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phenomenon

Definition:
Phenomenon (Phänomen), 28-31, (§ 7a), 34-37, 58-68, 131-134, 153-156, 158-162, 179-185, 188-191, 248-250, 268-271, 289-292, 302-305, 316-318, 359-360, 433, et passim (BT)


But then the history of the concept of time is the history of the discovery of time and the history of its conceptual interpretation. In other words, it is the history of the question of the being of entities, the history of the attempts to uncover entities in their being, borne by the particular understanding of time, by the particular level of conceptual elaboration of the PHENOMENON of time. Hence, in the end, the history of the concept of time is more accurately the history of the decline and the history of the distortion of the basic question of scientific research into the being of entities. It is the history of the incapacity to pose the question of being in a radically new way and to work out its first fundaments anew—an incapacity which is grounded in the being of Dasein. But over against this wholly external characterization of the fundamental role of the concept of time we will in the course of our considerations be confronted with the question: What after all makes time and the concept of time, the comprehending regard to time, appropriate for this peculiar function, hitherto always assumed as self-evident, of characterizing and dividing the domains of reality—temporal, extratemporal, supratemporal reality? GA20EN §2

Commensurate with the fundamental significance of time and its concept, the history [Geschichte] of the concept of time is in turn no arbitrary historiological [historische] reflection. This distinction in turn suggests the manner of this fundamental reflection on the history of the concept of time. The historiology of the time concept could be carried out as a gathering of opinions about time and a summary of its conceptual formulations. Through such a doxographical survey of the concept of time, one might expect to obtain an understanding of time itself and thus the basis for characterizing the special temporal realities ‘history’ and ‘nature.’ But even the most meticulous collections of opinions remain blind so long as one does not first have a clear idea of just what is constantly being sought in gathering such information. The understanding of time itself will never be obtained from the historiology of the time concept. Instead, it is precisely the understanding of the PHENOMENON of time, worked out in advance, which first permits us to understand earlier concepts of time. GA20EN §2

But at first we shall proceed in the traditional manner [and utilize the separation which we now regard as a purely didactic device]. The historiological clarification of the history of the concept of time is only didactically separated from the [systematic] analysis of the PHENOMENON of time. The latter in turn is the preparation for the possibility of historiological understanding. GA20EN §2

To summarize: the basic question of the reality of history and nature is the basic question of the reality of a particular domain of being. For the question of being, the concept of time is our guide. Accordingly, the question of the being of entities, if it is to be regarded as radical, is tied to a discussion of the PHENOMENON of time. This discussion of the PHENOMENON of time is neither systematic in the traditional sense nor historiological, but phenomenological. This results in the following outline for the entire course, which is divided into three parts. GA20EN §3

First Part: Analysis of the PHENOMENON of time and derivation of the concept of time. GA20EN §3

The First Part, “The Analysis of the PHENOMENON of Time and the Determination of the Concept of Time,” is divided into three divisions: GA20EN §3

First Division: The preparatory description of the field in which the PHENOMENON of time becomes manifest. GA20EN §3

Intentio is a Scholastic expression which means directing itself toward. Brentano speaks of the intentional inexistence of the object. Each lived experience directs itself toward something in a way which varies according to the distinctive character of the experience. To represent something after the manner of representing is a different self-directing than to judge something after the manner of judging. Brentano expressly emphasizes that Aristotle already made this point of view the basis for his treatment of psychic phenomena, and that the Scholastics took over this PHENOMENON of intentionality. GA20EN §4

Using this basic division of psychic experiences as a guide, Brentano seeks to exhibit the basic structure of representing, judging, and emotions. Regarding the relationship of these phenomena, Brentano laid down the following basic thesis: Every psychic PHENOMENON is itself either a representation or is based upon representations. “This representing forms the basis of judging just as it does of desiring and every other psychic act. Nothing can be judged, but also nothing can be desired, nothing can be hoped or feared, if it is not represented.” Hence the simple having of something assumes the function of a basic comportment. Judging and taking an interest are possible only if something is represented, which gets judged, in which an interest is taken. Brentano operates not only in mere description but tries to set off this division from the traditional one in a critical examination which we will not pursue any further. GA20EN §4

We want to consider intentionality first, precisely because contemporary philosophy then and even now actually finds this PHENOMENON offensive, because intentionality is precisely what prevents an immediate and unprejudiced reception of what phenomenology wants to do. Intentionality was already alluded to in our account of how Brentano sought to classify the totality of psychic phenomena in strict accord with it. Brentano discerned in intentionality the structure which constitutes the true nature of a psychic PHENOMENON. Intentionality thus became for him the criterion for the distinction of psychic from physical phenomena. But at the same time this structure is the criterion and principle of a natural division among psychic phenomena themselves, inasmuch as it is already found in the essence which appears in these phenomena. Brentano expressly emphasizes that he is only taking up what Aristotle and the Scholastics were already acquainted with. It was through Brentano that Husserl learned to see intentionality. GA20EN §5

In the reception of intentionality as well as in the way in which Brentano was interpreted and developed, everyone saw not so much the exposition of this composition of the structure of lived experience as what they suspected in Brentano: metaphysical dogmas. The decisive thing about Husserl was that he did not look to the dogmas and presuppositions, so far as these were there, but to the PHENOMENON itself, that perceiving is a directing-itself-toward. But now this structure cannot be disregarded in the other forms of comportment as well. Rickert makes this the basis of his argument and disputes seeing such a thing in these comportments. He reserves intentionality for the comportment relating to judgment but drops it for representing. He says representing is not knowing. He comes to this because he is trapped in dogmas, in this case the dogma that my representing involves no transcendence, that it does not get out to the object. Descartes in fact said that representing (perceptio) remains in the consciousness. And Rickert thinks that the transcendence of judging, whose object he specifies as a value, is less puzzling than the transcendence which is in representing, understood as getting out to a real thing. He comes to this view because he thinks that in judgment something is acknowledged which has the character of value and so does not exist in reality. He identifies it with the mental which consciousness itself is, and thinks that value is something immanent. When I acknowledge a value, I do not go outside of consciousness. GA20EN §5

These two concepts of truth and the corresponding two concepts of being were established in the initial elaboration of phenomenology and have persisted in further developments. This is important to keep in mind since we shall later raise the fundamental question of the sense of being and thus come to face the question of whether the concept of being can really be originally drawn in this context of being-true and the corresponding being-real, and whether truth is primarily a PHENOMENON which is to be originally conceived in the context of assertions or, in the broader sense, of objectifying acts. GA20EN §6

If I want to form the concept of aggregate, I find this PHENOMENON of aggregate not by reflecting upon the psychic process of bringing together a + b + c + d . . . but by referring to what is presumed in this act of assembling, not in the direction of the act but of what the act gives. Likewise, I find the categorial of identity not in the reflection upon consciousness and the subject as a process of ideating comportment, but in reference to what is intended in this comportment as such. GA20EN §6

Categorial intuition as intentional comportment was deliberately given only second place in the series of discoveries. With regard to our understanding of the first discovery, categorial intuition is just a concretion of the basic constitution of intentionality announced there. As categorial intuition is possible only on the basis of the PHENOMENON of intentionality having been seen before it, so the third discovery to be discussed now is intelligible only on the basis of the second and accordingly on the basis of the first. It is first in this way that the sequence of discoveries accounts for itself, and the first manifests its fundamental significance step by step. GA20EN §6

The name ‘phenomenology’ has two components, ‘PHENOMENON’ and ‘-logy.’ The latter phrase is familiar from such usages as theology, biology, physiology, sociology, and is commonly translated as ‘science of’: theology, science of God; biology, science of life, of organic nature; sociology, science of the community. Accordingly, phenomenology is the science of phenomena. ‘Logy,’ science of, varies in its character according to the thematic matter, which is logically and formally undefined. In our case, it is defined by what PHENOMENON stands for. So, to begin with, the first part of the name must be clarified [in order to see what this particular —logy stands for]. GA20EN §9

Both parts refer back to Greek expressions, PHENOMENON to phainomenon, —logy to logos. Phainomenon is the participle of phainesthai, the middle voice which means to show itself; phainomenon is accordingly that which shows itself. The middle voice phainesthai is a form of phaino: to bring something to light, to make it visible in itself, to put it in a bright light. Phaino has the stem pha—phos, light, brightness, that wherein something can be manifest, visible in itself. We shall adhere to this meaning of PHENOMENON: phainomenon, that which shows itself. The phainomena form the totality of that which shows itself, what the Greeks also simply identified with ta onta, entities. GA20EN §9

Now an entity can show itself in itself from itself in various ways, depending in each case on the kind of access we have to it. There is the noteworthy possibility that an entity may show itself as something which it nevertheless is not. We do not call such an entity a PHENOMENON, something which shows itself in the authentic sense, but a semblance [Schein]. The expression phainomenon thus receives a modification in meaning: instead of the agathon we speak of a phainomenon agathon, a good which only looks good but actually is not, it only ‘appears’ good. Everything now depends upon seeing the connection between the basic meaning of phainomenon, the manifest, and the second meaning, semblance. Phainomenon can mean semblance only because semblance is a modification of phainomenon in the first sense. Formulated more pointedly, only because phainesthai means “showing itself” can it also mean “merely showing itself as,” “only looking like.” Only insofar as something in its sense makes a pretense of showing itself can it pass itself off as . . . ; only what makes a pretense to be manifest can be a semblance. In fact, that is the sense of semblance: pretension to be manifest but not really being it. Phainomenon as semblance thus serves to show that the sense of PHENOMENON is the entity itself manifest in itself. Semblance, on the other hand, is a pretended self-showing. PHENOMENON is therefore a mode of encounter of entities in themselves such that they show themselves. GA20EN §9

We must adhere to this genuine sense of phainomenon employed by the Greeks. But we must also see that at first it has absolutely nothing to do with our term ‘appearance’ or still less ‘mere appearance.’ Probably no word has caused as much havoc and confusion in philosophy as this one. We cannot trace the history of these errors here. We shall only try to give the main differences of the authentic and original meaning of PHENOMENON as semblance in contrast to appearance. GA20EN §9

We use the term ‘appearances,’ for example, in the German expression Krankheitserscheinungen, “symptoms” [literally, “appearances of a disease”]. In a thing, processes and properties show themselves through which the thing represents itself as this and that. Appearances are themselves occurrences which refer back to other occurrences from which we can infer something else which does not make an appearance. Appearances are appearances of something which is not given as an appearance, something which refers to another entity. Appearance has the distinguishing feature of reference. What distinguishes reference is precisely this: that to which the appearance refers does not show itself in itself but merely represents, intimates by way of mediation, indirectly indicates. The term appearance therefore means a kind of reference of something to something which does not show itself in itself. More precisely, not only does it not show itself in itself, but according to its very sense it does not even pretend to show itself but instead pretends to represent itself. The characteristic feature of the referential function in appearance, in appearing, is the function of indicating, of the indication or announcement of something. Indicating something by means of another, however, means precisely not to show it in itself but to represent it indirectly, mediately, symbolically. We have here then, with what we mean by appearance, a very different connection. In the case of the PHENOMENON, we do not really have a referential connection; the structure peculiar to it is instead that of self-showing. It is now important for us to elucidate the inner connection between PHENOMENON in this genuine sense and appearance, but in the process we must also differentiate appearance from semblance. GA20EN §9

Semblance is a modification of the manifest, of something manifest which it pretends to be but is not. Semblance is not PHENOMENON in this privative sense; it has the characteristic of showing itself, but that which shows itself does not show itself as what it is, while appearance is precisely the representation of something which is essentially not really manifest. Semblance thus always goes back to something manifest and includes the idea of the manifest. But now it is also becoming clear that an appearance, a symptom, can only be what it is, namely, reference to something else which does not show itself, through the self-showing of that which appears. In short, that which gives itself as a symptom is a PHENOMENON. The possibility of appearance as reference of something to something rests on having that something which does the referring show itself in itself. To put it another way, the possibility of appearance as reference is founded in the authentic PHENOMENON, in self-showing. The structure of appearance as reference already intrinsically presupposes the more original structure of self-showing, the authentic sense of PHENOMENON. Something can be referential only as a self-showing something. GA20EN §9

The concept of appearance now also gets the name of PHENOMENON. Or PHENOMENON is defined as the appearance of something which does not appear; it is defined in terms of a state of affairs which already presupposes the sense of PHENOMENON but which on its part cannot define it. But in addition, appearance implies something which appears and, at the opposite pole, something which does not appear. So there are two entities and it is then maintained that appearances are something and behind them is something else, that of which they are appearances. By and large, we do not learn from philosophy what this standing behind the scenes really means. But in any event this is included in the concept of appearance, so that now appearance and the referential connection included in it are taken ontically, in terms of entities, and the connection between appearance and thing in itself is then a relation of being: one stands behind the other. Add to this the move whereby that which stays in the background and does not show itself but only announces itself in the appearance is now labelled ontically as the real and true entity; this naturally leads to the move of designating that which does appear, the appearance itself, as mere appearance. Thus, within the ontic referential context a distinction in grades of being is made between that which shows itself and that which only appears in the sense of announcing itself in the former. We thus come across a double possibility: appearance purely as a referential connection without first conceiving it ontically in any particular way, and then appearance as the name for an ontic connection of reference between phainomenon and noymenon, between essence and appearance in the ontic sense. If we now take this degraded entity, the appearance versus the essence in this sense of mere appearance, then this mere appearance is called semblance. Confusion is then carried to extremes. But traditional epistemology and metaphysics live off this confusion. GA20EN §9

By way of summary, the following must be made clear: There are two basic meanings of ‘PHENOMENON’; first the manifest, that which shows itself, and second that which presents itself as something manifest but which only gives itself [out] in this way—semblance. For the most part, we are not at all familiar with the original meaning of PHENOMENON and dispense with the task of making clear to ourselves what it does mean. We simply call something a ‘PHENOMENON’ which here has been identified as ‘appearance’ and analyzed as such. When phenomenology is criticized, the critic simply takes the concept of ‘appearance,’ which is convenient for his purposes [but has nothing to do with phenomenology], and uses this word to criticize a research endeavor oriented to the matters themselves. This should suffice for the clarification of the first component part of the term ‘phenomenology.’ GA20EN §9

The objects of philosophical research have the character of the PHENOMENON. In brief, such research deals with phenomena and only with phenomena. Phenomenology in its original and initial meaning, which is captured in the expression ‘phenomenology’, signifies a way of encountering something. It is in fact the outstanding way: showing itself in itself. The expression phenomenology names the way something has to be there through and for legein, for conceptual exposition and interpretation. As our preceding discussion has shown, phenomenology deals with intentionality in its apriori. The structures of intentionality in its apriori are the phenomena. In other words, the structures of intentionality in its apriori circumscribe the objects which are to be made present in themselves in this research and explicated in this presence. The term ‘PHENOMENON’ however says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but refers only to the way they are encountered. The phenomenal is accordingly everything which becomes visible in this kind of encounter and belongs in this structural context of intentionality. We therefore speak of ‘phenomenal structures’ as of what is seen, specified and examined in this kind of research. Phenomenological signifies everything that belongs to such a way of exhibiting phenomena and phenomenal structures, everything that becomes thematic in this kind of research. The unphenomenological would be everything that does not satisfy this kind of research, its conceptuality and its methods of demonstration. GA20EN §9

Phenomenology as the science of the apriori phenomena of intentionality thus never has anything to do with appearances and even less with mere appearances. It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the PHENOMENON as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a PHENOMENON in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses [this something else]. A PHENOMENON is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the PHENOMENON at all, since what the PHENOMENON gives is precisely that something in itself. Admittedly, what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. What is in itself visible and in its very sense is accessible only as a PHENOMENON does not necessarily need to be so already in fact. What a PHENOMENON is as a possibility is not directly given as a PHENOMENON but must first be given. As research work, phenomenology is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments. GA20EN §9

