulate a strong verb “innan”, which must have meant either “habitare”, “domus esse”, or “recipere in domum” (though only a weak derivative of ‘innan’ is actually found), with a surviving strong preterite written either as ‘an’ or as ‘ann’. Grimm goes on to argue that the preposition ‘in’ is derived from the verb, rather than the verb from the preposition.

² ‘…“an” bedeutet: ich bin gewohnt, vertraut mit, ich pflege etwas …

In Grimm’s second article he adds: ‘there was also an anomalous “ann” with the plural “unnum”, which expressed “ama”, “diligo”, “faweo”, and to which our “gonnen” and “Gunst” are immediately related, as has long been recognized. “Ann” really means “ich bin eingewohnt”, “pflege zu bauen”, this conceptual transition may be shown with minimal complication in the Latin ‘colo’, which stands for ‘habito’ as well as ‘diligo’.

It is not entirely clear whether Heidegger’s discussion of ‘an’ is aimed to elucidate the preposition ‘an’ (which corresponds in some of its usages to the English ‘at’, and which he has just used in remarking that the water and the glass are both at a location), or rather to explain the preterite ‘an’ of ‘innan’.

The reader should note that while the verb ‘wohnen’ normally means ‘to reside’ or ‘to dwell’, the expression ‘ich bin gewohnt’ means ‘I am accustomed to’, and ‘ich bin eingewohnt’ means ‘I have become accustomed to the place where I reside—to my surroundings’. Similarly ‘ich pflege etwas’ may mean either ‘I am accustomed to do something’ or ‘I take care of something’ or ‘I devote myself to it’. (Grimm’s ‘pflege zu bauen’ presumably means ‘I am accustomed to putting my trust in something’, ‘I can build on it’.) The Latin ‘colo’ has the parallel meanings of ‘I take care of something’ or ‘cherish’ it (‘diligo’) and ‘I dwell’ or ‘I inhabit’ (‘habito’).

³ ‘…ich wohne, halte mich auf bei … der Welt, als dem so und so Vertrauten.’ The preposition ‘bei’, like ‘an’, does not have quite the semantical range of any English preposition. Our ‘alongside’ with which we shall translate it when other devices seem less satisfactory, especially in the phrase ‘Being alongside’ (‘Sein bei’), is often quite misleading; the sense here is closer to that of ‘at’ in such expressions as ‘at home’ or ‘at my father’s’, or that of the French ‘chez’. Here again Heidegger seems to be relying upon Grimm, who proceeds (loc. cit.) to connect ‘bei’ with ‘bauen’ (‘build’) and ‘bin’.

⁴ ‘…in dem … Sinne des Augehen in der Welt …’ Aulgeheen means literally ‘to go up’, or ‘to rise’ in the sense that the sun ‘rises’ or the dough ‘rises’. But when followed by the preposition ‘in’, it takes on other meanings. Thus 5 ‘geh auf’ into 60 in the sense that

(a sense which calls for still closer interpretation) is an existentiale founded upon Being-in. In these analyses the issue is one of seeing a primordial structure of Dasein's Being—a structure in accordance with whose phenomenal content the concepts of Being must be Articulated; because of this, and because this structure is in principle one which cannot be grasped by the traditional ontological categories, this 'being-alongside' must be examined still more closely. We shall again choose the method of contrasting it with a relationship of Being which is essentially different ontologically—viz. categorial—but which we express by the same linguistic means. Fundamental ontological distinctions are easily obliterated; and if they are to be envisaged phenomenally in this way, this must be done explicitly, even at the risk of discussing the 'obvious'. The status of the ontological analytic shows, however, that we have been far from interpreting these obvious matters with an adequate 'grasp', still less with regard for the meaning of their Being; and we are even farther from possessing a stable coinage for the appropriate structural concepts.

As an existentiale, 'Being alongside' the world never means anything like the Being-present-at-hand-together of Things that occur. There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' of an entity called 'Dasein' with another entity called 'world'. Of course when two things are present-at-hand together alongside one another, we are accustomed to express this occasionally by something like 'The table stands "by" ['bei'] the door' or 'The chair "touches" ['berührt'] the wall'. Taken strictly, 'touching' is never what we are talking about in such cases, not because accurate re-examination will always eventually establish that there is a space between the chair and the wall, but because in principle the chair can never touch the wall, even if the space between them should be equal to zero. If the chair could touch the wall, this would presuppose that the wall is the sort of thing 'for' which a chair would be encounterable. An entity present-at-hand within the world can be touched by another entity only if by its very nature the latter entity has Being-in as its own kind of Being—only if, with its Being-there [Da-sein], something like the world is already revealed to it, so that from out of that world another entity can manifest itself in touching, and thus become accessible in its Being-present-at-hand. When two entities are present-at-hand within the world, and furthermore are worldless in themselves, they can never 'touch' each other,

it 'goes into' 30 without remainder; a country 'geht auf' into another country into which it is taken over or absorbed; a person 'geht auf' in anything to which he devotes himself fully, whether an activity or another person. We shall usually translate 'aufgehen' by some form of 'absorb'.

1 'Das Beisammen zweier Vorhandener …' 2 'Voraussetzung dafür wäre, dass die Wand "für" den Stuhl begegen könnte.' (Cf. also H. 97 below.)

nor can either of them 'be' 'alongside' the other. The clause 'furthermore are worldless' must not be left out; for even entities which are not worldless—Dasein itself, for example—are present-at-hand 'in' the world, or, more exactly, with some right and within certain limits be taken as merely present-at-hand. To do this, one must completely disregard or just not see the existential state of Being-in. But the fact that 'Dasein' can be taken as something which is present-at-hand and just present-at-hand, is not to be confused with a certain way of 'presence-at-hand' which is Dasein's own. This latter kind of presence-at-hand becomes accessible not by disregarding Dasein's specific structures but only by understanding them in advance. Dasein understands its ownmost Being in the sense of a certain 'factual Being-present-at-hand'. And yet the 'factuality' of the fact [Tatsache] of one's own Dasein is at bottom quite different ontologically from the factual occurrence of some kind of mineral, for example. Whenever Dasein is, it is as a Fact; and the factuality of such a Fact is what we shall call Dasein's "facticity". This is a definite way of Being [Seinsbestimmtheit], and it has a complicated structure which cannot even be grasped as a problem until Dasein's basic existential states have been worked out. The concept of "facticity" implies that an entity 'within-the-world' has Being-in-the-world in such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its 'destiny' with the Being of those entities which it encounters within its own world.

In the first instance it is enough to see the ontological difference between Being-in as an existential and the category of the 'insideness' which things present-at-hand can have with regard to one another. By thus delimiting Being-in, we are not denying every kind of 'spatiality' to Dasein. On the contrary, Dasein itself has a 'Being-in-space' of its own; but this in turn is possible only on the basis of Being-in-the-world in general. Hence Being-in is not to be explained ontologically by some ontical characterization, as if one were to say, for instance, that Being-in in a world is a spiritual property, and that man's 'spatiality' is a result of his bodily nature (which, at the same time, always gets 'founded' upon corporeality). Here again we are faced with the Being-present-at-hand-together of some such spiritual Thing along with a corporeal Thing, while the Being of the entity thus compounded remains more obscure

1 'Die Tatsächlichkeit des Faktums Dasein, als welches jeweilig jedes Dasein ist, nennen wir seine Faktizität.' We shall as a rule translate 'Tatsächlichkeit' as 'factuality', and 'Faktizität' as 'facticity', following our conventions for 'tatsächlich' and 'faktisch'. (See note 2, p. 27, H. 7 above.) The present passage suggests a comparable distinction between the nouns 'Tatsache' and 'Faktum'; so while we find many passages where these seem to be used interchangeably, we translate 'Faktum' as 'Fact' with an initial capital, using 'fact' for 'Tatsache' and various other expressions. On 'factuality' and 'facticity' see also H. 135 below.

than ever. Not until we understand Being-in-the-world as an essential structure of Dasein can we have any insight into Dasein's existential spatiality. Such an insight will keep us from failing to see this structure or from previously canceling it out—a procedure motivated not ontologically but rather 'metaphysically' by the naive supposition that man is, in the first instance, a spiritual Thing which subsequently gets misplaced 'into' a space.

Dasein's facticity is such that its Being-in-the-world has always dispersed [zerstreut]-itself or even split itself up into definite ways of Being-in. The multiplicity of these is indicated by the following examples: having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining… . All these ways of Being-in have concern$^1$ as their kind of Being—a kind of Being which we have yet to characterize in detail. Leaving undone, neglecting, renouncing, taking a rest—these too are ways of concern; but these are all deficient modes, in which the possibilities of concern are kept to a 'bare minimum'.$^2$ The term 'concern' has, in the first instance, its colloquial [vorwissenschaftliche] signification, and can mean to carry out something, to get it done [erledigen], to 'straighten it out'. It can also mean to 'provide oneself with something'.$^3$ We use the expression with still another characteristic turn of phrase when we say "I am concerned for the success of the undertaking."$^4$ Here 'concern' means something like apprehensiveness. In contrast to these colloquial ontical significations, the expression 'concern' will be used in this investigation as an ontological term for an existentialale, and will designate the Being of a possible way of Being-in-the-world. This term has been chosen not because Dasein happens to be proximally and to a large extent 'practical' and economic, but because the Being of Dasein itself

$^1$ 'Besorgen'. As Heidegger points out, he will use this term in a special sense which is to be distinguished from many of its customary usages. We shall, as a rule, translate it by 'concern', though this is by no means an exact equivalent. The English word 'concern' is used in many expressions where 'Besorgen' would be inappropriate in German, such as 'This concerns you', 'That is my concern', 'He has an interest in several banking concerns'. 'Besorgen' stands rather for the kind of 'concern' in which we 'concern ourselves' with activities which we perform or things which we procure.

$^2$ … alle Modi des "Nur noch" in bezug auf Möglichkeitkeiten des Besorgens.' The point is that in these cases concern is just barely ('nur noch') involved.

$^3$ … sich etwas besorgen im Sinne von "sich etwas verschaffen".

$^4$ … ich besorge, dass das Unternehmen missingt. Here it is not difficult to find a corresponding usage of 'concern', as our version suggests. But the analogy is imperfect. While we are also concerned for the success of the enterprise' or 'concerned lest the enterprise should fail,' we would hardly follow the German to the extent of expressing 'concern that' the enterprise should fail; nor would the German express 'Besorgen' at discovering that the enterprise has failed already.

is to be made visible as care. This expression too is to be taken as an ontological structural concept. (See Chapter 6 of this Division.) It has nothing to do with 'tribulation', 'melancholy', or the 'cares of life', though ontically one can come across these in every Dasein. These—like their opposites, 'gaiety' and 'freedom from care'—are ontically possible only because Dasein, when understood ontologically, is care. Because Being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Dasein, its Being towards the world [Sein zur Welt] is essentially concern.

From what we have been saying, it follows that Being-in is not a 'property' which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, and without which it could be just as well as it could with it. It is not the case that man 'is' and then has, by way of an extra, a relationship-of-Being towards the 'world'—a world with which he provides himself occasionally. Dasein is never 'proximally' an entity which is, so to speak, free from Being-in, but which sometimes has the inclination to take up a 'relationship' towards the world. Taking up relationships towards the world is possible only because Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is as it is. This state of Being does not arise just because some other entity is present-at-hand outside of Dasein and meets up with it. Such an entity can 'meet up with' Dasein only in so far as it can, of its own accord, show itself within a world.

Nowadays there is much talk about 'man's having an environment [Umwelt]'; but this says nothing ontologically as long as this 'having' is left indefinite. In its very possibility this 'having' is founded upon the existential state of Being-in. Because Dasein is essentially an entity with Being-in, it can explicitly discover those entities which it encounters environmentally, it can know them, it can avail itself of them, it can have the 'world'. To talk about 'having an environment' is ontically trivial, but ontologically it presents a problem. To solve it requires nothing else than defining the Being of Dasein, and doing so in a way which is ontologically adequate. Although this state of Being is one of which use has made in biology, especially since K. von Baer, one must not conclude that its philosophical use implies 'biologism'. For the environment is a structure which even biology as a positive science can never find and can never define, but must presuppose and constantly employ. Yet, even as an a priori condition for the objects which biology takes for its theme, this structure itself can be explained philosophically only if it has been conceived beforehand as a structure of Dasein. Only in terms of an orientation

1 'Sorge'. The important etymological connection between 'Besorgen' ('concern') and 'Sorge' ('care') is lost in our translation. On 'Sorge' see especially Sections 41 and 42 below.

2 'Der Mensch "ist" nicht und hat überdies noch ein Seinsverhältnis zur "Welt", die er sich gelegentlich zulegt.'

towards the ontological structure thus conceived can 'life' as a state of Being be defined a priori, and this must be done in a privative manner.¹ Ontically as well as ontologically, the priority belongs to Being-in-the world as concern. In the analytic of Dasein this structure undergoes a basic Interpretation.

But have we not confined ourselves to negative assertions in all our attempts to determine the nature of this state of Being? Though this Being-in is supposedly so fundamental, we always keep hearing about what it is not. Yes indeed. But there is nothing accidental about our characterizing it predominantly in so negative a manner. In doing so we have rather made known what is peculiar to this phenomenon, and our characterization is therefore positive in a genuine sense—a sense appropriate to the phenomenon itself. When Being-in-the-world is exhibited phenomenologically, disguises and concealments are rejected because this phenomenon itself always gets 'seen' in a certain way in every Dasein. And it thus gets 'seen' because it makes up a basic state of Dasein, and in every case is already disclosed for Dasein's understanding of Being, and disclosed along with that Being itself. But for the most part this phenomenon has been explained in a way which is basically wrong, or interpreted in an ontologically inadequate manner. On the other hand, this 'seeing in a certain way and yet for the most part wrongly explaining' is itself based upon nothing else than this very state of Dasein's Being, which is such that Dasein itself—and this means also its Being-in-the world—gets its ontological understanding of itself in the first instance from those entities which it itself is not but which it encounters 'within' its world, and from the Being which they possess.

Both in Dasein and for it, this state of Being is always in some way familiar [bekannt]. Now if it is also to become known [erkannt], the knowing which such a task explicitly implies takes itself (as a knowing of the world [Welterkennen]) as the chief exemplification of the 'soul's' relationship to the world. Knowing the world (vοεῖν)—or rather addressing oneself to the 'world' and discussing it (λόγος)—thus functions as the primary mode of Being-in-the-world, even though Being-in-the-world does not as such get conceived. But because this structure of Being remains ontologically inaccessible, yet is experienced ontically as a 'relationship' between one entity (the world) and another (the soul), and because one proximally understands Being by taking entities as entities within-the-world for one's ontological foothold, one tries to conceive the relationship between world and soul as grounded in these two entities.

¹ '… auf dem Wege der Privation …' The point is that in order to understand life merely as such, we must make abstraction from the fuller life of Dasein. See H. 50 above.

themselves and in the meaning of their Being—namely, to conceive it as Being-present-at-hand. And even though Being-in-the-world is something of which one has pre-phenomenological experience and acquaintance [erfahren und gekannt], it becomes invisible if one interprets it in a way which is ontologically inappropriate. This state of Dasein's Being is now one with which one is just barely acquainted (and indeed as something obvious), with the stamp of an inappropriate interpretation. So in this way it becomes the 'evident' point of departure for problems of epistemology or the 'metaphysics of knowledge'. For what is more obvious than that a 'subject' is related to an 'Object' and vice versa? This 'subject-Object-relationship' must be presupposed. But while this presupposition is unimpeachable in its facticity, this makes it indeed a baleful one, if its ontological necessity and especially its ontological meaning are to be left in the dark.

Thus the phenomenon of Being-in has for the most part been represented exclusively by a single exemplar—knowing the world. This has not only been the case in epistemology; for even practical behaviour has been understood as behaviour which is 'non-theoretical' and 'atheoretical'. Because knowing has been given this priority, our understanding of its own-most kind of Being gets led astray, and accordingly Being-in-the-world must be exhibited even more precisely with regard to knowing the world, and must itself be made visible as an existential 'modality' of Being-in.

13. A Founded Mode in which Being-in is Exemplified. Knowing the World.

If Being-in-the-world is a basic state of Dasein, and one in which Dasein operates not only in general but pre-eminently in the mode of everydayness, then it must also be something which has always been experienced ontically. It would be unintelligible for Being-in-the-world to remain totally veiled from view, especially since Dasein has at its disposal an understanding of its own Being, no matter how indefinitely this understanding may function. But no sooner was the 'phenomenon of knowing the world' grasped than it got interpreted in a 'superficial',

1 'Die Exemplifizierung des In-Seins an einem fundierten Modus.' The conception of 'founded' modes is taken from Husserl, who introduces the concept of 'founding' in his Logische Untersuchungen, vol. II, Part I, chapter 2 (second edition, Halle, 1913, p. 261). This passage has been closely paraphrased as follows by Marvin Farber in his The Foundation of Phenomenology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1943, p. 297; 'If in accordance with essential law an $a$ can only exist in a comprehensive unity which connects it with a $\mu$, then we say, an $a$ as such needs foundation through a $\mu$, or also, an $a$ as such is in need of completion by means of a $\mu$. If accordingly $a_0$, $\mu_0$ are definite particular cases of the pure genera $a$, or $\mu$, which stand in the cited relationship, and if they are members of one whole, we say that $a_0$ is founded by $\mu_0$; and it is exclusively founded by $\mu_0$ if the need of the completion of $a_0$ is alone satisfied by $\mu_0$. This terminology can be applied to the species themselves; the equivocation is harmless.' Thus a founded mode of Being-in is simply a mode which can subsist only when connected with something else.

formal manner. The evidence for this is the procedure (still customary today) of setting up knowing as a 'relation between subject and Object'—a procedure in which there lurks as much 'truth' as vacuity. But subject and Object do not coincide with Dasein and the world.

Even if it were feasible to give an ontological definition of "Being-in" primarily in terms of a Being-in-the-world which knows, it would still be our first task to show that knowing has the phenomenal character of a Being which is in and towards the world. If one reflects upon this relationship of Being, an entity called "Nature" is given proximally as that which becomes known. Knowing, as such, is not to be met in this entity. If knowing 'is' at all, it belongs solely to those entities which know. But even in those entities, human-Things, knowing is not present-at-hand. In any case, it is not externally ascertainable as, let us say, bodily properties are.$^1$ Now, inasmuch as knowing belongs to these entities and is not some external characteristic, it must be 'inside'. Now the more unequivocally one maintains that knowing is proximally and really 'inside' and indeed has by no means the same kind of Being as entities which are both physical and psychical, the less one presupposes when one believes that one is making headway in the question of the essence of knowledge and in the clarification of the relationship between subject and Object. For only then can the problem arise of how this knowing subject comes out of its inner 'sphere' into one which is 'other and external', of how knowing can have any object at all, and of how one must think of the object itself so that eventually the subject knows it without needing to venture a leap into another sphere. But in any of the numerous varieties which this approach may take, the question of the kind of Being which belongs to this knowing subject is left entirely unasked, though whenever its knowing gets handled, its way of Being is already included tacitly in one's theme. Of course we are sometimes assured that we are certainly not to think of the subject's "inside" [Innen] and its 'inner sphere' as a sort of 'box' or 'cabinet'. But when one asks for the positive signification of this 'inside' of immanence in which knowing is proximally enclosed, or when one inquires how this 'Being inside' [“Innenseins”] which knowing possesses its own character of Being grounded in the kind of Being which belongs to the subject, then silence reigns. And no matter how this inner sphere may get interpreted, if one does no more than ask how knowing makes its way 'out of' it and achieves 'transcendence', it becomes evident that the knowing which presents such enigmas will remain problematical unless one has previously clarified how it is and what it is.

$^1$ "In jedem Falle ist est nicht so äusserlich feststellbar wie etwa leibliche Eigenschaften. The older editions have ‘… nicht ist es …’ and place a comma after 'feststellbar'.

With this kind of approach one remains blind to what is already tacitly implied even when one takes the phenomenon of knowing as one's theme in the most provisional manner: namely, that knowing is a mode of Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world, and is founded ontically upon this state of Being. But if, as we suggest, we thus find phenomenally that knowing is a kind of Being which belongs to Being-in-the-world, one might object that with such an Interpretation of knowing, the problem of knowledge is nullified; for what is left to be asked if one presupposes that knowing is already 'alongside' its world, when it is not supposed to reach that world except in the transcending of the subject? In this question the constructivist 'standpoint', which has not been phenomenally demonstrated, again comes to the fore; but quite apart from this, what higher court is to decide whether and in what sense there is to be any problem of knowledge other than that of the phenomenon of knowing as such and the kind of Being which belongs to the knower?

If we now ask what shows itself in the phenomenal findings about knowing, we must keep in mind that knowing is grounded beforehand in a Being-already-alongside-the-world, which is essentially constitutive for Dasein's Being.1 Proximally, this Being-already-alongside is not just a fixed staring at something that is purely present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world, as concern, is fascinated by the world with which it is concerned.2 If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the present-at-hand by observing it,3 then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to-do with the world concernfully. When concern holds back [Sichenthalten] from any kind of producing, manipulating, and the like, it puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode of just tarrying alongside… . [das Nur-noch-verweilen bei …]

This kind of Being towards the world is one which lets us encounter entities within-the-world purely in the way they look (ελδος), just that; on the basis of this kind of Being, and as a mode of it, looking explicitly at what we encounter is possible.4 Looking at something in this way is sometimes a definite way of taking up a direction towards something—of setting our sights towards what is present-at-hand. It takes over a 'view-point' in advance from the entity which it encounters. Such looking-at enters the

1 '… dass das Erkennen selbst vorgängig gründet in einem Schon-sein-bei-der-Welt, als welches das Sein von Dasein wesenhaft konstituiert.' 2 'Das In-der-Welt-sein ist als Besorgen von der besorgenten Welt benommen.' Here we follow the older editions. The newer editions have 'das Besorgen' instead of 'als Besorgen'. 3 'Damit Erkennen als betrachtendes Bestimmen des Vorhandenen möglich sei …' Here too we follow the older editions. The newer editions again have 'das' instead of 'als'. 4 'Auf dem Grunde dieser Seinsart zur Welt, die das innerweltlich begegnende Seinde nur noch in seinem puren Aussehen (ελδος) begegen lässt, und als Modus dieser Seinsart ist ein ausdruckliches Hinsehen auf das so Begenende möglich.'

mode of dwelling autonomously alongside entities within-the-world. In this kind of ‘dwelling’ as a holding-oneself-back from any manipulation or utilization, the perception of the present-at-hand is consummated. Perception is consummated when one addresses oneself to something as something and discusses it as such. This amounts to interpretation in the broadest sense; and on the basis of such interpretation, perception becomes an act of making determinate. What is thus perceived and made determinate can be expressed in propositions, and can be retained and preserved as what has thus been asserted. This perceptive retention of an assertion about something is itself a way of Being-in-the-world; it is not to be Interpreted as a ‘procedure’ by which a subject provides itself with representations [Vorstellungen] of something which remain stored up ‘inside’ as having been thus appropriated, and with regard to which the question of how they ‘agree’ with actuality can occasionally arise.

When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always ‘outside’ alongside entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already discovered. Nor is any inner sphere abandoned when Dasein dwells alongside the entity to be known, and determines its character; but even in this ‘Being-outside’ alongside the object, Dasein is still ‘inside’, if we understand this in the correct sense; that is to say, it is itself ‘inside’ as a Being-in-the-world which knows. And furthermore, the perceiving of what is known is not a process of returning with one’s booty to the ‘cabinet’ of consciousness after one has gone out and grasped it; even in perceiving, retaining, and preserving, the Dasein which knows remains outside, and it does so as Dasein. If I ‘merely know [Wissen] about some way in which the Being of entities is interconnected, if I ‘only’ represent them, if I ‘do no more’ than ‘think’ about them, I am no less

1 ‘Solches Hinsehen kommt selbst in den Modus eines eigenständigen Sichaufhaltens bei dem innerweltlichen Seienden.’ 2 ‘In sogaratenen “Aufenthalt”—als dem Sichenthalten von jeglicher Hantierung and Nutzung—volzzieht sich das Vernehmen des Vorhandenen.’ The word ‘Aufenthalt’ normally means a stopping-off at some place, a sojourn, an abiding, or even an abode or dwelling. Here the author is exploiting the fact that it includes both the prefixes ‘auf-’ and ‘ent-’, which we find in the verbs ‘aufhalten’ and ‘enthalten’. ‘Aufhalten’ means to hold something at a stage which it has reached, to arrest it, to stop it; when used reflexively it can mean to stay at a place, to dwell there. While ‘enthalten’ usually means to contain, it preserves its more literal meaning of holding back or refraining, when it is used reflexively. All these meanings are presumably packed into the word ‘Aufenthalt’ as used here, and are hardly suggested by our ‘dwelling’. 3 ‘Das Vernehmen hat die Vollzugsart des Ansprechens und Besprechens von etwas als etwas.’ On ‘something as something’ see Section 32 below (H. 149), where ‘interpretation’ is also discussed. 4 ‘… wird das Vernehmen zum Bestimmen.’ 5 ‘Aussage’. For further discussion see Section 33 below.

alongside the entities outside in the world than when I originally grasp them. Even the forgetting of something, in which every relationship of Being towards what one formerly knew has seemingly been obliterated, must be conceived as a modification of the primordial Being-in; and this holds for every delusion and for every error.

We have now pointed out how those modes of Being-in-the-world which are constitutive for knowing the world are interconnected in their foundations; this makes it plain that in knowing, Dasein achieves a new status of Being [Seinsstand] towards a world which has already been discovered in Dasein itself. This new possibility of Being can develop itself autonomously; it can become a task to be accomplished, and as scientific knowledge it can take over the guidance for Being-in-the-world. But a 'commercium' of the subject with a world does not get created for the first time by knowing, nor does it arise from some way in which the world acts upon a subject. Knowing is a mode of Dasein founded upon Being-in-the-world. Thus Being-in-the-world, as a basic state, must be Interpreted beforehand.

1 '… bei einem originären Erfassen.'

14. The Idea of the Worldhood of the World in General

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD shall first be made visible with regard to that item of its structure which is the 'world' itself. To accomplish this task seems easy and so trivial as to make one keep taking for granted that it may be dispensed with. What can be meant by describing 'the world' as a phenomenon? It means to let us see what shows itself in 'entities' within the world. Here the first step is to enumerate the things that are 'in' the world: houses, trees, people, mountains, stars. We can depict the way such entities 'look', and we can give an account of occurrences in them and with them. This, however, is obviously a pre-phenomenological 'business' which cannot be at all relevant phenomenologically. Such a description is always confined to entities. It is ontical. But what we are seeking is Being. And we have formally defined 'phenomenon' in the phenomenological sense as that which shows itself as Being and as a structure of Being.

Thus, to give a phenomenological description of the 'world' will mean to exhibit the Being of those entities which are present-at-hand within the world, and to fix it in concepts which are categorial. Now the entities within the world are Things—Things of Nature, and Things 'invested with value' ['wertbehaftete'] Dinge]. Their Thinghood becomes a problem; and to the extent that the Thinghood of Things 'invested with value' is based upon the Thinghood of Nature, our primary theme is the Being of Things of Nature—Nature as such. That characteristic of Being which belongs to Things of Nature (substances), and upon which

1 'Welt', 'weltlich', 'Weltlichkeit', 'Weltmässigkeit'. We shall usually translate 'Welt' as 'the world' or 'a world', following English idiom, though Heidegger frequently omits the article when he wishes to refer to 'Welt' as a 'characteristic' of Dasein. In ordinary German the adjective 'weltlich' and the derivative noun 'Weltlichkeit' have much the same connotations as the English 'worldly' and 'worldliness'; but the meanings which Heidegger assigns to them (H. 65) are quite different from those of their English cognates. At the risk of obscuring the etymological connection and occasionally misleading the reader, we shall translate 'weltlich' as 'worldly', 'Weltlichkeit' as 'worldhood', and 'Weltmässigkeit' as 'worldly character'. The reader must bear in mind, however, that there is no suggestion here of the 'worldliness' of the 'man of the world'.

everything is founded, is substantiality. What is its ontological meaning? By asking this, we have given an unequivocal direction to our inquiry.

But is this a way of asking ontologically about the 'world'? The problematic which we have thus marked out is one which is undoubtedly ontological. But even if this ontology should itself succeed in explicating the Being of Nature in the very purest manner, in conformity with the basic assertions about this entity, which the mathematical natural sciences provide, it will never reach the phenomenon that is the 'world'. Nature is itself an entity which is encountered within the world and which can be discovered in various ways and at various stages.

Should we then first attach ourselves to those entities with which Dasein proximally and for the most part dwells—Things 'invested with value'? Do not these 'really' show us the world in which we live? Perhaps, in fact, they show us something like the 'world' more penetratingly. But these Things too are entities 'within' the world.

Neither the ontical depiction of entities within-the-world nor the ontological Interpretation of their Being is such as to reach the phenomenon of the 'world.' In both of these ways of access to 'Objective Being', the 'world' has already been 'presupposed', and indeed in various ways.

Is it possible that ultimately we cannot address ourselves to 'the world' as determining the nature of the entity we have mentioned? Yet we call this entity one which is "within-the-world". Is 'world' perhaps a characteristic of Dasein's Being? And in that case, does every Dasein 'proximally' have its world? Does not 'world' thus become something 'subjective'? How, then, can there be a 'common' world 'in' which, nevertheless, we are? And if we raise the question of the 'world', what world do we have in view? Neither the common world nor the subjective world, but the worldhood of the world as such. By what avenue do we meet this phenomenon?

'Worldhood' is an ontological concept, and stands for the structure of one of the constitutive items of Being-in-the-world. But we know Being-in-the-world as a way in which Dasein's character is defined existentially. Thus worldhood itself is an existentiale. If we inquire ontologically about the 'world', we by no means abandon the analytic of Dasein as a field for thematic study. Ontologically, 'world' is not a way of characterizing those entities which Dasein essentially is not; it is rather a characteristic of Dasein itself. This does not rule out the possibility that when we investigate the phenomenon of the 'world' we must do so by the avenue of entities within-the-world and the Being which they possess. The task of 'describing' the world phenomenologically is so far from obvious that even if we do no more than determine adequately what form it shall take, essential ontological clarifications will be needed.

This discussion of the word 'world', and our frequent use of it have made it apparent that it is used in several ways. By unravelling these we can get an indication of the different kinds of phenomena that are signified, and of the way in which they are interconnected.

1. "World" is used as an ontical concept, and signifies the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world.

2. "World" functions as an ontological term, and signifies the Being of those entities which we have just mentioned. And indeed 'world' can become a term for any realm which encompasses a multiplicity of entities: for instance, when one talks of the 'world' of a mathematician, 'world' signifies the realm of possible objects of mathematics.

3. "World" can be understood in another ontical sense—not, however, as those entities which Dasein essentially is not and which can be encountered within-the-world, but rather as that 'wherein' a factual Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World" has here a pre-ontological existentiel signification. Here again there are different possibilities: "world" may stand for the 'public' we-world, or one's 'own' closest (domestic) environment.

4. Finally, "world" designates the ontologico-existential concept of worldhood. Worldhood itself may have as its modes whatever structural wholes any special 'worlds' may have at the time; but it embraces in itself the a priori character of worldhood in general. We shall reserve the expression "world" as a term for our third signification. If we should sometimes use it in the first of these senses, we shall mark this with single quotation marks.

The derivative form 'worldly' will then apply terminologically to a kind of Being which belongs to Dasein, never to a kind which belongs to entities present-at-hand 'in' the world. We shall designate these latter entities as "belonging to the world" or "within-the-world" [weltzugehörig oder innerweltlich].

A glance at previous ontology shows that if one fails to see Being-in-the-world as a state of Dasein, the phenomenon of worldhood likewise gets passed over. One tries instead to Interpret the world in terms of the Being of those entities which are present-at-hand within-the-world but which are by no means proximally discovered—namely, in terms of Nature. If one understands Nature ontologico-categorially, one finds that

1. . . die "eigene" und nächste (häusliche) Umwelt. The word 'Umwelt', which is customarily translated as 'environment', means literally the 'world around' or the 'world about'. The prefix 'um', however, not only may mean 'around' or 'about', but, as we shall see, can also be used in an expression such as 'um zu …', which is most easily translated as 'in order to'. Section 15 will be largely devoted to a study of several words in which this same prefix occurs, though this is by no means apparent in the words we have chosen to represent them: 'Umgang' ('dealings'); 'das Um-zu' ('the "in-order-to"'); 'Umsicht' ('circumspection').

Nature is a limiting case of the Being of possible entities within-the-world. Only in some definite mode of its own Being-in-the-world can Dasein discover entities as Nature.$^1$ This manner of knowing them has the character of depriving the world of its worldhood in a definite way. 'Nature', as the categorical aggregate of those structures of Being which a definite entity encountered within-the-world may possess, can never make worldhood intelligible. But even the phenomenon of 'Nature', as it is conceived, for instance, in romanticism, can be grasped ontologically only in terms of the concept of the world—that is to say, in terms of the analytic of Dasein.

When it comes to the problem of analysing the world's worldhood ontologically, traditional ontology operates in a blind alley, if, indeed, it sees this problem at all. On the other hand, if we are to Interpret the worldhood of Dasein and the possible ways in which Dasein is made worldly [Verweltlichung], we must show why the kind of Being with which Dasein knows the world is such that it passes over the phenomenon of worldhood both ontically and ontologically. But at the same time the very Fact of this passing-over suggests that we must take special precautions to get the right phenomenal point of departure [Ausgang] for access [Zugang] to the phenomenon of worldhood, so that it will not get passed over.

Our method has already been assigned [Anweisung]. The theme of our analytic is to be Being-in-the-world, and accordingly the very world itself; and these are to be considered within the horizon of average everydayness—the kind of Being which is closest to Dasein. We must make a study of everyday Being-in-the-world; with the phenomenal support which this gives us, something like the world must come into view.

That world of everyday Dasein which is closest to it, is the environment. From this existential character of average Being-in-the-world, our investigation will take its course [Gang] towards the idea of worldhood in general. We shall seek the worldhood of the environment (environmentality) by going through an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment which we encounter as closest to us. The expression "environment" [Umwelt] contains in the 'environ' ["um"] a suggestion of spatiality. Yet the 'around' ['Umheruim'] which is constitutive for the environment does not have a primarily 'spatial' meaning. Instead, the spatial character which incontestably belongs to any environment, can be clarified only in terms of the structure of worldhood. From this point of view, Dasein's spatiality, of which we have given an indication in Section 12, becomes phenomenally visible. In ontology, however, an attempt has

$^1$ 'Das Seiende als Natur kann das Dasein nur in einem bestimmten Modus seines Inder-Welt-seins entdecken.'

been made to start with spatiality and then to Interpret the Being of the 'world' as res extensa. In Descartes we find the most extreme tendency towards such an ontology of the 'world', with, indeed, a counter-orientation towards the res cogitans—which does not coincide with Dasein either ontically or ontologically. The analysis of worldhood which we are here attempting can be made clearer if we show how it differs from such an ontological tendency. Our analysis will be completed in three stages: (A) the analysis of environmentality and worldhood in general; (B) an illustrative contrast between our analysis of worldhood and Descartes' ontology of the 'world'; (C) the aroundness [das Umhafte] of the environment, and the 'spatiality' of Dasein.1

A. Analysis of Environmentality and Worldhood in General

15. The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment

The Being of those entities which we encounter as closest to us can be exhibited phenomenologically if we take as our clue our everyday Being-in-the-world, which we also call our "dealings"2 in the world and with entities within-the-world. Such dealings have already dispersed themselves into manifold ways of concern.3 The kind of dealing which is closest to us is as we have shown, not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of 'knowledge'. The phenomenological question applies in the first instance to the Being of those entities which we encounter in such concern. To assure the kind of seeing which is here required, we must first make a remark about method.

