entscheiden, Entscheidung 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? BTMR §13 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 noetically 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’ [“Wesensschau”] 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. BTMR §31 Hearing and understanding have attached themselves beforehand to what is said-in-the-talk as such. The primary relationship-of-Being towards the entity talked about is not ‘imparted’ by communication; but Being-with-one-another takes place in talking with one another and in concern with what is said-in-the-talk. To this Being-with-one-another, the fact that talking is going on is a matter of consequence. The Being-said, the’ dictum, the pronouncement [Ausspruch] – all these now stand surety for the genuineness of the discourse and of the understanding which belongs to it, and for its appropriateness to the facts. And because this discoursing has lost its primary relationship-of-Being towards the entity talked about, or else has never achieved such a relationship, it does not communicate in such a way as to let this entity be appropriated in a primordial manner, but communicates rather by following the route of gossiping and passing the word along. What is said-in-the-talk as such, spreads in wider circles and takes on an authoritative character. Things are so because one says so. Idle talk is constituted by just such gossiping and passing the word along – a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on [Bodenständigkeit] becomes aggravated to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]. And indeed this idle talk is not confined to vocal gossip, but even spreads to what we write, where it takes the form of ‘scribbling’ [das “Geschreibe”]. In this latter case the gossip is not based so much upon hearsay. It feeds upon superficial reading [dem Angelesenen]. The average understanding of the reader will never be able to DECIDE what has been’ drawn from primordial sources with a struggle and how much is just gossip. The average understanding, moreover, will not want any such distinction, and does not need it, because, of course, it understands everything. [SZ:169] BTMR §35 When, in our everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing which is accessible to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to DECIDE what is disclosed in a genuine understanding, and what is not. This ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit] extends not only to the world, but just as much to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein’s Being towards itself. BTMR §37 In the following considerations, the ‘variations’ in which we are chiefly interested are those of end and totality; these are ways in which Dasein gets a definite character ontologically, and as such they should lead to a primordial Interpretation of this entity. Keeping constantly in view the existential constitution of Dasein already set forth, we must try to DECIDE how inappropriate to Dasein ontologically are those conceptions of end and totality which first thrust themselves to the fore, no matter how categorially indefinite they may remain. The rejection [Zurückweisung] of such concepts must be developed into a positive assignment [Zuweisung] of them to their specific realms. In this way our understanding of end and totality in their variant forms as existentialia will be strengthened, and this [SZ:242] will guarantee the possibility of an ontological Interpretation of death. BTMR §48 We have indeed already shown, in analysing the structure of understanding in general, that what gets censured inappropriately as a ‘circle’, belongs to the essence and to the distinctive character of understanding as such. In spite of this, if the problematic of fundamental ontology is to have its hermencutical Situation clarified, our investigation must now come back explicitly to this ‘circular argument’. When it is objected that the existential Interpretation is ‘circular’, it is said that we have ‘presupposed’ the idea of existence and of Being in general, and that Dasein gets Interpreted ‘accordingly’, so that the idea of Being may be obtained from it. But what does ‘presupposition’ signify? In positing the idea of existence, do we also posit some proposition from which we deduce further propositions about the Being of Dasein, in accordance with formal rules of consistency? Or does this pre-supposing have the character of an understanding projection, in such a manner indeed that the Interpretation by which such an understanding gets developed, will let that which is to be interpreted put itself into words for the very first time, so that it may DECIDE of its own accord whether, as the entity which it is, it has that state of Being for which it has been disclosed in the projection with regard to its formal aspects? Is [SZ:315] there any other way at all by which an entity can put itself into words with regard to its Being? We cannot ever ‘avoid’ a ‘circular’ proof in the existential analytic, because such an analytic does not do any proving at all by the rules of the ‘logic of consistency’. What common sense wishes to eliminate in avoiding the ‘circle’, on the supposition that it is measuring up to the loftiest rigour of scientific investigation, is nothing less than the basic structure of care. Because it is primordially constituted by care, any Dasein is already ahead of itself. As being, it has in every case already projected itself upon definite possibilities of its existence; and in such existentiell projections it has, in