Being-covered-up is the counterconcept to PHENOMENON, and such concealments are really the immediate theme of phenomenological reflection. What can be a PHENOMENON is first and foremost covered up, or known in a tentative form. The concealment can assume various guises. First, a PHENOMENON can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered, so that there is no knowledge or clue to its existence. Second, a PHENOMENON can be buried. This means that it was discovered before but once again got covered up. This is not a total concealment. What was discovered before is still visible, though only as a semblance. But so much semblance—so much being; this concealment understood as disguise is the most frequent and most dangerous kind, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially great. The originally seen phenomena are uprooted, torn from their ground, and are no longer understood in their origins, in their “extraction” from their roots in a particular subject matter. GA20EN §9

The reason why genuinely phenomenological work is difficult is that it must be especially critical of itself in a positive way. The sort of encounter involved in the mode of PHENOMENON must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenological research. This means that the characteristic mode of apprehending phenomena—originarily apprehending interpreting—implies not one iota of an immediate apprehension in the sense in which it can be said that phenomenology is a straightforward seeing which requires absolutely no methodological preparation. Precisely the opposite is the case, which is also why the expressness of the maxim is so essential. Because the PHENOMENON must first be won, scrutinizing the point of departure for access to the PHENOMENON and clearing the passage through the concealments already demand a high degree of methodological preparation so that we may be guided and determined by what the phenomenal givenness of intentionality in each instance implies. The demand for an ultimate direct givenness of the phenomena carries no implication of the comfort of an immediate beholding. There can be no disclosure or deduction of essence from essence, apriori from apriori, one from the other. Rather, each and every one of these must come to demonstrative vision. Accordingly, the way to go in each instance begins with the individual phenomenal correlations and varies according to the degree to which the apriori has been uncovered and the tradition has buried it, as well as the kind of obfuscation involved. Since every structure must ultimately be exhibited in itself, phenomenology’s way of research at first assumes the character or the aspect of what is called a picture-book phenomenology. It gives greater prominence to the exhibition of individual structures which are perhaps very useful for a systematic philosophy, even though the exhibition can only be provisional. As a result, there is a tendency to give philosophical sanction to the prominent displays of particular phenomenological considerations by finding a place for them in some sort of dialectic or the like. Against this tendency, it must be stated that at first nothing at all is to be made of the interconnections of the structures of intentionality. Rather, the interconnection of the apriori is always determined only from the subject matter which is to be explored in its phenomenal structure. Furthermore, at first we need not concern ourselves with these considerations, since they will always remain fruitless as long as the concrete aspect of phenomena is not clear. GA20EN §9

Rickert’s critique is based on his understanding of the word “appearance.” He states that the word “appearance” has, in its sense as appearance of something, the orientation toward something which is not appearance, which is therefore not immediately given. And since appearance is always appearance of something which is behind it, the immediate cannot be apprehended, so that we are always dealing with something already mediated. Phenomenology is accordingly unsuited to be the basic science of philosophy. It is apparent first that the concept of appearance, PHENOMENON, is merely taken up without any attempt to see what PHENOMENON originally means and in phenomenology truly means. Instead, the traditional concept of appearance, an empty verbal concept, is taken as a basis for criticizing the concrete labor of a research effort. It is unnecessary to go any further into this article, since nothing of relevance to our topic would be dredged up by such a critique and since it is in fact no great feat to criticize such an objection. It has to be mentioned, however, since Rickert in this essay gives voice to what is otherwise typical in philosophy and in its attitude toward phenomenology. I stress this not to save phenomenology but to make clear how such an interpretation not only deforms the sense of the phenomenological endeavor but above all loses the instinct for sticking to the topic in philosophizing. GA20EN §9

This reflection will be directed toward the original, that is, phenomenologically basic, determination of the thematic field, namely, the fundamental determination of intentionality and of what is already given with it. In the light of this new task of securing the thematic field originally, as it is prefigured in the PHENOMENON of intentionality, the account of the cultivation and development of phenomenological research will also shift its ground. We shall examine the growing elaboration of the thematic field, its determination, and the outlining of the working horizons as they emerge from this determination of the field. In point of fact, we shall pursue this theme in the double orientation of the work of the two leading researchers in phenomenology today, Husserl and Scheler. GA20EN §9

These problems of Husserl and Scheler just enumerated serve to define the actual development of phenomenology and the more detailed explication of the problem of demarcating and founding the thematic field of phenomenology. Accordingly, the analysis of the later basic studies will have to keep to these two spheres of problems. Within this concrete development of the phenomenological endeavor, the working horizons were at first also fixed by the purely traditional disciplines of logic, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and philosophy of law. The horizons of inquiry remained the same as in traditional philosophy. In addition, on the basis of the orientation to the PHENOMENON of intentionality, which is phenomenologically distinguished into intentio, intentum, and the correlation between the two, there arose three directions of work which always reciprocally require one another: phenomenology of the act, phenomenology of the subject matter, and the correlation between the two. The same separation is found in Husserl in the terms noesis, the specific structure of directing-itself-toward, and noema, the subject matter insofar as it is intended in the intention. For Husserl there is no special correlation, since it is given with noema and noesis and included in them. GA20EN §10

There was a tendency in logic to take the laws of thought as laws of the psychic processes of thought, of the psychic occurrence of thought. In opposition to this misunderstanding, Husserl, like Brentano, showed that the laws of thought are not the laws of the psychic course of thinking but laws of what is thought; that one must distinguish between the psychic process of judgment, the act in the broadest sense, and what is judged in these acts. Distinction is made between the real intake of the acts, the judging as such, and the ideal, the content of the judgment. This distinction between real performance and ideal content provides the basis for the fundamental rejection of psychologism. To the extent that phenomenology works in this direction in logic against psychologism or naturalism, it was from the beginning safeguarded from the naturalistic misunderstanding. However, it must be noted that in this demarcation in the PHENOMENON of judgment—judged content as ideal being or valid being on the one hand and real being or the act of judgment on the other—the distinction between the real and the ideal being of judgment is indeed confronted, but that precisely the reality of this real aspect of acts is left undetermined. The being of the judgment, its being an act, that is, the being of the intentional, is left unquestioned, so that there is always the possibility of conceiving this reality in terms of psychic processes of nature. The discovery, or better the rediscovery of the ideal exerted a fascination, cast a spell, as it were, while on the other side, the acts and processes were relegated to psychology. The elaboration of the pure field here simply led once again to norms, as we saw, without raising the central question. GA20EN §13

This essay is important in several respects: first as a transition stage from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas; then in regard to the concept of reduction: the relation between the eidetic and the transcendental reduction is still left unclarified; further, on account of the concept of PHENOMENON and the psychic, and the lack of clarity on the ‘noematic’ and ‘noetic’; above all, however, in its second part it typifies Husserl’s position toward the problem of history, a position which must be described as impossible, rightly evoking Dilthey’s dismay. But this problem does not interest us now. Our sole problem is the extent to which this treatise exhibits tendencies toward a personalistic psychology, and whether it gets beyond its initial naturalistic approach. GA20EN §13

We already noted that inherent in the PHENOMENON is the possibility of pretending-to-be: semblance. Put positively, this at the same time means: so much seeming, so much being. This means that wherever something passes itself off as this or that, what passes itself off retains the possibility of becoming manifest in itself and thus receiving definition. Accordingly, wherever semblance is identified, wherever semblance is apprehended and understood, there one already finds the allusion to something positive of which the seeming is the semblance. This ‘of which’ is not something ‘behind’ the experience but shines forth in the semblance itself. This precisely is the essence of seeming. GA20EN §14

When we now take up the question of being, we shall in the course of these considerations come across the PHENOMENON ‘time’ and in accord with our question be led to an explication of time. The first portion of our actual considerations is accordingly the exposition of the question of being. Let us recall the outline given earlier: GA20EN §14

The First Part (that is, the Main Part) has as its theme The Analysis of the PHENOMENON of Time: 1) The preparatory description of the field in which the PHENOMENON of time becomes manifest. This is nothing other than what the critical deliberations have now revealed as necessary—the exposition of the question of being. 2) The exposition of time itself. 3) The conceptual interpretation. GA20EN §14

We now proceed to the First Division of the Main Part: Preparatory Description of the Field in Which the PHENOMENON of Time Becomes Manifest. We shall confront this task more accurately under the heading which points to its material connection to the previous considerations: The Elaboration of the Question of Being in Terms of an Initial Explication of Dasein. GA20EN §14

The more authentically and purely this entity of questioning, experiencing, and conceiving is worked out in its being, the more radically will the answer to the question of being be given. This entity will be more purely elaborated, the more originally it is experienced, the more adequately it is conceptually determined, the more authentically the relationship of being to it is secured and conceived. Such a relationship will be secured more genuinely, when prejudices and opinions about it play a less decisive role, be these ever so obvious and generally recognized; and the more it can show itself from out of itself, the more it becomes definable as a PHENOMENON. GA20EN §17

Working out the articulation of the question is the preliminary experience and explication of the questioning entity itself, of the Dasein which we ourselves are. It is a matter of an entity to which we have this distinctive, at any rate noteworthy, relationship of being: we are it itself—an entity which is only insofar as I am it. It is a matter of an entity which to us is the nearest. But is it also what is first given to us, that is, the immediately given? In this respect it is perhaps the farthest. Thus it happens that when we ask about it as such, when this entity is defined, it tends not to be defined at all from an originary apprehension of itself. This entity which we ourselves are and which in respect to its givenness is the farthest from us is to be defined phenomenologically, brought to the level of PHENOMENON, that is, experienced in such a way that it shows itself in itself, so that we draw out of this phenomenal givenness of Dasein certain basic structures which are sufficient to make the concrete question of being into a transparent question. That we with good reason or almost of necessity first ask about this entity, the Dasein, in such a way that we exhibit it provisionally, that we necessarily begin with it, will be established from our growing knowledge of the structure of the being of this very entity. It will be shown that the necessity in the question of being to start from the clarification of questioning as an entity is demanded by this entity itself, by the questioning. This entity, the questioner, itself makes use of a particular sense of being, just the sense which, as we already noted, maintains itself in a certain lack of understanding, a lack which must be defined. Our next task is now the explication of Dasein as the entity whose way of being is questioning itself. GA20EN §17

Dasein in its everydayness, a highly complicated PHENOMENON, regards and defines it more authentically when a life is more differentiated. When we analyze Dasein in its everydayness and its being in everydayness, this should not be construed as saying also that we want to derive the remaining possibilities of the being of Dasein from everydayness, that we want to carry out a genetic consideration on the assumption that every other possibility of the being of Dasein could be derived from everydayness. Everydayness persists everywhere and always every day; each is a witness as to how Dasein has to be and how it is in everydayness, even though in a different way. It is easy to foresee that everydayness is a specific concept of time. GA20EN §18

Though this basic constitution becomes the theme of the analysis according to three aspects, it is still always wholly there as itself in each particular consideration. What the aspects bring out in each case are not pieces, detachable moments out of which the whole may first be assembled. Bringing out the individual structural moments is a purely thematic accentuation and as such always only an actual apprehension of the whole structure in itself. In order to indicate at the outset that this highlighting is a thematic accentuation, that in regarding the first, the in-the-world, we also always already co-intend the second and the third, we shall anticipate the comprehensive analysis of the first PHENOMENON, in-the-world, by an account orienting us to the last phenomenal constituent to be mentioned, in-being as such. GA20EN §19

The declaration of the genuine meaning of in-being does not also already guarantee seeing the PHENOMENON which it expresses. But at the same time it is also more than a mere verbal definition; it fixes our line of sight above all prohibitively, it indicates where we do not have to look. But from our account of the fundamental character we already know that, to demonstrate all the determinations of being under discussion, we should look to the entity which in each instance we are, to the extent that and as we are it. Dasein, insofar as it is at all, is in the way of being of in-being. This means that in-being in the sense already defined is not a ‘property’ of the entity called Dasein, not a property which it has or does not have, which devolves upon it or which it might add to itself, without which it could be just as well as with it, so that at first one could conceive the being of Dasein otherwise, to some extent without in-being. In-being is rather the constitution of the being of Dasein, in which every way of being of this entity is grounded. In-being is not merely something thrown into the bargain for an entity which even without this constitutive state would be Dasein, as if the world, in which every Dasein as Dasein always already is, were at times first added to this entity (or conversely this entity to it) so that this entity then could at its leisure enter into a ‘relation’ with the world. Such entering into relations with the world is altogether possible only insofar as Dasein already is being-in-the-world on the basis of its being-involved-with. . . . GA20EN §19

This characteristic PHENOMENON of in-being and its characteristic of defining Dasein in its very being must be made perfectly clear from the outset and kept in view as an apriori of every particular relationship to the world. I shall therefore try to make this clear in a roundabout way, inasmuch as this structure of in-being was in a certain way always already seen wherever Dasein was examined. It would even be incomprehensible if such a basic PHENOMENON of Dasein had been totally overlooked. It is another question whether it is experienced and apprehended so that its authentic structure shows itself and thereby presents the possibility of determining the being of the entity so structured in a phenomenally suitable way. GA20EN §19

In such an approach to the question of knowing, a relation between two entities which are on hand is assumed beforehand, explicitly or otherwise. This relationship of two things on hand is now applied more specifically to the determination of a relation between inner and outer when one asks: How is this relation of being between the two entities, subject and object, possible? This is asked, presumably in compliance with the facts of the case of knowing, without having even in the least determined the sense of being of this knowing, the sense of being of this relationship between subject and object, without having clarified the sense of being of the subject and delimited it from that of the object. To be sure, we are assured that the inside and this ‘inner sphere’ of the subject is not actually spatial; it is certainly not a ‘box’ or anything like a receptacle. But we do not learn what its positive meaning is, what this immanence after all is in which knowing finds itself enclosed, and how the being of the subject is to be understood if, as primarily immanent, it is only with itself. No matter how such an ‘inside’ and the sense of this inner sphere may be defined, as soon as the question is raised as to how knowing gets ‘out of’ it to . . . , then the way of dealing with the PHENOMENON of knowing has turned out to be one founded upon a semblance. But in the whole approach to this question, even when it is embedded in an epistemological problematic, one is blind to what is thus asserted about Dasein when knowing taken as a mode of being is attributed to it. This says nothing more and nothing less than: knowing the world is a mode of being of Dasein such that this mode is ontically founded in its basic constitution, in being-in-the-world. GA20EN §20

What Augustine identifies as love and hate and only in certain contexts specifies as Dasein’s truly cognitive mode of being we shall later have to take as an original PHENOMENON of Dasein, though not in this one-sided restriction to just this comportment. Rather, we shall first learn to understand, from the more refined apprehension of the modes of being of Dasein within which knowledge is possible at all, that knowledge as such cannot even be grasped if we do not from the outset see the specific context of being in which knowing as such is possible. When this is truly understood, it will always appear grotesque to explain knowledge in terms of itself by way of an epistemology. And it remains absurd to approach this entity, which as Dasein is constituted in its being as being-in-the-world, without regard to its world. This involves approaching it in such a way that its basic constitution is after a fashion taken away from it; this denatured Dasein is then approached as a subject, which amounts to a complete inversion of its being. It now becomes the source of a problem of explaining how a relation of being between this fantastically conceived entity and another entity called world might be possible. To explain knowing on this basis which is no longer a basis, that is, to make sense of manifest nonsense, naturally calls for a theory and metaphysical hypotheses. GA20EN §20

Before proceeding to this analysis, the PHENOMENON may be clarified by an analogy which itself is not too far removed from the matter at issue, inasmuch as this analogy is concerned with an entity to which we must likewise attribute, in a formal way, the kind of being which belongs to Dasein—‘life.’ GA20EN §20

We have oriented the question of in-being in particular toward the relation of knowing because this mode of being of Dasein traditionally has priority in the philosophical determination of the relation of the ego (the subject) to the world; and yet this mode of being is still not originally conceived but instead remains the source of all sorts of confusion as a result of this indeterminacy in regard to its being. The so-called epistemological positions of idealism and realism and their varieties and mixtures are all possible only on the basis of a lack of clarity of the PHENOMENON of in-being, about which they formulate theories without having exposed it in advance. Idealism and realism both let the relationship of being between subject and object first emerge. Indeed, in idealism this leads to the assertion (in quite distinct ways, depending on whether it is logical or psychological idealism) that it is the subject which first of all creates the relation of being to the object. Realism, which goes along with the same absurdity, in contrary fashion says that it is the object which through causal relations first effects the relations of being to the subject. In opposition to these basically equivalent positions, there is a third position which presupposes the relationship of being between subject and object from the start, for example, that of Avenarius: between subject and object there is what is called a ‘principal coordination,’ and subject and object must from the start be regarded as standing in a relationship of being. But this relationship is in its mode of being left undefined, as is the mode of being implied in subject and object. A position which wants to stand on this side of idealism and realism because it does not let the relationship first emerge, but which at the same time stands on the far side of idealism and realism because it tries to preserve and yet sublate both positions in their own rights, which they really do not have, is a position whose sense is always oriented to this theory. What has been said in our present consideration about knowing as a mode of being of in-being and suggested as a task of a phenomenology of knowing stands neither on this side nor on the far side of idealism and realism, nor is it either one of the two positions. Instead it stands wholly outside of an orientation to them and their ways of formulating questions. GA20EN §20