In the disclosure and explication of Being, entities are in every case our preliminary and our accompanying theme [das Vor-und Mitthematische]; but our real theme is Being. In the domain of the present analysis, the entities we shall take as our preliminary theme are those which show themselves in our concern with the environment. Such entities are not thereby objects for knowing the 'world' theoretically; they are simply what gets used, what gets produced, and so forth. As entities so encountered, they become the preliminary theme for the purview of a 'knowing' which, as phenomenological, looks primarily towards Being, and which, in thus taking Being as its theme, takes these entities as its accompanying theme. This phenomenological interpretation is accordingly not a way of knowing

1 A is considered in Sections 15-18; B in Sections 19-21; C in Sections 22-24. 2 'Umgang'. This word means literally a 'going around' or 'going about', in a sense not too far removed from what we have in mind when we say that someone is 'going about his business'. 'Dealings' is by no means an accurate translation, but is perhaps as convenient as any. 'Intercourse' and 'trafficking' are also possible translations. 3 See above, H. 57, n. 1, p. 83.

those characteristics of entities which themselves are [seiender Beschaffenheiten des Seienden]; it is rather a determination of the structure of the Being which entities possess. But as an investigation of Being, it brings to completion, autonomously and explicitly, that understanding of Being which belongs already to Dasein and which 'comes alive' in any of its dealings with entities. Those entities which serve phenomenologically as our preliminary theme—in this case, those which are used or which are to be found in the course of production—become accessible when we put ourselves into the position of concerning ourselves with them in some such way. Taken strictly, this talk about "putting ourselves into such a position" [Sichversetzen] is misleading; for the kind of Being which belongs to such concernful dealings is not one into which we need to put ourselves first. This is the way in which everyday Dasein always is: when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch. The achieving of phenomenological access to the entities which we encounter, consists rather in thrusting aside our interpretative tendencies, which keep thrusting themselves upon us and running along with us, and which conceal not only the phenomenon of such 'concern', but even more those entities themselves as encountered of their own accord in our concern with them. These entangling errors become plain if in the course of our investigation we now ask which entities shall be taken as our preliminary theme and established as the pre-phenomenal basis for our study.

One may answer: "Things." But with this obvious answer we have perhaps already missed the pre-phenomenal basis we are seeking. For in addressing these entities as 'Things' (res), we have tacitly anticipated their ontological character. When analysis starts with such entities and goes on to inquire about Being, what it meets is Thinghood and Reality. Ontological explication discovers, as it proceeds, such characteristics of Being as substantiality, materiality, extendedness, side-by-side-ness, and so forth. But even pre-ontologically, in such Being as this, the entities which we encounter in concern are proximally hidden. When one designates Things as the entities that are 'proximally given', one goes ontologically astray, even though ontically one has something else in mind. What one really has in mind remains undetermined. But suppose one characterizes these 'Things' as Things 'invested with value'? What does "value" mean ontologically? How are we to categorize this 'investing' and Being-invested? Disregarding the obscurity of this structure of investiture with value, have we thus met that phenomenal characteristic of Being which belongs to what we encounter in our concernful dealings?

The Greeks had an appropriate term for 'Things': πρᾶγμματα—that is to say, that which one has to do with in one's concernful dealings

(πρᾶξις). But ontologically, the specifically 'pragmatic' character of the πρᾶγματα is just what the Greeks left in obscurity; they thought of these 'proximally' as 'mere Things'. We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern "equipment". In our dealings we come across equipment for writing, sewing, working, transportation, measurement. The kind of Being which equipment possesses must be exhibited. The clue for doing this lies in our first defining what makes an item of equipment—namely, its equipmentality.

Taken strictly, there 'is' no such thing as an equipment. To the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment is essentially 'something in-order-to …''etwas um-zu...'. A totality of equipment is constituted by various ways of the 'in-order-to', such as serviceability, conductiveness, usability, manipulability.

In the 'in-order-to' as a structure there lies an assignment or reference of something to something. Only in the analyses which are to follow can the phenomenon which this term 'assignment' indicates be made visible in its ontological genesis. Provisionally, it is enough to take a look phenomenally at a manifold of such assignments. Equipment—in accordance with its equipmentality—always is in terms of [aus] its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These 'Things' never show themselves

1 'das Zeug'. The word 'Zeug' has no precise English equivalent. While it may mean any implement, instrument, or tool, Heidegger uses it for the most part as a collective noun which is analogous to our relatively specific 'gear' (as in 'gear for fishing') or the more elaborate 'paraphernalia', or the still more general 'equipment', which we shall employ throughout this translation. In this collective sense 'Zeug' can sometimes be used in a way which is comparable to the use of 'stuff' in such sentences as 'there is plenty of stuff lying around'. (See H. 74.) In general, however, this pejorative connotation is lacking. For the most part Heidegger uses the term as a collective noun, so that he can say that there is no such thing as an equipment'; but he still uses it occasionally with an indefinite article to refer to some specific tool or instrument—some item or bit of equipment.

2 'In der Struktur "Um-zu" liegt eine Verweisung von etwas aufetwas.' There is no close English equivalent for the word 'Verweisung', which occurs many times in this chapter. The basic metaphor seems to be that of turning something away towards something else, or pointing it away, as when one 'refers' or 'commits' or 'relegates' or 'assigns' something to something else, whether one 'refers' a symbol to what it symbolizes, 'refers' a beggar to a welfare agency, 'commits' a person for trial, 'relegates' or 'banishes' him to Siberia, or even 'assigns' equipment to a purpose for which it is to be used. 'Verweisung' thus does some of the work of 'reference', 'commitment', 'assignment', 'relegation', 'banishment'; but it does not do all the work of any of these expressions. For a businessman to 'refer' to a letter, for a symbol to 'refer' to what it symbolizes, for a man to 'commit larceny or murder' or merely to 'commit himself' to certain partisan views, for a teacher to give a pupil a long 'assignment', or even for a journalist to receive an 'assignment' to the Vatican, we would have to find some other verb than 'verweisen'. We shall, however, use the verbs 'assign' and 'refer' and their derivatives as perhaps the least misleading substitutes, employing whichever seems the more appropriate in the context, and occasionally using a hendiadys as in the present passage. See Section 17 for further discussion. (When other words such as 'anweisen' or 'zuweisen' are translated as 'assign', we shall usually subjoin the German in brackets.)

proximally as they are for themselves, so as to add up to a sum of realia and fill up a room. What we encounter as closest to us (though not as something taken as a theme) is the room; and we encounter it not as something 'between four walls' in a geometrical spatial sense, but as equipment for residing. Out of this the 'arrangement' emerges, and it is in this that any 'individual' item of equipment shows itself. Before it does so, a totality of equipment has already been discovered.

Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about [um] the hammer's character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the "in-order-to" which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' ["Handlichkeit"] of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call "readiness-to-hand" [Kuhandenheit].1 Only because equipment has this 'Being-in-itself' and does not merely occur, is it manipulable in the broadest sense and at our disposal. No matter how sharply we just look [Nur-nochhinsehen] at the outward appearance ['Aussehen'] of Things in whatever form this takes, we cannot discover anything ready-to-hand. If we look at Things just 'theoretically', we can get along without understanding readiness-to-hand. But when we deal with them by using them and manipulating them, this activity is not a blind one; it has its own kind of sight, by which our manipulation is guided and from which it acquires its specific Thingly character. Dealings with equipment subordinate themselves to the manifold assignments of the 'in-order-to'. And the sight with which they thus accommodate themselves is circumspection.

1 Italics only in earlier editions. 2 The word 'Umsicht', which we translate by 'circumspection', is here presented as standing for a special kind of 'Sicht' ('sight'). Here, as elsewhere, Heidegger is taking advantage of the fact that the prefix 'um' may mean either 'around' or 'in order to'. 'Umsicht' may accordingly be thought of as meaning 'looking around' or 'looking around for something' or 'looking around for a way to get something done'. In ordinary German usage, 'Umsicht' seems to have much the same connotation as our 'circumspection'—a kind of awareness in which one looks around before one decides just what one ought to do next. But Heidegger seems to be generalizing this notion as well as calling attention to

'Practical' behaviour is not 'a theoretical' in the sense of "sightlessness". The way it differs from theoretical behaviour does not lie simply in the fact that in theoretical behaviour one observes, while in practical behaviour one acts [gehandelt wird], and that action must employ theoretical cognition if it is not to remain blind; for the fact that observation is a kind of concern is just as primordial as the fact that action has its own kind of sight. Theoretical behaviour is just looking, without circumspection. But the fact that this looking is non-circumspective does not mean that it follows no rules: it constructs a canon for itself in the form of method.

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme. The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw [zurückzuziehen] in order to be ready-to-hand quite authentically. That with which our everyday dealings proximally dwell is not the tools themselves [die Werkzeuge selbst]. On the contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work—that which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand too. The work bears with it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered.

The work to be produced, as the "towards-which" of such things as the hammer, the plane, and the needle, likewise has the kind of Being that belongs to equipment. The shoe which is to be produced is for wearing (footgear) [Schuhzeug]; the clock is manufactured for telling the time. The work which we chiefly encounter in our concernful dealings—the work that is to be found when one is "at work" on something [das in Arbeit befindliche]—has a usability which belongs to it essentially; in this usability it lets us encounter already the "towards-which" for which it is usable. A work that someone has ordered [das bestellte Werk] is only by reason of its use and the assignment-context of entities which is discovered in using it.

But the work to be produced is not merely usable for something. The extent to which circumspection in the narrower sense occurs in our every-day living. (The distinction between 'sight' (Sicht) and 'seeing' ('Sehen') will be developed further in Sections 31 and 36 below.

1 '… im Sinne der Sichtlosigkeit …'. The point of this sentence will be clear to the reader who recalls that the Greek verb θεωρίν, from which the words 'theoretical' and 'atheoretical' are derived, originally meant 'to see'. Heidegger is pointing out that this is not what we have in mind in the traditional contrast between the 'theoretical' and the 'practical'.

2 'Das Werk trägt die Verweisungsganzheit, innerhalb der das Zeug begegnet.' In this chapter the word 'Werk' ('work') usually refers to the product achieved by working rather than the process of working as such. We shall as a rule translate 'Verweisungsganzheit' as 'referential totality', though sometimes the clumsier 'totality of assignments' may convey the idea more effectively. (The older editions read 'deren' rather than 'derer').

production itself is a using of something for something. In the work there is also a reference or assignment to 'materials': the work is dependent on [angewiesen auf] leather, thread, needles, and the like. Leather, moreover is produced from hides. These are taken from animals, which someone else has raised. Animals also occur within the world without having been raised at all; and, in a way, these entities still produce themselves even when they have been raised. So in the environment certain entities become accessible which are always ready-to-hand, but which, in themselves, do not need to be produced. Hammer, tongs, and needle, refer in themselves to steel, iron, metal, mineral, wood, in that they consist of these. In equipment that is used, 'Nature' is discovered along with it by that use—the 'Nature' we find in natural products.

Here, however, "Nature" is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source' which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead in the dale'.

The work produced refers not only to the "towards-which" of its usability and the "whereof" of which it consists: under simple craft conditions it also has an assignment to the person who is to use it or wear it. The work is cut to his figure; he 'is' there along with it as the work emerges. Even when goods are produced by the dozen, this constitutive assignment is by no means lacking; it is merely indefinite, and points to the random, the average. Thus along with the work, we encounter not only entities ready-to-hand but also entities with Dasein's kind of Being—entities for which, in their concern, the product becomes ready-to-hand; and together with these we encounter the world in which wearers and users live, which is at the same time ours. Any work with which one concerns oneself is ready-to-hand not only in the domestic world of the workshop but also in the public world. Along with the public world, the enironing Nature [die Umweltnatur] is discovered and is accessible to everyone. In roads, streets, bridges, buildings, our concern discovers Nature as having some definite direction. A covered railway platform takes account of bad weather; an installation for public lighting takes account of the darkness, or rather of specific changes in the presence or absence of daylight—the

‘position of the sun’. In a clock, account is taken of some definite constellation in the world-system. When we look at the clock, we tacitly make use of the ‘sun’s position’, in accordance with which the measurement of time gets regulated in the official astronomical manner. When we make use of the clock-equipment, which is proximally and inconspicuously ready-to-hand, the environing Nature is ready-to-hand along with it. Our concernful absorption in whatever work-world lies closest to us, has a function of discovering; and it is essential to this function that, depending upon the way in which we are absorbed, those entities within-the-world which are brought along [beigebrachte] in the work and with it (that is to say, in the assignments or references which are constitutive for it) remain discoverable in varying degrees of explicitness and with a varying circumspective penetration.

The kind of Being which belongs to these entities is readiness-to-hand. But this characteristic is not to be understood as merely a way of taking them, as if we were talking such ‘aspects’ into the ‘entities’ which we proximally encounter, or as if some world-stuff which is proximally present-at-hand in itself were ‘given subjective colouring’ in this way. Such an Interpretation would overlook the fact that in this case these entities would have to be understood and discovered beforehand as something purely present-at-hand, and must have priority and take the lead in the sequence of those dealings with the ‘world’ in which something is discovered and made one’s own. But this already runs counter to the ontological meaning of cognition, which we have exhibited as a founded mode of Being-in-the-world.$^2$ To lay bare what is just present-at-hand and no more, cognition must first penetrate beyond what is ready-to-hand in our concern. Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are ‘in themselves’ are defined ontologico-categorially. Yet only by reason of something present-at-hand, ‘is there’ anything ready-to-hand. Does it follow, however, granting this thesis for the nonce, that readiness-to-hand is ontologically founded upon presence-at-hand?

But even if, as our ontological Interpretation proceeds further, readiness-to-hand should prove itself to be the kind of Being characteristic of those entities which are proximally discovered within-the-world, and even if its primordiality as compared with pure presence-at-hand can be demonstrated, have all these explications been of the slightest help towards understanding the phenomenon of the world ontologically? In Interpreting these entities within-the-world, however, we have always

$^1$ ein zunächst an sich vorhandener Weltstoff … The earlier editions have ‘… zunächst ein an sich vorhandener Weltstoff …’.

$^2$ See H. 61 above.

'presupposed' the world. Even if we join them together, we still do not get anything like the 'world' as their sum. If, then, we start with the Being of these entities, is there any avenue that will lead us to exhibiting the phenomenon of the world?

16. How the Worldly Character of the Environment Announces itself in Entities Within-the-world

The world itself is not an entity within-the-world; and yet it is so determinative for such entities that only in so far as 'there is' a world can they be encountered and show themselves, in their Being, as entities which have been discovered. But in what way 'is there' a 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, no matter how indefinite that understanding may be, then does not Dasein have an understanding of the world—a pre-ontological understanding, which indeed can and does get along without explicit ontological insights? With those entities which are encountered within-the-world—that is to say, with their character as within-the-world—does not something like the world show itself for concernful Being-in-the-world? Do we not have a pre-phenomenological glimpse of this phenomenon? Do we not always have such a glimpse of it, without having to take it as a theme for ontological Interpretation? Has Dasein itself, in the range of its concernful absorption in equipment ready-to-hand, a possibility of Being in which the worldhood of those entities within-the-world with which it is concerned is, in a certain way, lit up for it, along with those entities themselves?

If such possibilities of Being for Dasein can be exhibited within its concernful dealings, then the way lies open for studying the phenomenon which is thus lit up, and for attempting to 'hold it at bay', as it were, and to interrogate it as to those structures which show themselves therein.

To the everydayness of Being-in-the-world there belong certain modes of concern. These permit the entities with which we concern ourselves to be encountered in such a way that the worldly character of what is within-the-world comes to the fore. When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous.

1 'Die am innerweltlich Seienden sich meldende Weltmässigkeit der Umwelt.'

presents the ready-to-hand equipment as in a certain un-readiness-to-hand. But this implies that what cannot be used just lies there; it shows itself as an equipimental Thing which looks so and so, and which, in its readiness-to-hand as looking that way, has constantly been present-at-hand too. Pure presence-at-hand announces itself in such equipment, but only to withdraw to the readiness-to-hand of something with which one concerns oneself—that is to say, of the sort of thing we find when we put it back into repair. This presence-at-hand of something that cannot be used is still not devoid of all readiness-to-hand whatsoever; equipment which is present-at-hand in this way is still not just a Thing which occurs somewhere. The damage to the equipment is still not a mere alteration of a Thing—not a change of properties which just occurs in something present-at-hand.

In our concernful dealings, however, we not only come up against unusable things within what is ready-to-hand already: we also find things which are missing—which not only are not 'handy' ["handlich"] but are not 'to hand' ["zur Hand"] at all. Again, to miss something in this way amounts to coming across something un-ready-to-hand. When we notice what is un-ready-to-hand, that which is ready-to-hand enters the mode of obtrusiveness The more urgently [Je dringlicher] we need what is missing, and the more authentically it is encountered in its un-readiness-to-hand, all the more obtrusive [um so aufdringlicher] does that which is ready-to-hand become—so much so, indeed, that it seems to lose its character of readiness-to-hand. It reveals itself as something just present-at-hand and no more, which cannot be budged without the thing that is missing. The helpless way in which we stand before it is a deficient mode of concern, and as such it uncovers the Being-just-present-at-hand-and-no-more of something ready-to-hand.

In our dealings with the world$^1$ of our concern, the un-ready-to-hand can be encountered not only in the sense of that which is unusable or simply missing, but as something un-ready-to-hand which is not missing at all and not unusable, but which 'stands in the way' of our concern. That to which our concern refuses to turn, that for which it has 'no time', is something un-ready-to-hand in the manner of what does not belong here, of what has not as yet been attended to. Anything which is un-ready-to-hand in this way is disturbing to us, and enables us to see the obstinacy of that with which we must concern ourselves in the first instance before we do anything else. With this obstinacy, the presence-at-hand of the ready-to-hand makes itself known in a new

$^1$ In the earlier editions 'Welt' appears with quotation marks. These are omitted in the later editions.

way as the Being of that which still lies before us and calls for our attending to it.¹

The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy all have the function of bringing to the fore the characteristic of presence-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand. But the ready-to-hand is not thereby just observed and stared at as something present-at-hand; the presence-at-hand which makes itself known is still bound up in the readiness-to-hand of equipment. Such equipment still does not veil itself in the guise of mere Things. It becomes 'equipment' in the sense of something which one would like to shove out of the way.² But in such a Tendency to shove things aside, the ready-to-hand shows itself as still ready-to-hand in its unswerving presence-at-hand.

Now that we have suggested, however, that the ready-to-hand is thus encountered under modifications in which its presence-at-hand is revealed, how far does this clarify the phenomenon of the world? Even in analysing these modifications we have not gone beyond the Being of what is within-the-world, and we have come no closer to the world-phenomenon than before. But though we have not as yet grasped it, we have brought ourselves to a point where we can bring it into view.

In conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, that which is ready-to-hand loses its readiness-to-hand in a certain way. But in our dealings with what is ready-to-hand, this readiness-to-hand is itself understood, though not thematically. It does not vanish simply, but takes its farewell, as it were, in the conspicuousness of the unusable. Readiness-to-hand still shows itself, and it is precisely here that the worldly character of the ready-to-hand shows itself too.

¹ Heidegger's distinction between 'conspicuousness' (Auffalligkeit) 'obtrusiveness' ('Aufdringlichkeit'), and 'obstinacy' ('Aufsässigkeit') is hard to present unambiguously in translation. He seems to have in mind three rather similar situations. In each of these we are confronted by a number of articles which are ready-to-hand. In the first situation we wish to use one of these articles for some purpose, but we find that it cannot be used for that purpose. It then becomes 'conspicuous' or 'striking', and in a way 'un-ready-to-hand'—in that we are not able to use it. In the second situation we may have precisely the same articles before us, but we want one which is not there. In this case the missing article too is 'un-ready-to-hand', but in another way—in that it is not there to be used. This is annoying, and the articles which are still ready-to-hand before us, thrust themselves upon us in such a way that they become 'obtrusive' or even 'obnoxious'. In the third situation, some of the articles which are ready-to-hand before us are experienced as obstacles to the achievement of some purpose; as obstacles they are 'obstinate', 'recalcitrant', 'refractory', and we have to attend to them or dispose of them in some way before we can finish what we want to do. Here again the obstinate objects are un-ready-to-hand, but simply in the way of being obstructate.

In all three situations the articles which are ready-to-hand for us tend to lose their readiness-to-hand in one way or another and reveal their presence-at-hand; only in the second situation, however, do we encounter them as 'just present-at-hand and no more' ('nur noch Vorhandenes').

² Here 'Zeug' is used in the pejorative sense of 'stuff'. See our note 1, p. 97 on H. 68.

The structure of the Being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references or assignments. In a peculiar and obvious manner, the 'Things' which are closest to us are 'in themselves' 'Ansich'; and they are encountered as 'in themselves' in the concern which makes use of them without noticing them explicitly—the concern which can come up against something unusable. When equipment cannot be used, this implies that the constitutive assignment of the "in-order-to" to a "towards-this" has been disturbed. The assignments themselves are not observed; they are rather 'there' when we concernfully submit ourselves to them [Sichstellen unter sie]. But when an assignment has been disturbed—when something is unusable for some purpose—then the assignment becomes explicit. Even now, of course, it has not become explicit as an ontological structure; but it has become explicit ontically for the circumspection which comes up against the damaging of the tool. When an assignment to some particular "towards-this" has been thus circumspectively aroused, we catch sight of the "towards-this" itself, and along with it everything connected with the work—the whole 'workshop'—as that wherein concern always dwells. The context of equipment is lit up, not as something never seen before, but as a totality constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection. With this totality, however, the world announces itself.

Similarly, when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence [Zugegensein] has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a break in those referential contexts which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environment announces itself afresh. What is thus lit up is not itself just one thing ready-to-hand among others; still less is it something present-at-hand upon which equipment ready-to-hand is somehow founded: it is in the 'there' before anyone has observed or ascertained it. It is itself inaccessible to circumspection, so far as circumspection is always directed towards entities; but in each case it has already been disclosed for circumspection. 'Disclose' and 'disclosedness' will be used as technical terms in the passages that follow, and shall signify 'to lay open' and 'the character of having been laid open.' Thus 'to disclose' never means anything like 'to obtain indirectly by inference'.¹

¹ In ordinary German usage, the verb 'erschliessen' may mean not only to 'disclose' but also—in certain constructions—to 'infer' or 'conclude' in the sense in which one 'infers' a conclusion from premisses. Heidegger is deliberately ruling out this latter interpretation, though on a very few occasions he may use the word in this sense. He explains his own meaning by the cognate verb 'aufschliessen', to 'lay open'. To say that something has been 'disclosed' or 'laid open' in Heidegger's sense, does not mean that one has any

That the world does not 'consist' of the ready-to-hand shows itself in the fact (among others) that whenever the world is lit up in the modes of concern which we have been Interpreting, the ready-to-hand becomes deprived of its worldhood so that Being-just-present-at-hand comes to the fore. If, in our everyday concern with the 'environment', it is to be possible for equipment ready-to-hand to be encountered in its 'Being-in-itself' [in seinem "An-sich-sein"], then those assignments and referential totalities in which our circumspection 'is absorbed' cannot become a theme for that circumspection any more than they can for grasping things 'thematically' but non-circumspectively. If it is to be possible for the ready-to-hand not to emerge from its inconspicuousness, the world must not announce itself. And it is in this that the Being-in-itself of entities which are ready-to-hand has its phenomenal structure constituted.

In such privative expressions as "inconspicuousness", "unobtrusiveness", and "non-obstinacy", what we have in view is a positive phenomenal character of the Being of that which is proximally ready-to-hand. With these negative prefixes we have in view the character of the ready-to-hand as "holding itself in"; this is what we have our eye upon in the "Being-in-itself" of something, though 'proximally' we ascribe it to the present-at-hand—to the present-at-hand as that which can be thematically ascertained. As long as we take our orientation primarily and exclusively from the present-at-hand, the 'in-itself' can by no means be ontologically clarified. If, however, this talk about the 'in-itself' has any ontological importance, some interpretation must be called for. This "in-itself" of Being is something which gets invoked with considerable emphasis, mostly in an ontical way, and rightly so from a phenomenal standpoint. But if some ontological assertion is supposed to be given when this is ontically invoked, its claims are not fulfilled by such a procedure. As the foregoing analysis has already made clear, only on the basis of the phenomenon of the world can the Being-in-itself of entities within-the-world be grasped ontologically.

But if the world can, in a way, be lit up, it must assuredly be disclosed. And it has already been disclosed beforehand whenever what is ready-to-hand within-the-world is accessible for circumspective concern. The world is therefore something 'wherein' Dasein as an entity already was, and if in detailed awareness of the contents which are thus 'disclosed', but rather that they have been 'laid open' to us as implicit in what is given, so that they may be made explicit to our awareness by further analysis or discrimination of the given, rather than by any inference from it.

1 "Diese 'Un' meinen den Charakter des Ansichhaltens des Zuhandenen, das, was wir mit dem An-sich-sein im Auge haben …" The point seems to be that when we speak of something 'as it is' "in itself" or "in its own right", we think of it as 'holding itself in' or 'holding itself back'—not 'stepping forth' or doing something 'out of character'.

any manner it explicitly comes away from anything, it can never do more than come back to the world.

Being-in-the-world, according to our Interpretation hitherto, amounts to a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assignments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment. Any concern is already as it is, because of some familiarity with the world. In this familiarity Dasein can lose itself in what it encounters within-the-world and be fascinated with it. What is it that Dasein is familiar with? Why can the worldly character of what is within-the-world be lit up? The presence-at-hand$^1$ of entities is thrust to the fore by the possible breaks in that referential totality in which circumspection 'operates'; how are we to get a closer understanding of this totality?

These questions are aimed at working out both the phenomenon and the problems of worldhood, and they call for an inquiry into the interconnections with which certain structures are built up. To answer them we must analyse these structures more concretely.

¶ 17. Reference and Signs

In our provisional Interpretation of that structure of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand (to 'equipment'), the phenomenon of reference or assignment became visible; but we merely gave an indication of it, and in so sketchy a form that we at once stressed the necessity of uncovering it with regard to its ontological origin.$^2$ It became plain, moreover, that assignments and referential totalities could in some sense become constitutive for worldhood itself. Hitherto we have seen the world lit up only in and for certain definite ways in which we concern ourselves environmentally with the ready-to-hand, and indeed it has been lit up only with the readiness-to-hand of that concern. So the further we proceed in understanding the Being of entities within-the-world, the broader and firmer becomes the phenomenal basis on which the world-phenomenon may be laid bare.

We shall again take as our point of departure the Being of the ready-to-hand, but this time with the purpose of grasping the phenomenon of reference or assignment itself more precisely. We shall accordingly attempt an ontological analysis of a kind of equipment in which one may come across such 'references' in more senses than one. We come across 'equipment' in signs. The word "sign" designates many kinds of things: not only may it stand for different kinds of signs, but Being-a-sign-for can itself be

$^1$ Here the older editions have 'Zuhandenheit' where the newer ones have 'Vorhandenheit'.

$^2$ Cf. H. 68 above.

formalized as a universal kind of relation, so that the sign-structure itself provides an ontological clue for 'characterizing' any entity whatsoever.

But signs, in the first instance, are themselves items of equipment whose specific character as equipment consists in showing or indicating. We find such signs in signposts, boundary-stones, the ball for the mariner's storm-warning, signals, banners, signs of mourning, and the like. Indicating can be defined as a 'kind' of referring. Referring is, if we take it as formally as possible, a relating. But relation does not function as a genus for 'kinds' or 'species' of references which may somehow become differentiated as sign, symbol, expression, or signification. A relation is something quite formal which may be read off directly by way of 'formalization' from any kind of context, whatever its subject-matter or its way of Being.

Every reference is a relation, but not every relation is a reference. Every 'indication' is a reference, but not every referring is an indicating. This implies at the same time that every 'indication' is a relation, but not every relation is an indicating. The formally general character of relation is thus brought to light. If we are to investigate such phenomena as references, signs, or even significations, nothing is to be gained by characterizing them as relations. Indeed we shall eventually have to show that 'relations' themselves, because of their formally general character, have their ontological source in a reference.

If the present analysis is to be confined to the Interpretation of the sign as distinct from the phenomenon of reference, then even within this limitation we cannot properly investigate the full multiplicity of possible signs. Among signs there are symptoms [Anzeichen], warning signals, signs of things that have happened already [Rückeichen], signs to mark something, signs by which things are recognized; these have different ways of indicating, regardless of what may be serving as such a sign. From such 'signs' we must distinguish traces, residues, commemorative monuments, documents, testimony, symbols, expressions, appearances, significations. These phenomena can easily be formalized because of their formal relational character; we find it especially tempting nowadays to take such a 'relation' as a clue for subjecting every entity to a kind of 'Interpretation' which always 'fits' because at bottom it says nothing, no more than the facile schema of content and form.

As an example of a sign we have chosen one which we shall use again in a later analysis, though in another regard. Motor cars are sometimes fitted up with an adjustable red arrow, whose position indicates

1. . . deren spezifischer Zeugcharakter im Zeigen besteht.' While we have often used 'show' and 'indicate' to translate 'zeigen' and 'anzeigen' respectively, in the remainder of this section it seems more appropriate to translate 'zeigen' by 'indicate', or to resort to hendiadys as in the present passage.

the direction the vehicle will take—at an intersection, for instance. The position of the arrow is controlled by the driver. This sign is an item of equipment which is ready-to-hand for the driver in his concern with driving, and not for him alone: those who are not travelling with him—and they in particular—also make use of it, either by giving way on the proper side or by stopping. This sign is ready-to-hand within-the-world in the whole equipment-context of vehicles and traffic regulations. It is equipment for indicating, and as equipment, it is constituted by reference or assignment. It has the character of the "in-order-to", its own definite serviceability; it is for indicating.$^1$ This indicating which the sign performs can be taken as a kind of 'referring'. But here we must notice that this 'referring' as indicating is not the ontological structure of the sign as equipment.

Instead, 'referring' as indicating is grounded in the Being-structure of equipment, in serviceability for… But an entity may have serviceability without thereby becoming a sign. As equipment, a 'hammer' too is constituted by a serviceability, but this does not make it a sign. Indicating, as a 'reference', is a way in which the "towards-which" of a serviceability becomes ontically concrete; it determines an item of equipment as for this "towards-which" [und bestimmt ein Zeug zu diesem]. On the other hand, the kind of reference we get in 'serviceability-for', is an ontologico-categorial attribute of equipment as equipment. That the "towards-which" of serviceability should acquire its concreteness in indicating, is an accident of its equipment-constitution as such. In this example of a sign, the difference between the reference of serviceability and the reference of indicating becomes visible in a rough and ready fashion. These are so far from coinciding that only when they are united does the concreteness of a definite kind of equipment become possible.

Now it is certain that indicating differs in principle from reference as a constitutive state of equipment; it is just as incontestable that the sign in its turn is related in a peculiar and even distinctive way to the kind of Being which belongs to whatever equipmental totality may be ready-to-hand in the environment, and to its worldly character. In our concernful

$^1$ 'Es hat den Charakter des Um-zu, seine bestimmte Dienlichkeit, es ist zum Zeigen.' The verb 'dienen', is often followed by an infinitive construction introduced by the preposition 'zu'. Similarly the English 'serve' can be followed by an infinitive in such expressions as 'it serves to indicate…'. In Heidegger's German the 'zu' construction is carried over to the noun 'Dienlichkeit'; the corresponding noun 'serviceability', however, is not normally followed by an infinitive, but rather by an expression introduced by 'for' e.g. 'serviceability for indicating…'. Since the preposition 'zu' plays an important role in this section and the next, it would be desirable to provide a uniform translation for it. We shall, however, translate it as 'for' in such expressions as 'Dienlichkeit zu', but as 'towards' in such expressions as 'Wozu' ('towards-which') and 'Dazu' ('towards-this'), retaining 'in-order-to' for 'Um-zu'.

dealings, equipment for indicating [Zeig-zeug] gets used in a very special way. But simply to establish this Fact is ontologically insufficient. The basis and the meaning of this special status must be clarified.

What do we mean when we say that a sign "indicates"? We can answer this only by determining what kind of dealing is appropriate with equipment for indicating. And we must do this in such a way that the readiness-to-hand of that equipment can be genuinely grasped. What is the appropriate way of having-to-do with signs? Going back to our example of the arrow, we must say that the kind of behaving (Being) which corresponds to the sign we encounter, is either to 'give way' or to 'stand still' vis-d-vis the car with the arrow. Giving way, as taking a direction, belongs essentially to Dasein's Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always somehow directed [ausgerichtet] and on its way; standing and waiting are only limiting cases of this directional 'on-its-way'. The sign addresses itself to a Being-in-the-world which is specifically 'spatial'. The sign is not authentically 'grasped' ["erfasst"] if we just stare at it and identify it as an indicator-Thing which occurs. Even if we turn our glance in the direction which the arrow indicates, and look at something present-at-hand in the region indicated, even then the sign is not authentically encountered. Such a sign addresses itself to the circumspection of our concernful dealings, and it does so in such a way that the circumspection which goes along with it, following where it points, brings into an explicit 'survey' whatever aroundness the environment may have at the time. This circumspective survey does not grasp the ready-to-hand; what it achieves is rather an orientation within our environment. There is also another way in which we can experience equipment: we may encounter the arrow simply as equipment which belongs to the car. We can do this without discovering what character it specifically has as equipment: what the arrow is to indicate and how it is to do so, may remain completely undetermined; yet what we are encountering is not a mere Thing. The experiencing of a Thing requires a definiteness of its own [ihre eigene Bestimmtheit], and must be contrasted with coming across a manifold of equipment, which may often be quite indefinite, even when one comes across it as especially close.

Signs of the kind we have described let what is ready-to-hand be encountered; more precisely, they let some context of it become accessible in such a way that our concernful dealings take on an orientation and hold it secure. A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself. In a symptom or a warning-signal, 'what is coming' 'indicates itself', but not in the sense of something

merely occurring, which comes as an addition to what is already present-at-hand; 'what is coming' is the sort of thing which we are ready for, or which we 'weren't ready for' if we have been attending to something else. In signs of something that has happened already, what has come to pass and run its course becomes circumspectively accessible. A sign to mark something indicates what one is 'at' at any time. Signs always indicate primarily 'wherein' one lives, where one's concern dwells, what sort of involvement there is with something.

The peculiar character of signs as equipment becomes especially clear in 'establishing a sign' ["Zeichenstiftung"]. This activity is performed in a circumspective fore-sight [Vorsicht] out of which it arises, and which requires that it be possible for one's particular environment to announce itself for circumspection at any time by means of something ready-to-hand, and that this possibility should itself be ready-to-hand. But the Being of what is most closely ready-to-hand within-the-world possesses the character of holding-itself-in and not emerging, which we have described above. Accordingly our circumspective dealings in the environment require some equipment ready-to-hand which in its character as equipment takes over the 'work' of letting something ready-to-hand become conspicuous. So when such equipment (signs) gets produced, its conspicuousness must be kept in mind. But even when signs are thus conspicuous, one does not let them be present-at-hand at random; they get 'set up' ["angebracht"] in a definite way with a view towards easy accessibility.

In establishing a sign, however, one does not necessarily have to produce equipment which is not yet ready-to-hand at all. Signs also arise when one takes as a sign [Zum-Zeichen-nehmen] something that is ready-to-hand already. In this mode, signs "get established" in a sense which is even more primordial. In indicating, a ready-to-hand equipment totality, and even the environment in general, can be provided with an availability which is circumspectively oriented; and not only this: establishing a sign can, above all, reveal. What gets taken as a sign becomes accessible only through its readiness-to-hand. If, for instance, the south wind 'is accepted' ["gilt"] by the farmer as a sign of rain, then this 'acceptance' ["Geltung"]—or the 'value' with which the entity is 'invested'—is not a sort of bonus over and above what is already present-at-hand in itself—viz. the flow of air in a definite geographical direction. The south wind may be meteorologically accessible as something which just occurs; but it is never present-

1. … das "was kommt" ist solches, darauf wir uns gefasst machen, bzw. "nicht gefasst waren", sofern wir uns mit anderem befassten.
2. Das Merkzeichen zeigt, "woran" man jeweils ist. Die Zeichen zeigen primär immer das, "worin" man lebt, wobei das Besorgen sich aufhält, welche Bewandtnis es damit hat. On 'Bewandtnis', see note 2, p. 115 H. 84 below.
3. See H. 75-76 above.

at-hand proximally in such a way as this, only occasionally taking over the function of a warning signal. On the contrary, only by the circumspection with which one takes account of things in farming, is the south wind discovered in its Being.