a pre-ontological manner, also projected something like existence and Being. Like all research, the research which wants to develop and conceptualize that kind of Being which belongs to existence, is itself a kind of Being which disclosive Dasein possesses; can such research be denied this projecting which is essential to Dasein? BTMR §63 We have defined “resoluteness” as a projecting of oneself upon one’s own Being-guilty – a projecting which is reticent and ready for anxiety. Resoluteness gains its authenticity as anticipatory resoluteness. In this, Dasein understands itself with regard to its potentiality-for-Being, and it does so in such a manner that it will go right under the eyes of Death in order thus to take over in its thrownness that entity which it is itself, and to take it over wholly. The resolute taking over of one’s factical ‘there’, signifies, at the same time, that the Situation is one which has been resolved upon. In the existential analysis we cannot, in principle, discuss what Dasein factically resolves in any particular case. Our investigation excludes even the existential projection of the factical possibilities of existence. Nevertheless, we must ask whence, in general, Dasein can draw those possibilities upon which it factically projects itself. One’s anticipatory projection of oneself on that possibility of existence which is not to be outstripped – on death – guarantees only the totality and authenticity of one’s resoluteness. But those possibilities of existence which have been factically disclosed are not to be gathered from death. And this is still less the case when one’s anticipation of this possibility does not signify that one is speculating about it, but signifies precisely that one is coming back to one’s factical “there”. Will taking over the thrownness of the Self into its world perhaps disclose an horizon from which existence snatches its factical possibilities away? Have we not said in addition that Dasein never comes back behind its thrownness? Before we DECIDE too quickly [SZ:383] whether Dasein draws it authentic possibilities of existence from thrownness or not, we must assure ourselves that we have a full conception of thrownness as a basic attribute of care. BTMR §74 Since the way in which things have been publicly interpreted has already become a temptation to itself in this manner, it holds Dasein fast in its fallenness. Idle talk and ambiguity, having seen everything, having understood everything, develop the supposition that Dasein’s disclosedness, which is so available and so prevalent, can guarantee to Dasein that all the possibilities of its Being will be secure, genuine, and full. Through the self-certainty and DECIDEDNESS of the “they”, it gets spread abroad increasingly that there is no need of authentic understanding or the state-of-mind that goes with it. The supposition of the “they” that one is leading and sustaining a full and genuine ‘life’, brings Dasein a tranquillity, for which everything is ‘in the best of order’ and all doors are open. Falling Being-in-the-world, which tempts itself, is at the same time tranquillizing [beruhigend]. BTMR §38 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 “existentiell.” 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 “existentiality”. 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. [SZ:13] BTMR §4 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 desevered 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 desevered 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 deseverant 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 [SZ:107] 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. BTMR §23 Of these questions about Reality, the one which comes first in order is the ontological question of what “Reality” signifies in general. But as long as a pure ontological problematic and methodology was lacking, this question (if it was explicitly formulated at all) was necessarily confounded with a discussion of the ‘problem of the external world’; for the analysis of Reality is possible only on the basis of our having appropriate access to the Real. But it has long been held that the way to grasp the Real is by that kind of knowing which is characterized by beholding [das anschauende Erkennen]. Such knowing ‘is’ as a way in which the soul – or consciousness – behaves. In so far as Reality has the character of something independent and “in itself”, the question of the meaning of “Reality” becomes linked with that of whether the Real can be independent ‘of consciousness’ or whether there can be a transcendence of consciousness into the ‘sphere’ of the Real. The possibility of an adequate ontological analysis of Reality depends upon how far that of which the Real is to be thus independent – how far that which is to be transcended – has itself been clarified with regard to its Being. Only thus can even the kind of Being which belongs to transcendence be ontologically grasped. And finally we must make sure what kind of primary access we have to the Real, by DECIDING the question of whether knowing can take over this function at all. BTMR §43 Dasein has lost itself in inauthenticity. When Dasein thus brings itself back [ Das Sichzurückholen] from the “they”, the they-self is modified in an existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic Being-one’s-Self. This must be accomplished by making up for not choosing [Nachholen einer Wahl]. But “making up” for not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice – DECIDING for a potentiality-for-Being, and making