Our further considerations will not only explicate the genuine sense of knowing more clearly. Above all, their aim is to show that knowing in its being is grounded upon more original structures of Dasein, that, for example, knowing can be true—can have truth as a distinctive predicate—only because truth is not so much a property of knowing but is rather a character of the being of Dasein itself. This may suffice as a provisional account of the PHENOMENON of in-being. GA20EN §20

We now wish to proceed just as we did earlier by first trying to limit the phenomenal horizon prohibitively, defensively, which means to suspend the direction of vision which does not lead us to the authentic PHENOMENON. It is especially important in this analysis of the world in its worldhood, since the question of the structure of the being of the world was always formulated as the question of the structure of the being of nature, not only today and since modern science but in a certain sense already with the Greeks. Thus the entire constellation of concepts which we have at our disposal in characterizing the being of the world in a primary way comes from this way of considering the world as nature. In an original analysis of the world, which does not regard nature as primary, we are therefore at a total loss for concepts and even more for expression. GA20EN §22

Descartes is aware that his definition of body really excludes force or, in today’s terms, energy. And this is the PHENOMENON which later provided Leibniz with the opening, in the context of introducing vis into his system, to subject Descartes’ determination of the being of nature to a fundamental critique. GA20EN §22

It is thus in Descartes that we see most clearly and simply that a whole chain of presuppositions deviates from the true PHENOMENON of the world. We saw how Descartes tries to reduce all the determinations of corporeal being, what British empiricism, precisely in conjunction with him, later called the secondary qualities of sensation as opposed to the primary qualities, to the basic determination of res extensa, to extensio, in order to enable a knowledge of the world which in its degree of certainty is no different from the knowledge of res cogitans. But it is also already evident that the being of the world, which on the basis of certain judgments is first conceived as nature, cannot even be obtained by a theoretical reconstruction which goes from the res extensa back to the sensory thing and then to the value-laden thing, but that by doing so the specific theoretical objectification is retained and the analysis is led astray even further. The world would remain deprived of its worldhood, since the primary exhibition of the authentic reality of the world should be referred to the original task of an analysis of reality itself, which would first have to disregard every specifically theoretical objectification. The course of the scientific inquiry into reality shows, however, that the original mode of encounter of the environing world is always already given up in favor of the established view of the world as the reality of nature, so that we may interpret the specific phenomena of the world in terms of its theoretical knowledge of the objectivity of nature. GA20EN §22

If we consider this work of Descartes in relation to the constitution of the mathematical sciences of nature and to the elaboration of mathematical physics in particular, these considerations then naturally assume a fundamentally positive significance. But if they are regarded in the context of a general theory of the reality of the world, it then becomes apparent that from this point on the fateful constriction of the inquiry into reality sets in, which to the present day has not yet been overcome. This constriction dominates the entire past tradition of philosophy. It was in a way prepared by Greek philosophy, not in the extreme sense of mathematization but in accord with a natural tendency of knowing. The world was experienced as pragmata, as the “with which of having to do with it”; and yet it was not understood ontologically in this sense, but instead in the broadest sense as a thing of nature. That the question of the reality of the world continues to be oriented primarily to the world as nature also serves to show, however, that the original way of encountering the environing world evidently cannot even be directly grasped, that this PHENOMENON is instead typically passed over. This is no accident, inasmuch as Dasein as being-in-the-world in the sense of concern is absorbed in its world in which it is preoccupied, is so to speak exhausted by that world, so that precisely in the most natural and the most immediate being-in-the-world the world in its worldhood is not experienced thematically at all. The world is experienced expressly only when it is apprehended in some sort of theoretical intention. The world thus encountered in theoretical intention becomes thematic when we inquire into its being theoretically. GA20EN §22

This peculiar fact, that the primary PHENOMENON of the world is passed over, along with the stubbornness and the constant pressure and intrusion of the kind of apprehension involved in the theoretical apprehension and determination of a thing, can itself be explained only by reference to Dasein’s essential kind of being. When this happens, when the kind of being involved in this specific theoretical apprehension and its precedence is itself understood, only then is this persistent prejudice rendered harmless for the primary analysis of the world. GA20EN §22

These steps serve to clarify four questions about the tradition: 1) why the authentic structure of the being of the world, [what we have called] primary worldhood, was from the start and has ever since been passed over in philosophy; 2) why this structure of being, even when a replacement PHENOMENON equipped with value predicates is brought in for it, is still held to be in need of explanation and derivation; 3) why it is explained by being clarified and founded in a fundamental stratum of reality; 4) why this founding reality is conceived as the being of nature and that in terms of the objectivity of mathematical physics. GA20EN §23

It thus becomes clear that the references are precisely the involvements [Wobei] in which the concernful occupation dwells; it does not dwell among isolated things of the environing world and certainly not among thematically or theoretically perceived objects. Rather things constantly step back into the referential totality or, more properly stated, in the immediacy of everyday occupation they never even first step out of it. That they do not step out of the referential totality, which itself is encountered primarily in the form of familiarity: this PHENOMENON characterizes the obviousness and unobtrusiveness of the reality of the environing world. Things recede into relations, they do not obtrude themselves, in order thus to be there for concern. These primary phenomena of encounter: reference, referential totality, the closed character of the referential context, familiarity of the referential whole, things not stepping out of referential relations, are of course seen only if the original phenomenological direction of vision is assumed and above all seen to its conclusion, which means letting the world be encountered in concern. This PHENOMENON is really passed over when the world is from the start approached as given for observation or, as is by and large the case even in phenomenology, when the world is approached just as it shows itself in an isolated, so-called sense perception of a thing, and this isolated free-floating perception of a thing is now interrogated on the specific kind of givenness belonging to its object. There is here a basic deception for phenomenology which is peculiarly frequent and persistent. It consists in having the theme determined by the way it is phenomenologically investigated. For inasmuch as phenomenological investigation is itself theoretical, the investigator is easily motivated to make a specifically theoretical comportment to the world his theme. Thus a specifically theoretical apprehension of the thing is put forward as an exemplary mode of being-in-the-world, instead of phenomenologically placing oneself directly in the current and the continuity of access of the everyday preoccupation with things, which is inconspicuous enough, and phenomenally recording what is encountered in it. It is precisely this inconspicuousness of comportment and of its corresponding way of having the world which must be secured in order to see in it the specific presence of the world. GA20EN §23

This is manifest even more clearly in the PHENOMENON in which some surroundings, especially the most familiar ones, become a compelling presence when something is missing in them. Because the specific presence of the environing world lies precisely in the familiar totality of references, missing something can allow us to encounter the inconspicuous extant thing. And to be missing always implies an absence of a something belonging-here within the closed context of references. The absence of something within the world of concern, absence as a breach of reference, as a disturbance of familiarity, thus has a distinctive function in encountering the environing world. We could put this in a very extreme form by asserting that the specific handiness of the environing world of equipment as the world of concern is constituted in the absence of handiness, in not being handy. But we do not wish to stop at such a perhaps somewhat paradoxical formulation. We want to understand its positive sense, namely, that this specific absence points to what underlies it as its possibility, that is, the always-already-there of a familiar continuity of references which is disturbed because something is missing, and which stands out through this specific absence. GA20EN §23

What is of concern [Besorgtheit]—that for the sake of which concern is concerned—that which is primarily placed under care, lets us encounter everything around it toward which it is oriented, the referential connections of serviceability, usability, conduciveness, and these references in turn then let us encounter what stands in them. What all this means: ‘to place under care,’ ‘to stand in a reference,’ and to be encountered from it, can only be clarified later, specifically only by the PHENOMENON of time. GA20EN §23

Against this analysis of the founded sense of bodily presence, which is founded in handiness, which in turn is founded in the non-emergence of referential relations, and in turn again in the intimate presence of what is of concern, it can be objected that one can nonetheless let a pure thing be encountered at any time and directly in its naked bodily presence. One does not first need the performance of an initially unreflective concern. In other words, the founding connection is not at all necessary. This objection, that bodily presence is not a founded PHENOMENON since one does not have to run through the individual steps of founding it, is no objection at all, but perhaps only the unbiased confirmation of the phenomenal state of affairs which grounded our assertion that bodily presence is founded. In order to see this, it should be noted that the explicitness and the awareness of the modes of being and their ontological foundation in the course of being do not decide on what belongs to the phenomenal composition of a structure of being. The fact that I know nothing about a particular founding connection in the enactment of a way of being cannot be taken as justification for the conclusion that this founding connection is not constitutive for that way of being. Explicitness and awareness do not decide on these matters. Rather, the very lack of explicitness in traversing this course, the very lack of an awareness of going along with the founding steps is characteristic of all concerned being-in-the-world, inasmuch as we define it as absorption in the world, being drawn in by it. For why can I let a pure thing of the world be encountered at all in bodily presence? Only because the world is already there in thus letting it be encountered, because letting-it-be-encountered is but a particular mode of my being-in-the-world and because world means nothing other than what is always already present for the entity in it. I can see a natural thing in its bodily presence only on the basis of this being-in-the-world. I can means that I have this possibility at my disposal, and this possibility is of course nothing other than the basic constitution of my Dasein, of my I of which I am capable, to wit, that I am in the world. It is utterly unthinkable how something, a natural thing, could be encountered in its pure bodily presence, if not on the basis of the prior presence of world. Otherwise, in encountering this thing, not only would it have to show itself in its presence but all in all something like presence as such first of all would have had to arise. But why presence arises not for the Dasein but is itself with the Dasein which is in its world, this we understand only by reference to time, to this namely, that Dasein itself—as we shall later see—is time. GA20EN §23

The founding of the proximally present handy entity in the always already present extant-on-hand, primarily the founding of these characters of being of handiness and extantness in the presence of what is of concern, has provided us with an initial phenomenological insight into the structure of encounter in worldhood. The function of encounter belonging to this presence of what is of concern has thus shown itself to us in a remarkable priority. If fundamental characters are exhibited in this way, further phenomenological interpretation of this presence must bring about a more transparent categorial understanding of worldhood. It is thus that the constitutive function of familiarity, which was expressly specified as a factor of worldhood, will then become clear. We shall later specify this moment in greater detail in conjunction with a closer determination of the presence of what is of concern, in particular, of the work-world. But now, this analysis of the structure of encounter belonging to the environing world is still in need of a fundamental clarification in the direction of the PHENOMENON which we simply introduced without further specification at the beginning of our analysis. There we said that environmental things are encountered in references in the character of ‘serving to,’ ‘useful for,’ ‘conducive to,’ and the like; worldhood is constituted in references, and these references themselves stand in referential correlations, referential totalities, which ultimately refer back to the presence of the work-world. It is not things but references which have the primary function in the structure of encounter belonging to the world, not substances but functions, to express this state of affairs by a formula of the ‘Marburg School.’ GA20EN §23

In fact, the analysis we have given of the structure of the environing world could be explained in terms of this particular epistemology of the Marburg School, but this would also spoil our understanding of the PHENOMENON. To be sure, the contrast between the concepts of substance and function, to which the epistemology of the Marburg School attaches particular importance, has without question permitted us to see something significant, but in the first place only in the investigation of the objectivity of nature as object of the mathematical sciences of nature. This contrast was found right in this context, precisely in the orientation in which the specific determination of the objectivity of the world as nature proceeds by specification of spatio-temporal relations expressed in mathematical functional relationships. Accordingly, the authentic reality of nature is constituted in these functional relations expressed, for example, by a set of differential equations of mathematical physics. This is where the objectivity of nature and so the being of nature is given as valid knowledge. Therefore, the concept of function, the mathematical in the broadest sense, has a primary prerogative in the constitution of the world when compared to the concept of substance. In this context, this distinction is obtained solely by orientation to the scientific knowledge of nature. GA20EN §23

Second, however, along with this restriction to a derivative level of reality, the contrast of substance and function is itself not made clear. Substance is not understood in its structure and genesis nor is function in its phenomenal genesis itself derived from a more original PHENOMENON. Function is simply posited as given with thinking itself and the thought process. GA20EN §23

If we now wish to get a clearer sense of the structure of the world-hood of the environing world in the direction of referential correlations, to the extent that this is possible at the present stage of our considerations, then obviously the PHENOMENON of reference must be characterized in more detail. The term ‘reference’ refers to a formal concept; deformalized, there are different senses of reference. The reference which we have in mind as a part of the structure of encounter belonging to world, we shall now more accurately designate as ‘to mean’ [bedeuten]. The structure of encounter thus specified in references as meaning we shall call ‘meaningfulness’ [Bedeutsamkeit]. GA20EN §23

Inasmuch as we are introducing meaningfulness formally through reference, a misunderstanding is thereby averted to which this expression is again and again readily prone, namely, that the term ‘meaningfulness’ says something along these lines: The environmental things, whose being is said to reside in meaningfulness, are not only natural things but also have a meaning, they have a certain rank and value. In ordinary language, ‘to mean’ and ‘meaningfulness’ are in fact so understood, and perhaps something of this sense also recurs in the terminological sense of the expression. The only question is, does this interpretation of a natural thing laden with predicates of value fit the PHENOMENON we have identified, or does it just distort it? The question is whether what is called value is an original PHENOMENON at all; or is it perhaps not something which again developed under the presupposition of that ontology which we identified as a specific ontology of nature, under the assumption that the things are first of all things of nature and then have something like a value, where value is taken ontologically in a specific reference back to the thingness of nature. Perhaps it is unavoidable to regard values as values, when being is in fact from the outset approached as nature. GA20EN §23

Meaningfulness, as we use the term, understood negatively to begin with says nothing about meaning in the sense of value and rank. In another sense, meaning also signifies the meaning of a word, meaning as something which word-combinations can have. Even this sense of meaning is in a certain way connected with what we call meaningfulness, in fact much more properly than the first sense of meaning and meaningfulness in terms of value. That such delimitations, which we are making here quite formally in regard to the bare words, already become necessary itself points to a certain embarrassment in the choice of the right expression for the complex PHENOMENON which we want to call meaningfulness. And I frankly admit that this expression is not the best, but for years I have found nothing better, in particular nothing which gives voice to an essential connection of the PHENOMENON with what we designate as meaning in the sense of the meaning of words, inasmuch as the PHENOMENON possesses just such an intrinsic connection with verbal meaning, discourse. This connection between discourse and world will now perhaps still be totally obscure. GA20EN §23