But, one will protest, that which gets taken as a sign must first have become accessible in itself and been apprehended before the sign gets established. Certainly it must in any case be such that in some way we can come across it. The question simply remains as to how entities are discovered in this previous encountering, whether as mere Things which occur, or rather as equipment which has not been understood—as something ready-to-hand with which we have hitherto not known 'how to begin', and which has accordingly kept itself veiled from the purview of circumspection. And here again, when the equipmental characters of the ready-to-hand are still circumspectively undiscovered, they are not to be Interpreted as bare Thinghood presented for an apprehension of what is just present-at-hand and no more.

The Being-ready-to-hand of signs in our everyday dealings, and the conspicuousness which belongs to signs and which may be produced for various purposes and in various ways, do not merely serve to document the inconspicuousness constitutive for what is most closely ready-to-hand; the sign itself gets its conspicuousness from the inconspicuousness of the equipmental totality, which is ready-to-hand and 'obvious' in its everydayness. The knot which one ties in a handkerchief [der bekannte "Knopf im Taschentuch"] as a sign to mark something is an example of this. What such a sign is to indicate is always something with which one has to concern oneself in one's everyday circumspection. Such a sign can indicate many things, and things of the most various kinds. The wider the extent to which it can indicate, the narrower its intelligibility and its usefulness. Not only is it, for the most part, ready-to-hand as a sign only for the person who 'establishes' it, but it can even become inaccessible to him, so that another sign is needed if the first is to be used circumspectively at all. So when the knot cannot be used as a sign, it does not lose its sign-character, but it acquires the disturbing obtrusiveness of something most closely ready-to-hand.

One might be tempted to cite the abundant use of 'signs' in primitive Dasein, as in fetishism and magic, to illustrate the remarkable role which they play in everyday concern when it comes to our understanding of the world. Certainly the establishment of signs which underlies this way of using them is not performed with any theoretical aim or in the course of theoretical speculation. This way of using them always remains completely within a Being-in-the-world which is 'immediate'. But on

closer inspection it becomes plain that to interpret fetishism and magic by taking our clue from the idea of signs in general, is not enough to enable us to grasp the kind of 'Being-ready-to-hand' which belongs to entities encountered in the primitive world. With regard to the sign-phenomenon, the following Interpretation may be given: for primitive man, the sign coincides with that which is indicated. Not only can the sign represent this in the sense of serving as a substitute for what it indicates, but it can do so in such a way that the sign itself always is what it indicates. This remarkable coinciding does not mean, however, that the sign-Thing has already undergone a certain 'Objectification'—that it has been experienced as a mere Thing and misplaced into the same realm of Being of the present-at-hand as what it indicates. This 'coinciding' is not an identification of things which have hitherto been isolated from each other: it consists rather in the fact that the sign has not as yet become free from that of which it is a sign. Such a use of signs is still absorbed completely in Being-towards what is indicated, so that a sign as such cannot detach itself at all. This coinciding is based not on a prior Objectification but on the fact that such Objectification is completely lacking. This means, however, that signs are not discovered as equipment at all—that ultimately what is 'ready-to-hand' within-the-world just does not have the kind of Being that belongs to equipment. Perhaps even readiness-to-hand and equipment have nothing to contribute [nichts auszurichten] as ontological clues in Interpreting the primitive world; and certainly the ontology of Thinghood does even less. But if an understanding of Being is constitutive for primitive Dasein and for the primitive world in general, then it is all the more urgent to work out the 'formal' idea of worldhood—or at least the idea of a phenomenon modifiable in such a way that all ontological assertions to the effect that in a given phenomenal context something is not yet such-and-such or no longer such-and-such, may acquire a positive phenomenal meaning in terms of what it is not.¹

The foregoing Interpretation of the sign should merely provide phenomenal support for our characterization of references or assignments. The relation between sign and reference is threefold. 1. Indicating, as a way whereby the "towards-which" of a serviceability can become concrete, is founded upon the equipment-structure as such, upon the "in-order-to" (assignment). 2. The indicating which the sign does is an equipmental character of something ready-to-hand, and as such it belongs to a totality of equipment, to a context of assignments or references. 3. The sign is not only ready-to-hand with other equipment, but in its readiness-to-hand the environment becomes in each case explicitly

¹ '… aus dem, was es nicht ist.' The older editions write 'was' for 'was'.

accessible for circumspection. A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand, which functions both as this definite equipment and as something indicative of [was … anzeigt] the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, of referential totalities, and of worldhood. Here is rooted the special status of the sign as something ready-to-hand in that environment with which we concern ourselves circumspectively. Thus the reference or the assignment itself cannot be conceived as a sign of it is to serve ontologically as the foundation upon which signs are based. Reference is not an ontical characteristic of something ready-to-hand, when it is rather that by which readiness-to-hand itself is constituted.

In what sense, then, is reference 'presupposed' ontologically in the ready-to-hand, and to what extent is it, as such an ontological foundation, at the same time constitutive for worldhood in general?

18. Involvement and Significance; the Worldhood of the World

The ready-to-hand is encountered within-the-world. The Being of this entity, readiness-to-hand, thus stands in some ontological relationship towards the world and towards worldhood. In anything ready-to-hand the world is always 'there'. Whenever we encounter anything, the world has already been previously discovered, though not thematically. But it can also be lit up in certain ways of dealing with our environment. The world is that in terms of which the ready-to-hand is ready-to-hand. How can the world let the ready-to-hand be encountered? Our analysis hitherto has shown that what we encounter within-the-world has, in its very Being, been freed for our concernful circumspection, for taking account. What does this previous freeing amount to, and how is this to be understood as an ontologically distinctive feature of the world? What problems does the question of the worldhood of the world lay before us?

We have indicated that the state which is constitutive for the ready-to-hand as equipment is one of reference or assignment. How can entities with this kind of Being be freed by the world with regard to their Being? Why are these the first entities to be encountered? As definite kinds of references we have mentioned serviceability-for-, detrimentality [Abträglichkeit], usability, and the like. The "towards-which" [das Wozu] of a serviceability and the "for-which" [das Wofür] of a usability prescribed the ways in which such a reference or assignment can become concrete. But the 'indicating' of the sign and the 'hammering' of the hammer are not properties of entities. Indeed, they are not properties at all, if the ontological structure designated by the term 'property' is that of some

1 'freigegeben'. The idea seems to be that what we encounter has, as it were, been released, set free, given its freedom, or given free rein, so that our circumspection can take account of it.

definite character which it is possible for Things to possess [einer möglichen Bestimmtheit von Dingen]. Anything ready-to-hand is, at the worst, appropriate for some purposes and inappropriate for others; and its 'properties' are, as it were, still bound up in these ways in which it is appropriate or inappropriate, just as presence-at-hand, as a possible kind of Being for something ready-to-hand, is bound up in readiness-to-hand. Serviceability too, however, as a constitutive state of equipment (and serviceability is a reference), is not an appropriateness of some entity; it is rather the condition (so far as Being is in question) which makes it possible for the character of such an entity to be defined by its appropriatenesses. But what, then, is "reference" or "assignment" to mean? To say that the Being of the ready-to-hand has the structure of assignment or reference means that it has in itself the character of having been assigned or referred [Verwiesenheit]. An entity is discovered when it has been assigned or referred to something, and referred as that entity which it is. With any such entity there is an involvement which it has in something. The character of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand is just such an involvement. If something has an involvement, this implies etting it be involved in something. The relationship of the "with … in…" hall be indicated by the term "assignment" or "reference".3

1 The words 'property' and 'appropriateness' reflect the etymological connection of [eidegger's 'Eigenschaft' and "Geeignetheit'].

2 Es hat mit ihm bei etwas sein Bewenden. The terms 'Bewenden' and 'Bewandtnis' are mong the most difficult for the translator. Their root meaning has to do with the way something is already 'turning' when one lets it 'go its own way', 'run its course', follows 'bent' or 'tendency', or finish 'what it is about', 'what it is up to' or 'what it is involved in'. The German expressions, however, have no simple English equivalents, but are restricted to a rather special group of idioms such as the following, which we have taken from Wildhagen and Hérauccourt's admirable English-German, German-English dictionary (Volume II, Wiesbaden 1953): 'es dabei bewenden lassen'—to leave it at hat, to let it go at that, to let it rest there'; 'und dabei hatte es sein Bewenden'—and aere the matter ended'; 'dabei muss es sein Bewenden haben'—there the matter must est'—that must suffice'; 'die Sache hat eine ganz andere Bewandtnis'—the case is quite different'; 'damit hat es seine besondere Bewandtnis'—there is something peculiar about it; thereby hangs a tale'; 'damit hat folgende Bewandtnis'—the matters as follows.

We have tried to render both 'Bewenden' and 'Bewandtnis' by expressions including either 'involve' or 'involvement'. But the contexts into which these words can easily be fitted in ordinary English do not correspond very well to those which are possible for 'Bewenden' and 'Bewandtnis'. Our task is further complicated by the emphasis which Heidegger gives to the prepositions 'mit' and 'bei' in connection with 'Bewenden' and 'Bewandtnis'. In passages such as the present one, it would be more idiomatic to leave these prepositions untranslated and simply write: 'Any such entity is involved in doing something', or 'Any such entity is involved in some activity'. But 'mit' and 'bei' receive so much attention in this connection that in contexts such as this we shall sometimes translate them as 'with' and 'in', though elsewhere we shall handle 'bei' very differently. (The reader must bear in mind that the kind of 'involvement' with which we are here concerned is always an involvement in some activity, which one is performing, not an involvement in circumstances in which one is 'caught' or 'entangled').

3 In Bewandtnis liegt: bewenden lassen mit etwas bei etwas. Der Bezug des "mit"

When an entity within-the-world has already been proximally freed for its Being, that Being is its "involvement". With any such entity as entity, there is some involvement. The fact that it has such an involvement is ontologically definitive for the Being of such an entity, and is not an ontical assertion about it. That in which it is involved is the "towards-which" of serviceability, and the "for-which" of usability.

With the "towards-which" of serviceability there can again be an involvement: with this thing, for instance, which is ready-to-hand, and which we accordingly call a "hammer", there is an involvement in hammering; with hammering, there is an involvement in making something fast; with making something fast, there is an involvement in protection against bad weather; and this protection 'is' for the sake of [um-willen] providing shelter for Dasein—that is to say, for the sake of a possibility of Dasein's Being. Whenever something ready-to-hand has an involvement with it, what involvement this is, has in each case been outlined in advance in terms of the totality of such involvements. In a workshop, for example, the totality of involvements which is constitutive for the ready-to-hand in its readiness-to-hand, is 'earlier' than any single item of equipment; so too for the farmstead with all its utensils and outlying lands. But the totality of involvements itself goes back ultimately to a "towards-which" in which there is no further involvement: this "towards-which" is not an entity with the kind of Being that belongs to what is ready-to-hand within a world; it is rather an entity whose Being is defined as Being-in-the-world, and to whose state of Being, worldhood itself belongs. This primary "towards-which" is not just another "towards-this" as something in which an involvement is possible. The primary 'towards-which' is a "for-the-sake-of-which". But the 'for-the-sake-of' always pertains to the Being of

… bei …” soll durch den Terminus Verweisung angezeigt werden.' Here the point seems to be that if something has an involvement in the sense of 'Bewandtnis' (or rather, if there is such an involvement with 'it'), the thing which has this involvement has been 'assigned' or 'referred' for a certain activity or purpose 'in' which it may be said to be involved.

1. "Bewandtnis ist das Sein des innerweltlichen Seienden, darauf es je schon zunächst freigegeben ist. Mit ihm als Seiendem hat es je eine Bewandtnis. Dieses, dass es eine Bewandtnis hat, ist die ontologische Bestimmung des Seins dieses Seienden, nicht eine ontische Aussage über das Seiende. Das Wobei es die Bewandtnis hat, ist das Wozu der Dienlichkeit, das Wofür der Verwendbarkeit.' This passage and those which follow are hard to translate because Heidegger is using three carefully differentiated prepositions ('zu', 'für', and 'auf') where English idiom needs only 'for'. We can say that something is serviceable, usable, or applicable for a purpose, and that it may be freed or given free rein for some kind of activity. In German, however, it will be said to have 'Dienlichkeit zu …', "Verwendbarkeit für …"; and it will be 'freigegeben auf …'. In the remainder of this section we shall use 'for' both for 'für' and for 'auf' as they occur in these expressions; we shall, however, continue to use 'towards-which' for the 'Wozu' of 'Dienlichkeit'. See note 1, p. 109, H. 78 above.

2. "Dieses primäre Wozu ist kein Dazu als mögliches Wobei einer Bewandtnis. Das primäre 'Wozu' ist ein Worum-willen."

Dasein, for which, in its Being, that very Being is essentially an issue. We have thus indicated the interconnection by which the structure of an involvement leads to Dasein's very Being as the sole authentic "for-the-sake-of-which"; for the present, however, we shall pursue this no further. 'Letting something be involved' must first be clarified enough to give the phenomenon of worldhood the kind of definiteness which makes it possible to formulate any problems about it.

Ontically, "letting something be involved" signifies that within our factical concern we let something ready-to-hand be so-and-so as it is already and in order that it be such. The way we take this ontical sense of 'letting be' is, in principle, ontological. And therewith we Interpret the meaning of previously freeing what is proximally ready-to-hand within-the-world. Previously letting something 'be' does not mean that we must first bring it into its Being and produce it; it means rather that something which is already an 'entity' must be discovered in its readiness-to-hand, and that we must thus let the entity which has this Being be encountered.

This 'a priori' letting-something-be-involved is the condition for the possibility of encountering anything ready-to-hand, so that Dasein, in its ontical dealings with the entity thus encountered, can thereby let it be involved in the ontical sense. On the other hand, if letting something be involved is understood ontologically, what is then pertinent is the freeing of everything ready-to-hand as ready-to-hand, no matter whether, taken ontically, it is involved thereby, or whether it is rather an entity of precisely such a sort that ontically it is not involved thereby. Such entities are, proximally and for the most part, those with which we concern ourselves when we do not let them 'be' as we have discovered that they are, but work upon them, make improvements in them, or smash them to pieces.

When we speak of having already let something be involved, so that it has been freed for that involvement, we are using a perfect tense a priori which characterizes the kind of Being belonging to Dasein itself. Letting an entity be involved, if we understand this ontologically, consists in previously freeing it for [auf] its readiness-to-hand within the environment. When we let something be involved, it must be involved in something; and in terms of this "in-which", the "with-which" of this involvement

1 'Bewendenlassen bedeutet ontisch; innerhalb eines faktischen Besorgens ein Zuhandenes so und so sein lassen, wie es nunmehr ist und damit es so ist.' 2 '…es im ontischen Sinne dabei bewendenlassen kann.' While we have translated 'dabei' simply as 'thereby' in this context, it is possible that it should have been construed rather as an instance of the special use of 'bei' with 'bewendenlessen'. A similar ambiguity occurs in the following sentence. 3 'Das auf Bewandtnis hin freigebende Je-schon-haben-bewenden-lassen ist ein apriorisches Perfekt, das die Seinsart des Daseins selbst charakterisiert.

is freed. Our concern encounters it as this thing that is ready-to-hand. To the extent that any entity shows itself to concern—that is, to the extent that it is discovered in its Being—it is already something ready-to-hand environmentally; it just is not 'proximally' a 'world-stuff' that is merely present-at-hand.

As the Being of something ready-to-hand, an involvement is itself discovered only on the basis of the prior discovery of a totality of involvements. So in any involvement that has been discovered (that is, in anything ready-to-hand which we encounter), what we have called the "worldly character" of the ready-to-hand has been discovered beforehand. In this totality of involvements which has been discovered beforehand, there lurks an ontological relationship to the world. In letting entities be involved so that they are freed for a totality of involvements, one must have disclosed already that for which [woraufhin] they have been freed. But that for which something environmentally ready-to-hand has thus been freed (and indeed in such a manner that it becomes accessible as an entity within-the-world first of all), cannot itself be conceived as an entity with this discovered kind of Being. It is essentially not discoverable, if we henceforth reserve "discoveredness" as a term for a possibility of Being which every entity without the character of Dasein may possess.

But what does it mean to say that that for which entities within-the-world are proximally freed must have been previously disclosed? To Dasein's Being, an understanding of Being belongs. Any understanding [Verständnis] has its Being in an act of understanding [Verstehen]. If Being-in-the-world is a kind of Being which is essentially befitting to Dasein, then to understand Being-in-the-world belongs to the essential content of its understanding of Being. The previous disclosure of that for which what we encounter within-the-world is subsequently freed, amounts to nothing else than understanding the world—that world towards which Dasein as an entity always comports itself.

Whenever we let there be an involvement with something in something beforehand, our doing so is grounded in our understanding such things as letting something be involved, and such things as the "with-which" and the "in-which" of involvements. Anything of this sort, and anything else

1 'Aus dem Wobei des Bewendenlassens her ist das Womit der Bewandtnis freigegeben.' 2 Here we follow the newer editions in reading: 'Sofern sich ihm überhaupt ein Seiendes zeigt …'. The older editions read 'Sofern sich mit ihm …', which is somewhat ambiguous but suggests that we should write: 'To the extent that with what is ready-to-hand any entity shows itself …'. 3 'Worauf'. The older editions have 'woraufhin'. 4 'Das vorgangige Erschliessen dessen, woraufhin die Freigabe des innerweltlichen Begegnenden erfolgt …'.

that is basic for it, such as the “towards-this” as that in which there is an involvement, or such as the “for-the-sake-of-which” to which every “towards-which” ultimately goes back—all these must be disclosed beforehand with a certain intelligibility [Verständlichkeit]. And what is that wherein Dasein as Being-in-the-world understands itself pre-ontologically? In understanding a context of relations such as we have mentioned, Dasein has assigned itself to an “in-order-to” [Um-zu], and it has done so in terms of a potentiality-for-Being for the sake of which it itself is—one which it may have seized upon either explicitly or tacitly, and which may be either authentic or inauthentic. This “in-order-to” prescribes a “towards-this” as a possible “in-which” for letting something be involved; and the structure of letting it be involved implies that this is an involvement which something has—an involvement which is with something. Dasein always assigns itself from a “for-the-sake-of-which” to the “with-which” of an involvement; that is to say, to the extent that it is, it always lets entities be encountered as ready-to-hand.$^2$ That wherein [Worin] Dasein understands itself beforehand in the mode of assigning itself is that for which [das Woraufhin] it has let entities be encountered beforehand. The “wherein” of an act of understanding which assigns or refers itself, is that for which one lets entities be encountered in the kind of Being that belongs to involvements; and this “wherein” is the phenomenon of the world.$^3$ And the structure of that to which [woraufhin] Dasein assigns itself is what makes up the worldhood of the world.

That wherein Dasein already understands itself in this way is always something with which it is primordially familiar. This familiarity with the world does not necessarily require that the relations which are constitutive for the world as world should be theoretically transparent. However, the possibility of giving these relations an explicit ontologico-existential Interpretation, is grounded in this familiarity with the world; and this familiarity, in turn, is constitutive for Dasein, and goes to make up Dasein’s understanding of Being. This possibility is one which can be seized upon explicitly in so far as Dasein has set itself the task of giving a primordial Interpretation for its own Being and for the possibilities of that Being, or indeed for the meaning of Being in general.

$^1$ ‘… wie das Dazu, als wobei es die Bewandtnis hat, das Worum-willen, darauf letztlich alles Wozu zurückgeht.’ The older editions have ‘… als wobei es je die Bewandtnis hat…’ and omit the hyphen in ‘Worum-willen’.

$^2$ ‘Dieses zeichnet ein Dazu vor, als mögliches Wobei eines Bewendenlassens, das strukturmassig mit etwas bewenden lasst. Dasein verweist sich je schon immer aus einem Worum-willen her an das Wormit einer Bewandtnis, d. h. es lässt je immer schon, sofern es ist, Seiendes als Zuhandenes begegnen.’

$^3$ ‘Das Worin des sicherweisenenden Wheels als Woraufhin des Beegenlenlassens von Seiendem in der Seinsart der Bewandtnis ist das Phänomen der Welt.’

But as yet our analyses have done no more than lay bare the horizon within which such things as the world and worldhood are to be sought. If we are to consider these further, we must, in the first instance, make it still more clear how the context of Dasein’s assigning-itself is to be taken ontologically.

In the act of understanding [Verstehen], which we shall analyse more thoroughly later (Compare Section 31), the relations indicated above must have been previously disclosed; the act of understanding holds them in this disclosedness. It holds itself in them with familiarity; and in so doing, it holds them before itself, for it is in these that its assignment operates.$^1$ The understanding lets itself make assignments both in these relationships themselves and of them.$^2$ The relational character which these relationships with assigning possess, we take as one of signifying.$^3$ In its familiarity with these relationships, Dasein ‘signifies’ to itself: in a primordial manner it gives itself both its Being and its potentiality-for-Being as something which it is to understand with regard to its Being-in-the-world. The “for-the-sake-of-which” signifies an “in-order-to”; this in turn, a “towards-this”; the latter, an “in-which” of letting something be involved; and that in turn, the “with-which” of an involvement. These relationships are bound up with one another as a primordial totality; they are what they are as s this signifying [Be-deuten] in which Dasein gives itself beforehand its Being-in-the-world as something to be understood. The relational totality of this signifying we call “significance”. This is what makes up the structure of the world—the structure of that wherein Dasein as such already is. Dasein, in its familiarity with significance, is the ontical condition for the possibility of discovering entities which are encountered in a world with involvement (readiness-to-hand) as their kind of Being, and which can thus make themselves known as they are in themselves [in seinem An-sich]. Dasein as such is always something of this sort; along with its Being, a context of the ready-to-hand is already essentially discovered: Dasein, in so far as it

$^1$ ‘Das … Verstehen … hält die angezeigten Bezüge in einer vorgängigen Erschlossenheit. Im vertrauten Sich-darin-halten hält es sich diese vor als das, worin sich sein Verweisen bewegt.’ The context suggests that Heidegger’s ‘diese’ refers to the relationships (Bezige) rather than to the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit), though the latter interpretation seems a bit more plausible grammatically.

$^2$ ‘Das Verstehen lässt sich in und von diesen Bezügen selbst verweisen.’ It is not entirely clear whether ‘von’ should be translated as ‘of’, ‘from’, or ‘by’.

$^3$ ‘be-deuten’. While Heidegger ordinarily writes this word without a hyphen (even, for instance, in the next sentence), he here takes pains to hyphenate it so as to suggest that etymologically it consists of the intensive prefix ‘be-’ followed by the verb ‘deuten’—to ‘interpret’, ‘explain’ or ‘point to’ something. We shall continue to follow our convention of usually translating ‘bedeuten’ and ‘Bedeutung’ by ‘signify’ and ‘signification’ respectively, reserving ‘significance’ for ‘Bedeutsamkeit’ (or, in a few cases, for ‘Bedeutung’). But these translations obscure the underlying meanings which Heidegger is emphasizing in this passage.

is, has always submitted itself already to a 'world' which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its Being.

But in significance itself, with which Dasein is always familiar, there lurks the ontological condition which makes it possible for Dasein, as something which understands and interprets, to disclose such things as 'significations'; upon these, in turn, is founded the Being of words and of language.

The significance thus disclosed is an existential state of Dasein—of its Being-in-the-world; and as such it is the ontical condition for the possibility that a totality of involvements can be discovered.

If we have thus determined that the Being of the ready-to-hand (involvement) is definable as a context of assignments or references, and that even worldhood may so be defined, then has not the 'substantial Being' of entities within-the-world been volatilized into a system of Relations? And inasmuch as Relations are always 'something thought', has not the Being of entities within-the-world been dissolved into 'pure thinking'?

Within our present field of investigation the following structures and dimensions of ontological problematics, as we have repeatedly emphasized, must be kept in principle distinct: 1. the Being of those entities within-the-world which we proximally encounter—readiness-to-hand; 2. the Being of those entities which we can come across and whose nature we can determine if we discover them in their own right by going through the entities proximally encountered—presence-at-hand; 3. the Being of that ontical condition which makes it possible for entities within-the-world to be discovered at all—the worldhood of the world. This third kind of Being gives us an existential way of determining the nature of Being-in-the-world, that is, of Dasein. The other two concepts of Being are categories, and pertain to entities whose Being is not of the kind which Dasein possesses. The context of assignments or references, which, as significance, 'is constitutive for worldhood, can be taken formally in the sense of a system of Relations. But one must note that in such formalizations the phenomena get levelled off so much that their real phenomenal content may be lost, especially in the case of such 'simple' relationships as those which lurk in significance. The phenomenal content of these 'Relations' and 'Relata'

1 'angewiesen'; 'Angewiesenheit'. The verb 'anweisen', like 'verweisen', can often be translated as 'assign', particularly in the sense in which one assigns or allots a place to something, or in the sense in which one gives an 'assignment' to someone by instructing him how to proceed. The past participle 'angewiesen' can thus mean 'assigned' in either of these senses; but it often takes on the connotation of 'being dependent on' something or even 'at the mercy' of something. In this passage we have tried to compromise by using the verb 'submit'. Other passages call for other idioms, and no single standard translation seems feasible.

the “in-order-to”, the “for-the-sake-of”, and the “with-which” of an involvement—is such that they resist any sort of mathematical functionalization; nor are they merely something thought, first posited in an ‘act of thinking.’ They are rather relationships in which concernful circumcision as such already dwells. This ‘system of Relations’, as something constitutive for worldhood, is so far from volatilizing the Being of the ready-to-hand within-the-world, that the worldhood of the world provides the basis on which such entities can for the first time be discovered as they are ‘substantially’ ‘in themselves’. And only if entities within-the-world can be encountered at all, is it possible, in the field of such entities, to make accessible what is just present-at-hand and no more. By reason of their Being-just-present-at-hand-and-no-more, these latter entities can have their ‘properties’ defined mathematically in ‘functional concepts.’ Ontologically, such concepts are possible only in relation to entities whose Being has the character of pure substantiality. Functional concepts are never possible except as formalized substantial concepts.

In order to bring out the specifically ontological problematic of worldhood even more sharply, we shall carry our analysis no further until we have clarified our Interpretation of worldhood by a case at the opposite extreme.

B. A Contrast between our Analysis of Worldhood and Descartes’ Interpretation of the World

Only step by step can the concept of worldhood and the structures which this phenomenon embraces be firmly secured in the course of our investigation. The Interpretation of the world begins, in the first instance, with some entity within-the-world, so that the phenomenon of the world in general no longer comes into view; we shall accordingly try to clarify this approach ontologically by considering what is perhaps the most extreme form in which it has been carried out. We not only shall present briefly the basic features of Descartes’ ontology of the ‘world’, but shall inquire into its presuppositions and try to characterize these in the light of what we have hitherto achieved. The account we shall give of these matters will enable us to know upon what basically undiscussed ontological ‘foundations’ those Interpretations of the world which have come after Descartes—and still more those which preceded him—have operated.

Descartes sees the extensio as basically definitive ontologically for the world. In so far as extension is one of the constituents of spatiality (according to Descartes it is even identical with it), while in some sense spatiality remains constitutive for the world, a discussion of the Cartesian ontology

of the ‘world’ will provide us likewise with a negative support for a positive explication of the spatiality of the environment and of Dasein itself. With regard to Descartes' ontology there are three topics which we shall treat: 1. the definition of the ‘world’ as res extensa (Section 19); 2. the foundations of this ontological definition (Section 20); 3. a hermeneutical discussion of the Cartesian ontology of the ‘world’ (Section 21). The considerations which follow will not have been grounded in full detail until the ‘cogito sum’ has been phenomenologically destroyed. (See Part Two, Division 2.)¹

¹ 19. The Definition of the ‘World’ as res extensa.

Descartes distinguishes the 'ego cogito' from the 'res corporea'. This distinction will thereafter be determinative ontologically for the distinction between 'Nature' and 'spirit'. No matter with how many variations of content the opposition between 'Nature' and 'spirit' may get set up ontically, its ontological foundations, and indeed the very poles of this opposition, remain unclarified; this unclarity has its proximate [nächste] roots in Descartes' distinction. What kind of understanding of Being does he have when he defines the Being of these entities? The term for the Being of an entity that is in itself, is “substantia”. Sometimes this expression means the Being of an entity as substance, substantiality; at other times it means the entity itself, a substance. That “substantia” is used in these two ways is not accidental; this already holds for the ancient conception of obvoia.

To determine the nature of the res corporea ontologically, we must explicate the substance of this entity as a substance—that is, its substantiality. What makes up the authentic Being-in-itself [An-ihm-selbstsein] of the res corporea? How is it at all possible to grasp a substance as such, that is, to grasp its substantiality? “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 every substance has some distinctive property from which the essence of the substantiality of that definite substance can be read off. Which property is this in the case of the res corporea? “Nempe extensio in longum, latum et profundum, substantiae corporae naturam constituit.” Extension—namely, in length, breadth, and thickness—makes up the real Being of that corporeal substance which we call the ‘world’. What gives the extension this distinctive status? “Nam omne aliud quod corpori tribui potest, extensionem praesupponit …” Extension is a state-of-Being constitutive for the entity we are talking about; it is that

¹ This portion of Being and Time has never been published.

which must already 'be' before any other ways in which Being is determined, so that these can 'be' what they are. Extension must be 'assigned' ["zugewiesen"] primarily to the corporeal Thing. The 'world's' extension and substantiality (which itself is characterized by extension) are accordingly demonstrated by showing how all the other characteristics which this substance definitely possesses (especially divisio, figura, motus), can be conceived only as modi of extensio, while, on the other hand, extensio sine figura vel motu remains quite intelligible.

Thus a corporeal Thing that maintains its total extension can still undergo many changes in the ways in which that extension is distributed in the various dimensions, and can present itself in manifold shapes as one and the same Thing. "… atque unum et idem corpus, retinendo suam eandem quantitatem, pluribus 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 is motion: for motus is grasped only "si de nullo nisi locali cogitemus, ac de vi a qua excitatur … non inquiramus." If the motion is a property of the res corporea, and a property which it is, then in order for it to be experienceable in its Being, it must be conceived in terms of the Being of this entity itself, in terms of extensio; this means that it must be conceived as mere change of location. So nothing like 'force' counts for anything in determining what the Being of this entity is. Matter may have such definite characteristics as hardness, weight, and colour; (durities, pondus, color); but these can all be taken away from it, and it still remains what it is. These do not go to make up its real Being; and in so far as they are, they turn out to be modes of extensio. Descartes tries to show this in detail with regard to 'hardness': "Nam, quantum ad duritiem, nihil aliud de illa sensus nobis indicat, quam partes durorum corporum resistere motui manuum nostrarum, cum in illas incurrant. Si enim, quotiescunque manus nostrae versus aliquam partem moventur, corpora omnia ibi existentia recederent eadem celeritate qua illae accedunt, nullam unquam duritiem sentiremus. Nec ullo modo potest intelligi, corpora quae sic recederent, idcirco naturam corporis esse amissura; nec proinde ipsa in duritie consistit." Hardness is experienced when one feels one's way by touch [Tasten]. What does the sense of touch 'tell' us about it? The parts of the hard Thing 'resist' a movement of the hand, such as an attempt to push it away. If, however, hard bodies, those which do not give way, should change their locations with the same velocity as that of the hand which 'strikes at' them, nothing would ever get touched [Berühren], and hardness would not be experienced and would accordingly never be. But it is quite incomprehensible that bodies which give way with such velocity should thus forfeit any of their

corporeal Being. If they retain this even under a change in velocity which makes it impossible for anything like 'hardness' to be, then hardness does not belong to the Being of entities of this sort. "Eademque ratione ostendi potest, et pondus, et colorem, et alias omnes eiusmodi qualitates, quae in materia corporea sentiuntur, ex ea tolli posse, ipsa integra remanente: unde sequitur, a nulla ex illis eius <sc. extensionis> naturam dependere."1x Thus what makes up the Being of the res corporea is the extensio: that which is omnimodo divisibile, figurabile et mobile (that which can change itself by being divided, shaped, or moved in any way), that which is capax mutationum—that which maintains itself (remanet) through all these changes. In any corporeal Thing the real entity is what is suited for thus remaining constant [ständigen Verbleib], so much so, indeed that this is how the substantiality of such a substance gets characterized.

20. Foundations of the Ontological Definition of the 'World'

Substantiality is the idea of Being to which the ontological characterization of the res extensa harks back. "Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum." "By substance we can understand nothing else than an entity which is in such a way that it needs no other entity in order to be."x The Being of a 'substance' is characterized by not needing anything. That whose Being is such that it has no need at all for any other entity satisfies the idea of substance in the authentic sense; this entity is the ens perfectissimum. "… substantia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe Deus."x1 Here 'God' is a purely ontological term, if it is to be understood as ens perfectissimum. At the same time, the 'self-evident' connotation of the concept of God is such as to permit an ontological interpretation for the characteristic of not needing anything—a constitutive item in substantiality. "Alias vero omnes , non nisi ope concursus Dei existere posse percipimus."x11 All entities other than God need to be "produced" in the widest sense and also to be sustained. 'Being' is to be understood within a horizon which ranges from the production of what is to be present-at-hand to something which has no need of being produced. Every entity which is not God is an ens creatum. The Being which belongs to one of these entities is 'infinitely' different from that which belongs to the other; yet we still consider creation and creator alike as entities. We are thus using "Being" in so wide a sense that its meaning embraces an 'infinite' difference. So even created entities can be called "substance" with some right. Relative to God, of course, these entities need to be produced and sustained; but within the realm of created entities—the 'world' in the sense of ens creatum—there are things which 'are in need of no other entity'

relatively to the creaturely production and sustentation that we find, for instance, in man. Of these substances there are two kinds: the res cogitans and the res extensa.

The Being of that substance whose distinctive proprietas is presented by extensio thus becomes definable in principle ontologically if we clarify the meaning of Being which is 'common' to the three kinds of substances, one of them infinite, the others both finite. But "… nomen substantiae non convenit Deo et illis univoce ut dici solet in Scholis, hoc est … quae Deo et creaturis sit communis." Here Descartes touches upon a problem with which medieval ontology was often busied—the question of how the signification of "Being" signifies any entity which one may on occasion be considering. In the assertions 'God is' and 'the world is', we assert Being. This word 'is', however, cannot be meant to apply to these entities in the same sense (συνωνιμως, univoce), when between them there is an infinite difference of Being; if the signification of 'is' were univocal, then what is created would be viewed as if it were uncreated, or the uncreated would be reduced to the status of something created. But neither does 'Being' function as a mere name which is the same in both cases: in both cases 'Being' is understood. This positive sense in which 'Being' signifies is one which the Schoolmen took as a signification 'by analogy', as distinguished from one which is univocal or merely homonymous. Taking their departure from Aristotle, in whom this problem is foreshadowed in prototypical form just as at the very outset of Greek ontology, they established various kinds of analogy, so that even the 'Schools' have different ways of taking the signification-function of "Being". In working out this problem ontologically, Descartes is always far behind the Schoolmen; indeed he evades the question. "… nulla eius _substantiae nominis significatio potest distincte intelligi, quae Deo et creaturis sit communis." This evasion is tantamount to his failing to discuss the meaning of Being which the idea of substantiality embraces, or the character of the 'universality' which belongs to this signification. Of course even the ontology of the medievals has gone no further than that of the ancients in inquiring into what "Being" itself may mean. So it is not surprising if no headway is made with a question like that of the way in which "Being" signifies, as long as this has to be discussed on the basis of an unclarified meaning of Being which this signification 'expresses'. The meaning remains unclarified because it is held to be 'self-evident'.