this DECISION from one’s own Self. In choosing to make this choice, Dasein makes possible, first and foremost, its authentic potentiality-for-Being. BTMR §54 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 have lost 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. [SZ:43] BTMR §9 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”. BTMR §27 ‘Once when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. ‘Care’ asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this, and demanded that it be given his name instead. While ‘Care’ and Jupiter were disputing, Earth arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter, and he made the following DECISION, which seemed a just one: ‘Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since ‘Care’ first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called ‘homo’, for it is made out of humus (earth).’ BTMR §42 This pre-ontological document becomes especially significant not only in that ‘care’ is here seen as that to which human Dasein belongs ‘for its lifetime’, but also because this priority of ‘care’ emerges in connection with the familiar way of taking man as compounded of body (earth) and spirit. “Cura prima finxit”: in care this entity has the ‘source’ of its Being. “Cura teneat, quamdiu vixerit”; the entity is not released from this source but is held fast, dominated by it through and through as long as this entity ‘is in the world’. ‘Being-in-the-world’ has the stamp of ‘care’, which accords with its Being. It gets the name “homo” not in consideration of its Being but in relation to that of which it consists (humus). The DECISION as to wherein the ‘primordial’ Being of this creature is to be seen, is left to Saturn, ‘Time’. Thus the pre-ontological characterization of man’s essence expressed in this fable, has brought to view in advance the kind of Being which dominates his temporal sojourn in the world, and does so through and through. [SZ:199] BTMR §42 The goddess of Truth who guides Parmenides, puts two pathways before him, one of uncovering, one of hiding; but this signifies nothing else than that Dasein is already both in the truth and in untruth. The way of uncovering is achieved only in krinein logo – in distinguishing between these understandingly, and making one’s DECISION for the one rather than the other. BTMR §44 We must presuppose truth. Dasein itself, as in each case my Dasein and this Dasein, must be; and in the same way the truth, as Dasein’s disclosedness, must be. This belongs to Dasein’s essential thrownness into the world. Has Dasein as itself ever decided freely whether it wants to come into ‘Dasein’ or not, and will it ever be able to make such a DECISION? ‘In itself’ it is quite incomprehensible why entities are to be uncovered, why truth and Dasein must be. The usual refutation of that scepticism which denies either ‘the Being of ‘truth’ or its cognizability, stops half way. What it shows, as a formal argument, is simply that if anything gets judged, truth has been presupposed. This suggests that ‘truth’ belongs to assertion – that pointing something out is, by its very meaning, an uncovering. But when one says this, one has to clarify why that in which there lies the ontological ground for this necessary connection between assertion and truth as regards their Being, must be as it is. The kind of Being which belongs to truth is likewise left completely obscure, and so is the meaning of presupposing, and that of its ontological foundation in Dasein itself. Moreover, one here fails to recognize that even when nobody judges, truth already gets presupposed in so far as Dasein is at all. [SZ:229] BTMR §44 On the other hand, in the ontological analysis of Being-towards-the-end there is no anticipation of our taking any existentiell stand toward death. If “death” is defined as the ‘end’ of Dasein – that is to say, of Being-in-the-world – this does not imply any ontical DECISION whether ‘after death’ still another Being is possible, either higher or lower, or whether Dasein ‘lives on’ or everi ‘outlasts’ itself and is ‘immortal’. Nor is anything decided ontically about the ‘other-worldly’ and its possibility, any more than about the ‘this-worldly’; it is not as if norms and rules for comporting oneself towards death were to be proposed for ‘edification’. But our analysis of death remains purely ‘this-worldly’ in so far as it Interprets that phenomenon merely in the way in which it enters into any particular Dasein as a possibility of its Being. Only when death is conceived in its full ontological essence can we have anymethodological assurance in even asking what may be after death; only then can we do so with meaning and justification. Whether such a question is a possible theoretical question at all will not be decided here. The this-worldly ontological Interpretation of death takes precedence over any ontical other-worldly speculation. [SZ:248] BTMR §49 What one resolves upon in resoluteness has been prescribed ontologically in the existentiality of Dasein in general as a potentiality-for-Being in the manner of concernful solicitude. As care, however, Dasein has been Determined by facticity and falling. Disclosed in its ‘there’, it maintains itself both in truth and in untruth with equal primordiality. This ‘really’ holds in particular for resoluteness as authentic truth. Resoluteness appropriates untruth authentically. Dasein is already in irresoluteness [Unentschlossenheit], and soon, perhaps, will be in it again. The term “irresoluteness’ merely expresses that phenomenon which we have Interpreted