When we say that the basic structure of worldhood, the being of the entity which we call world, lies in meaningfulness, this amounts to saying that the structure as we have characterized it thus far, the references and the referential contexts, are basically correlations of meaning, meaningful contexts. In what follows, we shall treat only what is most necessary for the characterization of these phenomena, specifically to the extent that it contributes to the elucidation of meaningfulness. Phenomenology in particular has time and again sensed the urgency of bringing that complex of phenomena which is usually summarized under the heading of ‘signs’ once and for all definitively out into the open. But these have remained only approaches. Husserl does some things in the second volume of the Logical Investigations, where the first investigation deals with signs in connection with demarcation of the PHENOMENON of verbal meaning from the universal PHENOMENON (as he says) of signs. Moreover, the universal scope of phenomena such as signs and symbols readily gives rise to using them as a clue for interpreting the totality of entities, the world as a whole. No less a figure than Leibniz sought in his characteristica universalis systematization of the totality of entities by way of an orientation to the PHENOMENON of the sign. Recently, Spengler, following Lamprecht’s procedure, has applied the idea of symbol to the history of philosophy and metaphysics in general, without providing a properly scientific clarification of the group of phenomena named by it. Most recently, in his work Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer has tried to explain the various domains of life (language, knowledge, religion, myth) by viewing them basically as phenomena of the expression of spirit. He has likewise sought to broaden the critique of reason presented by Kant into a critique of culture. Here too the PHENOMENON of expression, of symbol in the broadest sense, is taken as a clue for explaining all the phenomena of spirit and of entities in general. The universal applicability of formal clues such as ‘Gestalt,’ ‘sign,’ ‘symbol’ thus easily obscures the originality or non-originality of the interpretation thus achieved. What can be a suitable approach for aesthetic phenomena can have exactly the opposite effect in elucidating and interpreting other phenomena. What comes to light here is in fact a peculiar context which generally determines the human [i.e., spiritual] sciences in their development. In relation to such attempts, which are basically always violent, the object, the spiritual, which is at issue here, offers less resistance than in the field of natural science, where nature immediately takes its revenge on a wrongheaded approach. Because of our specific non-relationship to the spiritual, such objects and phenomena are more readily subject to misinterpretation, since the misinterpretation realizes itself as a spiritual product. It is understandable and applicable as a spiritual product and so can itself take the place of the subject matter to be understood, so that for a long time certain sciences of the spiritual could stand in a presumed relationship to it. This peculiar non-relationship is connected with the fact that this world of objects then seems to be easily understood and defined by anyone and by arbitrary means, and that in the field of these objects there is a peculiar lack of need for a suitable conceptuality, without which the natural sciences, for example, simply could not advance. Obviously, just such attempts at interpretation under the guidance of such universal phenomena from which all and sundry can be made—for ultimately each and every thing can be interpreted as a sign—pose a great danger for the development of the human sciences. GA20EN §23

If we now try to provide an initial clarification of the basic structure of worldhood by an interpretation of the PHENOMENON of meaningfulness, we must remember that a full understanding of this PHENOMENON can be obtained only from an adequate interpretation of the basic PHENOMENON from which it is now drawn for thematic investigation, from being-in-the-world as the basic constitution of Dasein. Only the progressive explication of this structure of being-in-the-world can insure an understanding of meaningfulness. At the present stage of the analysis, therefore, we must try to grasp this PHENOMENON of meaningfulness less by tracing its own structures than by distinguishing it from kindred structures. These kindred phenomena, reference, sign, relation, point back to meaningfulness as the root of their phenomenal genesis. GA20EN §23

The interconnection of the phenomena of meaningfulness, sign, reference, relation may first be formally indicated in the following propositions, which say something only if they have themselves arisen from the clarification of the phenomena themselves, and are understood in this way rather than as mere formulas. Thereupon it can be said: every reference is a relation but not every relation is a reference. Every sign, or better, ‘indication,’ is an ontic reference, but not every reference is a sign. This at the same time implies that every sign is a relation, but not every relation is a sign. Moreover, every sign means, which here signifies that it has the mode of being of meaningfulness. Meaning, however, is never a sign. Relation is the most universal formal character of these phenomena. Sign, reference, meaning are all relations. But just because the PHENOMENON of relation is the most universal, it is not the origin of these phenomena, that out of which the relationships which organize their particular structures can in turn be understood. GA20EN §23

In order to clarify the sense of meaningfulness we shall proceed by way of a brief characterization of sign and indication. For this purpose we have chosen an example which we shall meet again with some modifications in the discussion of another PHENOMENON, that of place and direction. GA20EN §23

In order to make meaningfulness as such understandable in a provisional way, we must return to a more original PHENOMENON of beingin-the-world, which we call understanding and understanding concern. It is only because being-in-the-world as understanding and concerned absorption appresents the world that this being-in-the-world can also be concerned with this appresentation of the world explicitly, and does in fact attend to it by means of environmental things produced expressly for that purpose, namely, by means of signs. Sign-things have their origin and sense in Dasein itself; there is nothing accidental about them. Being a sign is rooted in environmentality. This is why an environmental thing which at first is not a sign at all but simply an environmental thing, as an environmental thing can at any time become a sign (for example, a hammer or a stone-ax). They can become signs in the sense that a stone-ax, for example, in its extantness can point to an environment as having been. It is that type of sign which we call a vestige. GA20EN §23

With regard to the PHENOMENON of relation and its relationship of being to reference, sign and meaningfulness, it must be said that, as the formal structural element, relation is accessible at all times in references and signs. It is accessible specifically by way of a disregard, not only of the concretion and material content of these phenomena, but also that it is itself an indicating and referring of the relational kind, in order to let us see only the empty in-order-to. The apprehension of pure relations as such is a supreme way, but at the same time also the emptiest way of objectifying entities. It is a making present which does not go along with references and sign-taking in a primary way; rather, it only looks at and thus takes in the whole as a whole of relations. GA20EN §23

If the worldhood of the world is defined as a totality of references, this should not be misunderstood as saying that the environmental things, the ‘substances,’ are now dissolved into lawlike correlations of functions. Instead, the specification of reference as meaning points to the appresentational sense of references. This sense is what it is only in its grounding in the presence of what is of concern, of the work-world. As I have already emphasized, all further understanding will go back to the PHENOMENON of the presence of what is of concern in the authentic sense, to the analysis of being-in-the-world in its particular sense as concern, which has the mode of being of pure letting-become-present—a remarkable kind of being which is understood only when it is seen that this making present and appresenting is nothing other than time itself. GA20EN §23

Our task now is to see the structure of meaningfulness, which we are trying to bring out as the authentic constitution of worldhood, in the context of the question of an interpretation of Dasein with regard to the question of being as such. In order to reach this goal, it is necessary, by means of a summary consideration, to extricate the question of the world understood as meaningfulness from a perverse horizon oriented to some theory or other of the reality of the external world or even to an ontology of actuality. The provisional clarification of meaningfulness and the prior stage of the interpretation of the reality of the world antecedes such an epistemology or ontology of the world with the exposition of the question of being as such, that is, with the interpretation of Dasein. The complex of questions involving epistemology (subject-object) or ontology (of nature) thus does not touch the interpretation of Dasein in its being at all. In order to attain this end and to bring this provisional analysis of meaningfulness to a conclusion, we shall consider five points: a) The reality of the external world is exempt from any proof of it or belief in it. b) The reality of the real (the worldhood of the world) cannot be defined on the basis of its being an object and being apprehended. c) Reality is not interpreted by way of the character of ‘in itself’; rather, this character is itself in need of interpretation. d) Reality is not to be understood primarily in terms of the bodily presence of the perceived. e) Reality is not adequately clarified by the PHENOMENON of resistance as the object of drive and effort. GA20EN §24

I list the discussion of the PHENOMENON of resistance last because this interpretation of reality comes closest to the one I advocate and of late has been advanced by Scheler. This rapprochement in our interpretation probably stems from a common source, from presentiments (more they cannot be called) which Dilthey had in this direction. GA20EN §24

The question of the reality of the external world is in part defined on the basis of an extrinsic understanding of Kantian philosophy, or better put, under the influence of considerations which Descartes initiated. It is a question which has continuously occupied the epistemology of the modern era more or less explicitly. But this was always under the assurance that naturally no one doubted the reality of the external world. It is nonetheless always presupposed here that this reality, worldhood of the world, basically is still something which perhaps could be proved, or more accurately, if we were in an ideal state, we would in the end have proved it. That the world is real is however not only not in need of proof, it is also not something which for lack of rigorous proofs must then be merely believed, in view of which one has to dispense with knowledge and be content with faith. This talk of faith in the reality of the “world” presupposes that it can actually be proved. The view goes back to the first one, which aspires to some sort of proof. But here it should be noted that the recourse to a belief in reality does not correspond to any phenomenal finding. Dilthey’s treatise also took this line of inquiry. This treatise is not important because it so formulates the problem, which just shows that Dilthey did not understand the actual problem. It is important in relation to another PHENOMENON, that of resistance, which he touched on here and which we have to discuss later in greater detail. GA20EN §24

But if we for once refrain from all discussion of this theory, it becomes clear that nothing exists in our relationship to the world which provides a basis for the PHENOMENON of belief in the world. I have not yet been able to find this PHENOMENON of belief. Rather, the peculiar thing is just that the world is ‘there’ before all belief. The world is never experienced as something which is believed any more than it is guaranteed by knowledge. Inherent in the being of the world is that its existence needs no guarantee in regard to a subject. What is needed, if this question comes up at all, is that the Dasein should experience itself in its most elementary constitution of being, as being-in-the-world itself. This experience of itself—unspoiled by any sort of epistemology—eliminates the ground for any question of the reality of the world. That it is real stands in opposition to any move to prove it. And even any purported belief in it is a theoretically motivated misunderstanding. This is not a convenient evasion of a problem. The question rather is whether this so-called problem which is ostensibly being evaded is really a problem at all. I ‘know’ that the world is real only insofar as I am. It is not cogito sum which formulates a primary finding but rather sum cogito. And this sum is not taken in the ontological indifference in which Descartes and his successors took it, as the extantness of a thinking thing. Sum here is the assertion of the basic constitution of my being: I-am-in-a-world and therefore I am capable of thinking it. But this Cartesian proposition has been taken in the opposite way, and rightly so, since Descartes himself wanted it thus understood, such that the sum was not questioned at all. Instead consciousness as the inner was thought to be given absolutely as an absolute starting point, from which all the puzzles of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ then arise. GA20EN §24

The reality of the world is not a problem in the sense of whether it actually exists or not, but the question of the reality of the world persists in the question of how worldhood is to be understood. But even if it is said that the initial question of the existence of the world is naturally and obviously contrary to sense, which is often heard, this will not do phenomenologically. This countersense must be allowed to assault the PHENOMENON, so to speak, by way of the positive vision of the PHENOMENON of in-being and the world. In other words, the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world must be seen in order to be able to make the statement that it contravenes sense, it infringes the basic constitution of that of which we speak. The ‘self-evidence’ of the existence of the world must become transparent in a Dasein by way of the positive vision of the PHENOMENON of in-being. Ontic-existentiell self-evidence is given with the being of Dasein, but ontologically it is puzzling. GA20EN §24

What the proposition basically means, what is seen in it, is not that an entity is dependent on consciousness in its being nor that something transcendent is actually at the same time something immanent. The phenomenal finding in this proposition is rather that a world is encountered. The PHENOMENON itself thus directs us to interpret the structure of encounter, the activity of encountering. And the more we go about this without prejudice, the more authentically is the entity encountered ascertainable in its being. GA20EN §24

But reality is not adequately clarified even by the PHENOMENON of resistance. The Greeks obviously had this PHENOMENON already in mind when they proposed the sômata, the corporeal things, as the authentic ousiai with respect to pressure and impact. In more recent times, Dilthey in particular, in the context of the inquiry mentioned above, has pointed to the PHENOMENON of resistance, specifically resistance as a correlate of impulse. For every impulse which comes from the subject and is operative in the subject there is a correlative resistance. To be sure, Dilthey did not come to a more rigorous formulation of the PHENOMENON, but, and this is what is most important, he already saw quite early that reality is experienced not only in knowledge and awareness but in the whole “living subject,” as he puts it, in this “thinking, willing, feeling being.” He wants to get to the totality of the subject which experiences the world and not to a bloodless thinking thing which merely intends and theoretically thinks the world. But he seeks the whole within the framework of a traditional anthropological psychology, as you can see from the very formulation, this “thinking, willing, feeling being.” He just does not see that the adoption of this old psychology necessarily forces him away from the authentic PHENOMENON. This old psychology is not overcome by his new analytical psychology but only reaffirmed, thereby preventing a genuine apprehension of what is anticipated. GA20EN §24

All the same, it must be said that the PHENOMENON of resistance is not the original PHENOMENON. Rather, resistance in its turn again can only be understood in terms of meaningfulness. The authentic correlation of world and Dasein (if we can speak here of correlation at all, which is not my opinion) is not that of impulse and resistance or, as in Scheler, will and resistance, but rather care and meaningfulness. This correlation is the basic structure of life, a structure which I also call facticity. For something can be encountered in its resistivity as a resistance only as something which I do not succeed in getting through when I live in a wanting-to-get-through, which means in being out toward something, which means that something is already primarily present for caring and concern, which presence is the basis upon which there can first be a presence of the resistant at all. No resistance, however great, is capable of giving something objective. If resistance were the authentic being of entities, then the relationship of being of two entities with the greatest resistance between them, and so the intense pressure of one entity against another, would involve bringing something like a world into presence. But this is not directly given between two entities in a relationship of resistance. The pressure and counterpressure, thrust and counterthrust, of material things never allow something like a world in the sense of worldhood to come into being. Instead, resistance is a phenomenal character which already presupposes a world. GA20EN §24

In addition, this PHENOMENON of resistance is inadequate because it is basically oriented only to the correlation of acts, just as it was in Dilthey. Scheler is thus also forced, as a basis for this old proposal of a subject which has acts, to draw again upon the distinction of in mente and extra mentem. Notwithstanding, here, quite independently from another quarter within phenomenology comes the insistence that reality can never be understood in terms of the mere knowledge of something, that above all an epistemology cannot be oriented toward judgments or the like. All this is worth noting, and Scheler emphasized particularly the latter quite forcefully when he said that today still three-fourths of all epistemologies are of the wrongheaded opinion that the primary aspect from which the object of knowledge, the entity in itself, can be apprehended is the judgment. GA20EN §24

The theme under consideration is Dasein in its basic constitution, being-in-the-world. This unitary PHENOMENON was first brought into view by regarding one of three directions, that of the structural moment of the world, understood as the world of everyday Dasein. We first worked out this worldhood in its general structure as meaningfulness. GA20EN §25

The first two phenomena, remotion and region, refer back to orientation. If spatiality belongs primarily to worldhood, then it is not surprising if we now show phenomenally that in the analysis of the worldhood of aroundness we have already made use of its characters, albeit implicitly. Among the characters of the world relative to its worldhood we have cited that of being handy, which we defined as the presence of what is immediately available in concern. This determination of the ‘immediately’ includes the PHENOMENON of nearness. GA20EN §25

Furthermore, the analysis of the sign and of indicating made it clear that concern in an independent mode, as a special task, can undertake the discovery and release, the advance presentation of what can be pursued in the local constellation of the environing world at a definite moment. The arrow on the car indicates where the car is going, the way to this and that direction. Thus, the PHENOMENON of aroundness includes the distinctive characters of nearness and direction (way to . . .). GA20EN §25

Nearness implies distance [Ferne] or, as we shall later put it more precisely, nearness is only a mode of remotion [Entfernung]. Nearness and distance, which characterize the things of the world under concern as they are encountered in concern, already give us the PHENOMENON of remotion. Let us note at once that ‘remotion’ does not refer to the spacing between two points, even when we do not take them as pure points but as worldly things (say, the distance of the chair from the window). It refers rather to the temporally particular nearness or remotion of the chair or window to me. Only on the basis of this primary remotion, that the chair, insofar as it is there in a worldly way, as such is removed from me, as such has a possible nearness and distance to me, only on this account is it possible for the chair to be remote from the window, and that we can designate this referential connection of the two as remotion, although this usage of remotion is already secondary. The relation of the two points here can now no longer be designated as remotion. For these two points as geometric points are not remote but have a spacing [Abstand]. Spacing and remotion do not coincide. Instead, spacing is ontologically founded in remotion and can only be discovered and defined when there is remotion. GA20EN §25

The nearness and distance of environmental things among themselves are always grounded in primary remotion, which is a character of the world itself. It is because world in its very sense is ‘remote’ that there is something like nearness as a mode of distance. In other words, Dasein itself as being-in-the-world, as a being which makes present, a presentifying being intimately involved with something which is the world, is itself in its very sense of being a being which ‘remotes’ and so at the same time nears. I thus use the word ‘remotion’ to a certain extent in a transitive, active sense: re-moting [Ent-fernen, etymologically “removing distance”], making distance disappear (nearing as bringing forward or bringing itself away, bringing forward such that the bringing-itself-away becomes available on an average at any time and with ease. Here we do violence to natural linguistic usage, but it is demanded by the PHENOMENON itself. GA20EN §25