Descartes not only evades the ontological question of substantiality altogether; he also emphasizes explicitly that substance as such—that is to say, its substantiality—is in and for itself inaccessible from the outset [vorgängig]. "Verumtamen non potest substantia primum animadverti ex hoc solo,

quod sit res existens, quia hoc solum per se nos non afficit …". $^{xv1}$ 'Being' itself does not 'affect' us, and therefore cannot be perceived. 'Being is not a Real predicate,' says Kant,$^1$ who is merely repeating Descartes' principle. Thus the possibility of a pure problematic of Being gets renounced in principle, and a way is sought for arriving at those definite characteristics of substance which we have designated above. Because 'Being' is not in fact accessible as an entity, it is expressed through attributes—definite characteristics of the entities under consideration, characteristics which themselves are.$^2$ Being is not expressed through just any such characteristics, but rather through those satisfying in the purest manner that meaning of "Being" and "substantiality", which has still been tacitly presupposed. To the substantia finita as res corporea, what must primarily be 'assigned' ['Zuweisung'] is the extensio. "Quin et facilius intelligimus substantiam extensam, vel substantiam cogitatem, quam substantiam solam, omiso eo quod cogitet vel sit extensa";$^{xv11}$ for substantiality is detachable ratione tantum; it is not detachable realiter, nor can we come across it in the way in which we come across those entities themselves which are substantially.

Thus the ontological grounds for defining the 'world' as res extensa have been made plain: they lie in the idea of substantiality, which not only remains unclarified in the meaning of its Being, but gets passed off as something incapable of clarification, and gets represented indirectly by way of whatever substantial property belongs most pre-eminently to the particular substance. Moreover, in this way of defining a substance through some substantial entity, lies the reason why the term "substance" is used in two ways. What is here intended is substantiality; and it gets understood in terms of a characteristic of substance—a characteristic which is itself an entity.$^3$ Because something ontical is made to underlie the ontological, the expression "substantia" functions sometimes with a signification which is ontological, sometimes with one which is ontical, but mostly with one which is hazily ontico-ontological. Behind this slight difference of signification, however, there lies hidden a failure to master the basic problem of Being. To treat this adequately, we must 'track down' the equivocations in the right way. He who attempts this sort of thing does not just 'busy himself' with 'merely verbal significations'; he must venture forward into the most primordial problematic of the 'things themselves' to get such 'nuances' straightened out.

$^1$ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic, Book II, chapter III, Section 4.

$^2$ … seiende Bestimmtheiten des betreffenden Seienden …

$^3$ … aus einer seienden Beschaffenheit der Substanz.

21. Hermeneutical Discussion of the Cartesian Ontology of the 'World'

The critical question now arises: does this ontology of the 'world' seek the phenomenon of the world at all, and if not, does it at least define some entity within-the-world fully enough so that the worldly character of this entity can be made visible in it? To both questions we must answer "No". The entity which Descartes is trying to grasp ontologically and in principle with his "extensio", is rather such as to become discoverable first of all by going through an entity within-the-world which is proximally ready-to-hand—Nature. Though this is the case, and though any ontological characterization of this latter entity within-the-world may lead us into obscurity, even if we consider both the idea of substantiality and the meaning of the "existit" and "ad existendum" which have been brought into the definition of that idea, it still remains possible that through an ontology based upon a radical separation of God, the "I", and the 'world', the ontological problem of the world will in some sense get formulated and further advanced. If, however, this is not possible, we must then demonstrate explicitly not only that Descartes' conception of the world is ontologically defective, but that his Interpretation and the foundations on which it is based have led him to pass over both the phenomenon of the world and the Being of those entities within-the-world which are proximally ready-to-hand.

In our exposition of the problem of worldhood (Section 14), we suggested the importance of obtaining proper access to this phenomenon. So in criticizing the Cartesian point of departure, we must ask which kind of Being that belongs to Dasein we should fix upon as giving us an appropriate way of access to those entities with whose Being as extensio Descartes equates the Being of the 'world'. The only genuine access to them lies in knowing [Erkennen], intellectio, in the sense of the kind of knowledge [Erkenntnis] we get in mathematics and physics. Mathematical knowledge is regarded by Descartes as the one manner of apprehending entities which can always give assurance that their Being has been securely grasped. If anything measures up in its own kind of Being to the Being that is accessible in mathematical knowledge, then it is in the authentic sense. Such entities are those which always are what they are. Accordingly, that which can be shown to have the character of something that constantly remains, really is. This is the sort of thing which mathematics knows. That which is accessible in an entity through mathematics, makes up its Being. Thus the Being of the 'world' is, as it were, dictated to it in terms of a definite idea of Being which lies veiled in the concept of substantiality,

and in terms of the idea of a knowledge by which such entities are cognized. The kind of Being which belongs to entities within-the-world is something which they themselves might have been permitted to present; but Descartes does not let them do so.$^1$ Instead he prescribes for the world its 'real' Being, as it were, on the basis of an idea of Being whose source has not been unveiled and which has not been demonstrated in its own right—an idea in which Being is equated with constant presence-at-hand. Thus his ontology of the world is not primarily determined by his leaning towards mathematics, a science which he chances to esteem very highly, but rather by his ontological orientation in principle towards Being as constant presence-at-hand, which mathematical knowledge is exceptionally well suited to grasp. In this way Descartes explicitly switches over philosophically from the development of traditional ontology to modern mathematical physics and its transcendental foundations.

The problem of how to get appropriate access to entities within-the-world is one which Descartes feels no need to raise. Under the unbroken ascendance of the traditional ontology, the way to get a genuine grasp of what really is [des eigentlichen Seienden] has been decided in advance: it lies in νοεῖν—'beholding' in the widest sense [der "Anschauung" im weitesten Sinne]; διανοεῖν or 'thinking' is just a more fully achieved form of νοεῖν and is founded upon it. Sensatio (αὐτοθησις), as opposed to intellectio, still remains possible as a way of access to entities by a beholding which is perceptual in character; but Descartes presents his 'critique' of it because he is oriented ontologically by these principles.

Descartes knows very well that entities do not proximally show themselves in their real Being. What is 'proximally' given is this waxen Thing which is coloured, flavoured, hard, and cold in definite ways, and which gives off its own special sound when struck. But this is not of any importance ontologically, nor, in general, is anything which is given through the senses. "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 …"$^{xvii}$ The senses do not enable us to cognize any entity in its Being; they merely serve to announce the ways in which 'external' Things within-the-world are useful or harmful for human creatures encumbered with bodies. "… non … nos docere, qualia in seipsis existant"$^{xix}$ they tell us nothing about entities in their Being. "Quod agentes, percipiemus naturam materiae, sive corporis in universum spectati, non consistere in eo quod sit res dura, vel ponderosa, vel colorata,

$^1$ Descartes laisd sich nicht die Seinsart des innerweltlichen Seienden von diesem vorgeben …"

vel alio aliquo modo sensus afficiens: sed tantum in eo quod sit res extensa in longum, latum et profundum."xx

If we subject Descartes' Interpretation of the experience of hardness and resistance to a critical analysis, it will be plain how unable he is to let what shows itself in sensation present itself in its own kind of Being,¹ or even to determine its character (Cf. Section 19).

Hardness gets taken as resistance. But neither hardness nor resistance is understood in a phenomenal sense, as something experienced in itself whose nature can be determined in such an experience. For Descartes, resistance amounts to no more than not yielding place—that is, not undergoing any change of location. So if a Thing resists, this means that it stays in a definite location relatively to some other Thing which is changing its location, or that it is changing its own location with a velocity which permits the other Thing to 'catch up' with it. But when the experience of hardness is Interpreted this way, the kind of Being which belongs to sensory perception is obliterated, and so is any possibility that the entities encountered in such perception should be grasped in their Being. Descartes takes the kind of Being which belongs to the perception of something, and translates it into the only kind he knows: the perception of something becomes a definite way of Being-present-at-hand-side-by-side of two res extensae which are present-at-hand; the way in which their movements are related is itself a mode of that extensio by which the presence-at-hand of the corporeal Thing is primarily characterized. Of course no behaviour in which one feels one's way by touch [eines tastenden Verhaltens] can be 'completed' unless what can thus be felt [des Betastbaren] has 'closeness' of a very special kind. But this does not mean that touching [Berührung] and the hardness which makes itself known in touching consist ontologically in different velocities of two corporeal Things. Hardness and resistance do not show themselves at all unless an entity has the kind of Being which Dasein—or at least something living—possesses.

Thus Descartes' discussion of possible kinds of access to entities within-the-world is dominated by an idea of Being which has been gathered from a definite realm of these entities themselves.

The idea of Being as permanent presence-at-hand not only gives Descartes a motive for identifying entities within-the-world with the world in general, and for providing so extreme a definition of their Being; it also keeps him from bringing Dasein's ways of behaving into view in a manner which is ontologically appropriate. But thus the road is completely

¹… das in der Sinnlichkeit sich Zeigende in seiner eigenen Seinsart sich vorgeben zu lassen …'

blocked to seeing the founded character of all sensory and intellective awareness, and to understanding these as possibilities of Being-in-the-world. On the contrary, he takes the Being of 'Dasein' (to whose basic constitution Being-in-the-world belongs) in the very same way as he takes the Being of the res extensa—namely, as substance.

But with these criticisms, have we not sobbed off on Descartes a task altogether beyond his horizon, and then gone on to 'demonstrate' that he has failed to solve it? If Descartes does not know the phenomenon of the world, and thus knows no such thing as within-the-world-ness, how can he identify the world itself with certain entities within-the-world and the Being which they possess?

In controversy over principles, one must not only attach oneself to theses which can be grasped doxographically; one must also derive one's orientation from the objective tendency of the problematic, even if it does not go beyond a rather ordinary way of taking things. In his doctrine of the res cogitans and the res extensa, Descartes not only wants to formulate the problem of 'the "I" and the world'; he claims to have solved it in a radical manner. His Meditations make this plain. (See especially Meditations I and VI.) By taking his basic ontological orientation from traditional sources and not subjecting it to positive criticism, he has made it impossible to lay bare any primordial ontological problematic of Dasein; this has inevitably obstructed his view of the phenomenon of the world, and has made it possible for the ontology of the 'world' to be compressed into that of certain entities within-the-world. The foregoing discussion should have proved this.

One might retort, however, that even if in point of fact both the problem of the world and the Being of the entities encountered environmentally as closest to us remain concealed, Descartes has still laid the basis for characterizing ontologically that entity within-the-world upon which, in its very Being, every other entity is founded—material Nature. This would be the fundamental stratum upon which all the other strata of actuality within-the-world are built up. The extended Thing as such would serve, in the first instance, as the ground for those definite characters which show themselves, to be sure, as qualities, but which 'at bottom' are quantitative modifications of the modes of the extensio itself. These qualities, which are themselves reducible, would provide the footing for such specific qualities as "beautiful", "ugly", "in keeping", "not in

1 'Damit ist aber vollends der Weg dazu verlegt, gar auch noch den fundierten Charakter alles sinnlichen und verstandesmissigen Vernehmens zu sehen und sie als eine Möglichkeit des In-der-Welt-seins zu verstehen.' While we have construed the pronoun 'sie' as referring to the two kinds of awareness which have just been mentioned, it would be grammatically more plausible to interpret it as referring either to 'Dasein's ways of behaving' or to 'the idea of Being as permanent presence-at-hand'.

keeping,” “useful”, “useless”. If one is oriented primarily by Thinghood, these latter qualities must be taken as non-quantifiable value-predicates by which what is in the first instance just a material Thing, gets stamped as something good. But with this stratification, we come to those entities which we have characterized ontologically as equipment ready-to-hand. The Cartesian analysis of the ‘world’ would thus enable us for the first time to build up securely the structure of what is proximally ready-to-hand; all it takes is to round out the Thing of Nature until it becomes a full-fledged Thing of use, and this is easily done.

But quite apart from the specific problem of the world itself, can the Being of what we encounter proximally within-the-world be reached ontologically by this procedure? When we speak of material Thinghood, have we not tacitly posited a kind of Being—the constant presence-at hand of Things—which is so far from having been rounded out ontologically by subsequently endowing entities with value-predicates, that these value-characters themselves are rather just ontical characteristics of those entities which have the kind of Being possessed by Things? Adding on value-predicates cannot tell us anything at all new about the Being of goods, but would merely presuppose again that goods have pure presence-at-hand as their kind of Being. Values would then be determinate characteristics which a Thing possesses, and they would be present-at-hand. They would have their sole ultimate ontological source in our previously laying down the actuality of Things as the fundamental stratum. But even prephenomenological experience shows that in an entity which is supposedly a Thing, there is something that will not become fully intelligible through Thinghood alone. Thus the Being of Things has to be rounded out. What, then does the Being of values or their ‘validity’ [‘Geltung’] (which Lotze took as a mode of ‘affirmation’) really amount to ontologically? And what does it signify ontologically for Things to be ‘invested’ with values in this way? As long as these matters remain obscure, to reconstruct the Thing of use in terms of the Thing of Nature is an ontologically questionable undertaking, even if one disregards the way in which the problematic has been perverted in principle. And if we are to reconstruct this Thing of use, which supposedly comes to us in the first instance ‘with its skin off’, does not this always require that we previously take a positive look at the phenomenon whose totality such a reconstruction is to restore? But if we have not given a proper explanation beforehand of its ownmost state of Being, are we not building our reconstruction without a plan? Inasmuch as this reconstruction and ‘rounding-out’ of the traditional ontology of the ‘world’ results in our reaching the same entities with which we started when we analysed the readiness-to-hand of equipment and the totality of

involvements, it seems as if the Being of these entities has in fact been clarified or has at least become a problem. But by taking extensio as a proprietas, Descartes can hardly reach the Being of substance; and by taking refuge in 'value'-characteristics ["wertlichen" Beschaffenheiten] we are just as far from even catching a glimpse of Being as readiness-to-hand, let alone permitting it to become an ontological theme.

Descartes has narrowed down the question of the world to that of Things of Nature [Naturdinglichkeit] as those entities within-the-world which are proximally accessible. He has confirmed the opinion that to know an entity in what is supposedly the most rigorous ontical manner is our only possible access to the primary Being of the entity which such knowledge reveals. But at the same time we must have the insight to see that in principle the 'roundings-out' of the Thing-ontology also operate on the same dogmatic basis as that which Descartes has adopted.

We have already intimated in Section 14 that passing over the world and those entities which we proximally encounter is not accidental, not an oversight which it would be simple to correct, but that it is grounded in a kind of Being which belongs essentially to Dasein itself. When our analytic of Dasein has given some transparency to those main structures of Dasein which are of the most importance in the framework of this problematic, and when we have assigned [zugewiesen] to the concept of Being in general the horizon within which its intelligibility becomes possible, so that readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand also become primordially intelligible ontologically for the first time, only then can our critique of the Cartesian ontology of the world (an ontology which, in principle, is still the usual one today) come philosophically into its own.

To do this, we must show several things. (See Part One, Division Three.)¹

1. Why was the phenomenon of the world passed over at the beginning of the ontological tradition which has been decisive for us (explicitly in the case of Parmenides), and why has this passing-over kept constantly recurring?

2. Why is it that, instead of the phenomenon thus passed over, entities within-the-world have intervened as an ontological theme?²

3. Why are these entities found in the first instance in 'Nature'?

4. Why has recourse been taken to the phenomenon of value when it has seemed necessary to round out such an ontology of the world?

¹ This Division has never been published. ² Warum springt für das übersprungene Phänomen das innerweltlich Seiende als ontologisches Thema ein? The verbal play on 'überspringen' ('pass over') and 'einsprüngen' ('intervene' or 'serve as a deputy') is lost in translation. On 'einspringen' see our note 1, p. 158, H. 122 below.

In the answers to these questions a positive understanding of the problematic of the world will be reached for the first time, the sources of our failure to recognize it will be exhibited, and the ground for rejecting the traditional ontology of the world will have been demonstrated.

The world and Dasein and entities within-the-world are the ontologically constitutive states which are closest to us; but we have no guarantee that we can achieve the basis for meeting up with these as phenomena by the seemingly obvious procedure of starting with the Things of the world, still less by taking our orientation from what is supposedly the most rigorous knowledge of entities. Our observations on Descartes should have brought us this insight.

But if we recall that spatiality is manifestly one of the constituents of entities within-the-world, then in the end the Cartesian analysis of the 'world' can still be 'rescued'. When Descartes was so radical as to set up the extensio as the praesuppositum for every definite characteristic of the res corporea, he prepared the way for the understanding of something a priori whose content Kant was to establish with greater penetration. Within certain limits the analysis of the extensio remains independent of his neglecting to provide an explicit interpretation for the Being of extended entities. There is some phenomenal justification for regarding the extensio as a basic characteristic of the 'world', even if by recourse to this neither the spatiality of the world nor that of the entities we encounter in our environment (a spatiality which is proximally discovered) nor even that of Dasein itself, can be conceived ontologically.

C. The Aroundness of the Environment and Dasein's Spatiality

In connection with our first preliminary sketch of Being-in (See Section 12), we had to contrast Dasein with a way of Being in space which we call "insideness" [Inwendigkeit]. This expression means that an entity which is itself extended is closed round [umschlossen] by the extended boundaries of something that is likewise extended. The entity inside [Das inwendig Seiende] and that which closes it round are both present-at-hand in space. Yet even if we deny that Dasein has any such insideness in a spatial receptacle, this does not in principle exclude it from having any spatiality at all, but merely keeps open the way for seeing the kind of spatiality which is constitutive for Dasein. This must now be set forth. But inasmuch as any entity within-the-world is likewise in space, its spatiality will have an ontological connection with the world. We must therefore determine in what sense space is a constituent for that world which has in turn been characterized as an item in the structure of Being-in-the-world. In particular

1 'Das Umhafte der Umwelt'. See our note 1, p. 93, H. 65 above.

we must show how the aroundness of the environment, the specific spatiality of entities encountered in the environment, is founded upon the worldhood of the world, while contrariwise the world, on its part, is not present-at-hand in space. Our study of Dasein's spatiality and the way in which the world is spatially determined will take its departure from an analysis of what is ready-to-hand in space within-the-world. We shall consider three topics: 1. the spatiality of the ready-to-hand within-the-world (Section 22); 2. the spatiality of Being-in-the-world (Section 23); 3. space and the spatiality of Dasein (Section 24).

¶ 22. The Spatiality of the Ready-to-hand Within-the-world

If space is constitutive for the world in a sense which we have yet to determine, then it cannot surprise us that in our foregoing ontological characterization of the Being of what is within-the-world we have had to look upon this as something that is also within space. This spatiality of the ready-to-hand is something which we have not yet grasped explicitly as a phenomenon; nor have we pointed out how it is bound up with the structure of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand. This is now our task.

To what extent has our characterization of the ready-to-hand already come up against its spatiality? We have been talking about what is proximally ready-to-hand. This means not only those entities which we encounter first before any others, but also those which are 'close by'.¹ What is ready-to-hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness. To be exact, this closeness of equipment has already been intimated in the term 'readiness-to-hand', which expresses the Being of equipment. Every entity, that is 'to hand' has a different closeness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring distances. This closeness regulates itself in terms of circumspectively 'calculative' manipulating and using. At the same time what is close in this way gets established by the circum-spection of concern, with regard to the direction in which the equipment is accessible at any time. When this closeness of the equipment has been given directionality,² this signifies not merely that the equipment has its

¹ 'in der Nähe.' While the noun 'Nähe' often means the 'closeness' or 'nearness' of something that is close to us, it can also stand for our immediate 'vicinity', as in the present expression, and in many passages it can be interpreted either way. We shall in general translate it as 'closeness', but we shall translate 'in der Nähe' and similar phrases as 'close by'.

² 'Die ausgerichtete Nähe des Zeugs …' The verb 'ausrichten' has many specialized meanings—to 'align' a row of troops, to 'explore' a mine, to 'make arrangements' for something, to 'carry out' a commission, etc. Heidegger, however, keeps its root meaning in mind and associates it with the word 'Richtung' ('direction', 'route to be taken, etc.). We shall accordingly translate it as a rule by some form of the verb 'direct' (which will also be used occasionally for the verb 'richten'), or by some compound expression involving the word 'directional'. For further discussion, see H. 108 ff. below.

position [Stelle] in space as present-at-hand somewhere, but also that as equipment it has been essentially fitted up and installed, set up, and put to rights. Equipment has its place [Platz], or else it 'lies around'; this must be distinguished in principle from just occurring at random in some spatial position. When equipment for something or other has its place, this place defines itself as the place of this equipment—as one place out of a whole totality of places directionally lined up with each other and belonging to the context of equipment that is environmentally ready-to-hand. Such a place and such a multiplicity of places are not to be interpreted as the "where" of some random Being-present-at-hand of Things. In each case the place is the definite 'there' or 'yonder' ['Dort'] und "Da"] of an item of equipment which belongs somewhere. Its belonging-somewhere at the time [Die jeweilige Hingehörigkeit] corresponds to the equipmental character of what is ready-to-hand; that is, it corresponds to the belonging-to [Zugehörigkeit] which the ready-to-hand has towards a totality of equipment in accordance with its involvements. But in general the "whither" to which the totality of places for a context of equipment gets allotted, is the underlying condition which makes possible the belonging-somewhere of an equipmental totality as something that can be placed. This "whither", which makes it possible for equipment to belong somewhere, and which we circumspectively keep in view ahead of us in our concernful dealings, we call the "region".¹

'In the region of' means not only 'in the direction of' but also within the range [Umkreis] of something that lies in that direction. The kind of place which is constituted by direction and remoteness² (and closeness is only a mode of the latter) is already oriented towards a region and oriented within it. Something like a region must first be discovered if there is to be any possibility of allotting or coming across places for a totality of equipment that is circumspectively at one's disposal. The regional orientation of the multiplicity of places belonging to the ready-to-hand goes to make up the aroundness—the "round-about-us" [das Umuns-herum]—of those entities which we encounter as closest environmentally. A three-dimensional multiplicity of possible positions which gets filled up with Things present-at-hand is never proximally given. This dimensionality of space is still veiled in the spatiality of the ready-to-hand. The 'above' is what is 'on the ceiling'; the 'below' is what is 'on the floor';

¹ 'Gegend'. There is no English word which quite corresponds to 'Gegend'. 'Region' and 'whereabouts' perhaps come the closest, and we have chosen the former as the more convenient. (Heidegger himself frequently uses the word 'Region', but he does so in contexts where 'realm' seems to be the most appropriate translation; we have usually so translated it, leaving the English 'region' for 'Gegend'.) ² 'Entferntheit'. For further discussion, see Section 23 and our note 2, p. 138, H. 105.

the 'behind' is what is 'at the door'; all "wheres" are discovered and circumspectively interpreted as we go our ways in everyday dealings; they are not ascertained and catalogued by the observational measurement of space.

Regions are not first formed by things which are present-at-hand together; they always are ready-to-hand already in individual places. Places themselves either get allotted to the ready-to-hand in the circumspection of concern, or we come across them. Thus anything constantly ready-to-hand of which circumspective Being-in-the-world takes account beforehand, has its place. The "where" of its readiness-to-hand is put to account as a matter for concern, and oriented towards the rest of what is ready-to-hand. Thus the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places—sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated distinctively in terms of changes in the usability of what the sun bestows. Here we have something which is ready-to-hand with uniform constancy, although it keeps changing; its places become accentuated 'indicators' of the regions which lie in them. These celestial regions, which need not have any geographical meaning as yet, provide the "whither" beforehand for every special way of giving form to the regions which places can occupy. The house has its sunny side and its shady side; the way it is divided up into 'rooms' ["Räume"] is oriented towards these, and so is the 'arrangement' ["Einrichtung"] within them, according to their character as equipment. Churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according to the rising and the setting of the sun—the regions of life and death, which are determinative for Dasein itself with regard to its ownmost possibilities of Being in the world. Dasein, in its very Being, has this Being as an issue; and its concern discovers beforehand those regions in which some involvement is decisive. This discovery of regions beforehand is co-determined [mitbestimmt] by the totality of involvements for which the ready-to-hand, as something encountered, is freed.

The readiness-to-hand which belongs to any such region beforehand has the character of inconspicuous familiarity, and it has it in an even more primordial sense than does the Being of the ready-to-hand. The region itself becomes visible in a conspicuous manner only when one discovers

1 Reading 'jede' with the later editions. The earliest editions have 'je', which has been corrected in the list of errata. 2 Die vorgängige Zuhandenheit der jeweiligen Gegend hat in einem noch ursprünglicheren Sinne als das Sein des Zuhandenen den Charakter der unauffälligen Vertrautheit. Here the phrase 'als das Sein des Zuhandenen' is ambiguously placed. In the light of Section 16 above, we have interpreted 'als' as 'than' rather than 'as', and have treated 'das Sein' as a nominative rather than an accusative. But other readings are grammatically just as possible.

the ready-to-hand circumspectively and does so in the deficient modes of concern. Often the region of a place does not become accessible explicitly as such a region until one fails to find something in its place. The space which is discovered in circumspective Being-in-the-world as the spatiality of the totality of equipment, always belongs to entities themselves as the place of that totality. The bare space itself is still veiled over. Space has been split up into places. But this spatiality has its own unity through that totality-of-involvements in-accordance-with-the-world [weltmässige] which belongs to the spatially ready-to-hand. The 'environment' does not arrange itself in a space which has been given in advance; but its specific worldhood, in its significance, Articulates the context of involvements which belongs to some current totality of circumspectively allotted places. The world at such a time always reveals the spatiality of the space which belongs to it. To encounter the ready-to-hand in its environmental space remains ontically possible only because Dasein itself is 'spatial' with regard to its Being-in-the-world.

23. The Spatiality of Being-in-the-world

If we attribute spatiality to Dasein, then this 'Being in space' must manifestly be conceived in terms of the kind of Being which that entity possesses. Dasein is essentially not a Being-present-at-hand; and its "spatiality" cannot signify anything like occurrence at a position in 'world-space', nor can it signify Being-ready-to-hand at some place. Both of these are kinds of Being which belong to entities encountered within-the-world. Dasein, however, is 'in' the world in the sense that it deals with entities encountered within-the-world, and does so concernfully and with familiarity. So if spatiality belongs to it in any way, that is possible only because of this Being-in. But its spatiality shows the characters of de-severance and directionality.

1 'Sie wird selbst nur sightbar in der Weise des Auffallens bei einem umsichtigen Entdecken des Zuhandenen und zwar in den defizienten Modi des Besorgens.' This sentence too is ambiguous. The pronoun 'Sie' may refer either to the region, as we have suggested, or to its readiness-to-hand. Furthermore, while we have taken 'nur sichbar in der Weise des Auffallens' as a unit, it is possible that 'in der Weise des Auffallens' should be construed as going with the words that follow. In this case we should read: '… becomes visible only when it becomes conspicuous in our circumspective discovery of the ready-to-hand, and indeed in the deficient modes of concern.'

2 'Entfernung und Ausrichtung.' The nouns 'Entfernung' and 'Entfernheit' can usually be translated by 'removing', 'removal', 'remoteness', or even 'distance'. In this passage, however, Heidegger is calling attention to the fact that these words are derived from the stem 'fern-' ('far' or 'distant') and the privative prefix 'ent-'. Usually this prefix would be construed as merely intensifying the notion of separation or distance expressed in the 'fern-'; but Heidegger chooses to construe it as more strictly privative, so that the verb 'entfernt' will be taken to mean abolishing a distance or farness rather than enhancing it. It is as if by the very act of recognizing the 'remoteness' of something, we have in a sense brought it closer and made it less 'remote'.

Apparently there is no word in English with an etymological structure quite parallel

When we speak of deseverance as a kind of Being which Dasein has with regard to its Being-in-the-world, we do not understand by it any such thing as remoteness (or closeness) or even a distance. We use the expression "deseverance"* in a signification which is both active and transitive. It stands for a constitutive state of Dasein's Being—a state with regard to which removing something in the sense of putting it away is only a determinate factical mode. "De-severing"* amounts to making the farness vanish—that is, making the remoteness of something disappear, bringing it close. Dasein is essentially de-severant: it lets any entity be encountered close by as the entity which it is. De-severance discovers remoteness; and remoteness, like distance, is a determinate categorial characteristic of entities whose nature is not that of Dasein. De-severance*, however, is an existential; this must be kept in mind. Only to the extent that entities are revealed for Dasein in their deseveredness [Entferntheit], do 'remotenesses' ['Entfernungen'] and distances with regard to other things become accessible in entities within-the-world themselves. Two points are just as little desevered from one another as two Things, for neither of these types of entity has the kind of Being which would make it capable of desevering. They merely have a measurable distance between them, which we can come across in our de-severing.

Proximally and for the most part, de-severing³ is a circumspective to that of 'entfernen'; perhaps 'dissever' comes the nearest, for this too is a verb of separation in which a privative prefix is used as an intensive. We have coined the similar verb 'desever' in the hope that this will suggest Heidegger's meaning when 'remove' and its derivatives seem inappropriate. But with 'desever', one cannot slip back and forth from one sense to another as easily as one can with 'entfernen'; so we have resorted to the expedient of using both 'desever' and 'remove' and their derivatives, depending upon the sense we feel is intended. Thus 'entfernen' will generally be rendered by 'remove' or 'desever', 'entfernt' by 'remote' or 'desevered'. Since Heidegger is careful to distinguish Entfernung and Entfernheit, we shall usually translate these by 'deseverance' and 'remoteness' respectively; in the few cases where these translations do not seem appropriate, we shall subjoin the German word in brackets.

Our problem is further complicated by Heidegger's practise of occasionally putting a hyphen after the prefix 'ent-', presumably to emphasize its privative character. In such cases we shall write 'de-sever' 'de-severance', etc. Unfortunately, however, there are typographical discrepancies between the earlier and later editions. Some of the earlier hyphens occur at the ends of lines and have been either intentionally or inadvertently omitted in resetting the type; some appear at the end of the line in the later editions, but not in the earlier ones; others have this position in both editions. We shall indicate each of these ambiguous cases with an asterisk, supplying a hyphen only if there seems to be a good reason for doing so.

On 'Ausrichtung' see our note 2, p. 135, H. 102 above.

¹ 'Abstand'. Heidegger uses three words which might be translated as 'distance': Ferne (our 'farness'), Entfernung (our 'deseverance'), and Abstand ('distance' in the sense of a measurable interval). We shall reserve 'distance' for 'Abstand'.

² Entfernen* besagt ein Verschwindenmachen der Ferne, d. h. der Entferntheit von etwas, Naherung.

³ This hyphen is found only in the later editions.

bringing close—bringing something close by, in the sense of procuring it, putting it in readiness, having it to hand. But certain ways in which entities are discovered in a purely cognitive manner also have the character of bringing them close. In Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness. All the ways in which we speed things up, as we are more or less compelled to do today, push us on towards the conquest of remoteness. With the 'radio', for example, Dasein has so expanded its everyday environment that it has accomplished a de-severance of the 'world'—a de-severance which, in its meaning for Dasein, cannot yet be visualized.

De-severing does not necessarily imply any explicit estimation of the farness of something ready-to-hand in relation to Dasein. Above all, remoteness* never gets taken as a distance. If farness is to be estimated, this is done relatively to deseverances in which everyday Dasein maintains itself. Though these estimates may be imprecise and variable if we try to compute them, in the everydayness of Dasein they have their own definiteness which is thoroughly intelligible. We say that to go over yonder is "a good walk", "a stone's throw", or 'as long as it takes to smoke a pipe'. These measures express not only that they are not intended to 'measure' anything but also that the remoteness* here estimated belongs to some entity to which one goes with concernful circumspection. But even when we avail ourselves of a fixed measure and say 'it is half an hour to the house', this measure must be taken as an estimate. 'Half an hour' is not thirty minutes, but a duration [Dauer] which has no 'length' at all in the sense of a quantitative stretch. Such a duration is always interpreted in terms of well-accustomed everyday ways in which we 'make provision' ['Besorgungen']. Remotenesses* are estimated proximally by circumspection, even when one is quite familiar with 'officially' calculated measures. Since what is de-severed in such estimates is ready-to-hand, it retains its character as specifically within-the-world. This even implies that the pathways we take towards desevered entities in the course of our dealings will vary in their length from day to day. What is ready-to-hand in the environment is certainly not present-at-hand for an eternal observer exempt from Dasein: but it is encountered in Dasein's circumspectively concernful everydayness. As Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand; it does not 'devour the kilometres'; bringing close or de-severance is always a kind of concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed. A pathway which is long 'Objectively' can be much shorter than one which is 'Objectively' shorter still but which is perhaps 'hard going' and comes

before us$^1$ as interminably long. Yet only in thus ‘coming before us’$^1$ is the current world authentically ready-to-hand. The Objective distances of Things present-at-hand do not coincide with the remoteness and closeness of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. Though we may know these distances exactly, this knowledge still remains blind; it does not have the function of discovering the environment circumspectively and bringing it close; this knowledge is used only in and for a concernful Being which does not measure stretches—a Being towards the world that ‘matters’ to one [… Sein zu der einen “angehenden” Welt].

When one is oriented beforehand towards ‘Nature’ and ‘Objectively’ measured distances of Things, one is inclined to pass off such estimates and interpretations of deseverance as ‘subjective’. Yet this ‘subjectivity’ perhaps uncovers the ‘Reality’ of the world at its most Real; it has nothing to do with ‘subjective’ arbitrariness or subjectivistic ‘ways of taking’ an entity which ‘in itself’ is otherwise. The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the ‘true world’—of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside.$^2$

When one is primarily and even exclusively oriented towards remotenesses as measured distances, the primordial spatiality of Being-in is concealed. That which is presumably ‘closest’ is by no means that which is at the smallest distance ‘from us’. It lies in that which is dessevered to an average extent when we reach for it, grasp it, or look at it. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the way of de-severance, its dealings always keep within an ‘environment’ which is dessevered from it with a certain leeway [Spielraum]; accordingly our seeing and hearing always go proximally beyond what is distantially ‘closest’. Seeing and hearing are distance-senses [Fernsinne] not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that Dasein as desseverant mainly dwells. When, for instance, a man wears a pair of spectacles which are so close to him distantially that they are ‘sitting on his nose’, they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall. Such equipment has so little closeness that often it is proximally quite impossible to find. Equipment for seeing—and likewise for hearing, such as the telephone receiver—has what we have designated as the inconspicuousness of the proximally ready-to-hand. So too, for instance, does the street, as equipment for walking.

One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the closest and Realest of all that is ready-to-hand, and it slides itself, as it

$^1$ ‘vorkommt’; ‘‘Vorkommen’’. In general ‘vorkommen’ may be translated as ‘occur’, and is to be thought of as applicable strictly to the present-at-hand. In this passage, however, it is applied to the ready-to-hand; and a translation which calls attention to its etymological structure seems to be called for.

$^2$ ‘Das unsichtige Ent-jernen der Alltäglichkeit des Daseins enddeckt das An-sich-sein der “wahren Welt”, des Seienden, bei dem Dasein als existierendes je schon ist.’

were, along certain portions of one's body—the soles of one's feet. And yet it is farther remote than the acquaintance whom one encounters 'on the street' at a 'remoteness' ["Entfernung"] of twenty paces when one is taking such a walk. Circumspective concern decides as to the closeness and farness of what is proximally ready-to-hand environmentally. Whatever this concern dwells alongside beforehand is what is closest, and this is what regulates our de-severances.

If Dasein, in its concern, brings something close by, this does not signify that it fixes something at a spatial position with a minimal distance from some point of the body. When something is close by, this means that it is within the range of what is proximally ready-to-hand for circumspection. Bringing-close is not oriented towards the I-Thing encumbered with a body, but towards concernful Being-in-the-world—that is, towards whatever is proximally encountered in such Being. It follows, moreover, that Dasein's spatiality is not to be defined by citing the position at which some corporeal Thing is present-at-hand. Of course we say that even Dasein always occupies a place. But this 'occupying' must be distinguished in principle from Being-ready-to-hand at a place in some particular region. Occupying a place must be conceived as a dessevering of the environmentally ready-to-hand into a region which has been circumspectively discovered in advance. Dasein understands its "here" [Hier] in terms of its environmental "yonder". The "here" does not mean the "where" of something present-at-hand, but rather the "whereat" [Wobei] of a de-severant Being-alongside, together with this de-severance. Dasein, in accordance with its spatiality, is proximally never here but yonder; from this "yonder" it comes back to its "here"; and it comes back to its "here" only in the way in which it interprets its concernful Being-towards in terms of what is ready-to-hand yonder. This becomes quite plain if we consider a certain phenomenal peculiarity of the de-severance structure of Being-in.

