Kockelmans, Analytic of Dasein

CURRENT CONTINENTAL RESEARCH 218
Joseph J. Kockelmans
HEIDEGGER'S
"BEING AND TIME"
The Analytic of Dasein as
Fundamental Ontology
1989
Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology

& University Press of America, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1990 by
The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc.
University Press of America, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kockelmans, Joseph J., 1923Heidegger's being and time : the analytic of Dasein as
fundamental ontology I Joseph J. Kockelmans.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. Sein und Zeit. 2. Ontology.
3. Time. I. Title.
B3279 .H485K63
1989
111-<ic20
89-39039 CIP
ISBN 0--8191-7599-4 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0--8191-7600--1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
TABLE OF CONTENfS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Vll
Xl
I.
Being and Time: Its Author and Its Origin
II.
The Necessity, Structure, and Priority ofthe Question

ofBeing
41
The Twofold Task in Warking Out the Question of Being.

Reflections on Method
63
III.
Division 1: The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein

IV.
On the Nature and Task of the Preparatory Analysis of

Dasein's Being. Being-in-the World as the Basic
Structure of Dasein
91
93
V.
On the Being ofthe World
111
VI.
Spatiality and Space. Being-in-the-World as

Being-With
131
"Being In" As Such. The Fundamental Structure of

Dasein
145
VII.
IX.
Death, Conscience, and Resolve
163
183
187
X.
Dasein's Authentie Potentiality for Being-A-Whole.

Care and Selfuood. Temporality as the Meaning
of Care
215
XI.
Temporality and Time
239
XII.
The Temporality ofBeing-in-the-World and the

Problem of the Transcendence of the W orld
VIII. Care and the Being ofDasein. Reality and Truth
Division II: Dasein and Temporality
XIII. Temporality and Historicity
289
XIV. Temporality and Within~time-ness as the Sources of

the Ordinary Conception of Time
309
Conclusion
325
Bibliography
333
Index of Names
345
Index of Subjects
347
PREFACE
In 1962 I wrote abrief introduction to Heidegger's philosophy; it
was first published in Dutch and later, in 1965, translated into
English and slightly revised. The English version of this short
introduction has been used by many over a number of years. When it
finally went out ofprint quite a number ofpeople asked me to prepare
a new edition of the same book in which I would substantially
maintain its structure and content. I have constantly refrained from
re-editing the book because I was convinced that the time had passed
for such an introduction. There are now a number of treatises and
introductions that can be used with great profit as a first introduction
to Heidegger's thinking.
What I am presenting here is a commentary on Being and
Time as a whole. Yet the present book is not meant tobe a paragraph
by paragraph commentary or paraphrase of Heidegger's work.
Instead I have selected a number of basic themes which play an
important role in Being and Time. I have tried first to locate these
themes within their historical and thematic context. I have then
made an effort to familiarize the reader with the terminology and all
the background information which I thought to be important or
relevant to understanding Heidegger's text as maximally as possible.
Finally, I have attempted to describe Heidegger's position in detail.
There are several sections in Being and Time which will not be
discussed explicitly in my commentary. Limitations of space made
difficult choices necessary. For the sections not explicitly discussed
here I must refer the reader to other commentaries on Being and
Time. YetI am convinced that the content of this book will present
the reader with the basic ideas which Heidegger tried to develop in
his important work. If I have been successful in my effort, my
reflections will lead the reader back to Heidegger's own text for
which obviously no other text can be a substitute.
The interpretation of Being and Time which will be given here
will be strictly ontological. Thus I shall stay away from any nonontological interpretation of the book that some readers might have
liked to have seen, such as an anthropological interpretation. I have
particularly avoided a political interpretation of the work. Under the
influence of the appearance of recent publications in which
Heidegger's involvement with politics has been discussed pro and
con, many author.s have begun to look critically at Heidegger's
Vlll
HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME
philosophy from that perspective. Some of them even include in this