All environmental things have a remotion only insofar as they as worldly things are generally remote. If their specific environmental character is dimmed and the things are “unworlded” down to two geometric points, they finally lose the character of remotion. They are left only with spacing. The spacing itself is a quantum, a how-much. Spacing is what remotion in its sense first of all is not, a definite so-much which is solely defined by the manifold of that which stands in the spacing [Abstand, etymologically a “standing apart”]. In other words, the spacing between these two units, this definite so-much, is defined by the manifold of points which are themselves spaced here. Spacing is a deficient remotion. This peculiar transformation of environmental remotion—re-moting as an existential of Dasein and remoteness as a category—results precisely from the process of “unworlding” which has already been mentioned frequently. We cannot follow the structure of this process more closely at this stage, because for that we need the PHENOMENON of time. GA20EN §25

Orientedness is a structural moment of being-in-the-world itself and not the property of a subject which has a feeling for right and left. It is only from the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world that we can understand why concern can constantly orient itself, that is, can in each instance comport itself in its orientation in such and such a way, determining itself on the basis of that with which it intimately dwells and concerns itself. An isolated subject with the ‘feeling for right and left’ could never find its way in its world. This PHENOMENON can be clarified only when the subject is taken for what it actually is, as always already in its world. The appropriation and determination of a ‘there’ is indeed impossible without a right and left, but it is just as impossible without a world, without the always prior presence of an environmental thing upon which Dasein orients itself. In short, it would be impossible if Dasein were not in-being, already intimately involved with something at the time; for only then does it orient itself in certain directions according to a region. GA20EN §25

Kant is therefore in error when he says that I orient myself by the mere feeling of a distinction between my two sides. The subjective basis for the differentiation, if right and left can be called that, falls short of apprehending the full PHENOMENON of orientation. Since orientation is a structure of being-in-the-world, there is always a ‘world’ already from the outset inherent in the appropriation of an orientation, that is, in operating within an ever particular being-in-the-world. A subject with the ‘mere feeling’ for right and left is a construction which does not get at the being of the Dasein which I myself am. This becomes evident also from the example that Kant cites and the way in which he accounts for the PHENOMENON of orientation. GA20EN §25

Suppose I step into a familiar but darkened room which in my absence has been rearranged so that everything which was on my right is now on my left (everything switched from right to left and left to right). The feeling for right and left is now of no help to me at all for orientation, as long as I do not latch on to a definite object “whose position I have in mind,” as Kant incidentally remarks. But what does “have in mind” mean other than my orienting myself necessarily from and in my already being in my world. When I latch on to an object “whose position I have in mind,” this is no less constitutive for finding my way than the feeling for right and left. An inadequate concept of Dasein, that of the isolated subject, leads Kant astray into an inappropriate interpretation of the condition of possibility of the right-left orientation. Conversely, we see from Kant’s analysis that he must tacitly make use of the PHENOMENON which belongs to orientation, namely, the object I latch on to, “whose position I have in mind.” But this is only a psychological interpretation of the ontological state of affairs whereby Dasein in each instance is always already as such in its world in order to be able to orient itself at all. Only for a Dasein oriented in this way is there right and left at all along with the possibility of appropriating and interpreting the orientation. GA20EN §25

Kant sees neither the authentic founding context of orientation nor the right phenomenal composition. His intention from the beginning was of course not so much to clarify the PHENOMENON of orientation as to show that all orientation contains a ‘subjective principle,’ by which he meant the feeling for right and left. Since we are here suspending the concept of subject in the Kantian sense, which goes back to Descartes, and are taking the phenomena from Dasein itself in its full constitution of being, it would be premature and inappropriate to call right and left ‘subjective principles.’ If we wanted to call right and left ‘subjective principles’ in this context, then the basic constitutive state, whereby a world is always already present for Dasein, would also have to be called a ‘subjective principle.’ But surely it is not admissible to characterize the presence of a world as a ‘subjective principle.’ To do so shows just how little the traditional concept of the subject really does justice to what constitutes the authentic structure of Dasein, which is the structure of what the concept of the subject naturally always means de facto. But the way in which we appropriate orientation, the condition that makes it possible for us to orient ourselves, already shows that orientation belongs to Dasein itself. GA20EN §25

We shall now try to grasp the basic PHENOMENON of Dasein as being-in-the-world in a second direction. We are saying that this entity which has the mode of being of being-in-the-world must now be more accurately defined. But with this formulation we in a certain sense move away from a rigorous consideration of the PHENOMENON of Dasein. This becomes evident when we recall that this entity which we call Dasein has its what-determination in its ‘to-be.’ It is not any specific “what” which in addition would have its mode of being; rather, what the Dasein is is precisely its being. This indicates that we cannot undercut this expression ‘the entity which has the mode of being of Dasein’ with something that reverses the entire line of questioning. When we say, actually wrongly, ‘the entity which has the mode of being of Dasein,’ we cannot mean that this entity is something like a thing on hand in the world, which is first specifiable of itself purely in its “what” and which on the basis of this what-content now also has a specific mode of being just like a thing, chair, table, or the like. Because the expression ‘the entity of the character of Dasein’ always suggests something in the order of the substantiality of a thing, it is basically inappropriate. GA20EN §26

In the preceding analysis of the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world, we have thematized the world as the wherein of Dasein in its specific sense of in-being. But also in this analysis of the world we have not brought into relief all the phenomena which showed themselves there. In explicating the environing world of the craftsman, the PHENOMENON of the public world appeared. In the work under concern as well as in the material being employed and the hand tool being used, there are others, for whom the work is, by whom the tool in its turn is produced, there with [the craftsman]. In the world of concern, others are encountered; and the encountering is a being-there-with, not a being-on-hand. We did not consider these others any further with respect to their mode of being. And so far, we have not considered the manner of their encounter at all. GA20EN §26

In addition, we have spoken of the public environment in contrast to one’s own, and of the fluid boundary between the public and one’s own being-in-the-world. The environing world, we said, is not only mine, but also that of others. Once again, the PHENOMENON of the others comes to light, without our having brought it into relief more sharply—the others, of whom we say that they encounter us. When it comes to this PHENOMENON of ‘the others’ who are there with me in the environing world, we have actually not overlooked it in the phenomenal contexts already treated, but have intentionally focused the analysis of the world only on the environmental things encountered. This is a violent constriction of the analysis of the world, which however is mandated by the theme itself, a point which will become apparent later. GA20EN §26

The referential contexts which we brought out earlier always appresent something environmental. But the environing world can now in turn, as a particular world, at the same time appresent a being intimately involved with it—Dasein. For such an appresentation it is not necessary for others to be ‘personally’ near, so to speak. But even when the others are encountered personally or, as we can most appropriately put it here, “in the flesh,” in their bodily presence, this being of the others is not that of the ‘subject’ or the ‘person’ in the sense in which this is taken conceptually in philosophy. Rather, I meet the other in the field, at work, on the street while on the way to work or strolling along with nothing to do—always in a concern or non-concern according to his in-being. He is appresented in his co-Dasein by his world or by our common environment. The distinction between a personal meeting and the other’s being gone takes effect on the basis of this environmental encounter of one another, this environmentally appresented being-with-one-another. This with-one-another is an environmental and worldly concern with one another, having to do with one another in the one world, being dependent on one another. The most everyday of activities, passing by and avoiding one another on the street, already involves this environmental encounter, based on this street common to us. Avoiding makes sense only for an entity who is with one another, for an oriented and concerned being-in-the-world. Avoiding is merely a PHENOMENON of being preoccupied with one another, an everyday PHENOMENON pushed to the extreme, which is for the most part a caring for and with one another in having nothing to do with one another. GA20EN §26

It is important for this basic phenomenal composition of being-with-one-another to be made perfectly clear. In spite of all the former prejudices of philosophy and all the usual attempts to explain and deduce such phenomena, this PHENOMENON must be brought to an unadulterated givenness. And this is possible, since from the start the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world already stands before us. In order to understand not only this character of being-with but also the following characters, it must be kept in mind from the start that all these phenomena, which we naturally can discuss here only in a sequential treatment, are not derived from one another in accordance, say, with their structure of being, but are co-original with each other. It is true that all other characters can be made understandable only in terms of the basic constitution of in-being, but they do not first turn up in the course of being Dasein or in any other development of Dasein. GA20EN §26

We must therefore keep in mind that the worldhood of the world appresents not only world-things—the environing world in the narrower sense—but also, although not as worldly being, the co-Dasein of others and my own self. But this means that a worldly encounter of something does not yet decide for itself about the kind of being of what is encountered. This can be appresented as being handy and being on hand, co-Dasein or self-Dasein. Not to be denied phenomenally is the finding that co-Dasein—the Dasein of others—and my own Dasein are encountered by way of the world. On the strength of this worldly encountering of others, they can be distinguished from the world-things in their being on hand and being handy in the environing world and demarcated as a ‘with-world,’ while my own Dasein, insofar as it is encountered environmentally, can be taken as the ‘self-world.’ This is the way I saw things in my earlier courses and coined the terms accordingly. But the matter is basically false. The terminology shows that the phenomena are not adequately grasped in this way, that the others, though they are encountered in the world, really do not have and never have the world’s kind of being. The others therefore cannot be designated as a ‘with-world.’ The possibility of the worldly encounter of Dasein and co-Dasein is indeed constitutive of the being-in-the-world of Dasein and so of every other, but it never becomes something worldly as a result. Whenever the qualification ‘with’ is added to the PHENOMENON ‘world’ and we speak of a ‘with-world,’ things are turned the wrong way. This is why I now have used the term ‘being-with’ from the start. By contrast, the world itself is never there with us, it is never Dasein-with, co-Dasein; it is that in which Dasein is at any given time as concern. Of course, that still does not adequately clarify this remarkable possibility of the world, namely, that it lets us encounter Dasein, the alien Dasein as well as my own. We shall be able to make this clarification only in later contexts. GA20EN §26

It was already suggested that in the “first of all and most of all” of everyday concern, the temporally particular Dasein is always what it pursues. One is what one does. The everyday interpretation of Dasein takes its horizon of interpretation and naming from what is of concern in each particular instance. One is a shoemaker, tailor, teacher, banker. Here Dasein is something which others also can be and are. The others are environmentally there with us, their co-Dasein is taken into account, not only because what is of concern has the character of being useful and helpful for others, but also because others provide the same things of concern. In both respects to the others, the being-with with them stands in a relationship to them: with regard to the others and to what the others pursue, one’s own concern is more or less effective or useful; in relation to those who provide the exact same things, one’s own concern is regarded as more or less outstanding, backward, appreciated, or the like. The others are not only simply on hand in the concern for what one provides with, for, and against them; rather, concern as concern constantly lives in the concern [Sorge] over being different from them, even if only to equalize that difference; it may be that one’s own Dasein is falling behind the others and wants to catch up, as it were, or that it has an advantage over them and is intent on keeping them down. This peculiar structure of being, which governs our being with others in the everyday manner of concern, shall be called the PHENOMENON of apartness—Dasein’s concern over being apart—regardless of how conscious we are of it. On the contrary, it is just when everyday concern is not aware of it that this kind of being with the others is perhaps much more stubbornly and primordially there. There are human beings, for example, who do what they do purely out of ambition, without any bearing on what they are pursuing. All of these particulars here of course involve no moral judgments or the like. They only characterize movements in the raw sense, so to speak, which Dasein makes in its everydayness. GA20EN §26

This Anyone, who is no one in particular and ‘all’ are, though not as a sum, dictates the mode of being of everyday Dasein. The Anyone itself has its own ways to be. We have already characterized one of them with the PHENOMENON of apartness. The tendency of being-with to be on the basis of being different from others has in turn its ground, inasmuch as this being-with-one-another and concern have the character of averageness. This averageness is an existential determination of the Anyone; it is that around which everything turns for the Anyone, what is essentially at issue for it. That is why the Anyone holds itself factically in the averageness of what belongs to it and what it takes as valid. This polished averageness of the everyday interpretation of Dasein, of the assessment of the world and the similar averageness of customs and manners watches over every exception which thrusts itself to the fore. Every exception is short-lived and quietly suppressed. Anything original is smoothed out overnight into something which is available to Everyman and no longer barred to anyone. This essential averageness of the Anyone is in turn grounded in an original mode of being of the Anyone. This mode is given in its absorption in the world, in what can be called the levelling of being-with-one-another, the levelling of all differences. GA20EN §26

But now it must be noted phenomenologically that this ‘nobody,’ which I have just exhibited in bold outlines from various sides, is in fact not nothing. The Anyone is an undeniable, demonstrable PHENOMENON of Dasein itself as being-with in the world. It cannot be said that, because there are no categories for it and because one is of the opinion that only something like a chair really is, this Anyone is actually nothing. Instead, the concept of being must itself be directed toward this undeniable PHENOMENON. The Anyone is not nothing, but it is also not a worldly thing which I can see, grasp, and weigh. The more public this Anyone is, the less comprehensible it is and the less it is nothing, so little that it really constitutes the who of one’s own Dasein in each instance in everydayness. GA20EN §26

Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first to point out that certain languages, when they want to say ‘I,’ formulate this ‘I’ which is to be expressed—the Dasein itself—by the word ‘here,’ so that ‘I’ means as much as ‘here.’ The ‘thou’—the other—is the ‘there,’ and the ‘he’—the one who first of all is not directly and expressly present—is the ‘yonder.’ In grammatical terms, the personal pronouns—I, thou, he—are expressed by locative adverbs. But perhaps this formulation is already inverted. There is a long-standing dispute over what the original meaning of these expressions ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ really is, whether it is adverbial or pronominal. But in the end, the dispute is without foundation, once it is seen that these locative adverbs in their sense relate to the ‘I’ qua Dasein itself. They have within themselves what we earlier designated as the orientation to Dasein itself. ‘Here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ are not real determinations of place as characters of world-things, but are rather determinations of Dasein. In other words, these determinations of Dasein ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ as ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ ‘he’ are not locative adverbs at all. They are also not expressions for ‘I,’ ‘Thou,’ ‘He’ in a pointed sense such that they would refer to certain special things that are. They are rather adverbs of Dasein and as such pronouns at the same time. This shows that grammar simply fails in the face of such phenomena. Grammatical categories are not tailored to such phenomena and are not at all derived by regarding the phenomena themselves but rather with regard to a particular form of assertion, the theoretical proposition. All grammatical categories are derived from a particular theory of language, from the theory of logos as proposition, that is, from ‘logic.’ There are thus difficulties from the start if one tries to clarify such linguistic phenomena as we have discussed by means of these grammatical categories. The proper approach is to get behind the grammatical categories and forms and to try to determine the sense from the phenomena themselves. The source of this PHENOMENON, which Humboldt exhibited without understanding it in its ultimate ontological consequences, lies in this, that Dasein, to which we have attributed an original spatiality, when it speaks of itself, speaks in terms of that in which it finds itself. In everyday self-articulation, Dasein considers itself in terms of spatiality, to be taken in the sense described earlier of the remotive orientation of in-being. It must be noted that the sense of ‘here,’ ‘there,’ and ‘yonder’ are just as problematic and difficult as that of ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ and ‘he.’ We shall succeed in exhibiting the actual PHENOMENON only when Dasein itself is defined by in-being, so that we see how the average way of being-with-one-another, and at the same time the way which defines being-in-the-world, expresses itself in this manner in terms of spatiality. It would be basically wrong to think that such modes of expression are signs of a backward language, still oriented to space and matrix instead of to the spiritual ‘I.’ But are ‘here,’ ‘there,’ and ‘yonder’ less ‘spiritual’ and puzzling than the ‘I’? Is it not rather a more appropriate expression of Dasein itself if one does not cut oneself off from understanding it only because spatiality is oriented toward the distinctive space of natural science? GA20EN §26