As Being-in-the-world, Dasein maintains itself essentially in a dessevering. This de-severance—the farness of the ready-to-hand from Dasein itself—is something that Dasein can never cross over. Of course the remoteness of something ready-to-hand from Dasein can show up as a distance from it,¹ if this remoteness is determined by a relation to some Thing which gets thought of as present-at-hand at the place Dasein has formerly occupied. Dasein can subsequently traverse the "between" of this distance, but only in such a way that the distance itself becomes one which has been dessevered*. So little has Dasein crossed over its de-severance that it has rather taken it along with it and keeps doing so constantly; for

¹… kann zwar selbst von diesem als Abstandvorfindlich werden…'

Dasein is essentially de-severance—that is, it is spatial. It cannot wander about within the current range of its de-severances; it can never do more than change them. Dasein is spatial in that it discovers space circumspectively, so that indeed it constantly comports itself de-severantly* towards the entities thus spatially encountered.

As de-severant Being-in, Dasein has likewise the character of directionality. Every bringing-close [Näherung] has already taken in advance a direction towards a region out of which what is de-severed brings itself close [sich nähert], so that one can come across it with regard to its place. Circumspective concern is de-severing which gives directionality. In this concern—that is, in the Being-in-the-world of Dasein itself—a supply of ‘signs’ is presented. Signs, as equipment, take over the giving of directions in a way which is explicit and easily manipulable. They keep explicitly open those regions which have been used circumspectively—the particular “whithers” to which something belongs or goes, or gets brought or fetched. If Dasein is, it already has, as directing and desevering, its own discovered region. Both directionality and de-severance, as modes of Being-in-the-world, are guided beforehand by the circumspection of concern.

Out of this directionality arise the fixed directions of right and left. Dasein constantly takes these directions along with it, just as it does its de-severances. Dasein’s spatialization in its ‘bodily nature’ is likewise marked out in accordance with these directions. (This ‘bodily nature’ hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not treat it here.) Thus things which are ready-to-hand and used for the body—like gloves, for example, which are to move with the hands—must be given directionality towards right and left. A craftsman’s tools, however, which are held in the hand and are moved with it, do not share the hand’s specifically ‘manual’ [“handliche”] movements. So although hammers are handled just as much with the hand as gloves are, there are no right- or left-handed hammers.

One must notice, however, that the directionality which belongs to de-severance is founded upon Being-in-the-world. Left and right are not something ‘subjective’ for which the subject has a feeling; they are directions of one’s directedness into a world that is ready-to-hand already. ‘By the mere feeling of a difference between my two sides’ I could never find my way about in a world. The subject with a ‘mere feeling’ of this difference is a construct posited in disregard of the state that is truly constitutive for any subject—namely, that whenever Dasein has such a ‘mere feeling’, it is in a world already and must be in it to be able to orient itself at all. This becomes plain from the example with which Kant tries to clarify the phenomenon of orientation.

Suppose I step into a room which is familiar to me but dark, and which has been rearranged [umgeräumt] during my absence so that everything which used to be at my right is now at my left. If I am to orient myself the 'mere feeling of the difference' between my two sides will be of no help at all as long as I fail to apprehend some definite object 'whose position', as Kant remarks casually, 'I have in mind'. But what does this signify except that whenever this happens I necessarily orient myself both in and from my being already alongside a world which is 'familiar'? The equipment-context of a world must have been presented to Dasein. That I am already in a world is no less constitutive for the possibility of orientation than is the feeling for right and left. While this state of Dasein's Being is an obvious one, we are not thereby justified in suppressing the ontologically constitutive role which it plays. Even Kant does not suppress it, any more than any other Interpretation of Dasein. Yet the fact that this is a state of which we constantly make use, does not exempt us from providing a suitable ontological explication, but rather demands one. The psychological Interpretation according to which the "I" has something 'in the memory' ['im Gedächtnis'] is at bottom a way of alluding to the existentially constitutive state of Being-in-the-world. Since Kant fails to see this structure, he also fails to recognize all the interconnections which the Constitution of any possible orientation implies. Directedness with regard to right and left is based upon the essential directionality of Dasein in general, and this directionality in turn is essentially co-determined by Being-in-the-world. Even Kant, of course, has not taken orientation as a theme for Interpretation. He merely wants to show that every orientation requires a 'subjective principle'. Here 'subjective' is meant to signify that this principle is a priori. Nevertheless, the a priori character of directedness with regard to right and left is based upon the 'subjective' a priori of Being-in-the-world, which has nothing to do with any determinate character restricted beforehand to a worldless subject.

De-severance and directionality, as constitutive characteristics of Being-in, are determinative for Dasein's spatiality—for its being concernfully and circumspectively in space, in a space discovered and within-the-world. Only the explication we have just given for the spatiality of the ready-to-hand within-the-world and the spatiality of Being-in-the-world, will provide the prerequisites for working out the phenomenon of the world's spatiality and formulating the ontological problem of space.

1. … in und aus einem je schon sein bei einer "bekannten" Welt. The earlier editions have 'Sein' for 'sein'.

2. Here we follow the later editions in reading '… bedeuten wollen; a priori.' The earlier editions omit the colon, making the passage ambiguous.

3. Space and Dasein's Spatiality

As Being-in-the-world, Dasein has already discovered a 'world' at any time. This discovery, which is founded upon the worldhood of the world, is one which we have characterized as freeing entities for a totality of involvements. Freeing something and letting it be involved, is accomplished by way of referring or assigning oneself circumspectively, and this in turn is based upon one's previously understanding significance. We have now shown that circumspective Being-in-the-world is spatial. And only because Dasein is spatial in the way of de-severance and directionality can what is ready-to-hand within-the-world be encountered in its spatiality. To free a totality of involvements is, equiprimordially, to let something be involved at a region, and to do so by de-severing and giving directionality; this amounts to freeing the spatial belonging-somewhere of the ready-to-hand. In that significance with which Dasein (as concernful Being-in) is familiar, lies the essential co-disclosedness of space.$^1$

The space which is thus disclosed with the worldhood of the world still lacks the pure multiplicity of the three dimensions. In this disclosedness which is closest to us, space, as the pure "wherein" in which positions are ordered by measurement and the situations of things are determined, still remains hidden. In the phenomenon of the region we have already indicated that on the basis of which space is discovered beforehand in Dasein. By a 'region' we have understood the "whither" to which an equipment-context ready-to-hand might possibly belong, when that context is of such a sort that it can be encountered as directionally desevered—that is, as having been placed.$^2$ This belongingness [Gehörigkeit] is determined in terms of the significance which is constitutive for the world, and it Articulates the "hither" and "whither" within the possible "whither". In general the "whither" gets prescribed by a referential totality which has been made fast in a "for-the-sake-of-which" of concern, and within which letting something be involved by freeing it, assigns itself. With anything encountered as ready-to-hand there is always an involvement in [bei] a region. To the totality of involvements which makes up the Being of the ready-to-hand within-the-world, there belongs a spatial involvement which has the character of a region. By reason of such an involvement, the ready-to-hand becomes something which we can come across and ascertain as having form and direction.$^3$ With the factical Being of

1. … die wesenhafte Miterschlossenheit des Raumes.
2. 'Wir verstehen sie als das Wohin der möglichen Zugehörigkeit des zuhandenen Zeugusammenhanges, der als ausgerichtet entfernter, d. h. platzierter soll begegnen können.'
3. 'Auf deren Grunde wird das Zuhandene nach Form und Richtung vorfindlich und bestimmbar.' The earliest editions have 'erfindlich', which has been corrected to 'vorfindlich' in a list of errata.

Dasein, what is ready-to-hand within-the-world is dessevered* and given directionality, depending upon the degree of transparency that is possible for concernful circumspection.

When we let entities within-the-world be encountered in the way which is constitutive for Being-in-the-world, we 'give them space'. This 'giving space', which we also call 'making room' for them, consists in freeing the ready-to-hand for its spatiality. As a way of discovering and presenting a possible totality of spaces determined by involvements, this making-room is what makes possible one's factual orientation at the time. In concerning itself circumspectively with the world, Dasein can move things around or out of the way or 'make room' for them [um—, weg—, und "einräumen"] only because making-room—understood as an existential—belongs to its Being-in-the-world. But neither the region previously discovered nor in general the current spatiality is explicitly in view. In itself it is present [zugegen] for circumspection in the inconspicuousness of those ready-to-hand things in which that circumspection is concernfully absorbed. With Being-in-the-world, space is proximally discovered in this spatiality. On the basis of the spatiality thus discovered, space itself becomes accessible for cognition.

Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Space is rather 'in' the world in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-in-the-world which is constitutive for Dasein. Space is not to be found in the subject, nor does the subject observe the world 'as if' that world were in a space; but the 'subject' (Dasein), if well understood ontologically, is spatial. And because Dasein is spatial in the way we have described, space shows itself as a priori. This term does not mean anything like previously belonging to a subject which is proximally still worldless and which emits a space out of itself. Here "apriority" means the previousness with which space has been encountered (as a region) whenever the ready-to-hand is encountered environmentally.

The spatiality of what we proximally encounter in circumspection can become a theme for circumspection itself, as well as a task for calculation and measurement, as in building and surveying. Such thematization of the spatiality of the environment is still predominantly an act of circumspection by which space in itself already comes into view in a certain way. The space which thus shows itself can be studied purely by looking at it, if one gives up what was formerly the only possibility of access to it—circumspective calculation. When space is 'intuited formally', the pure

1 Both 'Raum-geben' (our 'giving space') and 'Einräumen' (our 'making room') are often used in the metaphorical sense of 'yielding', 'granting', or 'making concessions'. 'Einräumen' may also be used for 'arranging' furniture, 'moving it in', or 'stowing it away'.

possibilities of spatial relations are discovered. Here one may go through a series of stages in laying bare pure homogeneous space, passing from the pure morphology of spatial shapes to analysis situs and finally to the purely metrical science of space. In our present study we shall not consider how all these are interconnected.$^{xx}$ Our problematic is merely designed to establish ontologically the phenomenal basis upon which one can take the discovery of pure space as a theme for investigation, and work it out.

When space is discovered non-circumspectively by just looking at it, the environmental regions get neutralized to pure dimensions. Places—and indeed the whole circumspectively oriented totality of places belonging to equipment ready-to-hand—get reduced to a multiplicity of positions for random Things. The spatiality of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world loses its involvement-character, and so does the ready-to-hand. The world loses its specific aroundness; the environment becomes the world of Nature. The 'world', as a totality of equipment ready-to-hand, becomes spatialized [verräumlicht] to a context of extended Things which are just present-at-hand and no more. The homogeneous space of Nature shows itself only when the entities we encounter are discovered in such a way that the worldly character of the ready-to-hand gets specifically deprived of its worldhood.$^1$

In accordance with its Being-in-the-world, Dasein always has space presented as already discovered, though not thematically. On the other hand, space in itself, so far as it embraces the mere possibilities of the pure spatial Being of something, remains proximally still concealed. The fact that space essentially shows itself in a world is not yet decisive for the kind of Being which it possesses. It need not have the kind of Being characteristic of something which is itself spatially ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. Nor does the Being of space have the kind of Being which belongs to Dasein. Though the Being of space itself cannot be conceived as the kind of Being which belongs to a res extensa, it does not follow that it must be defined ontologically as a 'phenomenon' of such a res. (In its Being, it would not be distinguished from such a res.) Nor does it follow that the Being of space can be equated to that of the res cogitans and conceived as merely 'subjective', quite apart from the questionable character of the Being of such a subject.

The Interpretation of the Being of space has hitherto been a matter of perplexity, not so much because we have been insufficiently acquainted with the content of space itself as a thing [des Sachgehalten des Raumes

$^{1}$… die den Charakter einer spezifischen Entweltlichung der Weltmässigkeit des Zuhandenen hat.

selbst], as because the possibilities of Being in general have not been in principle transparent, and an Interpretation of them in terms of ontological concepts has been lacking. If we are to understand the ontological problem of space, it is of decisive importance that the question of Being must be liberated from the narrowness of those concepts of Being which merely chance to be available and which are for the most part rather rough; and the problematic of the Being of space (with regard to that phenomenon itself and various phenomenal spatialities) must be turned in such a direction as to clarify the possibilities of Being in general.

In the phenomenon of space the primary ontological character of the Being of entities within-the-world is not to be found, either as unique or as one among others. Still less does space constitute the phenomenon of the world. Unless we go back to the world, space cannot be conceived. Space becomes accessible only if the environment is deprived of its worldhood; and spatiality is not discoverable at all except on the basis of the world. Indeed space is still one of the things that is constitutive for the world, just as Dasein's own spatiality is essential to its basic state of Being-in-the-world.$^1$

$^1$ '… so zwar, dass der Raum die Welt doch mikkonstituiert, entsprechend der wesenhaften Räumlichkeit des Daseins selbst hinsichtlich seiner Grundverfassung des In-der-Welt-seins.'

IV

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AS BEING-WITH AND BEING-ONE'S-SELF. THE "THEY"

Our analysis of the worldhood of the world has constantly been bringing the whole phenomenon of Being-in-the-world into view, although its constitutive items have not all stood out with the same phenomenal distinctness as the phenomenon of the world itself. We have interpreted the world ontologically by going through what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; and this Interpretation has been put first, because Dasein, in its everydayness (with regard to which Dasein remains a constant theme for study), not only is in a world but comports itself towards that world with one predominant kind of Being. Proximally and for the most part Dasein is fascinated with its world. Dasein is thus absorbed in the world; the kind of Being which it thus possesses, and in general the Being-in which underlies it, are essential in determining the character of a phenomenon which we are now about to study. We shall approach this phenomenon by asking who it is that Dasein is in its everydayness. All the structures of Being which belong to Dasein, together with the phenomenon which provides the answer to this question of the "who", are ways of its Being. To characterize these ontologically is to do so existentially. We must therefore pose the question correctly and outline the procedure for bringing into view a broader phenomenal domain of Dasein's everydayness. By directing our researches towards the phenomenon which is to provide us with an answer to the question of the "who", we shall be led to certain structures of Dasein which are equiprimordial with Being-in-the-world: Being-with and Dasein-with [Mitsein und Mitdasein]. In this kind of Being is grounded the mode of everyday Being-one's-Self [Selbststein]; the explication of this mode will

1 'Das Man'. In German one may write 'man glaubt' where in French one would write 'on soit', or in English 'they believe', 'one believes', or 'it is believed'. But the German 'man' and the French 'on' are specialized for such constructions in a way in which the pronouns 'they', 'one', and 'it' are not. There is accordingly no single idiomatic translation for the German 'man' which will not sometimes lend itself to ambiguity, and in general we have chosen whichever construction seems the most appropriate in its context. But when Heidegger introduces this word with a definite article and writes 'das Man', as he does very often in this chapter, we shall translate this expression as 'the "they"', trusting that the reader will not take this too literally.

enable us to see what we may call the ‘subject’ of everydayness—the “they”.

Our chapter on the ‘who’ of the average Dasein will thus be divided up as follows: 1. an approach to the existential question of the “who” of Dasein (Section 25); 2. the Dasein-withof Others, and everyday Being-with (Section 26); 3. everyday Being-one’s-Self and the “they” (Section 27).

25. An Approach to the Existential Question of the “Who” of Dasein

The answer to the question of who Dasein is, is one that was seemingly given in Section 9, where we indicated formally the basic characteristics of Dasein. Dasein is an entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in each case mine. This definition indicates an ontologically constitutive state, but it does no more than indicate it. At the same time this tells us ontically (though in a rough and ready fashion) that in each case an “I”—not Others—is this entity. The question of the “who” answers itself in terms of the “I” itself, the ‘subject’, the ‘Self’.1 The “who” is what maintains itself as something identical throughout changes in its Experiences and ways of behaviour, and which relates itself to this changing multiplicity in so doing. Ontologically we understand it as something which is in each case already constantly present-at-hand, both in and for a closed realm, and which lies at the basis, in a very special sense, as the subjectum.

As something selfsame in manifold otherness,2 it has the character of the Self. Even if one rejects the “soul substance” and the Thinghood of consciousness, or denies that a person is an object, ontologically one is still positing something whose Being retains the meaning of present-at-hand, whether it does so explicitly or not. Substantiality is the ontological clue for determining which entity is to provide the answer to the question of the “who”. Dasein is tacitly conceived in advance as something present-at-hand. This meaning of Being is always implicated in any case where the Being of Dasein has been left indefinite. Yet presence-at-hand is the kind of Being which belongs to entities whose character is not that of Dasein.

The assertion that it is I who in each case Dasein is, is ontically obvious; but this must not mislead us into supposing that the route for an ontological Interpretation of what is ‘given’ in this way has thus been unmistakably prescribed. Indeed it remains questionable whether even the mere ontical content of the above assertion does proper justice to the stock of phenomena belonging to everyday Dasein. It could be that the “who” of everyday Dasein just is not the “I myself”.

1 ‘dem “Selbst”’. While we shall ordinarily translate the intensive ‘selbst’ by the corresponding English intensives ‘itself’, ‘oneself’, ‘myself’, etc., according to the context, we shall translate the substantive ‘Selbst’ by the substantive ‘Self’ with a capital.

2 ‘… als Selbiges in der vielfaltigen Andersheit …’. While the words ‘identisch’ and ‘selbig’ are virtually synonyms in ordinary German, Heidegger seems to be intimating a distinction between them. We shall accordingly translate the former by ‘identical’ and the latter by ‘selfsame’ to show its etymological connection with ‘selbst’. Cf. H. 130 below.

If, in arriving at ontico-ontological assertions, one is to exhibit the phenomena in terms of the kind of Being which the entities themselves possesses, and if this way of exhibiting them is to retain its priority over even the most usual and obvious of answers and over whatever ways of formulating problems may have been derived from those answers, then the phenomenological Interpretation of Dasein must be defended against a perversion of our problematic when we come to the question we are about to formulate.

But is it not contrary to the rules of all sound method to approach a problematic without sticking to what is given as evident in the area of our theme? And what is more indubitable than the givenness of the "I"? And does not this givenness tell us that if we aim to work this out primordially, we must disregard everything else that is 'given'—not only a 'world' that is [einer seienden "Welt"], but even the Being of other 'I's? The kind of "giving" we have here is the mere, formal, reflective awareness of the "I"; and perhaps what it gives is indeed evident. This insight even affords access to a phenomenological problematic in its own right, which has in principle the signification of providing a framework as a 'formal phenomenology of consciousness'.

In this context of an existential analytic of factual Dasein, the question arises whether giving the "I" in the way we have mentioned discloses Dasein in its everydayness, if it discloses Dasein at all. Is it then obvious a priori that access to Dasein must be gained only by mere reflective awareness of the "I" of actions? What if this kind of 'giving-itself' on the part of Dasein should lead our existential analytic astray and do so, indeed, in a manner grounded in the Being of Dasein itself? Perhaps when Dasein addresses itself in the way which is closest to itself, it always says "I am this entity", and in the long run says this loudest when it is 'not' this entity. Dasein is in each case mine, and this is its constitution; but what if this should be the very reason why, proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself? What if the aforementioned approach, starting with the givenness of the "I" to Dasein itself, and with a rather patent self-interpretation of Dasein, should lead the existential analytic, as it were, into a pitfall? If that which is accessible by mere "giving" can be determined, there is presumably an ontological horizon for determining it; but what if this horizon should remain in principle undetermined? It may well be that it is always ontically correct to say of this entity that 'I' am it. Yet the ontological analytic which makes use of such assertions must make certain reservations about them in principle. The word 'I' is to be

1 'Vielleicht ist in der Tat das, was diese Art von Gebung, das schlichte, formale, reflective Ichvernehmen gibt, evident.'

understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator, indicating something which may perhaps reveal itself as its 'opposite' in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the 'not-I' is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks 'I-hood' ['Ichheit'] but is rather a definite kind of Being which the 'I' itself possesses, such as having lost itself [Selbstverlorenheit].

Yet even the positive Interpretation of Dasein which we have so far given, already forbids us to start with the formal givenness of the "I", if our purpose is to answer the question of the "who" in a way which is phenomenally adequate. In clarifying Being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without a world never 'is' proximally, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an isolated "I" without Others is just as far from being proximally given. If, however, 'the Others' already are there with us [mit dasind] in Being-in-the-world, and if this is ascertained phenomenally, even this should not mislead us into supposing that the ontological structure of what is thus 'given' is obvious, requiring no investigation. Our task is to make visible phenomenally the species to which this Dasein-with in closest everydayness belongs, and to Interpret it in a way which is ontologically appropriate.

Just as the ontical obviousness of the Being-in-itself of entities within-the-world misleads us into the conviction that the meaning of this Being is obvious ontologically, and makes us overlook the phenomenon of the world, the ontical obviousness of the fact that Dasein is in each case mine, also hides the possibility that the ontological problematic which belongs to it has been led astray. Proximally the "who" of Dasein is not only a problem ontologically; even ontically it remains concealed.

But does this mean that there are no clues whatever for answering the question of the "who" by way of existential analysis? Certainly not. Of the ways in which we formally indicated the constitution of Dasein's Being in Sections 9 and 12 above, the one we have been discussing does not, of course, function so well as such a clue as does the one according to which Dasein's 'Essence' is grounded in its existence. If the 'I' is an Essential characteristic of Dasein, then it is one which must be Interpreted existentially. In that case the "Who?" is to be answered only by exhibiting phenomenally a definite kind of Being which Dasein possesses. If in each case Dasein is its Self only in existing, then the constancy of the Self no less than the

1 'as such a clue': here we read 'als solcher', following the later editions. The earliest editions have 'als solche', which has been corrected in the list of errata.

"Essence": while we ordinarily use 'essence' and 'essential' to translate 'Wesen' and 'wesenhaft', we shall use 'Essence' and "Essential" (with initial capitals) to translate the presumably synonymous but far less frequent 'Essenz' and 'essentii'.

The two 'formal indications' to which Heidegger refers are to be found on H. 42 above.

possibility of its 'failure to stand by itself' requires that we formulate the question existentially and ontologically as the sole appropriate way of access to its problematic.

But if the Self is conceived 'only' as a way of Being of this entity, this seems tantamount to volatilizing the real 'core' of Dasein. Any apprehensiveness however which one may have about this gets its nourishment from the perverse assumption that the entity in question has at bottom the kind of Being which belongs to something present-at-hand, even if one is far from attributing to it the solidity of an occurrent corporeal Thing. Yet man's 'substance' is not spirit as a synthesis of soul and body; it is rather existence.

26. The Dasein-with of Others and Everyday Being-with

The answer to the question of the "who" of everyday Dasein is to be obtained by analysing that kind of Being in which Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part. Our investigation takes its orientation from Being-in-the-world—that basic state of Dasein by which every mode of its Being gets co-determined. If we are correct in saying that by the foregoing explication of the world, the remaining structural items of Being-in-the-world have become visible, then this must also have prepared us, in a way, for answering the question of the "who".

In our 'description' of that environment which is closest to us—the work-world of the craftsman, for example,—the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work [in Arbeit], those Others for whom the 'work' ['Werk'] is destined are 'encountered too'. If this is ready-to-hand, then there lies in the kind of Being which belongs to it (that is, in its involvement) an essential assignment or reference to possible wearers, for instance, for whom it should be 'cut to the figure'. Similarly, when material is put to use, we encounter its producer or 'supplier' as one who 'serves' well or badly. When, for example, we walk along the edge of a field but 'outside it', the field shows itself as belonging to such-and-such a person, and decently kept up by him; the book we have used was bought at So-and-so's shop and given by such-and-such

1. … die Ständigkeit des Selbst ebensosehr wie seine mögliche "Unselbstständigkeit"…' The adjective 'ständig', which we have usually translated as 'constant' in the sense of 'permanent' or 'continuing', goes back to the root meaning of 'standing', as do the adjectives 'selfständig' ('independent') and 'unselbständig' ('dependent'). These concepts will be discussed more fully in Section 64 below, especially H. 322, where 'Unselbstständigkeit' will be rewritten not as 'Un-selbständigkeit' ('failure to stand by one's Self') but as 'Unselbst-ständigkeit' ('constancy to the Unself'). See also H. 128. (The connection with the concept of existence will perhaps be clearer if one recalls that the Latin verb 'existere' may also be derived from a verb of standing, as Heidegger points out in his later writings.)

a person, and so forth. The boat anchored at the shore is assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes voyages with it; but even if it is a 'boat which is strange to us', it still is indicative of Others. The Others who are thus 'encountered' in a ready-to-hand, environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some Thing which is proximally just present-at-hand; such 'Things' are encountered from out of the world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others—a world which is always mine too in advance. In our previous analysis, the range of what is encountered within-the-world was, in the first instance, narrowed down to equipment ready-to-hand or Nature present-at-hand, and thus to entities with a character other than that of Dasein. This restriction was necessary not only for the purpose of simplifying our explication but above all because the kind of Being which belongs to the Dasein of Others, as we encounter it within-the-world, differs from readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand. Thus Dasein's world frees entities which not only are quite distinct from equipment and Things, but which also—in accordance with their kind of Being as Dasein themselves—are 'in' the world in which they are at the same time encountered within-the-world, and are 'in' it by way of Being-in-the-world.¹ These entities are neither present-at-hand nor ready-to-hand; on the contrary, they are like the very Dasein which frees them, in that they are there too, and there with it. So if one should want to identify the world in general with entities within-the-world, one would have to say that Dasein too is 'world'.

Thus in characterizing the encountering of Others, one is again still oriented by that Dasein which is in each case one's own. But even in this characterization does one not start by marking out and isolating the 'I' so that one must then seek some way of getting over to the Others from this isolated subject? To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense we are talking about 'the Others'. By 'Others' we do not mean everyone else but me—those over against whom the "I" stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too [Auch-dasein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-present-at-hand-along-'with' them within a world. This 'with' is something of the character of Dasein; the 'too' means a sameness of Being as circum-spectively concernful Being-in-the-world. 'With' and 'too' are to be

¹ '… sondern gemäss seiner Seinsart als Dasein selbst in der Weise des In-der-Weltseins "in" der Welt ist, in der es zugleich innerweltlich begegnet.' ² Dieses Seiende ist weder vorhanden noch zuhänden, sondern ist so, wie das freigebende Dasein selbst—es ist auch und mit da. Wollte man denn schon Welt überhaupt mit dem innerweltlich Seinden identifizieren, dann müsste man sagen, "Welt" ist auch Dasein.

understood existentially, not categorially. By reason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with Others. Their Being-in-themselves within-the-world is Dasein-with [Mit-dasein].

When Others are encountered, it is not the case that one's own subject is proximally present-at-hand and that the rest of the subjects, which are likewise occurrents, get discriminated beforehand and then apprehended; nor are they encountered by a primary act of looking at oneself in such a way that the opposite pole of a distinction first gets ascertained. They are encountered from out of the world, in which concernfully circumspective Dasein essentially dwells. Theoretically concocted 'explanations' of the Being-present-at-hand of Others urge themselves upon us all too easily; but over against such explanations we must hold fast to the phenomenal facts of the case which we have pointed out, namely, that Others are encountered environmentally. This elemental worldly kind of encountering, which belongs to Dasein and is closest to it, goes so far that even one's own Dasein becomes something that it can itself proximally 'come across' only when it looks away from 'Experiences' and the 'centre of its actions', or does not as yet 'see' them at all. Dasein finds 'itself' proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids—in those things environmentally ready-to-hand with which it is proximally concerned.

And even when Dasein explicitly addresses itself as "I here", this locative personal designation must be understood in terms of Dasein's existential spatiality. In Interpreting this (See Section 23) we have already intimated that this "I-here" does not mean a certain privileged point—that of an I-Thing—but is to be understood as Being-in in terms of the "yonder" of the world that is ready-to-hand—the "yonder" which is the dwelling-place of Dasein as concern.1

W. von Humboldt2 has alluded to certain languages which express the 'I' by 'here', the 'thou' by 'there', the 'he' by 'yonder', thus rendering the personal pronouns by locative adverbs, to put it grammatically. It is controversial whether indeed the primordial signification of locative expressions is adverbial or pronominal. But this dispute loses its basis if one notes that locative adverbs have a relationship to the "I" qua Dasein. The 'here' and the 'there' and the 'yonder' are primarily not mere ways of designating the location of entities present-at-hand within-the-world at positions in space; they are rather characteristics of Dasein's primordial

1. … dass dieses Ich-hier nicht cinem ausgezeichneten Punkt des Ichdinges meint, sondern sich versteht als In-sein aus dem Dort der zuhandenen Welt, bei dem Dasein als Besorgen sich aufhält. The older editions have 'In-Sein' for 'In-sein', and 'dabei' for 'bei dem'.

spatiality. These supposedly locative adverbs are Dasein-designations; they have a signification which is primarily existential, not categorical. But they are not pronouns either; their signification is prior to the differentiation of locative adverbs and personal pronouns: these expressions have a Dasein-signification which is authentically spatial, and which serves as evidence that when we interpret Dasein without any theoretical distortions we can see it immediately as 'Being-alongside' the world with which it concerns itself, and as Being-alongside it spatially—that is to say, as desevering* and giving directionality. In the 'here', the Dasein which is absorbed in its world speaks not towards itself but away from itself towards the 'yonder' of something circumspectively ready-to-hand; yet it still has itself in view in its existential spatiality.

Dasein understands itself proximally and for the most part in terms of its world; and the Dasein-with of Others is often encountered in terms of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. But even if Others become themes for study, as it were, in their own Dasein, they are not encountered as person-Things present-at-hand: we meet them 'at work', that is, primarily in their Being-in-the-world. Even if we see the Other 'just standing around', he is never apprehended as a human-Thing present-at-hand, but his 'standing-around' is an existential mode of Being—an unconcerned, uncircumspective tarrying alongside everything and nothing [Verweilen bei Allem und Keinem]. The Other is encountered in his Dasein-with in the world.

The expression 'Dasein', however, shows plainly that 'in the first instance' this entity is unrelated to Others, and that of course it can still be 'with' Others afterwards. Yet one must not fail to notice that we use the term 'Dasein-with' to designate that Being for which the Others who are [die seienden Anderen] are freed within-the-world. This Dasein-with of the Others is disclosed within-the-world for a Dasein, and so too for those who are Daseins with us [die Mitdaseienden], only because Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with. The phenomenological assertion that "Dasein is essentially Being-with" has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not present-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur. If this were what is meant by the proposition that Dasein's Being-in-the-world is essentially constituted by Being-with, then Being-with would not be an existential attribute which Dasein, of its own accord, has coming to it from its own kind of Being. It would rather be something which turns up in every case by reason of the occurrence of Others. Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein's Being-alone is Being-with

in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occurrence of a second example of a human being 'beside' me, or by ten such examples. Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Dasein can still be alone. So Being-with and the facticity of Being with one another are not based on the occurrence together of several 'subjects'. Yet Being-alone 'among' many does not mean that with regard to their Being they are merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being 'among them' they are there with us; their Dasein-with is encountered in a mode in which they are indifferent and alien. Being missing and 'Being away' [Das Fehlen und "Fortsein"] are modes of Dasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world. Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one's own Dasein; Dasein-with characterizes the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with. Only so far as one's own Dasein has the essential structure of Being-with, is it Dasein-with as encounterable for Others.

If Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world, then, like our circumspective dealings with the ready-to-hand within-the-world (which, by way of anticipation, we have called 'concern'), it must be Interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care; for as "care" the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined. (Compare Chapter 6 of this Division.) Concern is a character-of-Being which Being-with cannot have as its own, even though Being-with, like concern, is a Being towards entities encountered within-the-world. But those entities towards which Dasein as Being-with comports itself do not have the kind of Being which belongs to equipment ready-to-hand; they are themselves Dasein. These entities are not objects of concern, but rather of solicitude.

1 Italics supplied in the later editions. 2 '… Mitdasein charakterisiert das Dasein anderer, sofern es für ein Mitsein durch dessen Welt freigegeben ist. Das eigene Dasein ist, sofern es die Wesensstruktur des Mitseins hat, als für Andere begegend Mitdasein.' 3 '… als welche das Sein des Daseins überhaupt bestimmt wird.' The older editions omit 'wird'. 4 'Dieses Seiende wird nicht besorgt, sondern steht in der Fürsorge.' There is no good English equivalent for 'Fürsorge', which we shall usually translate by 'solicitude'. The more literal 'caring-for' has the connotation of 'being fond of', which we do not want here; 'personal care' suggests personal hygiene; 'personal concern' suggests one's personal business or affairs. 'Fürsorge' is rather the kind of care which we find in 'prenatal care' or 'taking care of the children', or even the kind of care which is administered by welfare agencies. Indeed the word 'Fürsorge' is regularly used in contexts where we would speak of 'welfare work' or 'social welfare; this is the usage which Heidegger is in mind in his discussion of Fürsorge as 'a factical social arrangement'. (The etymological connection between 'Sorge' ('care')), 'Fürsorge' ('solicitude'), and 'Besorgen' ('concern'), is entirely lost in our translation.)

Even 'concern' with food and clothing, and the nursing of the sick body, are forms of solicitude. But we understand the expression "solicitude" in a way which corresponds to our use of "concern", as a term for an existential. For example, 'welfare work' ['Fürsorge'], as a factual social arrangement, is grounded in Dasein's state of Being as Being-with. Its tactical urgency gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude. Being for, against, or without one another, passing one another by, not "mattering" to one another—these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely these last-named deficient and Indifferent modes that characterize everyday, average Being-with-one-another. These modes of Being show again the characteristics of inconspicuousness and obviousness which belong just as much to the everyday Dasein-with of Others within-the-world as to the readiness-to-hand of the equipment with which one is daily concerned. These Indifferent modes of Being-with-one-another may easily mislead ontological Interpretation into interpreting this kind of Being, in the first instance, as the mere Being-present-at-hand of several subjects. It seems as if only negligible variations of the same kind of Being lie before us; yet ontologically there is an essential distinction between the 'indifferent' way in which Things at random occur together and the way in which entities who are with one another do not "matter" to one another.

With regard to its positive modes, solicitude has two extreme possibilities. It can, as it were, take away 'care' from the Other and put itself in his position in concern: it can leap in for him.$^1$ This kind of solicitude takes over for the Other that with which he is to concern himself. The Other is thus thrown out of his own position; he steps back so that afterwards, when the matter has been attended to, he can either take it over as something finished and at his disposal,$^2$ or disburden himself of it completely. In such solicitude the Other can become one who is dominated and dependent, even if this domination is a tacit one and remains hidden from him. This kind of solicitude, which leaps in and takes away 'care', is to a large extent determinative for Being with one another, and pertains for the most part to our concern with the ready-to-hand.

In contrast to this, there is also the possibility of a kind of solicitude which does not so much leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him [ihm

$^1$ '… sich an seine Stelle setzen, für ihn einspringen.' Here, as on H. 100 (See our note 2, p. 133), it would be more idiomatic to translate 'für ihn einspringen' as 'interveille for him'; 'stand in for him' or 'serve as deputy for him'; but since 'einspringen' is to be contrasted with 'vorspringen', 'vorausspringen' and perhaps even 'entspringen' in the following paragraphs, we have chosen a translation which suggests the etymological connection.