discussion Heidegger's earlier work that was written after 1919. I
have decided to stay away from such an interpretation because I find
such interpretations irrelevant to the basic intention of the book.
What I am interested in here is an effort to come to a founded
understanding of the meaning of Heidegger's first great work. As
far as the ontological content of the book is concerned, the work in my
opinion is in all likelihood the greatest philosophical text written in
this century. As the text explicitly states time and again the book is
meant to present a fundamental ontology. It is true that the author of
this book had his political opinions, but I do not feel qualified to say
much about Heidegger's personal political views of 1927. I merely
claim that the book, Being and Time, is not a treatise in political
philosophy, nor does it cryptically try to promote certain political
ideas.
The book is a fundamental ontology that attempts to make an
all-important contribution in regard to many vital problems of
modern philosophy. The author tries to move away from every form
of onto-theology. The basic thesis that the book tries to prepare isthat
the totality of meaning is inherently historical and that notwithstanding this fact we need not worry about either relativism or
"metaphysical" nihilism. It tries to avoid the pitfalls of the
philosophies of a closed consciousness that worry about the reality of
the world. Yet it transcends the pre-critical philosophies that were
developed between Plato and Kant by developing a theory that can be
called critical and transeendental in the deep sense of these terms. It
is understandable that such a position will have to develop an
analytic that is not concerned with consciousness, but with the
human reality as such. Furthermore, such an analytic can no
Ionger be a transeendental logic; rather it must be a transeendental
ontology instead. In addition, it can no Ionger speak about an
immortal soul or about isolated human faculties, such as intellect,
reason, will, and feeling. It can no Ionger begin with a theory of
perception, nor can it take its starting point in an a priori conception
of a thinking substance. It begins with an analytic of Dasein that is
both hermeneutical and transeendentaL It defines the mode of Being
of man as ek-sistence, i.e., as Being-in-the-world. What one
therefore may expect of this book is not an overt or covert political
theory, but a precise formulation of the genuine problern of the
meaning of Being, an explanation of the fact that Being is for us
problematic and should be so, a precise determination and
articulation of the mode of Being of man taken as Dasein which
PREFACE
IX
implies a detailed analysis of the notions of world, freedom,

transcendence, truth, etc. Finally one may expect a completely
original conception of both time and history, temporality and
historicity. I do not see that anything is gained by projecting these all
important ontological ideas upon a political background in which the
book itself does not appear to belang and to which it did not intend to
make a contribution.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this book I have sometimes made use of ideas which

I have developed elsewhere. As a consequence slightly revised versians of sections of book chapters and articles have been included in
some of the chapters of this book. I am very grateful for the permission of the publishers and editors of these sources to reprint slightly
revised portians of what has appeared previously.
In chapters V, VI, and VII I have included revised versions of
chapters 3 through 6 of my book Martin Heidegger: A First
Introduction to His Philosophy. Copyright 1965 by Duquesne
University Press and Lannoo, Tielt.
In chapters II and III I have incorporated sections of my article
"Destructive Retrieve and Hermeneutic Phenomenology in Being and
Time," which first appeared in Research in Phenomenology, 7(1977),
pp. 106-133.
Reprinted by permission of Humanities Press
International, Inc., Atlantic Highlands, N.J.
In chapter X I have made use of sections of my essay,
"Heidegger on the Self and Kant's Conception of the Ego," which appeared in Frederick Elliston, ed., Heidegger's Existential Analytic.
Copyright 1978 by Mauton Publishing Company. Reprinted by
permission of Mauton Publishing Company.
In chapters XI and XII I have included sections of my article,
"Heidegger on Time and Being," which appeared in The Southern
Journal of Philosophy, 8(1970), pp. 55-76. Reprinted by permission of
the Editor of The Southern Journal of Philosophy.
In chapters IV, VIII, XII, and XIII I have incorporated sectians of chapters III, IV, and VI of my book, Heidegger and Science,
which was published by The Center for Advanced Research in
Phenomenology & University Press of America, Inc. Washington,
D.C. Copyright 1985 by The Center for Advanced Research in
Phenomenology, Inc. and University Press of America, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the Director of the Current Continental
Research series.
In the first chapter I have included a brief characterization of
Being and Time which appeared in Thinkers of the 20th Century,
edited by Roland Turner. Copyright 1987 by Reference Publishers
International Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the Editor of Reference
Publishers International Ltd.
CHAPTERI
BEING AND TIME: ITS AUTHOR AND ITS ORIGIN
1: Martin Heidegger. A Biographical Sketch

Martin Heidegger is one of the most important and influential
philosophers of the twentieth century who from 1927 on has enjoyed a
world-wide reputation. Yet for a long time relatively little was known
about hisprivate life and personality. Heidegger himselfvery seldom
spoke or wrote about personal matters, and his close friends and
students have reverently respected his silence on these issues. This
silence about his personallife can perhaps be accounted for in part by
his attitude toward the Nazi movement between 1933 and 1945. Yet,
in view of the fact that Heidegger was already very uncommunicative
about his own life long before 1933, other factors must have played an
important part, also. One of these factors may have been Heidegger's
conviction that in the life of a thinker it is the course of his thinking
and his work that is important, not the person and his personal life.
In 1914 when Heidegger received his doctorate in philosophy
and, thus, was required to add an autobiography to his dissertation,
he confined hirnself to the following terse statement:
I, Martin Heidegger, was born on September 26, 1889, at
Messkirch (Baden) as the son of Friedrich Heidegger,
sexton and cellarer, and his wife Johanna, born Kempf,
both of the Catholic religion. After having attended the
public school of my home town, I studied at the
Gymnasium of Konstanz from 1903 until 1906, and after
the third year I transferred to the Bertholds-Gymnasium
in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, where I received my diploma in
1909. Until my oral examination for the doctorate I
attended the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. During
the first two years I attended lectures in philosophy and
theology. After 1911 I concentrated mostly on philosophy,