So far, we have considered the question of the structure of the world as worldhood (meaningfulness) and the question of the who of this being-in-the-world. Here the theme was always being-in-the-world, which we identified as the basic constitution of Dasein. The special explication of the world and of the Anyone were always only specific emphases of this structural whole of being-in-the-world itself. Finally, it was shown that the Dasein in the Anyone itself represents only a specific way of being-in-the-world. The who of Dasein is in each instance a way to be, whether authentically or inauthentically. Thus the question of the who of this entity also referred back to a kind of being, to a kind of being-in-the-world. But this implies that the being of Dasein is to be defined ultimately from in-being as such, and that only the correct explication of this basic PHENOMENON, of in-being, provides the warrant for founding the remaining co-original structures of Dasein. This is also why, already at the beginning of the analysis, we interjected a provisional characterization of this constitutive state of being, in which we first clarified in very rough fashion the sense of this ‘in.’ in contrast to a merely spatial ‘in’ It can now be asserted more clearly that the being of Dasein is not of the mode of being of the world, it is neither the being-handy nor the being-on-hand of something. It is just as little the being of a ‘subject,’ whose being would repeatedly, in a formally unexpressed way, have to be taken as being on hand. Should we be permitted to maintain the orientation to a world and a ‘subject,’ however, we could then say that the being of Dasein is precisely the being of the ‘between’ subject and world. This ‘between,’ which of course does not first arise by having a subject meet with a world, is the Dasein itself, but once again not as a property of a subject. This is the very reason why, strictly speaking, Dasein cannot be taken as a ‘between,’ since the talk of a ‘between’ subject and world always already presupposes that two entities are given between which there is supposed to be a relation. In-being is not a ‘between’ of real entities but the being of Dasein itself, to which a world belongs at any given time and which for the time being is mine, and first and foremost is the Anyone. That is why it is always wrong, at least if we want to speak in a conceptually rigorous way, to designate human Dasein as a microcosm over against the world as a macrocosm, since the mode of being of Dasein is essentially different from any kind of cosmos. GA20EN §27

The analysis of the world and of the Anyone time and again encroaches upon this PHENOMENON of in-being. We must now follow this direction; we must try to find out how far the specific PHENOMENON of in-being itself can be uncovered and specified. On this path of an even more original explication of in-being, we shall try to advance to the structure of the being of Dasein, from which we shall then draw and formulate the comprehensive terminology for the determinations of the constitution of Dasein. We call this structure of being care. GA20EN §27

With this explication of in-being as such, we come to the third stage of the analysis of the basic PHENOMENON of being-in-the-world as a whole. Through the analysis of in-being, we must now also be in a position to clarify the phenomena which already necessarily had to be drawn into the earlier analyses: concern, of which we constantly spoke in its function of primary appresenting, and which we also defined as understanding; then knowing, which we characterized as a specific way of cultivating understanding. The investigation of this basic character of Dasein [in-being] is therefore divided into four parts. It will highlight 1) the PHENOMENON of discoveredness, 2) falling as a basic movement of Dasein, 3) the structure of uncanniness (away from home—familiarity), and 4) care. GA20EN §27

The course of the explication thus leads through the phenomenal structures to the PHENOMENON which allows us to come upon the being of Dasein, even though not explicitly and in sufficient scope. These phenomena are connected among themselves; and the order in which they are advanced here at the same time serves to manifest a certain founding correlation among them. GA20EN §27

These two phenomena, the disclosedness of the world itself along with the fact that being-in-the-world is in turn co-discovered, define the unified PHENOMENON which we call discoveredness. This expression seeks to note above all that here it is still not and for the most part never a matter of a special thematic knowledge of the world or even a definite knowledge of itself; what alone is at stake here is the structure of the being of Dasein itself which first and foremost founds such a knowledge and so makes it possible, so that the world as disclosed can be encountered in a ‘there.’ ‘There’ is the very being which we call Dasein [there-being]. In thus being co-discovered, this Dasein is not expressly thematically had or known. This structure of discoveredness is to be taken rather as a structure of being, as a way to be. The adverbs of Dasein with their pronominal sense of ‘I’ and ‘thou’ make my own in-being as Dasein and the other as co-Dasein evident only as a ‘here’ and a ‘yonder.’ ‘Here’ and ‘yonder’ are possible only insofar as there is something like a ‘there’ at all. This ‘there’ is our being toward being-with-one-another insofar as the possibility of a stanced totality [Bewandtnisganzheit] for orientation subsists at all. A material thing occurring in the world is itself never a ‘there’ but is instead encountered in such a ‘there.’ We accordingly designate the entity which we also call man as the entity which is itself its ‘there.’ With this, we first come to the strict formulation of the meaning of the term ‘Dasein.’ GA20EN §28

In thus being elevated, or in its contrary of being depressed, the same PHENOMENON appears again and again as a constitutive state of Dasein, namely, that in all of its preoccupation with the world Dasein is always found in this or that way. It finds itself in this or that way, it is disposed in this or that mood. When we say, it finds itself, this ‘itself’ first does not really refer expressly to a developed and thematically conscious ‘I.’ In the very everyday absorption in the Anyone, it can be this Anyone itself in its indeterminacy, and this is just what it is. This codiscoveredness of being-in-the-world in being solicited by the world is possible only because Dasein originally always finds itself in each of its modes of being, because Dasein itself is discovered for itself. We call this basic form of primary co-discoveredness of Dasein disposition. GA20EN §28

Finding itself in being-in-the-world, in short, disposedness, belongs with being-in-the-world as such. We choose this term in order to avoid from the start regarding the finding-itself as some sort of a reflexion upon itself. We shall learn to see this PHENOMENON more rigorously with the analysis of care itself. Dasein ‘has’ its world, has it as a disclosed world, and Dasein finds itself. These are two phenomenological statements which refer to one and the same state of affairs, to the basic structure of being-in-the-world, to discoveredness. Disposition expresses a way of finding that Dasein is in its being as being in each instance its own there, and how it is this there. We must therefore totally give up any attempt to interpret disposition as a finding of inner lived experiences or any sort of apprehension of an inner something. Disposition is rather a basic mode of the being of Dasein, of its in-being. This character of discoveredness in disposition is related to being-in-the-world as such, specifically in the everyday way where one always finds oneself where one dwells, such that in all of what we do and where we dwell, we are in some sense—as we say—‘affected.’ This being affected does not need to be conscious and can be a matter of complete indifference—the sense of sameness, dreariness, emptiness, and staleness of Dasein—characters which in the most fleeting moment of Dasein are always constitutive of absorption in the world. GA20EN §28

The PHENOMENON of mood, of being attuned, which up to now has been left totally in the dark in our elucidation of the structure of Dasein, is an exponent of disposition. All these essential phenomena of mood and attunement can be explicated only on the basis of those structures of Dasein which we have already exposed. What are otherwise called ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ and treated as a special class of lived experiences remain unclarified in their primary structure of being as long as one does not take up the task of exposing the basic constitution of Dasein and here in particular its discoveredness, so as to draw these phenomena back into this constitutive structure. These phenomena of feeling and emotion can of course always be described up to a certain point, but this always gives us a ‘popular concept,’ to speak with Kant, especially if we also demand that these phenomena must be defined in their phenomenal structure before we begin to describe them in detail. Even the most extensive psychology will never unravel the authentic structure of these phenomena, because psychology in principle does not enter into the dimension of the structure of Dasein as such, since this problematic is in principle closed to it. To put it very generally without regard to the analysis of Dasein, the neglect of these phenomena of feelings and emotions is connected with the fact that anthropology generally is primarily oriented to knowing and willing, in short, to reason. Feelings are then just what accompanies knowing and willing, as hail accompanies a storm. Kant puts forward the idea that the feelings are something which hamper or impair rationality and so must be classed with sensibility, with the me on in man. One has thus cut oneself off in advance from understanding the sense which these phenomena have for the structure of being itself. In analyzing these structures in greater detail, we shall have to avoid classifying them in some sort of table of emotions or feelings. They are to be understood only in conjunction with the basic movement of Dasein itself. GA20EN §28

Understanding is a kind of being of the entity of the character of in-being. It is the being-involved-with of disclosed concernability, specifically a disposed involvement such that it always co-discovers itself. Understanding as disposed disclosure and having disclosed the world is as such a disclosive self-finding. As discoveredness makes up the structure of being of the full constitution of Dasein, since it applies to the world, in-being, and every way to be, so also the enactment of being belonging to it, understanding, always extends to the full understandability, which means to world, co-Dasein, and one’s own Dasein. It can thus be the case that the enactment of understanding at the time thematically refers in particular to the world, for example, or to the co-Dasein of others or to my own Dasein. But in each case the phenomena which belong to the scope of discoveredness, that is, to the full understandability of Dasein itself, are always co-understood. This is an apriori principle for understanding, without which we would constantly go astray in defining this PHENOMENON. It is a deception, which is connected with ignorance of the genuine structure of Dasein, to think that there is a separate understanding of a bare world or of an alien Dasein. This structure of understanding, which is grounded in Dasein itself and which defines understanding as the enactment of the being of discoveredness, provides crucial orientation points for all problems of hermeneutics. Such a hermeneutics is possible only on the basis of the explication of Dasein itself, the kind of being to which understanding belongs. The possibility that there is something which cannot be understood is first given with the orbit of understandability marked out by discoveredness, an orbit which encompasses the world, in-being, and the co-Dasein of others. Every ‘not-there’ and everything understood in the there is but a modification of the there. It is only on the basis of understandability that there is a possible access to something which is in principle incomprehensible, that is, to nature. Something like nature can be discovered only because there is history, because Dasein is itself the primarily historical being. And only because of this are there natural sciences. GA20EN §28

We now have discourse as the PHENOMENON which thus underlies language: There is language only because there is discourse, and not conversely. Our task will be to make this state of affairs still more evident phenomenally by considering the following four points: 1) Discoursing and hearing, 2) discoursing and silence, 3) discoursing and idle talk, 4) discourse and language. GA20EN §28

We shall now consider the third PHENOMENON which is given with discourse: idle talk. In cultivating the discoveredness of Dasein, discourse has a distinctive function: it lays out or interprets, that is, it brings the referential relations of meaningfulness into relief in communication. In communicating in this way, discourse articulates the meanings and meaningful correlations thus brought out. In being articulated, in the articulated word, the meaning highlighted in interpretation becomes available for being-with-one-another. The word is articulated in public. This articulated discourse preserves interpretation within itself. This is the sense of what we mean when we say that words have their meaning. This verbal meaning and the verbal whole as language is the interpretation of world and Dasein (in-being) communicated in being with one another. The utterance of interpretation is a secularization of discoveredness, making it worldly. GA20EN §28

Genuinely enacted and heard, communication brings an understanding being-with to fruition in what is talked over. Since the communication is being said in words, what is said is ‘verbal’ for the other, which means that it is available in a worldly way. The articulated is accompanied by an understanding in public, in which what is talked over does not necessarily have to be appresented as something on hand and handy. In other words, articulated discourse can be understood without an original being-with involved in what the discourse is about. This means that in hearing and subsequent understanding, the understanding relation-of-being to that about which the discourse is can be left undetermined, uninvolved, even emptied to the point of a merely formal belief in what the original understanding had intended. The matter being spoken of thus slips away with the absence of the understanding relation of being. But while the matter being talked about slips away, what is said as such—the word, the sentence, the dictum—continues to be available in a worldly way, along with a certain understanding and interpretation of the matter. The discourse is of course uprooted in the absence of right understanding, but it still retains an understandability. And since such a discourse, which has become groundless, always remains discourse, it can be repeated and passed along without proper understanding. The hearing of discourse is now no longer participation in the being of being-with-one-another involved in the matter being talked over, for the matter itself now is no longer uncovered in an original way. Instead, hearing is being-with involved in what is said in terms of its being said as such. Hearing is now hearing mere talk as talk and understanding is understanding based on mere hearsay. Things so heard and in a certain way understood can be passed along, and this process of passing along and repeating now produces a growing groundlessness of what was originally articulated. Discourse undergoes an increase in groundlessness in repetitive talk to the extent that a hardening of a specific opinion being expressed in discourse corresponds to such groundlessness. Such discourse, which is cultivated in the uprooting engendered by repetitive talk, is idle talk. I am referring to a well-defined PHENOMENON with this term, which as such carries no disparaging connotation whatsoever. GA20EN §28

Idle talk is itself posited with Dasein and its being. Like hearing and silence, it is a constitutive PHENOMENON given with discourse as a mode of the being of Dasein. Idle talk is not restricted to oral communication in speaking; much more idle talk today comes from what is written. Repetitive talk here is not talking from hearsay but hearing and talking from what is picked up by reading. Such reading takes place characteristically without understanding the subject matter, but in such a way that the reader—there are purported to be such readers in the sciences as well—acquires the possibility of dealing with the matters with great skill without ever having seen them. Something being said here to some extent acquires an intrinsic authoritative character. That it is said at all and that something definite is said is sufficient to assume that what is said is true and to proceed to repeat it and pass it along on the strength of its being said. What is talked about in idle talk is meant only in an indeterminate emptiness, which is why discourse about it is disoriented. Accordingly, when men who have to deal with a matter do so solely on the basis of the idle talk about it, they bring the various opinions, views, and perceptions together on an equal basis. In other words, they do so on the basis of what they have picked up from reading and hearing. They pass along what they have read and heard about the matter without any sensitivity for the distinction of whether or not that opinion or their own is actually relevant to the matter. Their care in discovering does not apply to the matter but to the discourse. And idle talk, which rules precisely on the basis of a lack of basis, provides such discovery with the consolidation of its rule as a way of being in the interpretation of Dasein. The groundlessness of idle talk does not bar its entry into the public arena but directly promotes it. For idle talk is just the possibility of interpreting something without first making the matter one’s own. Idle talk, which anyone can pick up, dispenses us from the task of genuine understanding. One can talk along and be taken seriously in idle talk. This free-floating interpretation, which belongs to everyone and no one, dominates everydayness, and Dasein grows up in such a temporally particular interpretation, and more and more into it. This interpretation of the world and of Dasein, which is prevalent and consolidated as idle talk, we shall call the everyday way in which Dasein has already been interpreted. GA20EN §28

Nowadays, one decides about metaphysics or even higher matters at congresses. For everything which must be done nowadays, there is first a conference. One meets and meets, and everyone waits for someone else to tell him, and it doesn’t really matter if it isn’t said, for one has now indeed spoken one’s mind. Even if all the speakers who thus speak their minds have understood little of the matter, one is of the opinion that the cumulation of this lack of understanding will nevertheless eventually generate an understanding. There are people nowadays who travel from one conference to another and are convinced in doing so that something is really happening and that they have accomplished something; whereas in reality they have shirked the labor and now seek refuge in idle talk for their helplessness, which they of course do not understand. The characterization of these phenomena should not be interpreted as a moral sermon or the like, which has no place here. Our sole concern here is to draw attention to a PHENOMENON, to a possibility which is constitutive of the structure of Dasein. It is not as if we today have the prerogative of this PHENOMENON. Ancient sophistry was nothing but this in its essential structure, although it was perhaps shrewder in certain ways. This would-be attendance is particularly dangerous because one is in good faith, since one believes that it is all to the good and that one is obliged to attend the congresses. This peculiar kind of idle talk, which governs Dasein in being-with-one-another, is a function of uncovering, but now in the remarkable mode of covering up. GA20EN §29

The term ‘falling’ designates a movement of the being of the happening of Dasein and once again should not be taken as a value judgment, as if it indicated a base property of Dasein which crops up from time to time, which is to be deplored and perhaps eliminated in advanced stages of human culture. Like discoveredness, being-with and in-being, falling refers to a constitutive structure of the being of Dasein, in particular a specific PHENOMENON of in-being, in which Dasein first constantly has its being. If we orient ourselves once again in the ‘between’ of world and Dasein, then the dwelling in the Anyone and in the idle talk of this being is in an uprooted state of suspension. But this uprooting is just what constitutes the solid everydayness of Dasein, [and idle talk is] one way of falling in which Dasein loses itself. GA20EN §29