as a Being-surrendered to the way in which things have been prevalently interpreted by the “they”. Dasein, as a they-self, gets ‘lived’ by the common-sense ambiguity of that publicness in which nobody resolves upon anything but which has always made its DECISION. “Resoluteness” signifies letting oneself be summoned out of one’s lostness in the “they”. The irresoluteness of the “they” remains dominant notwithstanding, but it cannot impugn resolute existence. In the counterconcept to irresoluteness, as resoluteness as existentially understood, we do not have in mind any ontico-psychical characteristic in the sense of Being-burdened with inhibitions. Even resolutions remain dependent upon [SZ:299] the “they” and its world. The understanding of this is one of the things that a resolution discloses, inasmuch as resoluteness is what first gives authentic transparency to Dasein. In resoluteness the issue for Dasein is its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which, as something thrown, can project itself only upon definite factical possibilities. Resolution does not withdraw itself from ‘actuality’, but discovers first what is factically possible; and it does so by seizing upon it in whatever way is possible for it as its ownmost potentiality-for-Being in the “they”. The existential attributes of any possible resolute Dasein include the items constitutive for an existential phenomenon which we call a “Situation” and which we have hitherto passed over. BTMR §60 This can be made plain, in the first instance, by the suggestion that historiology, as the science of Dasein’s history, must ‘presuppose’ as its possible ‘Object’ the entity which is primordially historical. But history must not only be, in order that a historiological object may become accessible; and historiological cognition is not only historical, as a historizing way in which Dasein comports itself. Whether the historiological disclosure of history is factically accomplished or not, its ontological structure is such that in itself this disclosure has its roots in the historicality of Dasein. This is the connection we have in view when we talk of Dasein’s historicality as the existential source of historiology. To cast light upon this connection signifies methodologically that the idea of historiology must be projected ontologically in terms of Dasein’s historicality. The issue here is not one of ‘abstracting’ the concept of historiology from the way something is factically done in the sciences today, nor is it one of assimilating it to anything of this sort. For what guarantee do we have in principle that such a factical procedure will indeed be properly representative of historiology in its primordial and authentic possibilities? And even if this should turn out to be the case – we shall hold back from any DECISION about this – then the concept could be ‘discovered’ in the Fact only by using the clue provided by the idea of historiology as one which we have already understood. On the other hand, the existential idea of historiology is not given a higher justification. by having the historian affirm that his factical behaviour is in agreement with it. Nor does the idea become ‘false’ if he disputes any such agreement. [SZ:393] BTMR §76 The possibility that historiology in general can either be ‘used’ ‘for one’s life’ or ‘abused’ in it, is grounded on the fact that one’s life is historical in the roots of its Being, and that therefore, as factically existing, one has in each case made one’s DECISION for authentic or inauthentic historicality. Nietzsche recognized what was essential as to the ‘use and abuse of historiology for life’ in the second of his studies “out of season” ( 1874), and said it unequivocally and penetratingly. He distinguished three kinds of historiology – the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical – without explicitly pointing out the necessity of this triad or the ground of its unity. The threefold character of historiology is adumbrated in the historicality of Dasein. At the same time, this historicality enables us to understand to what extent these three possibilities must be united factically and concretely in any historiology which is authentic. Nietzsche’s division is not accidental. The beginning of his ‘study’ allows us to suppose that he understood more than he has made known to us. BTMR §76 So far we have only had to understand provisionally how Dasein, as grounded in temporality, is, in its very existing, concerned with times and how, in such interpretative concern, time makes itself public for Being-in-the-world. But the sense in which time ‘is’ if it is of the kind which is public and has been expressed, remains completely undefined, if indeed such time can be considered as being at all. Before we can make any DECISION as to whether public time is ‘merely subjective’ or ‘Objectively actual’, or neither of these, its phenomenal character must first be determined more precisely.’ BTMR §80 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. BTMR §6 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. [SZ:24] BTMR §6 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. BTMR §6 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. BTMR §10 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 [mitbestimint] by ,the totality of involvements for which the ready-to-hand, as something encountered, is freed. [SZ:104] BTMR §22 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 spatiail 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 cogilans and conceived as merely ‘subjective’, quite apart from the questionable character of the Being of such a subject. [SZ:113] BTMR §24 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 Sachgehaltes des Raumes 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 spatialitics) must be turned in such a direction as to clarify the possibilities of Being in general. BTMR §24 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]. BTMR §27 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. BTMR §27 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 presentat-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-presentat-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 farreaching and detailed study, is simply to express the fact that something which was ontically self-evident in the traditional way of treating the [SZ:132] BTMR §28 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 [SZ:153] 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. BTMR §32 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 logos functioned as the only clue for obtaining access to that which authentically is [zun 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. BTMR §33 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’, 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. BTMR §34 This way in which things have been interpreted in idle talk has already established itself in Dasein. There are many things with which we first become acquainted in this way, and there is not a little which never gets beyond such an average understanding. This everyday way in which things have been interpreted is one into which Dasein has grown in the first instance, with never a possibility of extrication. In it, out of it, and against it, all genuine understanding, interpreting, and communicating, all re-discovering and appropriating anew, are performed. In no case is a Dasein, untouched and unseduced by this way in which things have been interpreted, set before the open country of a ‘world-in-itself’ so that it just beholds what it encounters. The dominance of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already been DECISIVE even for the possibilities of having a mood – that is, for the basic way in which Dasein lets the world “matter” to it. The “they” prescribes one’s state-of-mind, and determines what and how one ‘sees’. [SZ:170] BTMR §35 Of course this proof is not a causal inference and is therefore not encumbered with the disadvantages which that would imply. Kant gives, as it were, an ‘ontological proof’ in terms of the idea of a temporal entity. It seems at first as if Kant has given up the Cartesian approach of positing a subject one can come across in isolation. But only in semblance. That Kant demands any proof at all for the ‘Dasein of Things outside of me’ shows already that he takes the subject – the ‘in me’ – as the starting-point for this problematic. Moreover, his proof itself is then carried through by starting with the empirically given changes ‘in me’. For only ‘in me’ is ‘time’ experienced, and time carries the burden of the proof. Time provides the basis for leaping off into what is ‘outside of me’ in the course of the proof. Furthermore, Kant emphasizes that “The problematical kind [of idealism], which merely alleges our inability to prove by immediate experience that there is a Dasein outside of our own, is reasonable and accords with a sound kind of philosophical thinking: namely, to permit no DECISIVE judgment until an adequate proof has been found.” BTMR §43 But even if the ontical priority of the isolated subject and inner experience should be given up, Descartes’ position would still be retained ontologically. What Kant proves – if we may suppose that his proof is correct and correctly based – is that entities which are changing and entities which are permanent are necessarily present-at-hand together. But when two things which are present-at-hand are thus put on the same level, this does not as yet mean that subject and Object are present-at-hand together. And even if this were proved, what is ontologically DECISIVE would still be covered up – namely, the basic state of the ‘subject’, Dasein, as Being-in-the-world. The Being-present-at-hand-together of the physical and the psychical is completely different onticaly and ontologicaly from the phenomenon of Being-in-the-world. BTMR §43 In this ‘critical’ determination of the certainty of death, and of its impendence, what is manifested in the first instance is, once again, a failure to recognize Dasein’s kind of Being and the Being-towards-death which belongs to Dasein – a failure that is characteristic of everydayness. The fact that demise, as an event which occurs, is ‘only’ empirically certain, is in no way DECISIVE as to the certainty of death. Cases of death may be the factical occasion for Dasein’s first paying attention to death at all. So long, however, as Dasein remains in the empirical certainty which we have mentioned, death, in the way that it ‘is’, is something of which Dasein can by no means become certain. Even though, in the publicness of the “they”, Dasein seems to ‘talk’ only of this ‘empirical’ certainty of death, nevertheless at bottom Dasein does not exclusively or primarily stick to those cases of death which merely occur. In evading its death, even everyday Being-towards-the-end is indeed certain of its death in another way than it might itself like to have true on purely theoretical considerations. This ‘other way’ is what everydayness for the most part veils from itself. Everydayness does not dare to let itself become transparent in such