$^2$ '… um nachträglich das Besorgte als fertig Verfügbares zu übernehmen …'

vorausspringt] in his existentiell potentiality-for-Being, not in order to take away his ‘care’ but rather to give it back to him authentically as such for the first time. This kind of solicitude pertains essentially to authentic care—that is, to the existence of the Other, 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 state of Dasein’s Being—one which, in accordance with its different possibilities, is bound up with its Being towards the world of its concern, and likewise with its authentic Being towards itself. Being with one another is based proximally and often exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such Being. A Being-with-one-another which arises [entspringt] from one’s doing the same thing as someone else, not only keeps for the most part within the outer limits, but enters the mode of distance and reserve. The Being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives only on mistrust. On the other hand, when they devote themselves to the same affair in common, their doing so is determined by the manner in which their Dasein, each in its own way, has been taken hold of.$^1$ They thus become authentically bound together, and this makes possible the right kind of objectivity [die rechte Sachlichkeit], which frees the Other in his freedom for himself.

Everyday Being-with-one-another maintains itself between the two extremes of positive solicitude—that which leaps in and dominates, and that which leaps forth and liberates [vorspringend-befreienden]. It brings numerous mixed forms to maturity;$^2$ to describe these and classify them would take us beyond the limits of this investigation.

Just as circumspection belongs to concern as a way of discovering what is ready-to-hand, solicitude is guided by considerateness and forbearance.$^3$ Like solicitude, these can range through their respective deficient and Indifferent modes up to the point of inconsiderateness or the perfunctoriness for which indifference leads the way.$^4$

$^1$ ‘Umgekehrt ist das gemeinsame Sicheinsetzen für dieselbe Sache aus dem je eigens ergriffenen Dasein bestimmt.’

$^2$ Reading ‘… und zeitigt mannigfache Mischformen …’ with the older editions. The later editions have ‘zeigt’ (‘shows’) instead of ‘zeitigt’ (‘brings to maturity’). On ‘zeitigen’ see H. 304 and our note ad loc.

$^3$ ‘Wie dem Besorgen als Weise des Entdeckens des Zuhandenen die Umsicht zugehört, so ist die Fursorg: g·leitet durch die Rückicht und Nach sight.’ Heidegger is here calling attention to the etymological kinship of the three words which he italicizes, each of which stands for a special kind of sight or seeing (‘Sicht’).

The italicization of ‘Umsicht’ (‘circumspection’) is introduced in the newer editions.

$^4$ ‘… bis zur Rückichtslosigkeit und dem Nachsehen, das die Gleichgültigkeit leitet.’ This passage is ambiguous both syntactically and semantically. It is not clear, for instance, whether the subject of the relative clause is ‘die Gleichgültigkeit’ or the pronoun ‘das’, though we prefer the former interpretation. ‘Nachsehen,’ which is etymologically

The world not only frees the ready-to-hand as entities encountered within-the-world; it also frees Dasein, and the Others in their Dasein-with. But Dasein's ownmost meaning of Being is such that this entity (which has been freed environmentally) is Being-in in the same world in which, as encounterable for Others, it is there with them. We have interpreted worldhood as that referential totality which constitutes significance (Section 18). In Being-familiar with this significance and previously understanding it, Dasein lets what is ready-to-hand be encountered as discovered in its involvement. In Dasein's Being, the context of references or assignments which significance implies is tied up with Dasein's ownmost Being—a Being which essentially can have no involvement, but which is rather that Being for the sake of which Dasein itself is as it is.

According to the analysis which we have now completed, Being with Others belongs to the Being of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being. Thus as Being-with, Dasein 'is' essentially for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential statement as to its essence. Even if the particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, and supposes that it has no need of them or manages to get along without them, it is in the way of Being-with. In Being-with, as the existential "for-the-sake-of" of Others, these have already been disclosed in their Dasein. With their Being-with, their disclosedness has been constituted before-hand; accordingly, this disclosedness also goes to make up significance—that is to say, worldhood. And, significance, as worldhood, is tied up with the existential "for-the-sake-of-which". Since the worldhood of that world in which every Dasein essentially is already, is thus constituted, it accordingly lets us encounter what is environmentally ready-to-hand as something with which we are circumspectively concerned, and it does so in such a way that together with it we encounter the Dasein-with of Others. The structure of the world's worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world.

Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others

akin to 'Nachsicht', means to 'inspect' or 'check' something; but it often means to do this in a very perfunctory manner, and this latter sense may well be the one which Heidegger has in mind.

1. zum Sein des Daseins, um das es ihm in seinem Sein selbst geht … The older editions have 'darum' instead of 'um das'.

2. Diese mit dem Mitsein vorgängig konstituerte Erschlossenheit der Anderen macht demnach auch die Bedeutsamkeit, dh. die Weltlichkeit mit aus, als welche sie im existenzalen Worum-willen festgemacht ist.' The word 'sie' appears only in the later editions.

belongs to it; this means that because Dasein's Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of Being, which, more than anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible.$^1$ Knowing oneself [Sichkennen] is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It operates proximally in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us—Being-in-the-world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with the Others, comes across in its environmental circum-spection and concerns itself with—an acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed.

But because solicitude dwells proximally and for the most part in the deficient or at least the Indifferent modes (in the indifference of passing one another by), the kind of knowing-oneself which is essential and closest, demands that one become acquainted with oneself.$^2$ And when, indeed, one's knowing-oneself gets lost in such ways as aloofness, hiding oneself away, or putting on a disguise, Being-with-one-another must follow special routes of its own in order to come close to Others, or even to 'see through them' ['"hinter sie" zu kommen'].

But just as opening oneself up [Sichoffenbaren] or closing oneself off is grounded in one's having Being-with-one-another as one's kind of Being at the time, and indeed is nothing else but this, even the explicit disclosure of the Other in solicitude grows only out of one's primarily Being with him in each case. Such a disclosure of the Other (which is indeed thematic, but not in the manner of theoretical psychology) easily becomes the phenomenon which proximally comes to view when one considers the theoretical problematic of understanding the 'psychical life of Others' ['"fremden Seelenlebens"']. In this phenomenally 'proximal' manner it thus presents a way of Being with one another understandingly; but at the same time it gets taken as that which, primordially and 'in the beginning', constitutes Being towards Others and makes it possible at all.

$^1$ 'Dieses Verstehen ist, wie Verstehen überhaupt, nicht eine aus Erkennen erwachsene Kenntnis, sondern eine ursprünglich existenziale Seinsart die Erkennen und Kenntnis allererst möglich macht'. While we have here translated 'Kenntnis' as 'acquaintance' and 'Erkennen' as 'knowledge about', these terms must not be understood in the special senses exploited by Lord Russell and C. L. Lewis. The 'acquaintance' here involved is of the kind which may be acquired whenever one is well informed about something, whether one has any direct contact with it or not.

$^2$ … bedarf das nächste und wesenhafte Sichkennen eines Sichkennenlernens.' 'Sichkennen' ['"knowing oneself"] is to be distinguished sharply from 'Selbstkerkenntnis' ['"knowledge of the Self"'], which will be discussed on H. 146. See our note 1, p. 186.

This phenomenon, which is none too happily designated as 'empathy' ["Einfühlung"], is then supposed, as it were, to provide the first ontological bridge from one's own subject, which is given proximally as alone, to the other subject, which is proximally quite closed off.

Of course Being towards Others is ontologically different from Being towards Things which are present-at-hand. The entity which is 'other' has itself the same kind of Being as Dasein. In Being with and towards Others, there is thus a relationship of Being [Seinsverhältnis] from Dasein to Dasein. But it might be said that this relationship is already constitutive for one's own Dasein, which, in its own right, has an understanding of Being, and which thus relates itself towards Dasein. The relationship-of-Being which one has towards Others would then become a Projection of one's own Being-towards-oneself 'into something else'. The Other would be a duplicate of the Self.

But while these deliberations seem obvious enough, it is easy to see that they have little ground to stand on. The presupposition which this argument demands—that Dasein's Being towards an Other is its Being towards itself—fails to hold. As long as the legitimacy of this presupposition has not turned out to be evident, one may still be puzzled as to how Dasein's relationship to itself is thus to be disclosed to the Other as Other.

Not only is Being towards Others an autonomous, irreducible relationship of Being: this relationship, as Being-with, is one which, with Dasein's Being, already is. Of course it is indisputable that a lively mutual acquaintanceship on the basis of Being-with, often depends upon how far one's own Dasein has understood itself at the time; but this means that it depends only upon how far one's essential Being with Others has made itself transparent and has not disguised itself. And that is possible only if Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already is with Others. 'Empathy' does not first constitute Being-with; only on the basis of Being-with does 'empathy' become possible: it gets its motivation from the unsociability of the dominant modes of Being-with.

1. '… sich … verhält …' We have often translated this expression as 'comports' itself, compromising between two other possible meanings: 'relates itself' and 'behaves or conducts itself'. In this passage, however, and in many others where this expression is tied up with 'Verhaltnis' ('relationship') rather than with 'Verhalten' ('behaviour or conduct'), only 'relates itself' seems appropriate.

2. 'Projektion'. Here we are dealing with 'projection' in the familiar psychological sense, not in the sense which would be expressed by 'Entwurf'. See H. 145 ff.

3. 'Das Sein zu Anderen ist nicht nur ein eigenständiger, irreduktibler Seinsbezug, er ist als Mitsein mit dem Sein des Daseins schon seind.

4. '… wie weit es das wesenhafte Mitsein mit anderen sich durchsichtig gemacht und nicht verstellt hat …' (The older editions have '… sich nicht undurchsichtig gemacht und verstellt hat …')

5. "'Einfühlung" konstituiert nicht erst das Mitsein, sondern ist auf dessen Grunde erst möglich und durch die vorherrschenden defizienten Modi des Mitseins in ihrer Unumgänglichkeit motiviert.'

But the fact that 'empathy' is not a primordial existential phenomenon, any more than is knowing in general, does not mean that there is nothing problematical about it. The special hermeneutic of empathy will have to show how Being-with-one-another and Dasein's knowing of itself are led astray and obstructed by the various possibilities of Being which Dasein itself possesses, so that a genuine 'understanding' gets suppressed, and Dasein takes refuge in substitutes; the possibility of understanding the stranger correctly presupposes such a hermeneutic as its positive existential condition. Our analysis has shown that Being-with is an existential constituent of Being-in-the-world. Dasein-with has proved to be a kind of Being which entities encountered within-the-world have as their own. So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being. This cannot be conceived as a summative result of the occurrence of several 'subjects'. Even to come across a number of 'subjects' [einer Anzahl von "Subjekten"] becomes possible only if the Others who are concerned proximally in their Dasein-with are treated merely as 'numerals' ['Nummer']. Such a number of 'subjects' gets discovered only by a definite Being-with-and-towards-one-another. This 'inconsiderate' Being-with 'reckons' ['rechnet'] with the Others without seriously 'counting on them' ['auf sie zählt'], or without even wanting to 'have anything to do' with them.

One's own Dasein, like the Dasein-with of Others, is encountered proximally and for the most part in terms of thewith-world with which we are environmentally concerned. When Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern—that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards Others—it is not itself. Who is it, then, who has taken over Being as everyday Being-with-one-another?

27. Everyday Being-one's-Self and the "They"

The ontologically relevant result of our analysis of Being-with is the insight that the 'subject character' of one's own Dasein and that of Others is to be defined existentially—that is, in terms of certain ways in which one may be. In that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the Others are encountered as what they are; they are what they do [sie sind das, was sie betreiben].

In one's concern with what one has taken hold of, whether with, for, or against, the Others, there is constant care as to the way one differs from them, whether that difference is merely one that is to be evened out, whether one's own Dasein has lagged behind the Others and wants to

1. … welche positive existenziale Bedingung rechtes Fremdverstehen für seine Möglichkeit voraussetzt. We have construed 'welche' as referring back to 'Hermeneutik', though this is not entirely clear.

catch up in relationship to them, or whether one's Dasein already has some priority over them and sets out to keep them suppressed. The care about this distance between them is disturbing to Being-with-one-another, though this disturbance is one that is hidden from it. If we may express this existentially, such Being-with-one-another has the character of distantiality [Abständigkeit]. The more inconspicuous this kind of Being is to everyday Dasein itself, all the more stubbornly and primordially does it work itself out.

But this distantiality which belongs to Being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection [Botmässigkeit] to Others. It itself is not; its Being has been taken away by the Others. Dasein's everyday possibilities of Being are for the Others to dispose of as they please. These Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent them. What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by Others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with. One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their power. 'The Others' whom one thus designates in order to cover up the fact of one's belonging to them essentially oneself, are those who proximally and for the most part 'are there' in everyday Being-with-one-another. The "who" is not this one, not that one, not oneself [man selbst], not some people [einige], and not the sum of them all. The 'who' is the neuter, the "they" [das Man].

We have shown earlier how in the environment which lies closest to us, the public 'environment' already is ready-to-hand and is also a matter of concern [mitbesorgt]. In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others', in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the "they" is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as they shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The "they", which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness.

The "they" has its own ways in which to be. That tendency of Being-with which we have called "distantiality" is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the "they". The "they", in its Being,

1 'Nicht es selbst ist; . .'

essentially makes an issue of this. Thus the "they" maintains itself factically in the averageness of that which belongs to it, of that which it regards as valid and that which it does not, and of that to which it grants success and that to which it denies it. In this averageness with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, it keeps watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force. This care of averageness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the "levelling down" [Einebnung] of all possibilities of Being.

Distantiality, averageness, and levelling down, as ways of Being for the "they", constitute what we know as 'publicness' ["die Offentlichkeit"]. Publicness proximally controls every way in which the world and Dasein get interpreted, and it is always right—not because there is some distinctive and primary relationship-of-Being in which it is related to 'Things', or because it avails itself of some transparency on the part of Dasein which it has explicitly appropriated, but because it is insensitive to every difference of level and of genuineness and thus never gets to the 'heart of the matter' ["auf die Sachen"]. By publicness everything gets obscured, and what has thus been covered up gets passed off as something familiar and accessible to everyone.

The "they" is there alongside everywhere [ist überall dabei], but in such a manner that it has always stolen away whenever Dasein presses for a decision. Yet because the "they" presents every judgment and decision as its own, it deprives the particular Dasein of its answerability. The "they" can, as it were, manage to have 'them' constantly invoking it. It can be answerable for everything most easily, because it is not someone who needs to vouch for anything. It 'was' always the "they" who did it, and yet it can be said that it has been 'no one'. In Dasein's everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say that "it was no one".

Thus the particular Dasein in its everydayness is disburdened by the "they". Not only that; by thus disburding it of its Being, the "they" accommodates Dasein [kommt … dem Dasein entgegen] if Dasein has any tendency to take things easily and make them easy. And because the "they" constantly accommodates the particular Dasein by disburding it of its Being, the "they" retains and enhances its stubborn dominion.

Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The "they", which supplies

1 "Das Man kann es sich gleichsam leisten, dass 'man' sich ständig auf es beruft."

the answer to the question of the "who" of everyday Dasein, is the "nobody" to whom every Dasein has already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-other [Untereinandersein].

In these characters of Being which we have exhibited—everyday Being-among-one-another, distantiality, averageness, levelling down, publicness, the disburdening of one's Being, and accommodation—lies that 'constancy' of Dasein which is closest to us. This "constancy" pertains not to the enduring Being-present-at-hand of something, but rather to Dasein's kind of Being as Being-with. Neither the Self of one's own Dasein nor the Self of the Other has as yet found itself or lost itself as long as it is [seiend] in the modes we have mentioned. In these modes one's way of Being is that of inauthenticity and failure to stand by one's Self.$^1$ To be in this way signifies no lessening of Dasein's facticity, just as the "they", as the "nobody", is by no means nothing at all. On the contrary, in this kind of Being, Dasein is an ens realissimum, if by 'Reality' we understand a Being with the character of Dasein.

Of course, the "they" is as little present-at-hand as Dasein itself. The more openly the "they" behaves, the harder it is to grasp, and the slier it is, but the less is it nothing at all. If we 'see' it ontico-ontologically with an unprejudiced eye, it reveals itself as the 'Realest subject' of everydayness. And even if it is not accessible like a stone that is present-at-hand, this is not in the least decisive as to its kind of Being. One may neither decree prematurely that this "they" is 'really' nothing, nor profess the opinion that one can Interpret this phenomenon ontologically by somehow 'explaining' it as what results from taking the Being-present-at-hand-together of several subjects and then fitting them together. On the contrary, in working out concepts of Being one must direct one's course by these phenomena, which cannot be pushed aside.

Furthermore, the "they" is not something like a 'universalsubject' which a plurality of subjects have hovering above them. One can come to take it this way only if the Being of such 'subjects' is understood as having a character other than that of Dasein, and if these are regarded as cases of a genus of occurrents—cases which are factually present-at-hand. With this approach, the only possibility ontologically is that everything which is not a case of this sort is to be understood in the sense of genus and species.

The "they" is not the genus to which the individual Dasein belongs, nor can we come across it in such entities as an abiding characteristic. That even the traditional logic fails us when confronted with these phenomena, is not surprising if we bear in mind that it has its foundation in an

$^1$ 'Man ist in der Weise der Unselbständigkeit und Uneigentlichkeit.' On 'Ständigkeit' and 'Unselbständigkeit' see our note 1, p. 153, H. 117 above.

ontology of the present-at-hand—an ontology which, moreover, is still a rough one. So no matter in how many ways this logic may be improved and expanded, it cannot in principle be made any more flexible. Such reforms of logic, oriented towards the 'humane sciences', only increase the ontological confusion.

The "they" is an existentiale; and as a primordial phenomenon, it belongs to Dasein's positive constitution. It itself has, in turn, various possibilities of becoming concrete as something characteristic of Dasein [seiner daseinsmässigen Konkretion]. The extent to which its dominion becomes compelling and explicit may change in the course of history.

The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self,$^1$ which we distinguish from the authentic Self—that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way [eigens ergriffenen]. As they-self, the particular Dasein has been dispersed into the "they", and must first find itself. This dispersal characterizes the 'subject' of that kind of Being which we know as concernful absorption in the world we encounter as closest to us. If Dasein is familiar with itself as they-self, this means at the same time that the "they" itself prescribes that way of interpreting the world and Being-in-the-world which lies closest. Dasein is for the sake of the "they" in an everyday manner, and the "they" itself Articulates the referential context of significance.$^2$ When entities are encountered, Dasein's world frees them for a totality of involvements with which the "they" is familiar, and within the limits which have been established with the "they's" averageness. Proximally, factical Dasein is in the with-world, which is discovered in an average way. Proximally, it is not 'I', in the sense of my own Self, that 'am', but rather the Others, whoseway is that of the "they".$^3$ In terms of the "they", and as the "they", I am 'given' proximally to 'myself' [mir "selbst"].

Proximally Dasein is "they", and for the most part it remains so. If Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the 'world' and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of the disguises with which Dasein bars its own way.

With this Interpretation of Being-with and Being-one's-Self in the

$^1$ '… das Man-selbst …' This expression is also to be distinguished from 'das Man selbst' ('the "they" itself'), which appears elsewhere in this paragraph. In the first of these expressions 'selbst' appears as a substantive, in the second as a mere intensive.

$^2$ 'Das Man selbst, worum-willen das Dasein alltäglich ist, artikuliert den Verweisungszusammenhang der Bedeutsamkeit.' It is also possible to construe 'alltäglich' as a predicate adjective after 'ist'; in that case we should read: 'Dasein is everyday for the sake of the "they"';

$^3$ 'Zunächst "bin" nicht "ich" im Sinne des eigenen Selbst, sondern die Anderen in der Weise des Man.' In the earlier editions there are commas after '“ich”' and 'Anderen', which would suggest a somewhat different interpretation.

"they", the question of the "who" of the everydayness of Being-with-one-another is answered. These considerations have at the same time brought us a concrete understanding of the basic constitution of Dasein: Being-in-the-world, in its everydayness and its averageness, has become visible.

From the kind of Being which belongs to the "they"—the kind which is closest—everyday Dasein draws its pre-ontological way of interpreting its Being. In the first instance ontological Interpretation follows the tendency to interpret it this way: it understands Dasein in terms of the world and comes across it as an entity within-the-world. But that is not all: even that meaning of Being on the basis of which these 'subject' entities [diese seienden "Subjekte"] get understood, is one which that ontology of Dasein which is 'closest' to us lets itself present in terms of the 'world'. But because the phenomenon of the world itself gets passed over in this absorption in the world, its place gets taken [tritt an seine Stelle] by what is present-at-hand within-the-world, namely, Things. The Being of those entities which are there with us, gets conceived as presence-at-hand. Thus by exhibiting the positive phenomenon of the closest everyday Being-in-the-world, we have made it possible to get an insight into the reason why an ontological Interpretation of this state of Being has been missing. This very state of Being, in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself and covers itself up.

If the Being of everyday Being-with-one-another is already different in principle from pure presence-at-hand—in spite of the fact that it is seemingly close to it ontologically—still less can the Being of the authentic Self be conceived as presence-at-hand. Authentic Being-one's-Self does not rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached from the "they"; it is rather an existentiell modification of the "they"—of the "they" as an essential existentiale.

But in that case there is ontologically a gap separating the selfsameness of the authentically existing Self from the identity of that "I" which maintains itself throughout its manifold Experiences.

1 We interpret Heidegger's pronoun 'Sie' as referring to 'Seinsverfassung' ('state of Being'); but there are other words in the previous sentence to which it might refer with just as much grammatical plausibility, particularly 'Interpretation'.

28. The Task of a Thematic Analysis of Being-in

In the preparatory stage of the existential analytic of Dasein, we have for our leading theme this entity's basic state, Being-in-the-World. Our first aim is to bring into relief phenomenally the unitary primordial structure of Dasein's Being, in terms of which its possibilities and the ways for it 'to be' are ontologically determined. Up till now, our phenomenal characterization of Being-in-the-world has been directed towards the world, as a structural item of Being-in-the-world, and has attempted to provide an answer to the question about the "who" of this entity in its everydayness. But even in first marking out the tasks of a preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein, we have already provided an advance orientation as to Being-in as such,$^1$ and have illustrated it in the concrete mode of knowing the world.$^{11}$

The fact that we foresaw this structural item which carries so much weight, arose from our aim of setting the analysis of single items, from the outset, within the frame of a steady preliminary view of the structural whole, and of guarding against any disruption or fragmentation of the unitary phenomenon. Now, keeping in mind what has been achieved in the concrete analysis of the world and the "who", we must turn our Interpretation back to the phenomenon of Being-in. By considering this more penetratingly, however, we shall not only get a new and surer phenomenological view of the structural totality of Being-in-the-world, but shall also pave the way to grasping the primordial Being of Dasein itself—namely, care.

But what more is there to point out in Being-in-the-world, beyond the essential relations of Being alongside the world (concern), Being-with (solicitude), and Being-one's-Self ("who")? If need be, there still remains the possibility of broadening out the analysis by characterizing comparatively the variations of concern and its circumspection, of solicitude and the considerateness which goes with it; there is also the possibility of contrasting Dasein with entities whose character is not that of Dasein by a more precise explication of the Being of all possible entities within-the-

world. Without question, there are unfinished tasks still lying in this field. What we have hitherto set forth needs to be rounded out in many ways by working out fully the existential a priori of philosophical anthropology and taking a look at it. But this is not the aim of our investigation. Its aim is one of fundamental ontology. Consequently, if we inquire about Being-in as our theme, we cannot indeed consent to nullify the primordial character of this phenomenon by deriving it from others—that is to say, by an inappropriate analysis, in the sense of a dissolving or breaking up. But the fact that something primordial is underivable does not rule out the possibility that a multiplicity of characteristics of Being may be constitutive for it. If these show themselves, then existentially they are equiprimordial. The phenomenon of the equiprimordiality of constitutive items has often been disregarded in ontology, because of a methodologically unrestrained tendency to derive everything and anything from some simple 'primal ground'.

In which direction must we look, if we are to characterize Being-in, as such, phenomenally? We get the answer to this question by recalling what we were charged with keeping phenomenologically in view when we called attention to this phenomenon: Being-in is distinct from the present-at-hand insideness of something present-at-hand 'in' something else that is present-at-hand; Being-in is not a characteristic that is effected, or even just elicited, in a present-at-hand subject by the 'world's' Being-present-at-hand; Being-in is rather an essential kind of Being of this entity itself. But in that case, what else is presented with this phenomenon than the commercium which is present-at-hand between a subject present-at-hand and an Object present-at-hand? Such an interpretation would come closer to the phenomenal content if we were to say that Dasein is the Being of this 'between'. Yet to take our orientation from this 'between' would still be misleading. For with such an orientation we would also be covertly assuming the entities between which this "between", as such, 'is', and we would be doing so in a way which is ontologically vague. The "between" is already conceived as the result of the convenientia of two things that are present-at-hand. But to assume these beforehand always splits the phenomenon asunder, and there is no prospect of putting it together again from the fragments. Not only do we lack the 'cement'; even the 'schema' in accordance with which this joining-together is to be accomplished, has been split asunder, or never as yet unveiled. What is decisive for ontology is to prevent the splitting of the phenomenon—in other words, to hold its positive phenomenal content secure. To say that for this we need far-reaching and detailed study, is simply to express the fact that something which was ontically self-evident in the traditional way of treating the

'problem of knowledge' has often been ontologically disguised to the point where it has been lost sight of altogether.

The entity which is essentially constituted by Being-in-the-world is itself in every case its 'there'. According to the familiar signification of the word, the 'there' points to a 'here' and a 'yonder'. There 'here' of an 'I-here' is always understood in relation to a 'yonder' ready-to-hand, in the sense of a Being towards this 'yonder'—a Being which is de-severant, directional, and concernful. Dasein's existential spatiality, which thus determines its 'location', is itself grounded in Being-in-the-world. The "yonder" belongs definitely to something encountered within-the-world. 'Here' and 'yonder' are possible only in a 'there'—that is to say, only if there is an entity which has made a disclosure of spatiality as the Being of the 'there'. This entity carries in its ownmost Being the character of not being closed off. In the expression 'there' we have in view this essential disclosedness. By reason of this disclosedness, this entity (Dasein), together with the Being-there¹ of the world, is 'there' for itself.

When we talk in an ontically figurative way of the lumen naturale in man, we have in mind nothing other than the existential-ontological structure of this entity, that it is in such a way as to be its "there". To say that it is 'illuminated' ["erleuchtet"] means that as Being-in-the-world it is cleared [gelichtet] in itself, not through any other entity, but in such a way that it is itself the clearing.² Only for an entity which is existentially cleared in this way does that which is present-at-hand become accessible in the light or hidden in the dark. By its very nature, Dasein brings its "there" along with it. If it lacks its "there", it is not factically the entity which is essentially Dasein; indeed, it is not this entity at all. Dasein is its disclosedness.

We are to set forth the Constitution of this Being. But in so far as the essence of this entity is existence, the existential proposition, 'Dasein is its disclosedness', means at the same time that the Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being is to be its "there". In addition to characterizing the primary Constitution of the Being of disclosedness, we will require, in conformity with the course of the analysis, an Interpretation of the kind of Being in which this entity is its "there" in an everyday manner.

This chapter, in which we shall undertake the explication of Being-in as such (that is to say, of the Being of the "there"), breaks up into two parts: A. the existential Constitution of the "there"; B. the everyday Being of the "there", and the falling of Dasein.

In understanding and state-of-mind, we shall see the two constitutive ways

¹ 'Da-sein'. See our note 1, p. 27, H. 7 above. ² 'Lichtung'. This word is customarily used to stand for a 'clearing' in the woods, not for a 'clarification'; the verb 'lichten' is similarly used. The force of this passage lies in the fact that these words are cognates of the noun 'Licht' ('light').

of being the “there”; and these are equiprimordial. If these are to be analysed, some phenomenal confirmation is necessary; in both cases this will be attained by Interpreting some concrete mode which is important for the subsequent problematic. State-of-mind and understanding are characterized equiprimordially by discourse.

Under A (the existential Constitution of the “there”) we shall accordingly treat: Being-there as state-of-mind (Section 29); fear as a mode of state-of-mind (Section 30); Being-there as understanding (Section 31); understanding and interpretation (Section 32); assertion as a derivative mode of interpretation (Section 33); Being-there, discourse, and language (Section 34).

The analysis of the characteristics of the Being of Being-there is an existential one. This means that the characteristics are not properties of something present-at-hand, but essentially existential ways to be. We must therefore set forth their kind of Being in everydayness.

Under B (the everyday Being of the “there”; and the falling of Dasein) we shall analyse idle talk (Section 35), curiosity (Section 36), and ambiguity (Section 37) as existential modes of the everyday Being of the “there”；we shall analyse them as corresponding respectively to the constitutive phenomenon of discourse, the sight which lies in understanding, and the interpretation (or explaining [Deutung]) which belongs to understanding. In these phenomenal modes a basic kind of Being of the “there” will become visible—a kind of Being which we Interpret as falling; and this ‘falling’ shows a movement [Bewegtheit] which is existentially its own.$^1$

A. The Existential Constitution of the “There”

29. Being there as State-of-mind

What we indicate ontologically by the term “state-of-mind”$^2$ is ontically the most familiar and everyday sort of thing; our mood, our Being-attuned.$^3$ Prior to all psychology of moods, a field which in any case still

$^1$ While we shall ordinarily reserve the word ‘falling’ for ‘Verfallen’ (see our note 2, p. 42, H. 21 above), in this sentence it represents first ‘Verfallen’ and then ‘Fallen’, the usual German word for ‘falling’. ‘Fallen’ and ‘Verfallen’ are by no means strictly synonymous; the latter generally has the further connotation of ‘decay’ or ‘deterioration’, though Heidegger will take pains to point out that in his own usage it ‘does not express any negative evaluation’. See Section 98 below.

$^2$ ‘Befindlichkeit’. More literally: ‘the state in which one may be found’. (The common German expression ‘Wie befinden Sie sich’ means simply ‘How are you?’ or ‘How are you feeling?’) Our translation, ‘state-of-mind’, comes fairly close to what is meant; but it should be made clear that the ‘of-minded’ belongs to English idiom, has no literal counterpart in the structure of the German word, and fails to bring out the important connotation of finding oneself.

$^3$ … die Stimmung, das Gestimmtsein. The noun ‘Stimmung’ originally means the tuning of a musical instrument, but it has taken on several other meanings and is the usual word for one’s mood or humour. We shall usually translate it as ‘mood’, and we shall generally translate both ‘Gestimmtsein’ and ‘Gestimmtheit’ as ‘having a mood’, though sometimes, as in the present sentence, we prefer to call attention to the root metaphor of ‘Gestimmtsein’ by writing ‘Being-attuned’, etc.

lies fallow, it is necessary to see this phenomenon as a fundamental existential, and to outline its structure.

Both the undisturbed equanimity and the inhibited ill-humour of our everyday concern, the way we slip over from one to the other, or slip off into bad moods, are by no means nothing ontologically, even if these phenomena are left unheeded as supposedly the most indifferent and fleeting in Dasein. The fact that moods can deteriorate [verdorben werden] and change over means simply that in every case Dasein always has some mood [gestimmt ist]. The pallid, evenly balanced lack of mood [Ungestimmtheit], which is often persistent and which is not to be mistaken for a bad mood, is far from nothing at all. Rather, it is in this that Dasein becomes satiated with itself. Being has become manifest as a burden. Why that should be, one does not know. And Dasein cannot know anything of the sort because the possibilities of disclosure which belong to cognition reach far too short a way compared with the primordial disclosure belonging to moods, in which Dasein is brought before its Being as "there". Furthermore, a mood of elation can alleviate the manifest burden of Being; that such a mood is possible also discloses the burdensome character of Dasein, even while it alleviates the burden. A mood makes manifest 'how one is, and how one is faring' ['wie einem ist und wird']. In this 'how one is', having a mood brings Being to its "there".

In having a mood, Dasein is always disclosed moodwise as that entity to which it has been delivered over in its Being; and in this way it has been delivered over to the Being which, in existing, it has to be. "To be disclosed" does not mean "to be known as this sort of thing". And even in the most indifferent and inoffensive everydayness the Being of Dasein can burst forth as a naked 'that it is and has to be' [als nacktes "Dass es ist und zu sein hat"]. The pure 'that it is' shows itself, but the "whence" and the "whither" remain in darkness. The fact that it is just as everyday a matter for Dasein not to 'give in' ['nachgibt'] to such moods—in other words, not to follow up [nachgeht] their disclosure and allow itself to be brought before that which is disclosed—is no evidence against the phenomenal facts of the case, in which the Being of the "there" is disclosed moodwise in its "that-it-is"; it is rather evidence for it. In an

1 In this sentence 'equanimity' represents 'Gleichmut', 'ill-humour' represents 'Miss-mut', and 'bad moods' represents 'Verstimmungen'. 2 . . den phänomenalen Tatbestand der stimmungsmässigen Erschlossenheit des Seins des Da in seinem Dass … It would be more literal to write simply 'in its "that"'; but to avoid a very natural confusion between the conjunction 'that' and pronoun 'that', we shall translate 'das Dass' as 'the "that-it-is"', even though we use the same expression unphyphenated for 'das "Dass es ist"' in this paragraph and in that which follows. (The striking contrast between the 'Da' and the 'Dass' is of course lost in translation.)

ontico-existentiell sense, Dasein for the most part evades the Being which is disclosed in the mood. In an ontologico-existential sense, this means that even in that to which such a mood pays no attention, Dasein is unveiled in its Being-delivered-over to the "there". In the evasion itself the "there" is something disclosed.

This characteristic of Dasein's Being—this 'that it is'—is veiled in its "whence" and "whither", yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we call it the "thrownness"¹ of this entity into its "there"; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the "there". The expression "thrownness" is meant to suggest the facticity of its being delivered over.² The 'that it is and has to be' which is disclosed in Dasein's state-of-mind is not the same 'that-it-is' which expresses ontologico-categorially the factuality belonging to presence-at-hand. This factuality becomes accessible only if we ascertain it by looking at it. The "that-it-is" which is disclosed in Dasein's state-of-mind must rather be conceived as an existential attribute of the entity which has Being-in-the-world as its way of Being. Facticity is not the factuality of the factum brutum of something present-at-hand, but a characteristic of Dasein's Being—one which has been taken up into existence, even if proximally it has been thrust aside. The "that-it-is" of facticity never becomes something that we can come across by beholding it.

An entity of the character of Dasein is its "there" in such a way that, whether explicitly or not, it finds itself [sich befindet] in its thrownness. In a state-of-mind Dasein is always brought before itself, and has always found itself, not in the sense of coming across itself by perceiving itself, but in the sense of finding itself in the mood that it has.³ As an entity which has been delivered over to its Being, it remains also delivered over to the fact that it must always have found itself—but found itself in a way of finding which arises not so much from a direct seeking as rather from a fleeing. The way in which the mood discloses is not one in which we look at thrownness, but one in which we turn towards or turn away [An-und Abkehr]. For the most part the mood does not turn towards the burdensome character of Dasein which is manifest in it, and least of all does it do so in the mood of elation when this burden has been alleviated. It is always by way of a state-of-mind that this turning-away is what it is.

¹ 'Geworfenheit'. This important term, which Heidegger introduces here, is further discussed in Section 38. ² 'Der Ausdruck Geworfenheit soll die Faktizität der Überantwortung aneuten.' On the distinction between 'facticity' and 'factuality', see H. 56 above. ³ In this sentence there is a contrast between 'wahrnehmendes Sich-vorfinden' ('coming across itself by perceiving') and 'gestimmtes Sichbefinden' ('finding itself in the mood that it has'). In the next sentence, on the other hand, 'found' and 'finding' represent 'gefunden' and 'Finden'.

Phenomenally, we would wholly fail to recognize both what mood discloses and how it discloses, if that which is disclosed were to be compared with what Dasein is acquainted with, knows, and believes 'at the same time' when it has such a mood. Even if Dasein is 'assured' in its belief about its 'whither', or if, in rational enlightenment, it supposes itself to know about its "whence", all this counts for nothing as against the phenomenal facts of the case: for the mood brings Dasein before the "that-it-is" of its "there", which, as such, stares it in the face with the inexorability of an enigma. From the existential-ontological point of view, there is not the slightest justification for minimizing what is 'evident' in states-of-mind, by measuring it against the apodictic certainty of a theoretical cognition of something which is purely present-at-hand. However the phenomena are no less falsified when they are banished to the sanctuary of the irrational. When irrationalism, as the counterplay of rationalism, talks about the things to which rationalism is blind, it does so only with a squint.