This remarkable priority of seeing over other ways of perceiving was already noticed by Augustine, but in the last analysis he was unable to illuminate this PHENOMENON. Thus, when he speaks in the Confessions of the concupiscentia oculorum, of the “lust of the eyes,” he says: Ad oculos enim videre proprie pertinet. “Seeing belongs properly to the eyes.” Utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus. “But we use this word ‘seeing’ also for the other senses when we take them in their cognitive performance.” Neque enim dicimus: audi quid rutilet; aut, olfac quam niteat; aut, gusta quam splendeat; aut, palpa quam fulgeat: videri enim dicuntur haec omnia. “For we do not say ‘Hear how it glimmers’ or ‘Smell how it sparkles’ or ‘Taste how it shines,’ or ‘Feel how it flashes’; but in all of these cases, ‘See,’ we say that all this is seen.” Dicimus autem non solum, vide quid luceat, quod soli oculi sentire possunt. “But we not only say ‘See how it shines,’ when the eyes alone can perceive it;” sed etiam, vide quid sonet; vide quid oleat; vide quid sapiat; vide quam durum sit. “We also say, ‘See how it sounds,’ ‘See how it is scented,’ ‘See how it tastes,’ ‘See how hard it is.’” Ideoque generalis experientia sensuum concupiscentia sicut dictum est oculorum vocatur, quia videndi officium in quo primatum oculi tenent, etiam ceteri sensus sibi de similitudine usurpant, cum aliquid cognitionis explorant. “Thus the experience of the senses in general is designated as a ‘lust of the eyes,’ for when it comes to knowing, the other senses by way of a similitude take over the work of seeing, which first belongs to the eyes.” The other senses in a way take on this sort of perceptual performance insofar as it is a matter of a cognitio, an apprehension of something. It becomes clear here that seeing has a pre-eminence in apprehending and that the sense of seeing is therefore not restricted alone to perceiving with the eyes. Seeing rather, as was continually the case also already with the Greeks, is identified with apprehending something. Augustine did not address himself to the task of actually elucidating this preeminence of seeing and the meaning of its being in Dasein, although this text does furnish essential insights on the concupiscentia oculorum. GA20EN §29

The mode of being of falling becomes apparent in the PHENOMENON of curiosity, just as it did in idle talk. Curiosity and idle talk are constitutive ways of the being of being-in-the-world. The Anyone, which in idle talk defines the public way of having been interpreted, at the same time controls and prescribes the ways of curiosity. It says what one must have seen and read. Conversely, what curiosity discovers enters into idle talk. Not that these two phenomena exist side by side; rather, one tendency to uproot drags the other along with it. Curiosity’s way of being everywhere and nowhere is relegated to idle talk, which is for no one and everyone. GA20EN §29

As everyday being-with-one-another in the world, Dasein is of itself subject to idle talk and curiosity. As concern it is concerned also with covering up its discoveredness. In interpreting, for example, it sees itself in the way it has been interpreted by the Anyone and so is always concerned also with a flight from itself. When we say here that Dasein is simultaneously concerned with its own falling, it should be noted that in such a related concern falling does not become manifest directly and from the outset, as though there were in Dasein an explicit intention in this direction. On the contrary, since Dasein in curiosity knows everything within a certain sphere and talks over everything in idle talk, it arrives rather at the opinion that such a being in the Anyone is true and genuine being. The universal validity inherent in what one says and how one sees is for the public and the Anyone the greatest guarantee that it has for the infallibility of its being. This means that the self-interpretation of everyday being-with-one-another also adopts this presumption. But with this presumption an ambiguity enters into Dasein. This is the third PHENOMENON of falling. It has the function of aggravating in a special way the falling given in idle talk and curiosity. GA20EN §29

There is a double ambiguity involved in this PHENOMENON. The first affects the world, which is what is encountered and what happens in being-with-one-another. In this regard, the aggravation of falling stemming from ambiguity has the functional sense of suppressing the Dasein in the Anyone. The second ambiguity affects not only the world but being-with itself, my own being and that of others. With regard to this being-toward-one-another, the aggravation of falling at the time is a prior neutralization cutting off the genuine rootedness of Dasein in itself, which means that the ambiguity does not let Dasein come to an original relationship of being in being with one another. GA20EN §29

The PHENOMENON of falling exhibited as a way of being of Dasein now at the same time shows an inherent movement in its structure, whose characters can now be easily highlighted. GA20EN §29

The structure of falling can now be phenomenologically elucidated in such a way that the fundamental structures of Dasein itself are seen from it. We want to make a brief attempt at least to arrive at the horizon of these fundamental structures as they are prefigured in the PHENOMENON of falling. GA20EN §29

Concern includes both circumspective performance in the broadest sense, which does its work by looking around, and the tarrying which only looks, and in turn includes both of these in the calm of carelessness as well as in the restlessness of anxious concern. The leveling and the disappearance of Dasein in the Anyone is a falling apart of Dasein which is covered up by the public and everyday character of the Anyone. This falling apart temporalizes itself as a falling away of Dasein from its authenticity into the falling which we have already described. Authenticity here must be understood in the literal sense of “having itself for its own in intimacy with itself.” Falling away is a kind of falling constitutive of Dasein itself insofar as it is an entity of the character of being-in-the-world and Dasein is in each instance mine. This sort of falling as a tendency of being is a priori possible only on the basis of a propensity for it. This propensity [Hang], to which our analysis of falling keeps referring in a phenomenal way, constitutes a basic structure of Dasein which we call destiny [Verhängnis]. We use the term ‘destiny’ here not as a fact but as a meaning, like our usage of ‘encounter’ [Begegnis] and ‘knowledge’ [Erkenntnis], so that ‘destiny’ here does not refer to a particular state but to a structure, an existential structure. This destiny is nothing but the flight of Dasein from itself, a flight from itself into the world discovered by it. A propensity in its being is not something original, but in itself refers back to a possible urge. There is a propensity only where there is an entity which is determined by an urge. Propensity and urge in their turn are to be defined more fundamentally in the PHENOMENON which we call care. GA20EN §29

But before we analyze these primary structures of Dasein, it is necessary to bring into sharper focus the PHENOMENON which we have just now arrived at, namely, the flight of Dasein from itself. We shall therefore start with the exposition of that from which Dasein flees in its flight, in order to exhibit in this fleeing a basic disposition of Dasein which is constitutive of the being of Dasein qua care, and for this very reason is the most radically concealed. GA20EN §30

These two meanings are generally intermingled in the ancient concept of phuge and in the medieval concept of fuga, both of which we simply translate as “flight.” Flight is sometimes equated with falling back before something, which does not have to mean fleeing in the strict sense at all. But the term can also mean flight directly. Fleeing from something is grounded in being afraid of something. Accordingly, that from which flight flees must be made manifest in that of which fear is afraid. The mode of being of fleeing must be explicated by way of the mode of being of fear, or the structures of being which themselves lie in fear. So in order to phenomenologically grasp this PHENOMENON of the flight of Dasein from itself, it is first necessary to explicate the PHENOMENON of fear. GA20EN §30

In doing so, we must bear in mind that the PHENOMENON of fear is a way of being toward the world, and that fearing is always a fearing related to world or to co-Dasein. To the extent that the PHENOMENON of fear has been investigated, it is in fact always taken in this way, and all the different modifications of fear are defined on the basis of this being afraid of something within the world. But we have already stated that the flight of Dasein in falling is a flight of Dasein from itself, and so not a flight from the world and from a particular thing of the world. If it is true that Dasein flees from itself, then the fear which founds this flight cannot, strictly speaking, actually be fear, inasmuch as fear is always a mode of being which is essentially related to something worldly. In other words, it will become apparent that the traditional analysis of the PHENOMENON of fear is in principle insufficient, that fear is a derivative PHENOMENON and is itself grounded in the PHENOMENON which we call dread. GA20EN §30

Dread is not a mode of fear. Rather, it is the other way around: All fear finds its ground in dread. To facilitate our phenomenological apprehension, our consideration will start with fear and then go back to the PHENOMENON of dread. We shall consider five points: 1) fear as being afraid of something, 2) the modification of the being of fear, 3) fear in the sense of fearing about and fearing for another, 4) dread, and 5) uncanniness. GA20EN §30

This PHENOMENON was first investigated by Aristotle in the context of an analysis of the passions, the pathe, in his Rhetoric. The analysis of fear which Aristotle presents here as well as his analysis of the emotions generally serve to define the interpretation of the Stoics and so that of Augustine and the middle ages. Then, in the revival of the Stoic doctrine of the emotions in the Renaissance, this entire complex of analyses of the emotional was introduced into modern philosophy, which is where things have remained. Kant, for example, operates almost without exception within these ancient definitions. Of course, we cannot go into these historical connections here, especially since they offer nothing essentially new when compared to Aristotle, except that the Stoics, to note at least this much, classified various modifications of fear. GA20EN §30

The following analysis is oriented toward the previously elaborated structure of the being of Dasein, but it also makes regular reference to the Aristotelian definition. In the PHENOMENON of being afraid we shall distinguish 1) the of which of being afraid, and 2) the way of being toward that of which one is afraid. (We have no proper term for the first, one would actually have to say the ‘frightful,’ ‘frightening,’ or ‘fearful,’ if one takes these terms in a purely formal structural sense without any sort of devaluation.) Then we have 3) the about which of fearing. Being afraid is not only being afraid of, but at the same time always afraid about. Finally, we must investigate 4) the ways of being toward that about which fear is in fear. GA20EN §30

Fearing for another thus proves to be a distinctive PHENOMENON of being-with. And it becomes clear that being with one another by way of the world is constitutive of it. The specific relations are as follows: the co-entity in the sense of the one who fears for the others, is with the other precisely when he is not in the other’s mode of being; thus either he is not afraid with the other in the true sense of being afraid; or the other is not necessarily afraid when I am in fear about him. This fearing about is in a way an anticipation of fear for the others, without oneself necessarily having to be afraid. I cannot go any further here into the final correlations which are revealed here in regard to the structure of being with one another. GA20EN §30

We shall now consider dread as a fourth PHENOMENON in connection with our analysis of fear. In addition to all of these modifications of fear there is a being afraid which at bottom can no longer be called that. For the of-which of fear can remain indefinite, no longer being this or that worldly thing on hand. Correspondingly, in-being as being-involved-with is no longer affected in a definite way. No real confusion ensues, since the possibility of confusion exists only when a definite orientation of concern gets all mixed up, that is, when the circumspectively disclosed in-being in its definite, factual, environmental possibilities falls into disarray. What threatens is nothing definite and worldly, and yet it is not without the impending approach which characterizes the threatening. Indeed, what threatens in this indefinite way is now quite near and can be so close that it is oppressive. It can be so near and yet not present as this or that, not something fearful, something to be feared by way of a definite reference of the environing world in its meaningfulness. Dread can ‘befall’ us right in the midst of the most familiar environment. Oftentimes it does not even have to involve the PHENOMENON of darkness or of being alone which frequently accompanies dread. We then say: one feels uncanny [or in more idiomatic English: “Things look so weird all of a sudden” or “I’m getting this eerie feeling”]. One no longer feels at home in his most familiar environment, the one closest to him; but this does not come about in such a way that a definite region in the hitherto known and familiar world breaks down in its orientation, nor such that one is not at home in the surroundings in which one now finds himself, but instead in other surroundings. On the contrary, in dread, being-in-the-world is totally transformed into a ‘not at home’ purely and simply. GA20EN §30

For this peculiar and wholly original PHENOMENON there now are, as for all such phenomena, characteristic delusions, delusions of dread which, for example, can be induced purely physiologically. But this physiological possibility itself exists only because this entity, which is corporeally determined, can by virtue of its being be in dread at all, and not because some physiological occurrence could produce something like dread. It is for this reason that we speak of inducing a dread which is always possible and to some extent latent. GA20EN §30

This analysis of dread depicts a PHENOMENON which in its nature simply cannot be forced and whose analysis here also has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of sentimentality. The analysis has exhibited this PHENOMENON of dread as the foundation in being for Dasein’s flight from itself. This PHENOMENON of dread is not something invented by me but has already been seen repeatedly, even though not in these concepts. Here I am only trying to provide the concepts for things which are usually treated in a nebulous way in the sciences, and at times also in theology. GA20EN §30

Augustine did not regard the PHENOMENON of dread in a thematic way, but he in fact caught a glimpse of it in a short study “On Fear” within a collection of questions, “On Various Questions of the Eighty Tribes.” Luther then dealt with the PHENOMENON of dread in the traditional context of an interpretation of contritio and poenitentia in his commentary on Genesis. In recent times, particularly in connection with the problem of original sin, Kierkegaard made the PHENOMENON of dread the theme of his separate work, The Concept of Dread. GA20EN §30

I cannot go into greater detail here into the various modifications whereby dread as implicit is directly concealed by the PHENOMENON of being afraid. We shall consider them in the persistent retrograde movement from discoveredness towards falling. From falling to dread we now come to the last fundament of being, which gives to dread in general, which means to being-in-the-world, its original constitution. This fundament is the PHENOMENON of care. GA20EN §30

The explication of the movement of falling as a flight of Dasein from itself led to the PHENOMENON of dread as a basic disposition of Dasein to itself, namely, to itself in its pure being, where being must always be taken in the sense already exhibited as being-in-the-world. The foregoing reflections on dread which we have just cited suffer from the basic deficiency of not really seeing the conceptual, existential structure of Dasein, so that dread then becomes a psychological problem, even in Kierkegaard. But dread is dread of this being itself, such that this being-in-dread-of-it is a being in dread about this being. But this implies that Dasein is an entity for which in its being, in its being-in-the-world, “it goes about its very being” [es geht um sein Sein selbst], for which, that is, its very being is at issue. This is the sense of the selfsameness of the of-which and the about-which of dread which has just been expounded. GA20EN §30

This selfsameness must not be understood in such a way that the essential structural moments of the of-which and the about-which would become fused in dread. The selfsameness rather only serves to show that the essence of dread is Dasein itself. Dasein occurs twice, so to speak, in the disposition of dread. This formulation of the PHENOMENON is of course the very worst way of putting it, its only sense being to give us a preliminary indication of a peculiar state of affairs, namely, that Dasein is an entity in whose being its own being is at issue. But is this actually a phenomenal composition of the being of Dasein itself? For it seems to be directly contradicted by the PHENOMENON of falling, the flight of Dasein from itself. It became evident in falling that everydayness moves Dasein away from itself. It therefore cannot be said that Dasein is intimately involved with itself in its everydayness. This, however, is still a blind and unphenomenological way of arguing. GA20EN §30

It is this peculiar structure of the being of the entity, that it is an entity for which, within its in-being, that very being is at issue, which we must now grasp in greater detail. But how? We shall define this structure terminologically as care and designate it as a primal structure, the structure of Dasein itself. But I would like to emphasize expressly that this structure does not uncover the ultimate context of the being of Dasein. It is the penultimate PHENOMENON, so to speak, on the way toward the authentic structure of the being of Dasein. Care is the term for the being of Dasein pure and simple. It has the formal structure, an entity for which, intimately involved in its being-in-the-world, this very being is at issue. GA20EN §31

The definition of the structure of care already shows that this PHENOMENON, which thus authentically comprehends being, exhibits a multiple structure. And if Dasein in its being is generally defined by care, then these phenomena must have already been in our sights in the foregoing analyses of Dasein. In fact we dealt with the PHENOMENON of care in a certain way right from the start, when we spoke of concern as the authentic mode of being-in-the-world. Concern itself is but a mode of being of care, specifically because care is the character of being of an entity which is essentially defined by being-in-the-world. To put it better, care qua structure of Dasein is in-being as concern. Caring as it is in the world is eo ipso concern. The expression which we use in the definition of the formal structure of care, ‘being is at issue,’ must now be more accurately defined. GA20EN §31

‘Its own being is the issue for Dasein’: This first presupposes that in this Dasein there is something like a being out for something. Dasein is out for its own being; it is out for its very being in order ‘to be’ its being. As such a being-about care is this being out for the being which this very being-out is. This must be understood in such a way that Dasein as it were anticipates itself there. If the being of Dasein is what is at issue for care, then Dasein has always already held its own being ahead of itself, even if not in the sense of a thematic consciousness of it. The innermost structure of Dasein’s caring about its being can be conceived formally as Dasein’s being-ahead-of-itself. But we must understand this being-ahead-of-itself of Dasein in the context of the structures which have hitherto already been exhibited. This being-ahead is not a kind of psychological process or a property of a subject, but rather an element of the entity which, in accord with its sense is in the world, that is, in accord with its original character of being, insofar as it is at all, is always already intimately involved in something, namely, in the world. We thus arrive at the overall structure of care in the formal sense: Dasein’s being-ahead-of-itself in its always already being involved in something. This formal structure of care applies to every comportment. There are only different modalities of the individual structural moments of care, such that they can assume the kinds of being which urge and propensity have. We shall have to envisage these two phenomena in still greater detail in order to come to understand how the specific wholeness of the PHENOMENON of Dasein is now first of all integrated from this primal structure of the being of Dasein as care. The wholeness of Dasein cannot be combined from various ways of being and the coupling which then comes into play. On the contrary, with care we now find the PHENOMENON from which we can then understand the various ways of being as ways of being, that is, as care. GA20EN §31