a manner. We have already characterized the everyday state-of-mind which consists in an air of superiority with regard to the certain ‘fact’ of death – a superiority which is ‘anxiously’ concerned while seemingly free from anxiety. In’ this state-of-mind, everydayness acknowledges a ‘higher’ certainty than one which is only empirical. One knows about the certainty of death, and yet ‘is’ not authentically certain of one’s own. The falling everydayness of Dasein is acquainted with death’s certainty, and yet evades Being-certain. But in the light of what it evades, this very evasion attests phenomenally that death must be conceived as one’s owrimost possibility, non-relational, not to be outstripped, and – above all – certain. [SZ:258] BTMR §52 [SZ:345] But may not the thesis of the temporality of moods hold only for those phenomena which we have selected for our analysis? How is a temporal meaning to be found in the pallid lack of mood which dominates the ‘grey everyday’ through and through? And how about the temporality of such moods and affects as hope, joy, enthusiasm, gaiety? Not only fear and anxiety, but other moods, are founded existentially upon one’s haying been; this becomes plain if we merely mention such phenomena as satiety, sadness, melancholy, and desperation. Of course these must be Interpreted on the broader basis of an existential analytic of Dasein that has been well worked out. But even a phenomenon like hope, which seems to be founded wholly upon the future, must be analysed in much the same way as fear. Hope has sometimes been characterized as the expectation of a bonum futurum, to distinguish it from fear, which relates itself to a malum futurum. But what is DECISIVE for the structure of hope as a phenomenon, is not so much the ‘futural’ character of that to which it relates itself but rather the existential meaning of hoping itself. Even here its character as a mood lies primarily in hoping as hoping for something for oneself [Fürsich-erhoffen]. He who hopes takes himself with him into his hope, as it were, and brings himself up against what he hopes for. But this presupposes that he has somehow arrived at himself. To say that hope brings alleviation [erleichtert] from depressing misgivings, means merely that even hope, as a state-of-mind, is still related to our burdens, and related in the mode of Being-as-having been. Such a mood of elation – or better, one which elates – is ontologically possible only if Dasein has an ecstatico-temporal relation to the thrown ground of itself. BTMR §68 In characterizing the change-over from the manipulating and using and so forth which are circumspective in a ‘practical’ way, to ‘theoretical’ exploration, it would be easy to suggest that merely looking at entities is something which emerges when concern holds back from any kind of manipulation. What is DECISIVE in the ‘emergence’ of the theoretical attitude would then lie in the disappearance of praxis. So if one posits ‘practical’ concern as the primary and predominant kind of Being which factical Dasein possesses, the ontological possibility of ‘theory’ will be due to the absence of praxis – that is, to a privation. But the discontinuance of a specific manipulation in our concernful dealings does not simply leave the guiding circumspection behind as a remainder. Rather, our concern then diverts itself specifically into a just-looking-around [ein Nur-sich-umsehen]. But this is by no means the way in which the ‘theoretical’ attitude of science is reached. On the contrary, the tarrying which is discontinued when one manipulates, can take on the character of a more precise kind of circumspection, such as ‘inspecting’, checking up on what has been attained, or looking over the ‘operations’ [“Betrieb”] which are now ‘at a standstill’. Holding back from the use of equipment is so far from sheer ‘theory’ that the kind of circumspection which tarries and ‘considers’, remains wholly in the grip of the ready-to-hand equipment with which one is concerned. ‘Practical’ dealings have their own ways of tarrying. And just as praxis has its own specific kind of sight (‘theory’), theoretical research is not without a praxis of its own. Reading off the measurements which result from an experiment often requires a complicated ‘technical’ set-up for the experimental design. Observation with a microscope is dependent upon the production of ‘preparations’. Archaeological excavation, which precedes any Interpretation of the ‘findings’, demands manipulations of the grossest kind. But even in the ‘most abstract’ way of working out problems and establishing what has been obtained, one manipulates equipment for writing, for example. However ‘uninteresting’ and ‘obvious’ such components of scientific research may be, they are by no means a matter of indifference ontologically. The explicit suggestion that scientific behaviour as a way of Being-in-the-world, is not just a ‘purely intellectual activity’, may seem petty and superfluous. If only it were not plain from this triviality that it is by no means patent where the ontological boundary between ‘theoretical’ and ‘atheoretical’ behaviour really runs! [SZ:358] BTMR §69 The classical example for the historical development of a science and even for its ontological genesis, is the rise of mathematical physics. What is DECISIVE for its development does not lie in its rather high esteem for the observation of ‘facts’, nor in its ‘application’ of mathematics in determining the character of natural processes; it lies rather in the way in which Nature herself is mathematically