Factically, Dasein can, should, and must, through knowledge and will, become master of its moods; in certain possible ways of existing, this may signify a priority of volition and cognition. Only we must not be misled by this into denying that ontologically mood is a primordial kind of Being for Dasein, in which Dasein is disclosed to itself prior to all cognition and volition, and beyond their range of disclosure. And furthermore, when we master a mood, we do so by way of a counter-mood; we are never free of moods. Ontologically, we thus obtain as the first essential characteristic of states-of-mind that they disclose Dasein in its thrownness, and—proximally and for the most part—in the manner of an evasive turning-away.

From what has been said we can see already that a state-of-mind is very remote from anything like coming across a psychical condition by the kind of apprehending which first turns round and then back. Indeed it is so far from this, that only because the "there" has already been disclosed in a state-of-mind can immanent reflection come across 'Experiences' at all. The 'bare mood' discloses the "there" more primordially, but correspondingly it closes it off more stubbornly than any not-perceiving.

This is shown by bad moods. In these, Dasein becomes blind to itself, the environment with which it is concerned veils itself, the circumspection of concern gets led astray. States-of-mind are so far from being reflected upon, that precisely what they do is to assail Dasein in its unreflecting devotion to the 'world' with which it is concerned and on which it expends

1. . . so verschlägt das alles nichts gegen den phänomenalen Tatbestand, dass die Stimmung das Dasein vor das Dass seines Da bringt, als welches es ihm in unerbittlicher Rätselhaftigkeit entgegenstarrt.' The pronoun 'es' (the reference of which is not entirely unambiguous) appears only in the later editions.

itself. A mood assails us. It comes neither from 'outside' nor from 'inside', but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being. But with the negative distinction between state-of-mind and the reflective apprehending of something 'within', we have thus reached a positive insight into their character as disclosure. The mood has already disclosed, in every case, Being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself towards something. Having a mood is not related to the psychical in the first instance, and is not itself an inner condition which then reaches forth in an enigmatical way and puts its mark on Things and persons. It is in this that the second essential characteristic of states-of-mind shows itself. We have seen that the world, Dasein-with, and existence are equiprimordially disclosed; and state-of-mind is a basic existential species of their disclosedness, because this disclosedness itself is essentially Being-in-the-world.

Besides these two essential characteristics of states-of-mind which have been explained—the disclosing of thrownness and the current disclosing of Being-in-the-world as a whole—we have to notice a third, which contributes above all towards a more penetrating understanding of the worldhood of the world. As we have said earlier, the world which has already been disclosed beforehand permits what is within-the-world to be encountered. This prior disclosedness of the world belongs to Being-in and is partly constituted by one's state-of-mind. Letting something be encountered is primarily circumspective; it is not just sensing something, or staring at it. It implies circumspective concern, and has the character of becoming affected in some way [Betroffenwerdens]; we can see this more precisely from the standpoint of state-of-mind. But to be affected by the unserviceable, resistant, or threatening character [Bedrohllichkeit] of that which is ready-to-hand, becomes ontologically possible only in so far as Being-in as such has been determined existentially beforehand in such a manner that what it encounters within-the-world can "matter" to it in this way. The fact that this sort of thing can "matter" to it is grounded in one's state-of-mind; and as a state-of-mind it has already disclosed the world—as something by which it can be threatened, for instance.

Only something which is in the state-of-mind of fearing (or fearlessness) can discover that what is environmentally ready-to-hand is threatening. Dasein's openness to the world is constituted existentially by the attunement of a state-of-mind.

And only because the 'senses' [die "Sinne"] belong ontologically to an

1. . . weil diese selbst wesenhaft In-der-Welt-sein ist.' It is not clear whether the antecedent of 'diese' is 'Existenz' ('existence') or 'Erschlossenheit' ('disclosedness').

2. 'Diese Angänglichkeit gründet in der Befindlichkeit, als welche sie die Welt zum Beispiel auf Bedrohbarkeit hin erschlossen hat.' The pronoun 'sie' appears only in the newer editions.

entity whose kind of Being is Being-in-the-world with a state-of mind, can they be 'touched' by anything or 'have a sense for' [“Sinn haben für”] something in such a way that what touches them shows itself in an affect. Under the strongest pressure and resistance, nothing like an affect would come about, and the resistance itself would remain essentially undiscovered, if Being-in-the-world, with its state-of-mind, had not already submitted itself [sich schon angewiesen] to having entities within-the-world "matter" to it in a way which its moods have outlined in advance. Existentially, a state-of-mind implies a disclosive submission to the world, out of which we can encounter something that matters to us. Indeed from the ontological point of view we must as a general principle leave the primary discovery of the world to 'bare mood'. Pure beholding, even if it were to penetrate to the innermost core of the Being of something present-at-hand, could never discover anything like that which is threatening.

The fact that, even though states-of-mind are primarily disclosive, everyday circumspection goes wrong and to a large extent succumbs to delusion because of them, is a μήν οἱ [non-being] when measured against the idea of knowing the 'world' absolutely. But if we make evaluations which are so unjustified ontologically, we shall completely fail to recognize the existentially positive character of the capacity for delusion. It is precisely when we see the 'world' unsteadily and fitfully in accordance with our moods, that the ready-to-hand shows itself in its specific worldhood, which is never the same from day to day. By looking at the world theoretically, we have already dimmed it down to the uniformity of what is purely present-at-hand, though admittedly this uniformity comprises a new abundance of things which can be discovered by simply characterizing them. Yet even the purest θεωρία [theory] has not left all moods behind it; even when we look theoretically at what is just present-at-hand, it does not show itself purely as it looks unless this θεωρία lets it come towards us in a tranquil tarrying alongside … , in βασιλῶν and διαγυμή. Any cognitive determining has its existential-ontological Constitution in the state-of-mind of Being-in-the-world; but pointing this out is not to be confused with attempting to surrender science ontically to 'feeling'.

1 'befindlichen In-der-Welt-sains'. In previous chapters we have usually translated 'befindlich' by such expressions as 'which is to be found', etc. See, for instance, H. 67, 70, 117 above, where this adjective is applied to a number of things which are hardly of the character of Dasein. In the present chapter, however, the word is tied up with the special sense of 'Befindlichkeit' as 'state-of-mind', and will be translated by expressions such as 'with a state-of-mind', 'having a state-of-mind', etc.

2 In this sentence Heidegger has been calling attention to two ways of using the word 'Sinn' which might well be expressed by the word 'sense' but hardly by the word 'meaning': (1) 'die Sinne' as 'the five senses' or the 'senses' one has when one is 'in one's senses'; (2) 'der Sinn' as the 'sense' one has for something—one's 'sense for clothes', one's 'sense of beauty', one's 'sense of the numinous', etc. Cf. the discussion of 'Sinn' on H. 151 f. below.

The different modes of state-of-mind and the ways in which they are interconnected in their foundations cannot be Interpreted within the problematic of the present investigation. The phenomena have long been well-known ontically under the terms "affects" and "feelings" and have always been under consideration in philosophy. It is not an accident that the earliest systematic Interpretation of affects that has come down to us is not treated in the framework of 'psychology'. Aristotle investigates the πῆδη [affects] in the second book of his Rhetoric. Contrary to the traditional orientation, according to which rhetoric is conceived as the kind of thing we 'learn in school', this work of Aristotle must be taken as the first systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of Being with one another. Publicness, as the kind of Being which belongs to the "they" (Cf. Section 27), not only has in general its own way of having a mood, but needs moods and 'makes' them for itself. It is into such a mood and out of such a mood that the orator speaks. He must understand the possibilities of moods in order to rouse them and guide them aright.

How the Interpretation of the affects was carried further in the Stoa, and how it was handed down to modern times through patristic and scholastic theology, is well known. What has escaped notice is that the basic ontological Interpretation of the affective life in general has been able to make scarcely one forward step worthy of mention since Aristotle. On the contrary, affects and feelings come under the theme of psychical phenomena, functioning as a third class of these, usually along with ideaation [Vorstellen] and volition. They sink to the level of accompanying phenomena.

It has been one of the merits of phenomenological research that it has again brought these phenomena more unrestrictedly into our sight. Not only that: Scheler, accepting the challenges of Augustine and Pascal, has guided the problematic to a consideration of how acts which 'represent' and acts which 'take an interest' are interconnected in their foundations. But even here the existential-ontological foundations of the phenomenon of the act in general are admittedly still obscure.

A state-of-mind not only discloses Dasein in its thrownness and its submission to that world which is already disclosed with its own Being; it is itself the existential kind of Being in which Dasein constantly surrenders itself to the 'world' and lets the 'world' "matter" to it in such a way that somehow Dasein evades its very self. The existential constitution of such evasion will become clear in the phenomenon of falling.

A state-of-mind is a basic existential way in which Dasein is its "there". It not only characterizes Dasein ontologically, but, because of what it discloses, it is at the same time methodologically significant in principle

for the existential analytic. Like any ontological Interpretation whatsoever, this analytic can only, so to speak, ‘listen in’ to some previously disclosed entity as regards its Being. And it will attach itself to Dasein’s distinctive and most far-reaching possibilities of disclosure, in order to get information about this entity from these. Phenomenological Interpretation must make it possible for Dasein itself to disclose things primordially; it must, as it were, let Dasein interpret itself. Such Interpretation takes part in this disclosure only in order to raise to a conceptual level the phenomenal content of what has been disclosed, and to do so existentially.

Later (Cf. Section 40) we shall provide an Interpretation of anxiety as such a basic state-of-mind of Dasein, and as one which is significant from the existential-ontological standpoint; with this in view, we shall now illustrate the phenomenon of state-of-mind even more concretely in its determinate mode of fear.

30. Fear as a Mode of State-of-Mind

There are three points of view from which the phenomenon of fear may be considered. We shall analyse: (1) that in the face of which we fear, (2) fearing, and (3) that about which we fear. These possible ways of looking at fear are not accidental; they belong together. With them the general structure of states-of-mind comes to the fore. We shall complete our analysis by alluding to the possible ways in which fear may be modified; each of these pertains to different items in the structure of fear.

That in the face of which we fear, the ‘fearsome’, is in every case something which we encounter within-the-world and which may have either readiness-to-hand, presence-at-hand, or Dasein-wit’ as its kind of Being. We are not going to make an ontical report on those entities which can often and for the most part be ‘fearsome’: we are to define the fearsome phenomenally in its fearsomeness. What do we encounter in fearing that belongs to the fearsome as such? That in the face of which we fear can be characterized as threatening. Here several points must be considered.

1. What we encounter has detrimentality as its kind of involvement. It shows itself within a context of involvements.
2. The target of this detrimentality is a definite range of what can be affected by it; thus the detrimentality is itself made definite, and comes from a definite region.
3. The region itself is well known as such, and so is that which is coming from it; but that which is coming from it has something ‘queer’ about it.
4. That which is detrimental, as something that threatens us, is not yet within

1 The earliest editions cite Section 39 rather than Section 40. This has been corrected in the list of errata.

2 Das Wow der Furcht, das Furchtbare …

3 ‘… mit dem es nicht “geheuer” ist.’

striking distance [in beherrschbarer Nähe], but it is coming close. In such a drawing-close, the detrimentality radiates out, and therein lies its threatening character. 5. This drawing-close is within what is close by. Indeed, something may be detrimental in the highest degree and may even be coming constantly closer; but if it is still far off, its fearsomeness remains veiled. If, however, that which is detrimental draws close and is close by, then it is threatening: it can reach us, and yet it may not. As it draws close, this 'it can, and yet in the end it may not' becomes aggravated. We say, "It is fearsome". 6. This implies that what is detrimental as coming-close close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away and pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it.

In fearing as such, what we have thus characterized as threatening is freed and allowed to matter to us. We do not first ascertain a future evil (malum futurum) and then fear it. But neither does fearing first take note of what is drawing close; it discovers it beforehand in its fearsomeness. And in fearing, fear can then look at the fearsome explicitly, and 'make it clear' to itself. Circumspection sees the fearsome because it has fear as its state-of-mind. Fearing, as a slumbering possibility of Being-in-the-world in a state-of-mind (we call this possibility 'fearfulness' ["Furchtsamkeit"]), has already disclosed the world, in that out of it something like the fearsome may come close. The potentiality for coming close is itself freed by the essential existential spatiality of Being-in-the-world.

That which fear fears about is that very entity which is afraid—Dasein.1 Only an entity for which in its Being this very Being is an issue, can be afraid. Fearing discloses this entity as endangered and abandoned to itself. Fear always reveals Dasein in the Being of its "there", even if it does so in varying degrees of explicitness. If we fear about our house and home, this cannot be cited as an instance contrary to the above definition of what we fear about; for as Being-in-the-world, Dasein is in every case concernful Being-alongside.2 Proximally and for the most part, Dasein is

1. Das Worum die Furcht aufchtet, ist das sich fürchtende Seiende selbst, das Dasein.' While it is convenient to translate 'das Worum der Furcht' as 'that which one fears about', this expression must be taken in a narrower sense than one would ordinarily expect in English. What Heidegger generally has in mind is rather the person on whose behalf or for whose sake one fears. (Cf. our remarks on 'um' in note 1, p. 93, H. 65, and note 2, p. 98, H. 69 above.) Thus 'furchten um' comes closer to the ordinary meaning of 'fear for' than it does to that of 'fear about'. We shall soon see, however, that Heidegger also uses the expression 'furchten fur', for which 'fear for' would seem to be the natural translation. Notice that what he then has in mind—namely, our fearing for Others—is only a special case of 'fearing for' in the ordinary English sense, and likewise only a special case of what we shall call 'fearing about' in this translation.

2. Sein bei.' Here our usual translation, 'Being-alongside', fails to bring out the connection. A German reader would recall at once that 'bei may mean, 'at the home of' like the French 'chez'. See our note 3, p. 80, H. 54 above.

in terms of what it is concerned with. When this is endangered, Being-alongside is threatened. Fear discloses Dasein predominantly in a privative way. It bewilders us and makes us 'lose our heads'. Fear closes off our endangered Being-in, and yet at the same time lets us see it, so that when the fear has subsided, Dasein must first find its way about again.

Whether privatively or positively, fearing about something, as being-afraid in the face of something, always discloses equiprimordially entities within-the-world and Being-in—the former as threatening and the latter as threatened. Fear is a mode of state-of-mind.

One can also fear about Others, and we then speak of "fearing for" them [Fürchten für sie]. This fearing for the Other does not take away his fear. Such a possibility has been ruled out already, because the Other, for whom we fear, need not fear at all on his part. It is precisely when the Other is not afraid and charges recklessly at what is threatening him that we fear most for him. Fearing-for is a way of having a co-state-of-mind with Others, but not necessarily a being-afraid-with or even a fearing-with-one-another.$^1$ One can "fear about" without "being-afraid". Yet when viewed more strictly, fearing-about is "being-afraid-for-oneself".$^2$ Here what one "is apprehensive about" is one's Being-with with the Other, who might be torn away from one.$^3$ That which is fearsome is not aimed directly at him who fears with someone else. Fearing-about knows that in a certain way it is unaffected, and yet it is co-affected in so far as the Dasein-with for which it fears is affected. Fearing-about is therefore not a weaker form of being-afraid. Here the issue is one of existential modes, not of degrees of 'feeling-tones'. Fearing-about does not lose its specific genuiness even if it is not 'really' afraid.

There can be variations in the constitutive items of the full phenomenon of fear. Accordingly, different possibilities of Being emerge in fearing. Bringing-close close by, belongs to the structure of the threatening as encounterable. If something threatening breaks in suddenly upon concernful Being-in-the-world (something threatening in its 'not right away, but any moment'), fear becomes alarm [Erschrecken]. So, in what is threatening we must distinguish between the closest way in which it brings itself close, and the manner in which this bringing-close gets encountered—its suddenness. That in the face of which we are alarmed is proximally something well known and familiar. But if, on the other hand,

$^1$ "Fürchten für … ist eine Weise der Mitbefindlichkeit mit den Anderen, aber nicht notwendig ein Sich-mitfurchten oder gar ein Miteinanderfurchten."

$^2$ "ein Sichfürchten". We have hitherto translated 'sich furchten' with various forms of 'be afraid', which is its usual signification in ordinary German. In this passage, however, the emphasis on the reflexive pronoun 'sich' clearly calls for 'being-afraid-for-oneself'.

$^3$ "Befürchtet" ist dabei das Mitsein mit dem Anderen, der einem entrissen werden könnte."

that which threatens has the character of something altogether unfamiliar, then fear becomes dread [Grauen]. And where that which threatens is laden with dread, and is at the same time encountered with the suddenness of the alarming, then fear becomes terror [Entsetzen]. There are further variations of fear, which we know as timidity, shyness, misgiving, becoming startled. All modifications of fear, as possibilities of having a state-of-mind, point to the fact that Dasein as Being-in-the-world is 'fearful' ["furchtsam"].

This 'fearfulness' is not to be understood in an ontical sense as some factual 'individualized' disposition, but as an existential possibility of the essential state-of-mind of Dasein in general, though of course it is not the only one.

31. Being-there as Understanding

State-of-mind is one of the existential structures in which the Being of the 'there' maintains itself. Equiprimordial with it in constituting this Being is understanding. A state-of-mind always has its understanding, even if it merely keeps it suppressed. Understanding always has its mood. If we Interpret understanding as a fundamental existential, this indicates that this phenomenon is conceived as a basic mode of Dasein's Being. On the other hand, 'understanding' in the sense of one possible kind of cognizing among others (as distinguished, for instance, from 'explaining'), must, like explaining, be Interpreted as an existential derivative of that primary understanding which is one of the constituents of the Being of the "there" in general.

We have, after all, already come up against this primordial understanding in our previous investigations, though we did not allow it to be included explicitly in the theme under discussion. To say that in existing, Dasein is its "there", is equivalent to saying that the world is 'there'; its Being-there is Being-in. And the latter is likewise 'there', as that for the sake of which Dasein is. In the "for-the-sake-of-which", existing Being-in-the-world is disclosed as such, and this disclosedness we have called "understanding". In the understanding of the "for-the-sake-of-which", the significance which is grounded therein, is disclosed along with it. The disclosedness of understanding, as the disclosedness of the "for-the-sake-of-which" and of significance equiprimordially, pertains to the entirety of Being-in-the-world. Significance is that on the basis of which the world is disclosed as such. To say that the "for-the-sake-of-which" and significance are both disclosed in Dasein, means that Dasein is that entity which, as Being-in-the-world, is an issue for itself.

1 '… im ontischen Sinne einer faktischen, "vereinzelten" Veranlagung …' While the verb 'vereinzeln' often means 'to isolate', Heidegger does not ordinarily use it in this sense. Indeed he contrasts it with the verb 'isolieren'. Cf. H. 188 below.

When we are talking ontically we sometimes use the expression 'understanding something' with the signification of 'being able to manage something', 'being a match for it', 'being competent to do something'. In understanding, as an existentiale, that which we have such competence over is not a "what", but Being as existing. The kind of Being which Dasein has, as potentiality-for-Being, lies existentially in understanding. Dasein is not something present-at-hand which possesses its competence for something by way of an extra; it is primarily Being-possible. Dasein is in every case what it can be, and in the way in which it is its possibility. The Being-possible which is essential for Dasein, pertains to the ways of its solicitude for Others and of its concern with the 'world', as we have characterized them; and in all these, and always, it pertains to Dasein's potentiality-for-Being towards itself, for the sake of itself. The Being-possible which Dasein is existentially in every case, is to be sharply distinguished both from empty logical possibility and from the contingency of something present-at-hand, so far as with the present-at-hand this or that can 'come to pass'. As a modal category of presence-at-hand, possibility signifies what is not yet actual and what is not at any time necessary. It characterizes the merely possible. Ontologically it is on a lower level than actuality and necessity. On the other hand, possibility as an existentiale is the most primordial and ultimate positive way in which Dasein is characterized ontologically. As with existentiality in general, we can, in the first instance, only prepare for the problem of possibility. The phenomenal basis for seeing it at all is provided by the understanding as a disclosive potentiality-for-Being.

Possibility, as an existentiale, does not signify a free-floating potentiality-for-Being in the sense of the 'liberty of indifference' (libertas indifferente). In every case Dasein, as essentially having a state-of-mind, has already got itself into definite possibilities. As the potentiality-for-Being which is is, it has let such possibilities pass by; it is constantly waiving the possibilities of its Being, or else it seizes upon them and makes mistakes. But this means that Dasein is Being-possible which has been delivered over to itself—thrown possibility through and through. Dasein is the possibility of Being-free for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. Its Being-possible is transparent to itself in different possible ways and degrees.

Understanding is the Being of such potentiality-for-Being, which is

1. . . in der Bedeutung von "einer Sache vorstehen können", "ihr gewachsen sein", "etwas können"? The expression 'vorstehen' ('to manage', 'to be in charge') is here connected with 'verstehen' ('to understand').

2. . . von der Kontingenz eines Vorhandenen, sofern mit diesem das und jenes "passieren" kann.

3. . . ergreift sie und vergreift sich.'

never something still outstanding as not yet present-at-hand, but which, as something which is essentially never present-at-hand, ‘is’ with the Being of Dasein, in the sense of existence. Dasein is such that in every case it has understood (or alternatively, not understood) that it is to be thus or thus. As such understanding it ‘knows’ what it is capable of—that is, what its potentiality-for-Being is capable of.$^1$ This ‘knowing’ does not first arise from an immanent self-perception, but belongs to the Being of the “there”, which is essentially understanding. And only because Dasein, in understanding, is its “there”, can it go astray and fail to recognize itself. And in so far as understanding is accompanied by state-of-mind and as such is existentially surrendered to thrownness, Dasein has in every case already gone astray and failed to recognize itself. In its potentiality-for-Being it is therefore delivered over to the possibility of first finding itself again in its possibilities.

Understanding is the existential Being of Dasein’s own potentiality-for-Being; and it is so in such a way that this Being discloses in itself what its Being is capable of.$^2$ We must grasp the structure of this existentiale more precisely.

As a disclosure, understanding always pertains to the whole basic state of Being-in-the-world. As a potentiality-for-Being, any Being-in is a potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Not only is the world, qua world, disclosed as possible significance, but when that which is within-the-world is itself freed, this entity is freed for its own possibilities. That which is ready-to-hand is discovered as such in its serviceability, its usability, and its detrimentality. The totality of involvements is revealed as the categorical whole of a possible interconnection of the ready-to-hand. But even the ‘unity’ of the manifold present-at-hand, of Nature, can be discovered only if a possibility of it has been disclosed. Is it accidental that the question about the Being of Nature aims at the ‘conditions of its possibility’? On what is such an inquiry based? When confronted with this inquiry, we cannot leave aside the question: why are entities which are not of the character of Dasein understood in their Being, if they are disclosed in accordance with the conditions of their possibility? Kant presupposes something of the sort, perhaps rightly. But this presupposition itself is something that cannot be left without demonstrating how it is justified.

Why does the understanding—whatever may be the essential dimensions of that which can be disclosed in it—always press forward into possibilities? It is because the understanding has in itself the existential

$^1$ ‘Als solches Verstehen “weiss” es, woran es mit ihm selbst, das heisst seinem Seinkönnen ist.’

$^2$ ‘… so zwar, dass dieses Sein an ihm selbst das Woran des mit ihm selbst Seins erschliesst.’

structure which we call "projection". With equal primordiality the understanding projects Dasein's Being both upon its "for-the-sake-of-which" and upon significance, as the worldhood of its current world. The character of understanding as projection is constitutive for Being-in-the-world with regard to the disclosedness of its existentially constitutive state-of-Being by which the factual potentiality-for-Being gets its leeway [Spielraum]. And as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call "projecting". Projecting has nothing to do with comporting oneself towards a plan that has been thought out, and in accordance with which Dasein arranges its Being. On the contrary, any Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself; and as long as it is, it is projecting. As long as it is, Dasein always has understood itself and always will understand itself in terms of possibilities. Furthermore, the character of understanding as projection is such that the understanding does not grasp thematically that upon which it projects—that is to say, possibilities. Grasping it in such a manner would take away from what is projected its very character as a possibility, and would reduce it to the given contents which we have in mind; whereas projection, in throwing, throws before itself the possibility as possibility, and lets it be as such. As projecting, understanding is the kind of Being of Dasein in which it is its possibilities as possibilities.

Because of the kind of Being which is constituted by the existentiale of projection, Dasein is constantly 'more' than it factually is, supposing that one might want to make an inventory of it as something-at-hand and list the contents of its Being, and supposing that one were able to do so. But Dasein is never more than it factically is, for to its facticity its potentiality-for-Being belongs essentially. Yet as Being-possible, moreover, Dasein is never anything less; that is to say, it is existentially that which, in its

1 'Entwurf'. The basic meaning of this noun and the cognate verb 'entwerfen' is that of 'throwing' something 'off' or 'away' from one; but in ordinary German usage, and often in Heidegger, they take on the sense of 'designing' or 'sketching' some 'project' which is to be carried through; and they may also be used in the more special sense of 'projection' in which a geometer is said to 'project' a curve 'upon' a plane. The words 'projection' and 'project' accordingly lend themselves rather well to translating these words in many contexts, especially since their root meanings are very similar to those of 'Entwurf' and 'entwerfen'; but while the root meaning of 'throwing off' is still very much alive in Heidegger's German, it has almost entirely died out in the ordinary English usage of 'projection' and 'project', which in turn have taken on some connotations not felt in the German. Thus when in the English translation Dasein is said to 'project' entities, or possibilities, or even its own Being 'upon' something, the reader should bear in mind that the root meaning of 'throwing' is more strongly felt in the German than in the translation.

2 . . zieht es herab zu einem gegebenen, gemeinten Bestand, während der Entwurf im Werfen die Möglichkeit als Möglichkeit sich vorwirft und als solche sein lässt.' The expression 'einem etwas vorwerfen' means literally to 'throw something forward to someone', but often has the connotation of 'reproaching him with something', or 'throwing something in his teeth'. Heidegger may have more than one of these significations in mind.

potentiality-for-Being, it is not yet. Only because the Being of the "there" receives its Constitution through understanding and through the character of understanding as projection, only because it is what it becomes (or alternatively, does not become), can it say to itself 'Become what you are', and say this with understanding.

Projection always pertains to the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world; as potentiality-for-Being, understanding has itself possibilities, which are sketched out beforehand within the range of what is essentially disclosable in it. Understanding can devote itself primarily to the disclosedness of the world; that is, Dasein can, proximally and for the most part, understand itself 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 authentic, arising out of one's own Self as such, or inauthentic. The 'in-' of "inauthentic" does not mean that Dasein cuts itself off from its Self and understands 'only' the world. The world belongs to Being-one's-Self as Being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic understanding, no less than that which is inauthentic, can be either genuine or not genuine. As potentiality-for-Being, understanding is altogether permeated with possibility. When one is diverted into [Sichverlegen in] one of these basic possibilities of understanding, the other is not laid aside [legt … nicht ab]. Because understanding, in every case, pertains rather to Dasein's full disclosedness as Being-in-the-world, this diversion of the understanding is an existential modification of projection as a whole. In understanding the world, Being-in is always understood along with it, while understanding of existence as such is always an understanding of the world.

As factical Dasein, any Dasein has already diverted its potentiality-for-Being into a possibility of understanding.

In its projective character, understanding goes to make up existentially what we call Dasein's "sight" [Sicht]. With the disclosedness of the "there", this sight is existentially [existenzial seinde]; and Dasein is this sight equiprimordially in each of those basic ways of its Being which we have already noted: as the circumspection [Umsicht] of concern, as the considerateness [Rücksicht] of solicitude, and as that sight which is directed upon Being as such [Sicht auf das Sein als solches], for the sake of which any Dasein is as it is. The sight which is related primarily and on the whole to existence we call "transparency" [Durchsichtigkeit]. We choose this term to designate 'knowledge of the Self' in a sense which is well understood,

1 "'Selfsterkennnis'" This should be carefully distinguished from the 'Sichkennenn' discussed on H. 124-125. Perhaps this distinction can be expressed—though rather crudely—by pointing out that we are here concerned with a full and sophisticated knowledge of the Self in all its implications, while in the earlier passage we were concerned with the kind of 'self-knowledge' which one loses when one 'forgets oneself' or does something so out of character that one 'no longer knows oneself'.

so as to indicate that here it is not a matter of perceptually tracking down and inspecting a point called the “Self”, but rather one of seizing upon the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world throughout all the constitutive items which are essential to it, and doing so with understanding. In existing, entities sight ‘themselves’ [sichtet “sich”] only in so far as they have become transparent to themselves with equal primordiality in those items which are constitutive for their existence: their Being-alongside the world and their Being-with Others.

On the other hand, Dasein's opaqueness [Undurchsichtigkeit] is not rooted primarily and solely in ‘egocentric’ self-deceptions; it is rooted just as much in lack of acquaintance with the world.

We must, to be sure, guard against a misunderstanding of the expression ‘sight’. It corresponds to the “clearedness” [Gelichtetheit] which we took as characterizing the disclosedness of the “there”. ‘Seeing’ does not mean just perceiving with the bodily eyes, but neither does it mean pure non-sensory awareness of something present-at-hand in its presence-at-hand. In giving an existential signification to “sight”, we have merely drawn upon the peculiar feature of seeing, that it lets entities which are accessible to it be encountered unconcealedly in themselves. Of course, every ‘sense’ does this within that domain of discovery which is genuinely its own. But from the beginning onwards the tradition of philosophy has been oriented primarily towards ‘seeing’ as a way of access to entities and to Being. To keep the connection with this tradition, we may formalize “sight” and “seeing” enough to obtain therewith a universal term for characterizing any access to entities or to Being, as access in general.

By showing how all sight is grounded primarily in understanding (the circumspection of concern is understanding as common sense [Verständigkeit]), we have deprived pure intuition [Anschauen] of its priority, which corresponds noctically to the priority of the present-at-hand in traditional ontology. ‘Intuition’ and ‘thinking’ are both derivatives of understanding, and already rather remote ones. Even the phenomenological ‘intuition of essences’ [“Wesenssschau”] is grounded in existential understanding. We can decide about this kind of seeing only if we have obtained explicit conceptions of Being and of the structure of Being, such as only phenomena in the phenomenological sense can become.

The disclosedness of the “there” in understanding is itself a way of Dasein's potentiality-for-Being. In the way in which its Being is projected both upon the “for-the-sake-of-which” and upon significance (the world), there lies the disclosedness of Being in general. Understanding of Being has already been taken for granted in projecting upon possibilities. In projection, Being is understood, though not ontologically conceived. An

entity whose kind of Being is the essential projection of Being-in-the-world has understanding of Being, and has this as constitutive for its Being. What was posited dogmatically at an earlier stage now gets exhibited in terms of the Constitution of the Being in which Dasein as understanding is its "there". The existential meaning of this understanding of Being cannot be satisfactorily clarified within the limits of this investigation except on the basis of the Temporal Interpretation of Being.

As existentialia, states-of-mind and understanding characterize the primordial disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. By way of having a mood, Dasein 'sees' possibilities, in terms of which it is. In the projective disclosure of such possibilities, it already has a mood in every case. The projection of its ownmost potentiality-for-Being has been delivered over to the Fact of its thrownness into the "there". Has not Dasein's Being become more enigmatical now that we have explicated the existential constitution of the Being of the "there" in the sense of thrown projection? It has indeed. We must first let the full enigmatic character of this Being emerge, even if all we can do is to come to a genuine breakdown over its 'solution', and to formulate anew the question about the Being of thrown projective Being-in-the-world.

But in the first instance, even if we are just to bring into view the everyday kind of Being in which there is understanding with a state-of-mind, and if we are to do so in a way which is phenomenally adequate to the full disclosedness of the "there", we must work out these existentialia concretely.¹

¶ 32. Understanding and Interpretation²

As understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities. This Being-towards-possibilities which understands is itself a potentiality-for-Being, and it is so because of the way these possibilities, as disclosed, exert their counter-thrust [Rückschlag] upon Dasein. The projecting of the understanding has its own possibility—that of developing itself [sich auszubilden]. This development of the understanding we call "interpretation".³ In it the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it. In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information about what is

¹ 'konkreten'. The earlier editions have 'konkreteren' ('more concretely').

² 'Auslegung'. See our note 3, p. 19, H. 1 above.

³ 'Auslegung'. The older editions have 'Auslegung'.

understood; it is rather the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding. In accordance with the trend of these preparatory analyses of everyday Dasein, we shall pursue the phenomenon of interpretation in understanding the world—that is, in inauthentic understanding, and indeed in the mode of its genuineness.

In terms of the significance which is disclosed in understanding the world, concernful Being-alongside the ready-to-hand gives itself to understand whatever involvement that which is encountered can have. To say that "circumspection discovers" means that the 'world' which has already been understood comes to be interpreted. The ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight which understands. All preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are accomplished in the following way: we take apart in its "in-order-to" that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and we concern ourselves with it in accordance with what becomes visible through this process. That which has been circumspectively taken apart with regard to its "in-order-to", and taken apart as such—that which is explicitly understood—has the structure of something as something. The circumspective question as to what this particular thing that is ready-to-hand may be, receives the circumspectively interpretative answer that it is for such and such a purpose [es ist zum …].

If we tell what it is for [des Wozu], we are not simply designating something; but that which is designated is understood as that as which we are to take the thing in question. That which is disclosed in understanding—that which is understood—is already accessible in such a way that its 'as which' can be made to stand out explicitly. The 'as' makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation. In dealing with what is environmentally ready-to-hand by interpreting it circumspectively, we 'see' it as a table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge; but what we have thus interpreted [Ausgelegte] need not necessarily be also taken apart [auseinander zu legen] by making an assertion which definitely characterizes it. Any mere pre-predicative seeing of the ready-to-hand is, in itself, something which already understands and interprets. But does not the absence of such an 'as' make up the mereness of any pure perception of something? Whenever we see with this kind of sight, we already do so understandingly and interpretatively. In the mere encountering of something, it is understood in terms of a totality of involvements; and such seeing hides in itself the explicitness of the assignment-relations (of the "in-order-to") which belong to that totality.

1 '… gibt sich … zu verstehen, welche Bewandtnis es je mit dem Begegnenden haben kann.'

2 'auseinandergelegt'. Heidegger is contrasting the verb 'auslegen' (literally, 'lay out') with the cognate 'auseinanderlegen' ('lay asunder' or 'take apart').

That which is understood gets Articulated when the entity to be understood is brought close interpretatively by taking as our clue the 'something as something'; and this Articulation lies before [liegt vor] our making any thematic assertion about it. In such an assertion the 'as' does not turn up for the first time; it just gets expressed for the first time, and this is possible only in that it lies before us as something expressible.$^1$ The fact that when we look at something, the explicitness of assertion can be absent, does not justify our denying that there is any Articulative interpretation in such mere seeing, and hence that there is any as-structure in it. When we have to do with anything, the mere seeing of the Things which are closest to us bears in itself the structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that just to grasp something free, as it were, of the 'as', requires a certain readjustment. When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more. This grasping which is free of the 'as', is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands. It is not more primordial than that kind of seeing, but is derived from it. If the 'as' is ontically unexpressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori.

But if we never perceive equipment that is ready-to-hand without already understanding and interpreting it, and if such perception lets us circumspectively encounter something as something, does this not mean that in the first instance we have experienced something purely present-at-hand, and then taken it as a door, as a house? This would be a misunderstanding of the specific way in which interpretation functions as disclosure. In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the

$^1$… was allein so möglich ist, dass es als Aussprechbares vor-liegt.$^2$ Here we follow the reading of the earlier editions. The hyphen in 'vor-liest' comes at the end of the line in the later editions, but is undoubtedly meant to suggest (like the italicization of the 'vor' in the previous sentence) that this verb is to be interpreted with unusual literalness.

This paragraph is noteworthy for an exploitation of the prefix 'aus' ('out'), which fails to show up in our translation. Literally an 'Aususage' ('assertion') is something which is said out; an 'Auslegung' ('interpretation') is a 'laying-out'; that which is 'ausdrücklich' ('explicit') is something that has been 'pressed out'; that which is 'aussprechbar' (our 'expressible') is something that can be 'spoken out'.