mathematics, and the natural sciences, and during the
last semester I added history. I
Friedrich Heidegger (1851-1914) and Johanna Kempf(1858-1927)

had three children: Martin, Mariele, who died early, and Fritz who
survived Martin and often helped him with the typing of his
publications.
Heidegger always spoke very positively about his gymnasium
years. "I acquired there everything that was to be of lasting value."2
There he learned to read Greek, Latin, and French. There he also
discovered Adalbert Stifter, one of the greatest German story-tellers
of Austrian descent, and the famous poet Hlderlin. In 1907 Father
Conrad Grber, then pastor of the Trinity Church in Konstanz, later
bishop ofMeissen in Saxony, and finally archbishop ofFreiburg, gave
Heidegger a copy of Brentano's book, On the Several Senses of Being
in Aristotle, which Heidegger later described as "my first guide
through Greek philosophy in my secondary school days."3 Heidegger
studied this book carefully and was finally led by this work to the
question which was to dominate the development of his entire career
as a philosopher: if that which is in Being (das Seiende) has several
meanings, what then does Being itself (das Sein) mean in its unity?
Heidegger had originally planned to become a priest. After the
completion of his gymnasium studies he thus entered the
archdiocesan seminary in Freiburg and at the same time enrolled at
the Albert Ludwig Universitt in Freiburg in theology and philosophy
in 1909. After he had abandoned the idea of becoming a priest in
1911, he continued his study at the University, but from then on he
concentrated mainly on philosophy, mathematics, physics, and
history. As early as 1912, while still a student in philosophy, he
published a short essay on epistemology under the title: "The
lMartin Heidegger, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus. Ein kritischpositiver Beitrag zur Logik. Leipzig: Barth, 1914. This work was reprinted in
Frhe Schriften, vol. I, ed. Fr.-W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1978,
pp. 59-188. For further information on Heidgger's Iife see Thomas Sheehan, ed.,
Heidegger. The Man and the Thinker. Chicago: Precedent Publishing, Inc., 1981,
Part I, pp. 1-75; Walter Biemel, Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study, trans. J.
L. Mehta. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976.
2Martin Heidegger, A Recollection (1957), Ibid., p. 21.
3Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1960, pp. 9192; English, On the Way to Language, trans. P. Hertz. New York: Rarper and
Row, 1971, p. 7.
BEING AND TIME
Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy."4 In this article Heidegger

defended the realism of Geyser, Messer, and Klpe against a form of
psychologism that rejected all metaphysics; yet he did not yet express
a personal opinion; nor is there in this essay a trace of any infl:uence
of Dilthey, Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche.
In his doctoral dissertation, which he wrote under the direction
of Arthur Schneider, he abandoned the traditional point of view.
Furthermore, in The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism,
Heidegger also took distance from Brentano's philosophy; yet here,
too, he had not yet arrived at a genuinely personal position.S
Already in 1907 Heidegger appears to have been in contact with
the work of Husserl. In his first semester at the university
Heidegger started to read Husserl's Logical Investigations. He had
hoped to find there "a decisive aid in the questions stimulated by
Brentano's dissertation,"6 in view ofthe fact that Husserl in that book
introduced a new kind of philosophical method and, above all, in view
of the fact that Husserl was a student of Brentano. Yet Heidegger
soon became "alienated" from Husserl's conception of phenomenology, when in 1913 it became clear in Husserl's Ideas, that the
latter had turned from some form of realism to a kind of
transeendental idealism. Heidegger must have realized even then
that although the phenomenological method developed by Husserl
might have helped him articulate the whole domain of Being,
Husserl's turn toward transeendental subjectivity nonetheless would
have stood in the way of his ever achieving that goal. Some time
between 1911 and 1913 Heidegger began to realize that neither
consciousness nor transeendental subjectivity, but rather aletheia is
the central issue of philosophy. According to Heidegger hirnself
Werner Jaeger's book, The History and the Genesis of Aristotle's
Metaphysics (1912) awakened his interest in the problematic of truth
as disclosure in Metaphysics IX, 10.7
During the same period at the University of Freiburg,
Heidegger also made a careful study of Maurice Blondel's L'Action
4Martin Heidegger, "Das Realittsproblem in der modernen Philosophie," in
Jahrbuch (Fulda), 25 (1912), 353-363; Frhe Schriften, vol. I, pp. 1-15.
scr. note 1 above.
6Martin Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1969, p. 82;
English: On "Time and Being," trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and
Row, 1972, p. 75.
7Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger's Early Years: Fragments for a Philosophical
Bibliography," in Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, pp. 3-19, p. 5.
and the works of Ravaisson.S Yet the influence of Carl Braig, a