projected. In this projection something constantly present-at-hand (matter) is uncovered beforehand, and the horizon is opened so that one may be guided by looking at those constitutive items in it which are quantitatively determinable (motion, force, location, and time). Only ‘in the light’ of a Nature which has been projected in this fashion can anything like a ‘fact’ be found and set up for an experiment regulated and delimited in terms of this projection. The ‘grounding’ of ‘factual science’ was possible only because the researchers understood that in principle there are no ‘bare facts’. In the mathematical projection of Nature, moreover, what is DECISIVE is not primarily the mathematical as such; what is DECISIVE is that this projection discloses something that is a priori. Thus the paradigmatic character of mathematical natural science does not lie in its exactitude or in the fact that it is binding for ‘Everyman’; it consists rather in the fact that the entities which it takes as its theme are discovered in it in the only way in which entities can be discovered – by the prior projection of their state of Being. When the basic concepts of that understanding of Being by which we are guided have been worked out, the clues of its methods, the structure of its way of conceiving things, the possibility of truth and certainty which belongs to it, the ways in which things get grounded or proved, the mode in which it is binding for us, and the way it is communicated – all these will be Determined. The totality of these items constitutes the full existential conception of science. [SZ:363] BTMR §69 To demonstrate that temporality is constitutive for Dasein’s Being and how it is thus constitutive, we have shown that historicality, as a state-of-Being which belongs to existence, is ‘at bottom’ temporality. We have carried through our Interpretation of the temporal character of history without regard for the ‘fact’ that all historizing runs its course ‘in time’. Factically, in the everyday understanding of Dasein, all history is known merely as that which happens ‘within-time’; but throughout the course of our existential-temporal analysis of historicality, this understanding has been ruled out of order. If the existential analytic is to make Dasein ontologically transparent in its very facticity, then the factical ‘ontico-temporal’ interpretation of history must also be explicitly given its due. It is all the more necessary that the time ‘in which’ entities are encountered should be analysed in principle, since not only history but natural processes too are determined ‘by time’. But still more elemental than the circumstance that the ‘time factor’ is one that occurs in the sciences of history and Nature, is the Fact that before Dasein does any thematical research, it ‘reckons with time’ and regulates itself according to it. And here again what remains DECISIVE is Dasein’s way of ‘reckoning with its time’ – a way of reckoning which precedes any use of measuring equipment by which time can be determined. The reckoning is prior to such equipment, and is what makes anything like the use of clocks possible at all. BTMR §78 Although one can concern oneself with time in the manner which we have characterized – namely, by dating in terms of environmental events – this always happens basically within the horizon of that kind of concern with time which we know as astronomical and calendrical time-reckoning. Such reckoning does not occur by accident, but has its existential-ontological necessity in the basic state of Dasein as care. Because it is essential to Dasein that it exists fallingly as something thrown, it interprets its time concernfully by way of time-reckoning. In this, the ‘real’ making-public of time gets temporalized, so that we must say that Dasein’s thrownness is the reason why ‘there is’ time publicly. If we are to demonstrate that public time has its source in factical temporality, and if we are to assure ourselves that this demonstration is as intelligible as possible, the time which has been interpreted in the temporality of concern must first be characterized, [SZ:412] if only in order to make clear that the essence of concern with time does not lie in the application of numerical procedures in dating. Thus in time-reckoning, what is DECISIVE from an existential-ontological standpoint is not to be seen in the quantification of time but must be conceived more primordially in terms of the temporality of the Dasein which reckons with time. BTMR §80 The time which is made public by our measuring it, does not by any means turn into space because we date it in terms of spatial measurementrelations. Still less is what is existential-ontologically essential in the measuring of time to be sought in the fact that dated ‘time’ is determined numerically in terms of spatial stretches and in changes in the location of some spatial Thing. What is ontologically DECISIVE lies rather in the specific kind of making-present which makes measurement possible. Dating [SZ:418] in terms of what is ‘spatially’ present-at-hand is so far from a spatializing of time that this supposed spatialization signifies nothing else than that an entity which is present-at-hand for everyone in every “now” is made present in its own presence. Measuring time is essentially such that it is. necessary to say “now”; but in obtaining the measurement, we, as it were, forget what has been measured as such, so that nothing is to be found except a number and a stretch. BTMR §80 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. BTMR §2