Care has the formal structure of being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in something. This being-ahead implies a structure whereby care is always a being about something, specifically such that Dasein in concern, in every performance, in every provision and production of something in particular, is at the same time concerned for its Dasein. This being-ahead-of-itself signifies precisely that care or Dasein in care has thrust its own being ahead as existential facticity. This being out for its own being, which is at issue for it, always takes place already in being involved in something, from a being-always-already-in-the-world-involved-in. (In-being is therefore constitutive for every kind of being of Dasein—even for authentic being!) The structure of ‘being out for something’ which I do not yet have, but being-out in an already-involved-in which eo ipso is being out for something, brings with it the PHENOMENON of not yet having something which I am out for. This PHENOMENON of not yet having something which I am out for is called being in want. It is not merely a pure and simple objective not-having but is always a not-having of something that I am out for. It is what first constitutes being-in-want, lack, need. Later, as the interpretation proceeds, this basic structure of care will lead us back to the constitution of being which we shall then come to understand as time. But first it is important to bring out a few more structures in care itself, specifically in relation to what we have learned in the preceding analysis of Dasein. GA20EN §31

In the two structural moments of being-ahead-of-itself and already-being-involved-in, there is a puzzling character which is peculiar to care and, as we shall see, is nothing other than time. This peculiar character of the ‘before,’ of the ‘ahead,’ this ‘fore-character,’ namely, that Dasein is always ahead of itself and always already involved in something—which displays a double PHENOMENONnow determines the concrete ways of being which we have already come to know. Before we proceed toward the understanding of one of these ways of being, namely, the interpretation of this character of the “before,” we shall clarify the two phenomena which are closely associated with care—urge and propensity. GA20EN §31

In the structure identified as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in something, care is first and foremost the condition of possibility for urge and propensity, and not the other way around, where care would be pieced together from these two phenomena. Urge has the character of ‘towards’ something. In particular, this ‘towards something’ points to an element of compulsion which comes from the ‘towards’ itself. Urge is a ‘towards’ something which brings the drive into play from itself. When we view it against the background of care, urge brings out both the character of compulsion and being out for something. Care is modified in order to predominate in these two structural moments of care. Care as urge suppresses. The suppression here applies to the remaining structural moments also given in care. These do not fall away or fall out but are there in the urge as suppressed moments, where suppressed always means covered up, inasmuch as Dasein is defined by discoveredness. Insofar as the urge takes over the primary kind of being of Dasein, it suppresses the already-being-involved-in something along with that something, but it also suppresses the explicit being-ahead-of-itself. For in urge, care is now merely a concern for a ‘towards and nothing else.’ Urge as such blinds, it makes us blind. We are in the habit of saying that ‘love is blind.’ Here, love is regarded as an urge and so is replaced by an entirely different PHENOMENON. For love really gives us sight. Urge is a mode of the being of care, specifically care which has not yet become free, but care is not an urge. That care has not yet become free means that in urge the full structure of care does not yet come to its authentic being. For urge only cares about the ‘towards,’ and this at any price, in blind disregard of everything else. This blind state of only being. ‘towards and nothing else’ is a modification of caring. GA20EN §31

Urge is care which has not yet become free, while propensity is care which is already bound in what it is involved in in its very being. Along with care, propensity as well as urge are constitutive of every Dasein. Propensity itself cannot be eradicated any more than urge can be annihilated. But certain possibilities of propensity and urge can be modified and guided by the genuine possibility of care. Against the care which has not yet become free in the urge, against the attachment of propensity, there is their liberation in the sense that they are not simply let go but are themselves fulfilled in their way of fulfillment in genuine care. When they are seen and understood, these two structures (propensity and urge) are always understood such that care is from the start co-intended in them. Care, however, is not a PHENOMENON composed of propensity and urge. GA20EN §31

To Dasein as being-in-the-world belongs discoveredness. The enactment of the being of this moment is understanding. Discoveredness is the determination of the being of Dasein whereby it is always involved in something, such that the involvement itself becomes sighted and so can see. This PHENOMENON of discoveredness also appears in a primary way in care. Care is characterized by discoveredness. GA20EN §31

The moments of ‘toward something,’ of ‘already being involved in,’ and of ‘being ahead’ are all phenomena having the character of discoveredness. They are not sighted in the sense that they themselves could be the theme of seeing. Rather, they have a sight in themselves. As far as I can see, this peculiar constitution of Dasein provides the basis for understanding an old idea and interpretation of Dasein, whereby it is said that the lumen naturale, the “natural light,” is inherent in human Dasein. Dasein by itself, by its nature, in what it is, has a light. It is intrinsically defined by a light. To take an example, this means that a mere thing, a stone, has no light within itself, which means that what it is and how it is toward its environs, if we can speak at all of an environment for the stone, is without sight. We cannot even say that it is dark, since darkness is in fact the negation of light. There is darkness only where there can be light. The manner of being of a mere thing stands beyond or before light and dark. By contrast, the idea that the lumen naturale belongs to the Dasein of man means that it is lighted within itself, that it is involved in something, has and sees this something and together with it is this very involvement. With the PHENOMENON of discoveredness, we have arrived at nothing other than the concept, as it were, the category of this structure of being, the PHENOMENON which was already manifestly seen in the old interpretation of Dasein as the lumen naturale. GA20EN §31

Understanding is not a primary PHENOMENON of knowledge but a way of primary being toward something, toward the world and toward itself. Furthermore, this being toward something is now first fully defined by the ‘I can.’ ‘I can’ necessarily corresponds as a correlative to the understandability of something. And conversely, what can be of concern as something understandable is what can be pursued in care and in concern. Understanding in the earlier sense, where it was taken solely as a way of being toward, now has, as a mode of being of Dasein, the character of care. But this implies that understanding and more so the way of enacting understanding, interpretation, are determined by this kind of being of Dasein, by care. This PHENOMENON of care as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in includes the character of ‘before.’ It is precisely interpretation, as a mode of being of understanding and so of care, which is defined by this character of the ‘before.’ GA20EN §31

It has thus become clear in connection with a PHENOMENON, that of interpretation, how the structure of care, especially the character of the ‘before,’ extends to the individual forms of enactment of these kinds of being of Dasein itself. With the PHENOMENON of care, we have thus brought out the basic structure from which the hitherto explicated phenomena are now to be seen. The ‘pre’-structure of care, particularly of understanding, has become visible, but it will be illuminated only when we answer this question: In this being-ahead-of-itself and in the being-already-involved-in, what is actually meant by being? GA20EN §31

The assertion, “The structure of the being of Dasein is care,” is a phenomenological and not a pre-scientific self-interpretation such as, for example, an assertion like “Life is care and toil.” The first proposition is concerned with a basic structure which the second assertion reproduces only in one of its immediate everyday aspects. But the first assertion can and must at the same time be taken as a definition of man, if Dasein is indeed our theme. Also, this interpretation of Dasein based upon the PHENOMENON of care is not an invention of mine. It does not come from a particular philosophical standpoint—I have no philosophy at all—, but is suggested simply by the analysis of the matters themselves. Nothing is being read into the matters (in this case Dasein); instead, everything is drawn from them (it); Dasein itself is a self-interpreting, self-articulating entity. It was seven years ago, while I was investigating these structures in conjunction with my attempts to arrive at the ontological foundations of Augustinian anthropology, that I first came across the PHENOMENON of care. Of course, Augustine and ancient Christian anthropology in general did not know the PHENOMENON explicitly, nor even directly as a term, although cura, care, already played a role in Seneca as well as in the New Testament, as is well-known. Later, however, I came across a self-interpretation of Dasein in an old fable, in which Dasein sees itself as care. Such interpretations have the primary advantage of being drawn from an originally naive view of Dasein itself and so of playing a particularly positive role for all interpretation, as Aristotle already knew. GA20EN §31

In this naive interpretation of Dasein, we observe the astonishing fact that here the view is directed toward Dasein and that along with body and spirit something like ‘care’ is seen as that PHENOMENON which is attributed to this entity as long as it lives, to wit, as Dasein, which we have regarded here as being-in-the-world. Konrad Burdach, through whom I also came across this fable, has now worked out the details. Burdach shows here that Goethe got the fable of Hyginus from Herder and adapted it in his Faust, in the second part. Burdach then gives, as always in a very reliable and scholarly way, a large amount of material relating to the history of this concept. Among other things, he says that the word in the New Testament for ‘care’ (sollicitudo in the Vulgate), merimna (or as it probably was originally called, phrontis), was already a technical term in the moral philosophy of the Stoics. It was used in Seneca’s 90th letter, which was also known to Goethe, for the description of primitive man. The double sense of cura refers to care for something as concern, absorption in the world, but also care in the sense of devotion. This concurs with the structures which we have exposed. But does this not mean that in a certain way cura is already seen in the natural interpretation of Dasein, although not in the form of an explicit question regarding the very structure of the being of Dasein? GA20EN §31

With the PHENOMENON of care, we have arrived at that structure of being from which the previously secured characters of the being of Dasein can now be made understandable, not only in their structure as such, but in the possible ways of being arising from it. GA20EN §31

Now that we have brought the various structures of Dasein into a certain correlation with the basic PHENOMENON of care, this stage in our consideration serves to provide us with the basis upon which we could critically repeat what we have heard about intentionality in our introductory considerations. It could be shown from the PHENOMENON of care as the basic structure of Dasein that what phenomenology took to be intentionality and how it took it is fragmentary, a PHENOMENON regarded merely from the outside. But what is meant by intentionality—the bare and isolated directing-itself-towards—must still be set back into the unified basic structure of being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in. This alone is the authentic PHENOMENON which corresponds to what inauthentically and only in an isolated direction is meant by intentionality. I refer to this here only in passing in order to mark the place from which a fundamental critique of phenomenological inquiry finds its start. GA20EN §31

The interpretation of Dasein in the everydayness of being opened the prospect for understanding the fundamental constitutive states of this entity. Structures like being-in-the-world, in-being and being-with, the Anyone, discoveredness, understanding, falling, and care came to light. The latter PHENOMENON at the same time reveals the unifying root of this manifold of structures. We have constantly reiterated that these structures are co-original. To say that they are co-original means that they always already belong with and to the PHENOMENON of care. They are ingrained in it even when they do not come to the foreground. These structures are therefore not optional additions to something which might from the start be akin to care without them. Nor do we have something which could be shaped into what we have called the PHENOMENON of care by putting these structures together. But if our inquiry is pointed toward the being of Dasein, as we have constantly done here, then whenever Dasein is interrogated, it is always already meant in the co-originality of these structures. Thus, when I phenomenologically envisage discoveredness or the Anyone or falling, the unity of these structures is always co-intended. GA20EN §32

Dasein is neither a combination of comportments nor a composite of body, soul, and spirit, so it is futile to search for the sense of the being of this unity of the composite. It is also not a subject or consciousness, which only incidentally provides itself with a world. Nor is it a center from which acts spring, where neither the being of this center nor the being of the acts is defined. The structures which we have exhibited are themselves ways of being of this entity and as such are understandable only from the being always already intended with them, namely, from care. Dasein understands itself from itself as care. Care is accordingly the primary totality of the constitution of the being of Dasein, which as this totality always adopts this or that particular way of its can-be. This totality of being is as such totally present in every way of being of Dasein. What has thus been secured with the PHENOMENON of care as the being of Dasein is not a derived universal concept which, as a genus, would underlie every way to be. Still less is it the concept resulting from the interplay of various ways to be and conceived by drawing an abstract universal out of them. The interplay of the various ways of being is what it is only as the playing out and playing apart, so to speak, at any given time of the primary structures of the totality of Dasein itself. GA20EN §32

This PHENOMENON of ‘being,’ which takes the lead and so decides the way for all research into being, must be elaborated. As we showed earlier, this calls for the interpretation of the very questioning; what is needed here is the clarification of the very structure of research into being, of the interrogation of the entity with regard to its being. The formulation of the question can as such be clearly realized only when it has become clear what questioning, what understanding, what taking a view, what an experience of an entity is, what the being of an entity in general means, in short, when all that we mean by Dasein has been elaborated. GA20EN §32

The question remains: in our considerations thus far, is Dasein approached as a whole, so that we can claim that the characters of being gained thus far as such fully define Dasein as such? If the being of Dasein is interpreted as care, we then ask: Does this PHENOMENON give us the totality of the structures of its being? Or does not the elaboration of this PHENOMENON of care lead us straight to the insight that Dasein as a whole was not put into prepossession in the consideration thus far? Indeed, does it not lead to the insight that the whole of Dasein is not only not in fact secured but in principle can not be secured, precisely because care constitutes the basic structure of its being? Formulated in another way, insofar as Dasein shows itself in this structure of being of care, it stands in direct opposition to the possibility of ever being grasped in its wholeness and so brought into prepossession. GA20EN §33

But this implies that the structure of the specific totality of Dasein nonetheless must have somehow become visible, and that this structure of totality became visible in a provisional consideration of the PHENOMENON of death as a PHENOMENON of Dasein. It is only when the impossibility of the experience of Dasein as a whole is exhibited expressly from the PHENOMENON of Dasein itself and from death as a mode of being of this being that this impossibility of determining the totality of Dasein receives its scientific justification. It is only when this demonstration has been conducted with phenomenological clarity that an insurmountable barrier is placed before the investigation of the being of Dasein. In order that we may scientifically ascertain the impossibility of whether Dasein can be experienced as a whole and thus whether its totality of being can be brought into structural relief, the phenomenological concept of death must be elaborated. But this means that we need the genuine interpretation of death as a pure PHENOMENON of Dasein, which in turn means that we have to understand death from what has previously been exhibited about Dasein in connection with the structures of being. The phenomenologically pure accomplishment of this task brings out something remarkable: the purported impossibility is a mere semblance. Genuine phenomenological interpretation of the PHENOMENON of death is rather the only way to open the prospect for Dasein as such to implement a possibility of being to be itself genuinely in its wholeness. The character of being of this very possibility will then yield the phenomenal ground for securing the sense of being of Dasein’s being-whole. Not only that. In Dasein’s genuine totality, which manifests itself in the genuinely seen PHENOMENON of death, and which is commensurate with its being, this primary totality of being simultaneously shows itself. The elaboration of death as a PHENOMENON of Dasein, its determination in strict conformity with the structures of being of the entity which we have as our theme, eo ipso leads us to the being of the entity itself and indeed in such a way that the totality of the being of Dasein is thereby understood. GA20EN §33

Care as being-ahead-of-itself is as such at the same time a being-possible. ‘I can,’ or more accurately, I am this ‘I can’ in a superlative sense. For I am this ‘I can die at any moment.’ This possibility is a possibility of being in which I always already am. It is a superlative possibility. For I myself am this constant and utmost possibility of myself, namely, to be no more. Care, which is essentially care about the being of Dasein, at its innermost is nothing but this being-ahead-of-itself in the uttermost possibility of its own can-be. Therefore Dasein is essentially its death. With death, the impending is not something worldly, but Dasein itself. Dasein stands before itself, not in a possibility of being of its choosing but in its no-longer-Dasein. Insofar as Dasein qua being-possible is essentially already its death, it is as Dasein always already a whole. Because Dasein means ‘being-ahead-of-itself as care,’ it can of itself be its being wholly in every moment of its being. The wholeness of Dasein will become phenomenally comprehensible in its structure with the elaboration of the way of being in which Dasein can be this its utmost possibility authentically. In connection with this way of being it now becomes evident how, in what kind of being Dasein is its very death. The elaboration of the way of being in which Dasein is its utmost possibility of being constitutes the sense of the phenomenological interpretation of the PHENOMENON of death, where death is taken as a constitutive determination of the being of Dasein. This at the same time indicates what this interpretation of death cannot take into account: GA20EN §34

Submitted on 20.09.2023 17:39
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