The verbs 'ausdrücken' and 'aussprechen' are roughly synonymous; but 'aussprechen' often has the more specific connotations of 'pronunciation', 'pronouncing oneself', 'speaking one's mind', 'finishing what one has to say', etc. While it would be possible to reserve 'express' for 'ausdrücken' and translate 'aussprechen' by some such phrase as 'speak out', it is more convenient to use 'express' for both verbs, especially since 'aussprechen' and its derivatives have occurred very seldom before the present chapter, in which 'ausdrücken' rarely appears. On the other hand, we can easily distinguish between the more frequent 'ausdrücklich' and 'ausgesprochen' by translating the latter as 'expressed' or 'expressly', and reserving 'explicit' for both 'ausdrücklich' and 'explizit'.

thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation.$^1$

The ready-to-hand is always understood in terms of a totality of involvements. This totality need not be grasped explicitly by a thematic interpretation. Even if it has undergone such an interpretation, it recedes into an understanding which does not stand out from the background. And this is the very mode in which it is the essential foundation for everyday circumspective interpretation. In every case this interpretation is grounded in something we have in advance—in a fore-having.$^2$ As the appropriation of understanding, the interpretation operates in Being towards a totality of involvements which is already understood—a Being which understands. When something is understood but is still veiled, it becomes unveiled by an act of appropriation, and this is always done under the guidance of a point of view, which fixes that with regard to which what is understood is to be interpreted. In every case interpretation is grounded in something we see in advance—in a fore-sight. This fore-sight 'takes the first cut' out of what has been taken into our fore-having, and it doesso with a view to a definite way in which this can be interpreted.$^3$ Anything understood which is held in our fore-having and towards which we set our sights 'foresightedly', becomes conceptualizable through the interpretation. In such an interpretation, the way in which the entity we are interpreting is to be conceived can be drawn from the entity itself, or the interpretation can force the entity into concepts to which it is opposed in its manner of Being. In either case, the interpretation has already decided for a definite way of conceiving it, either with finality or with reservations; it is grounded in something we grasp in advance—in a fore-conception.

Whenever something is interpreted as something, the interpretation will be founded essentially upon fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. An interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of

$^1$… die durch die Auslegung herausgelegt wird.$^2$ In this paragraph Heidegger introduces the important words 'Vorhabe', 'Vorsicht', and 'Vorgriff'. 'Vorhabe' is perhaps best translated by some such expression as 'what we have in advance' or 'what we have before us'; but we shall usually find it more convenient to adopt the shorter term 'fore-having', occasionally resorting to hendiadys, as in the present sentence, and we shall handle the other terms in the same manner. 'Vorsicht' ('what we see in advance' or 'fore-sight') is the only one of these expressions which occurs in ordinary German usage, and often has the connotation of 'caution' or 'prudence'; Heidegger, however, uses it in a more general sense somewhat more akin to the English 'foresight', without the connotation of a shrewd and accurate prediction. 'Vorgriff' ('what we grasp in advance' or 'fore-conception') is related to the verb 'vorgreifen' ('to anticipate') as well as to the noun "Begriff".$^3$ $^1$Die Auslegung grindet jeweils in einer Vorsicht, die das in Vorhabe Genommene auf eine bestimmte Auslegbarkeit hin "anschneedet". The idea seems to be that just as the person who cuts off the first slice of a loaf of bread gets the loaf 'started', the fore-sight makes a start on what we have in advance—the fore-having.

something presented to us. If, when one is engaged in a particular concrete kind of interpretation, in the sense of exact textual Interpretation, one likes to appeal [beruft] to what 'stands there', then one finds that what 'stands there' in the first instance is nothing other than the obvious undiscussed assumption [Vormeinung] of the person who does the interpreting. In an interpretative approach there lies such an assumption, as that which has been 'taken for granted' ["gesetzt"] with the interpretation as such—that is to say, as that which has been presented in our fore-having, our fore-sight, and our fore-conception.

How are we to conceive the character of this 'fore'? Have we done so if we say formally that this is something 'a priori'? Why does understanding, which we have designated as a fundamental existentiale of Dasein, have this structure as its own? Anything interpreted, as something interpreted, has the 'as'-structure as its own; and how is this related to the 'fore' structure? The phenomenon of the 'as'-structure is manifestly not to be dissolved or broken up 'into pieces'. But is a primordial analytic for it thus ruled out? Are we to concede that such phenomena are 'ultimates'? Then there would still remain the question, "why?" Or do the forest 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 state of Dasein's Being?

Before we answer these questions, for which the preparation up till now has been far from sufficient, we must investigate whether what has become visible as the fore-structure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation, does not itself already present us with a unitary phenomenon—one of which copious use is made in philosophical problematics, though what is used so universally falls short of the primordiality of ontological explication.

In the projecting of the understanding, entities are disclosed in their possibility. The character of the possibility corresponds, on each occasion, with the kind of Being of the entity which is understood. Entities within-the-world generally are projected upon the world—that is, upon a whole of significance, to whose reference-relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has been tied up in advance. When entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein—that is, when they have come to be understood—we say that they have meaning [Sinn]. But that which is understood, taken strictly is not the meaning but the entity, or

1. . . eines Vorgegebenen.' Here, as in many other passages, we have translated 'vorgeben' by various forms of the verb 'to present'; but it would perhaps be more in line with Heidegger's discussion of the prefix 'vor-' to write '… of something fore-given'.

alternatively, Being. Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility [Verständlichkeit] of something maintains itself. That which can be Articulated in a disclosure by which we understand, we call "meaning". The concept of meaning embraces the formal existential framework of what necessarily belongs to that which an understanding interpretation Articulates. Meaning is the "upon-which" of a projection in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something; it gets its structure from a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception.$^1$ In so far as understanding and interpretation make up the existential state of Being of the "there", "meaning" must be conceived as the formal-existential framework of the disclosedness which belongs to understanding. Meaning is an existentiale of Dasein, not a property attaching to entities, lying 'behind' them, or floating somewhere as an 'intermediate domain'. Dasein only 'has' meaning, so far as the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world can be 'filled in' by the entities discoverable in that disclosedness.$^2$ Hence only Dasein can be meaningful [sinnwoll] or meaningless [sinnlos]. That is to say, its own Being and the entities disclosed with its Being can be appropriated in understanding, or can remain relegated to non-understanding.

This Interpretation of the concept of 'meaning' is one which is ontologico-existential in principle; if we adhere to it, then all entities whose kind of Being is of a character other than Dasein's must be conceived as unmeaning [unsinniges], essentially devoid of any meaning at all. Here 'unmeaning' does not signify that we are saying anything about the value of such entities, but it gives expression to an ontological characteristic. And only that which is unmeaning can be absurd [widersinnig]. The present-at-hand, as Dasein encounters it, can, as it were, assault Dasein's Being; natural events, for instance, can break in upon us and destroy us.

And if we are inquiring about the meaning of Being, our investigation does not then become a "deep" one [tiefsinnig], nor does it puzzle out what stands behind Being. It asks about Being itself in so far as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein. The meaning of Being can never be

$^1$ 'Sinn ist das durch Vorhabe, Vorsicht und Vorgiff strukturierte Woraufhin des Entwurfs, aus dem her etuaas als etwas verständlich wird.' (Notice that our usual translation of 'verständlich, and 'Verständlichkeit' as 'intelligible' and 'intelligibility', fails to show the connection of the words with 'Verstandnis', etc. This connection could have been brought out effectively by writing 'understandable,' 'understandability', etc., but only at the cost of awkwardness.)

$^2$ 'Sinn "hat" nur das Dasein, sofern die Erschlossenheit des In-der-Welt-seins durch das in ihr entdeckbare Seiende "erfüllbar" ist.' The point of this puzzling and ambiguous sentence may become somewhat clearer if the reader recalls that here as elsewhere (see H. 75 above) the verb 'erschliessen' ('disclose') is used in the sense of 'opening something up' so that its contents can be 'discovered'. What thus gets 'opened up' will then be 'filled in' as more and more of its contents get discovered.

contrasted with entities, or with Being as the 'ground' which gives entities support; for a 'ground' becomes accessible only as meaning, even if it is itself the abyss of meaninglessness.¹

As the disclosedness of the "there", understanding always pertains to the whole of Being-in-the-world. In every understanding of the world, existence is understood with it, and vice versa. All interpretation, moreover, operates in the fore-structure, which we have already characterized. Any interpretation which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what is to be interpreted. This is a fact that has always been remarked, even if only in the area of derivative ways of understanding and interpretation, such as philological Interpretation. The latter belongs within the range of scientific knowledge. Such knowledge demands the rigour of a demonstration to provide grounds for it. In a scientific proof, we may not presuppose what it is our task to provide grounds for. But if interpretation must in any case already operate in that which is understood, and if it must draw its nurture from this, how is it to bring any scientific results to maturity without moving in a circle, especially if, moreover, the understanding which is presupposed still operates within our common information about man and the world? Yet according to the most elementary rules of logic, this circle is a circulus vitiosus. If that be so, however, the business of historiological interpretation is excluded a priori from the domain of rigorous knowledge. In so far as the Fact of this circle in understanding is not eliminated, historiology must then be resigned to less rigorous possibilities of knowing. Historiology is permitted to compensate for this defect to some extent through the 'spiritual signification' of its 'objects'. But even in the opinion of the historian himself, it would admittedly be more ideal if the circle could be avoided and if there remained the hope of creating some time a historiology which would be as independent of the standpoint of the observer as our knowledge of Nature is supposed to be.

But if we see this circle as a vicious one and look out for ways of avoiding it, even if we just 'sense' it as an inevitable imperfection, then the act of understanding has been misunderstood from the ground up. The assimilation of understanding and interpretation to a definite ideal of knowledge is not the issue here. Such an ideal is itself only a subspecies of understanding—a subspecies which has strayed into the legitimate task of grasping the present-at-hand in its essential unintelligibility [Unverständlichkeit]. If the basic conditions which make interpretation possible are to be fulfilled, this must

¹ 'Der Sinn von Sein kann nie in Gegensatz gebracht werden zum Seienden oder zum Sein als tragenden "Grund" des Seienden, weil "Grund" nur als Sinn zugänglich wird, und sei er selbst der Abgrund der Sinnlosigkeit.' Notice the etymological kinship between 'Grund' ('ground') and 'Abgrund' ('abyss').

rather be done by not failing to recognize beforehand the essential conditions under which it can be performed. What is decisive is not to get out of the circle but to come into it in the right way. This circle of understanding is not an orbit in which any random kind of knowledge may move; it is the expression of the existential fore-structure of Dasein itself.

It is not to be reduced to the level of a vicious circle, or even of a circle which is merely tolerated. In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our interpretation, we have understood that our first, last, and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves. Because understanding, in accordance with its existential meaning, is Dasein's own potentiality-for-Being, the ontological presuppositions of historiological knowledge transcend in principle the idea of rigour held in the most exact sciences. Mathematics is not more rigorous than historiology, but only narrower, because the existential foundations relevant for it lie within a narrower range.

The 'circle' in understanding belongs to the structure of meaning, and the latter phenomenon is rooted in the existential constitution of Dasein—that is, in the understanding which interprets. An entity for which, as Being-in-the-world, its Being is itself an issue, has, ontologically, a circular structure. If, however, we note that 'circularity' belongs ontologically to a kind of Being which is present-at-hand (namely, to subsistence [Bestand]), we must altogether avoid using this phenomenon to characterize anything like Dasein ontologically.

¶ 33. Assertion as a Derivative Mode of Interpretation

All interpretation is grounded on understanding. That which has been articulated$^1$ as such in interpretation and sketched out beforehand in the understanding in general as something articulable, is the meaning. In so far as assertion ('judgment')$^2$ is grounded on understanding and presents us with a derivative form in which an interpretation has been carried out, it too 'has' a meaning. Yet this meaning cannot be defined as something which occurs 'in' ['"an"] a judgment along with the judging itself. In our

$^1$ 'Gegliederte'. The verbs 'artikulieren' and 'gliedern' can both be translated by 'articulate' in English; even in German they are nearly synonymous, but in the former the emphasis is presumably on the 'joints' at which something gets divided, while in the latter the emphasis is presumably on the 'parts' or 'members'. We have distinguished between them by translating 'artikulieren' by 'Articulate' (with a capital 'A'), and 'gliedern' by 'articulate' (with a lower-case initial).

$^2$ … die Aussage (das "Urteil")…

present context, we shall give an explicit analysis of assertion, and this analysis will serve several purposes.

For one thing, it can be demonstrated, by considering assertion, in what ways the structure of the 'as', which is constitutive for understanding and interpretation, can be modified. When this has been done, both understanding and interpretation will be brought more sharply into view. For another thing, the analysis of assertion has a special position in the problematic of fundamental ontology, because in the decisive period when ancient ontology was beginning, the λόγος functioned as the only clue for obtaining access to that which authentically is [zum eigentlich Seienden], and for defining the Being of such entities. Finally assertion has been accepted from ancient times as the primary and authentic 'locus' of truth. The phenomenon of truth is so thoroughly coupled with the problem of Being that our investigation, as it proceeds further, will necessarily come up against the problem of truth; and it already lies within the dimensions of that problem, though not explicitly. The analysis of assertion will at the same time prepare the way for this latter problematic.

In what follows, we give three significations to the term "assertion". These are drawn from the phenomenon which is thus designated, they are connected among themselves, and in their unity they encompass the full structure of assertion.

1. The primary signification of "assertion" is "pointing out" [Aufzeigen]. In this we adhere to the primordial meaning of λόγος as ἀπὸφανους—letting an entity be seen from itself. In the assertion 'The hammer is too heavy', what is discovered for sight is not a 'meaning', but an entity in the way that it is ready-to-hand. Even if this entity is not close enough to be grasped and 'seen', the pointing-out has in view the entity itself and not, let us say, a mere "representation" [Vorstellung] of it—neither something 'merely represented' nor the psychical condition in which the person who makes the assertion "represents" it.

2. "Assertion" means no less than "predication". We 'assert' a 'predicate' of a 'subject', and the 'subject' is given a definite character [bestimmt] by the 'predicate'. In this signification of "assertion", that which is put forward in the assertion [Das Ausgesagte] is not the predicate, but 'the hammer itself'. On the other hand, that which does the asserting [Das Aussagende] (in other words, that which gives something a definite character) lies in the 'too heavy'. That which is put forward in the assertion in the second signification of "assertion" (that which is given a definite character, as such) has undergone a narrowing of content as compared with what is put forward in the assertion in the first signification

of this term. Every predication is what it is, only as a pointing-out. The second signification of "assertion" has its foundation in the first. Within this pointing-out, the elements which are Articulated in predication—the subject and predicate—arise. It is not by giving something a definite character that we first discover that which shows itself—the hammer—as such; but when we give it such a character, our seeing gets restricted to it in the first instance, so that by this explicit restriction$^1$ of our view, that which is already manifest may be made explicitly manifest in its definite character. In giving something a definite character, we must, in the first instance, take a step back when confronted with that which is already manifest—the hammer that is too heavy. In 'setting down the subject', we dim entities down to focus in 'that hammer there', so that by thus dimming them down we may let that which is manifest be seen in its own definite character as a character that can be determined.$^2$ Setting down the subject, setting down the predicate, and setting down the two together, are thoroughly 'apophantical' in the strict sense of the word.

3. "Assertion" means "communication" $^3$ [Mitteilung], speaking forth [Heraussage]. As communication, it is directly related to "assertion" in the first and second significations. It is letting someone see with us what we have pointed out by way of giving it a definite character. Letting someone see with us shares with [teilt … mit] the Other that entity which has been pointed out in its definite character. That which is 'shared' is our Being towards what has been pointed out—a Being in which we see it in common. One must keep in mind that this Being-towards is Being-in-the-world, and that from out of this very world what has been pointed out gets encountered. Any assertion, as a communication understood in this existential manner, must have been expressed.$^3$ As something communicated, that which has been put forward in the assertion is something that Others can 'share' with the person making the assertion, even though the entity which he has pointed out and to which he has given a definite character is not close enough for them to grasp and see it. That which is put forward in the assertion is something which can be passed along in 'further retelling'. There is a widening of the range of that mutual sharing which sees. But at the same time, what has been pointed out may become veiled again in this further retelling, although even the kind of knowing which arises in such hearsay (whether knowledge that

$^1$ 'Einschränkung'. The older editions have 'Entschränkung'.

$^2$ '… die "Subjektsetzung" blendet das Seiende ab auf "der Hammer da", um durch den Vollzug der Entblendung das Offenbare in seiner bestimmbaren Bestimmtheit sehen zu lassen.'

$^3$ 'Zur Aussage als der so existenzial verstandenen Mit-teilung gehört die Ausgesprochenheit.'

something is the case [Wissen] or merely an acquaintance with something [Kennen]) always has the entity itself in view and does not 'give assent' to some 'valid meaning' which has been passed around. Even hearsay is a Being-in-the-world, and a Being towards what is heard.

There is prevalent today a theory of 'judgment' which is oriented to the phenomenon of 'validity'. We shall not give an extensive discussion of it here. It will be sufficient to allude to the very questionable character of this phenomenon of 'validity', though since the time of Lotze people have been fond of passing this off as a 'primal phenomenon' which cannot be traced back any further. The fact that it can play this role is due only to its ontologically unclarified character. The 'problematic' which has established itself round this idolized word is no less opaque. In the first place, validity is viewed as the 'form of actuality' which goes with the content of the judgment, in so far as that content remains unchanged as opposed to the changeable 'psychical' process of judgment. Considering how the status of the question of Being in general has been characterized in the introduction to this treatise, we would scarcely venture to expect that 'validity' as 'ideal Being' is distinguished by special ontological clarity. In the second place, "validity" means at the same time the validity of the meaning of the judgment, which is valid of the 'Object' it has in view; and thus it attains the signification of an 'Objectively valid character' and of Objectivity in general. In the third place, the meaning which is thus 'valid' of an entity, and which is valid 'timelessly' in itself, is said to be 'valid' also in the sense of being valid for everyone who judges rationally. "Validity" now means a bindingness, or 'universally valid' character.

Even if one were to advocate a 'critical epistemological theory, according to which the subject does not 'really' 'come out' to the Object, then this valid character, as the validity of an Object (Objectivity), is grounded upon that stock of true (!) meaning which is itself valid. The three signi- fications of 'being valid' which we have set forth—the way of Being of the ideal, Objectivity, and bindingness—not only are opaque in themselves but constantly get confused with one another. Methodological fore-sight

1 Heidegger uses three words which might conveniently be translated as 'validity': 'Geltung' (our 'validity'), 'Gültigkeit' (our 'valid character'), and 'Gelten' (our 'being valid', etc.). The reader who has studied logic in English and who accordingly thinks of 'validity' as merely a property of arguments in which the premises imply the conclusion, must remember that in German the verb 'gelten' and its derivatives are used much more broadly, so as to apply to almost anything that is commonly (or even privately) accepted, so that one can speak of the 'validity' of legal tender, the 'validity' of a ticket for so many weeks or months, the 'validity' of that which 'holds' for me or for you, the 'validity' of anything that is the case. While Heidegger's discussion does not cover as many of these meanings as will be listed in any good German dictionary, he goes well beyond the narrower usage of the English-speaking logician. Of course, we shall often translate 'gelten' in other ways.

2 … Verbindlichkeit, "Allgemeingültigkeit".

demands that we do not choose such unstable concepts as a clue to Interpretation. We make no advance restriction upon the concept of "meaning" which would confine it to signifying the 'content of judgment', but we understand it as the existential phenomenon already characterized, in which the formal framework of what can be disclosed in understanding and Articulated in interpretation becomes visible.

If we bring together the three significations of 'assertion' which we have analysed, and get a unitary view of the full phenomenon, then we may define "assertion" as "a pointing-out which gives something a definite character and which communicates". It remains to ask with what justification we have taken assertion as a mode of interpretation at all. If it is something of this sort, then the essential structures of interpretation must recur in it.

The pointing-out which assertion does is performed on the basis of what has already been disclosed in understanding or discovered circumspectively. Assertion is not a free-floating kind of behaviour which, in its own right, might be capable of disclosing entities in general in a primary way: on the contrary it always maintains itself on the basis of Being-in-the-world. What we have shown earlier\textsuperscript{1x} in relation to knowing the world, holds just as well as assertion. Any assertion requires a fore-having of whatever has been disclosed; and this is what it points out by way of giving something a definite character. Furthermore, in any approach when one gives something a definite character, one is already taking a look directionally at what is to be put forward in the assertion. When an entity which has been presented is given a definite character, the function of giving it such a character is taken over by that with regard to which we set our sights towards the entity.\textsuperscript{1} Thus any assertion requires a fore-sight; in this the predicate which we are to assign [zuzuweisende] and make stand out, gets loosened, so to speak, from its unexpressed inclusion in the entity itself. To any assertion as a communication which gives something a definite character there belongs, moreover, an Articulation of what is pointed out, and this Articulation is in accordance with significations.

Such an assertion will operate with a definite way of conceiving: "The hammer is heavy", "Heaviness belongs to the hammer", "The hammer has the property of heaviness". When an assertion is made, some fore-conception is always implied; but it remains for the most part inconspicuous, because the language already hides in itself a developed way of conceiving. Like any interpretation whatever, assertion necessarily has a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception as its existential foundations.

\textsuperscript{1} Woraufhin das vorgegebene Seiende anvisiert wird, das übernimmt im Bestimmungs-vollzug die Funktion des Bestimmenden.

But to what extent does it become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it? We can point out the modification if we stick to certain limiting cases of assertion which function in logic as normal cases and as examples of the 'simplest' assertion-phenomena. Prior to all analysis, logic has already understood 'logically' what it takes as a theme under the heading of the "categorical statement"—for instance, 'The hammer is heavy'. The unexplained presupposition is that the 'meaning' of this sentence is to be taken as: "This Thing—a hammer—has the property of heaviness". In concernful circumspection there are no such assertions 'at first'. But such circumspection has of course its specific ways of interpreting, and these, as compared with the 'theoretical judgment' just mentioned, may take some such form as 'The hammer is too heavy', or rather just 'Too heavy!', 'Hand me the other hammer!'. Interpretation is carried out primordially not in a theoretical statement but in an action of circumspective concern—laying aside the unsuitable tool, or exchanging it, 'without wasting words'. From the fact that words are absent, it may not be concluded that interpretation is absent. On the other hand, the kind of interpretation which is circumspectively expressed is not necessarily already an assertion in the sense we have defined. By what existential-ontological modifications does assertion arise from circumspective interpretation?

The entity which is held in our fore-having—for instance, the hammer—is proximally ready-to-hand as equipment. If this entity becomes the 'object' of an assertion, then as soon as we begin this assertion, there is already a change-over in the fore-having. Something ready-to-hand with which we have to do or perform something, turns into something 'about which' the assertion that points it out is made. Our fore-sight is aimed at something present-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand. Both by and for this way of looking at it [Hin-sicht], the ready-to-hand becomes veiled as ready-to-hand. Within this discovering of presence-at-hand, which is at the same time a covering-up of readiness-to-hand, something present-at-hand which we encounter is given a definite character in its Being-present-at-hand-in-such-and-such-a-manner. Only now are we given any access to properties or the like. When an assertion has given a definite character to something present-at-hand, it says something about it as a "what"; and this "what" is drawn from that which is present-at-hand as such. The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. In its function of appropriating what is understood, the 'as' no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements. As regards its possibilities for Articulating reference-relations, it has been cut off from that significance which, as such, constitutes environmentality. The 'as' gets pushed back into the

uniform plane of that which is merely present-at-hand. It dwindles to the structure of just letting one see what is present-at-hand, and letting one see it in a definite way. This levelling of the primordial 'as' of circum-spective interpretation to the "as" with which presence-at-hand is given a definite character is the specialty of assertion. Only so does it obtain the possibility of exhibiting something in such a way that we just look at it.

Thus assertion cannot disown its ontological origin from an interpretation which understands. The primordial 'as' of an interpretation (ερμηνεια) which understands circumspectively we call the "existential-hermeneutical 'as'" in distinction from the "apophantical 'as'" of the assertion.

Between the kind of interpretation which is still wholly wrapped up in concernful understanding and the extreme opposite case of a theoretical assertion about something present-at-hand, there are many intermediate gradations: assertions about the happenings in the environment, accounts of the ready-to-hand, reports on the Situation', the recording and fixing of the 'facts of the case', the description of a state of affairs, the narration of something that has befallen. We cannot trace back these 'sentences' to theoretical statements without essentially perverting their meaning. Like the theoretical statements themselves, they have their 'source' in circum-spective interpretation.

With the progress of knowledge about the structure of the λόγος, it was inevitable that this phenomenon of the apophantical 'as' should come into view in some form or other. The manner in which it was proximally seen was not accidental, and did not fail to work itself out in the subsequent history of logic.

When considered philosophically, the λόγος itself is an entity, and, according to the orientation of ancient ontology, it is something present-at-hand. Words are proximally present-at-hand; that is to say, we come across them just as we come across Things; and this holds for any sequence of words, as that in which the λόγος expresses itself. In this first search for the structure of the λόγος as thus present-at-hand, what was found was the Being-present-at-hand-together of several words. What establishes the unity of this "together"? As Plato knew, this unity lies in the fact that the λόγος is always λόγος τυρός. In the λόγος an entity is manifest, and with a view to this entity, the words are put together in one verbal whole.

Aristotle saw this more radically: every λόγος is both σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις, not just the one (call it 'affirmative judgment') or the other (call it 'negative judgment'). Rather, every assertion, whether it affirms or denies, whether it is true or false, is σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις equiprimordially. To exhibit anything is to take it together and take it apart. It is

true, of course, that Aristotle did not pursue the analytical question as far as the problem of which phenomenon within the structure of the λόγος is the one that permits and indeed obliges us to characterize every statement as synthesis and diaeresis.

Along with the formal structures of 'binding' and 'separating'—or, more precisely, along with the unity of these—we should meet the phenomenon of the 'something as something', and we should meet this as a phenomenon. In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something: it is taken together with it, yet in such a way that this confrontation which understands will at the same time take apart what has been taken together, and will do so by Articulating it interpretatively. If the phenomenon of the 'as' remains covered up, and, above all, if its existential source in the hermeneutical 'as' is veiled, then Aristotle's phenomenological approach to the analysis of the λόγος collapses to a superficial 'theory of judgment', in which judgment becomes the binding or separating of representations and concepts.

Binding and separating may be formalized still further to a 'relating'. The judgment gets dissolved logistically into a system in which things are 'co-ordinated' with one another; it becomes the object of a 'calculus'; but it does not become a theme for ontological Interpretation. The possibility and impossibility of getting an analytical understanding of οὐθθεους and δωαίρεους—of the 'relation' in judgment generally—is tightly linked up with whatever the current status of the ontological problematic and its principles may be.

How far this problematic has worked its way into the Interpretation of the λόγος, and how far on the other hand the concept of 'judgment' has (by a remarkable counter-thrust) worked its way into the ontological problematic, is shown by the phenomenon of the copula. When we consider this 'bond', it becomes clear that proximally the synthesis-structure is regarded as self-evident, and that it has also retained the function of serving as a standard for Interpretation. But if the formal characteristics of 'relating' and 'binding' can contribute nothing phenomenally towards the structural analysis of the λόγος as subject-matter, then in the long run the phenomenon to which we allude by the term "copula" has nothing to do with a bond or binding. The Interpretation of the 'is', whether it be expressed in its own right in the language or indicated in the verbal ending, leads us therefore into the context of problems belonging to the existential analytic, if assertion and the understanding of Being are existential possibilities for the Being of Dasein itself. When we come to work out the question of Being (cf. Part I, Division 3), we shall thus

1 This Division has never appeared.

encounter again this peculiar phenomenon of Being which we meet within the λόγος.

By demonstrating that assertion is derived from interpretation and understanding, we have made it plain that the 'logic' of the λόγος is rooted in the existential analytic of Dasein; and provisionally this has been sufficient. At the same time, by knowing that the λόγος has been Interpreted in a way which is ontologically inadequate, we have gained a sharper insight into the fact that the methodological basis on which ancient ontology arose was not a primordial one. The λόγος gets experienced as something present-at-hand and interpreted as such, while at the same time the entities which it points out have the meaning of presence-at-hand. This meaning of Being is left undifferentiated and uncontrasted with other possibilities of Being, so that Being in the sense of a formal Being-something becomes fused with it simultaneously, and we are unable even to obtain a clear-cut division between these two realms.

¶ 34. Being-there and Discourse. Language

The fundamental existentialia which constitute the Being of the "there", the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, are states-of-mind and understanding. In understanding, there lurks the possibility of interpretation—that is, of appropriating what is understood. In so far as a state-of-mind is equiprimordial with an act of understanding, it maintains itself in a certain understanding. Thus there corresponds to it a certain capacity for getting interpreted. We have seen that assertion is derived from interpretation, and is an extreme case of it. In clarifying the third signification of assertion as communication (speaking forth), we were led to the concepts of "saying" and "speaking", to which we had purposely given no attention up to that point. The fact that language now becomes our theme for the first time will indicate that this phenomenon has its roots in the existential constitution of Dasein's disclosedness. The existential-ontological foundation of language is discourse or talk.¹ This phenomenon is one of which we have been making constant use already in our foregoing Interpretation of state-of-mind, understanding, interpretation, and assertion; but we have, as it were, kept it suppressed in our thematic analysis.

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding. The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation

¹ 'Rede'. As we have pointed out earlier (see our note 3, p. 47, H. 25 above), we have translated this word either as 'discourse' or 'talk', as the context seems to demand, sometimes compromising with the hendiadys 'discourse or talk'. But in some contexts 'discourse' is too formal while 'talk' is too colloquial; the reader must remember that there is no good English equivalent for 'Rede'. For a previous discussion see Section 7 B above (H. 32-34).

of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. That which can be Articulated in interpretation, and thus even more primordially in discourse, is what we have called "meaning". That which gets articulated as such in discursive Articulation, we call the "totality-of-significations" [Bedeutungsganze]. This can be dissolved or broken up into significations. Significations, as what has been Articulated from that which can be Articulated, always carry meaning [… sind … sinnhaft]. If discourse, as the Articulation of the intelligibility of the "there", is a primordial existentiale of disclosedness, and if disclosedness is primarily constituted by Being-in-the-world, then discourse too must have essentially a kind of Being which is specifically worldly. The intelligibility of Being-in-the-world—an intelligibility which goes with a state-of-mind—expresses itself as discourse. The totality-of-significations of intelligibility is put into words. To significations, words accrue. But word-Things do not get supplied with significations.

The way in which discourse gets expressed is language.$^1$ Language is a totality of words—a totality in which discourse has a 'worldly' Being of its own; and as an entity within-the-world, this totality thus becomes something which we may come across as ready-to-hand. Language can be broken up into word-Things which are present-at-hand. Discourse is existentially language, because that entity whose disclosedness it Articulates according to significations, has, as its kind of Being, Being-in-the-world—a Being which has been thrown and submitted to the 'world'.

As an existential state in which Dasein is disclosed, discourse is constitutive for Dasein's existence. Hearing and keeping silent [Schweigen] are possibilities belonging to discursive speech. In these phenomena the constitutive function of discourse for the existentiality of existence becomes entirely plain for the first time. But in the first instance the issue is one of working out the structure of discourse as such.

Discoursing or talking is the way in which we articulate 'significantly' the intelligibility of Being-in-the-world. Being-with belongs to Being-in-the-world, which in every case maintains itself in some definite way of concernful Being-with-one-another. Such Being-with-one-another is discursive as assenting or refusing, as demanding or warning, as pronouncing, consulting, or interceding, as 'making assertions', and as talking in the way of 'giving a talk'.$^2$ Talking is talk about something. That which the discourse is about [das Worüber der Rede] does not necessarily or even for the most part serve as the theme for an assertion in

$^1$Die Hinausgesprochenheit der Rede ist die Sprache.$^2$Dieses ist redend als zu- und absagen, auffordern, warnen, als Aussprache, Rücksprache, Fürsprache, ferner als "Aussagen machen" und als reden in der Weise des "Redenhaltens".

which one gives something a definite character. Even a command is given about something; a wish is about something. And so is intercession. What the discourse is about is a structural item that it necessarily possesses; for discourse helps to constitute the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, and in its own structure it is modelled upon this basic state of Dasein. What is talked about [das Beredete] in talk is always 'talked to' ["angeredet"] in a definite regard and within certain limits. In any talk or discourse, there is something said-in-the-talk as such [ein Geredetes as solches]—something said as such [das … Gesagte als solches] whenever one wishes, asks, or expresses oneself about something. In this "something said", discourse communicates.

As we have already indicated in our analysis of assertion,$^1$ the phenomenon of communication must be understood in a sense which is ontologically broad. 'Communication' in which one makes assertions—giving information, for instance—is a special case of that communication which is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind [Mitbefindlichkeit] gets 'shared', and so does the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes 'explicitly' shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated.$^2$

Whenever something is communicated in what is said-in-the-talk, all talk about anything has at the same time the character of expressing itself [Sichausprechens]. In talking, Dasein expresses itself [spricht sich … aus] not because it has, in the first instance, been encapsulated as something 'internal' over against something outside, but because as Being-in-the-world it is already 'outside' when it understands. What is expressed is precisely this Being-outside—that is to say, the way in which one currently has a state-of-mind (mood), which we have shown to pertain to the full disclosedness of Being-in. Being-in and its state-of-mind are made known in discourse and indicated in language by intonation, modulation, the tempo of talk, 'the way of speaking'. In 'poetical' discourse, the communication of the existential possibilities of one's state-of-mind can become an aim in itself, and this amounts to a disclosing of existence.

$^1$ Reading '… bei der Analyse der Aussage …' with the older editions. The words 'der Aussage' have been omitted in the newer editions.$^2$ 'Das Mitsein wird in der Rede "ausdrücklich" geteilt, das heisst es ist schon, nur ungeteilt als nicht ergriffenes und zugeeignetes.'

In discourse the intelligibility of Being-in-the-world (an intelligibility which goes with a state-of-mind) is articulated according to significations; and discourse is this articulation. The items constitutive for discourse are: what the discourse is about (what is talked about); what is said-in-the-talk, as such; the communication; and the making-known. These are not properties which can just be raked up empirically from language. They are existential characteristics rooted in the state of Dasein's Being, and it is they that first make anything like language ontologically possible. In the factual linguistic form of any definite case of discourse, some of these items may be lacking, or may remain unnoticed. The fact that they often do not receive 'verbal' expression, is merely an index of some definite kind of discourse which, in so far as it is discourse, must in every case lie within the totality of the structures we have mentioned.

Attempts to grasp the 'essence of language' have always taken their orientation from one or another of these items; and the clues to their conceptions of language have been the ideas of 'expression', of 'symbolic form', of communication as 'assertion',$^1$ of the 'making-known' of experiences, of the 'patterning' of life. Even if one were to put these various fragmentary definitions together in syncretistic fashion, nothing would be achieved in the way of a fully adequate definition of "language". We would still have to do what is decisive here—to work out in advance the ontologico-existential whole of the structure of discourse on the basis of the analytic of Dasein.

We can make clear the connection of discourse with understanding and intelligibility by considering an existential possibility which belongs to talking itself—hearing. If we have not heard 'aright', it is not by accident that we say we have not 'understood'. Hearing is constitutive for discourse. And just as linguistic utterance is based on discourse, so is acoustic perception on hearing. Listening to … is Dasein's existential way of Being-open as Being-with for Others. Indeed, hearing constitutes the primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being—as in hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it. Dasein hears, because it understands. As a Being-in-the-world with Others, a Being which understands, Dasein is 'in thrall' to Dasein-with and to itself; and in this thraldom it "belongs" to these.$^2$ Being-with develops in listening to one another [Auseinander-hören], which can be done in several possible ways: following,$^3$ going along with,

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