Catholic theologian of the school of Tbingen, who taught in
Freiburg, was probably the most important. In his book, On Being:
An Outline of Ontology, Braig provided Heidegger with a great
number of philosophical texts of the tradition. In addition, the book
led Heidegger to the notion of the onto-theological structure of
metaphysics. Finally, it taught Heidegger the importance of
searching out the etymology of fundamental philosophical concepts.
In conversations with the young Heidegger, Braig also spoke about
the inherent restrictions of scholasticism in theology and about the
possibilities opened up for theology by German idealism, notably by
Schelling and Hegel.9
Finally, at the University of Freiburg, Heidegger also discovered
Kierkegaard, Dilthey, and Nietzsche as weil as the works of
Dostoevsky, Rilke, and Trakl. Heidegger also seems to have learned
a lot from the historian, Wilhelm Vge.lO
In 1911 Heidegger would have liked to have gone to Gttingen to
study with Husserl. Financial problems made this move impossible.
He thus stayed in Freiburg and completed his doctoral dissertation
under Schneider. Yet he also affiliated hirnself closely with the neoKantian scholar Heinrich Rickert whose lectures and seminars he
attended between 1911 and 1913. Rickert, in turn, introduced
Heidegger to the work of Emil Lask.ll
In August of 1914 Heidegger enlisted in the army but was so0 n
dismissed on October 9, 1914 because of frail health. From 1915 until
1917 he worked with the Control Board of the Post Office in Freiburg;
this work left him with sufficient time to continue his studies at the
University. As early as 1916 he published his second book, Duns
Scotus' Doctrine of Categories and Meaning.12 The basis of this
BJbid., cf. Henri Dumery, "Blonde! et Ia philosophie contemporaine," in Etudes
blondeliennes, 2(1952), n. 1; Jean Guitton, "Visite a Heidegger," in La Table
Ronde, 123, March, 1958, p. 155.
9sheehan, lbid. and p. 16-17, notes 4 and 5; cf. Kar! Braig, Vom Sein. Abriss der
Ontologie. Freiburg: Herder, 1896; Vom Denken. Freiburg: Herder, 1897; Das
Dogma des jngsten Christentums. Herder: Freiburg, 1907.
10Sheehan, lbid., p. 6.
llSheehan, lbid., p. 6; cf. Emil Lask, Die Lehre vom Urteil, in Gesammelte
Schriften, ed. Eugen HerrigeL Tbingen: Mohr, 1923; Die Logik der Philosophie
und die Kategorienlehre. Tbingen: Mohr, 1911.
12Sheehan, Ibid., pp. 6-7; cf. Roderick M. Stewart, "Signification and Radical
Subjectivity in Heidegger's Habilitationsschrift," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed.,
BEING AND TIME
historico-critical study was the Grammatica Speculatiua which at

that time was still attributed to Duns Scotus; Grabmann has later
been able to show that this work must have been written by Thomas of
Erfurt.13 Heidegger had presented this work which was written
under the guidance of Rickert, in 1915 as his probationary thesis
(Habilitationsschrift); this book, tagether with a public lecture on
"The Concept of Time in the Science of History," gave Heidegger the
right to lecture on philosophy within the German university
system.14
Heidegger began immediately to lecture in Freiburg as
Privatdozent. His first course, affered in the fall of 1915, was on
Parmenides. During the next two semesters he presented lectures
on Kant, Fichte, nineteenth century philosophy, and Aristotle. In
April of 1916 Husserl received his appointment at Freiburg.
Heidegger immediately established contact with him and worked
closely with him until 1923 when Heidegger moved to Marburg. In
1920 Heidegger became Husserl's official assistant,15
Yet one year after Husserl's arrival in Freiburg, Heidegger was
drafted for service in the army, first with the infantry on the Western
Front and later with the meteorological service at Verdun. During
the period in which Heidegger was in the army, Husserl received a
letter from Natorp in Marburg, asking whether Heidegger would he a
fitting candidate for the position of Professor Extraordinarius left
vacant by Georg Misch who was appointed as a full professor in
Gttingen. Natorp would have liked to have made this a position in
medieval philosophy and thought that Heidegger, because of his book
on the Grammatica Speculatiua, would be an eligible candidate.
Husserl responded that he thought that Heidegger was too young and
immature for the position; his Scotus' book was in Husserl's view
still the work of a beginner and Heidegger had not yet had the
opportunity to prove hirnself extensively as a teacher. Natorp had
been particularly interested in knowing whether Heidegger's
commitment to Catholicism could affect the appointment. With
A Companion to Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time." Lanham MD:
University Press of America, 1986, pp. 1-21, and the sources discussed there.
13Roderick Stewart, loc. cit., p. 2; cf. Martin Grabmann, ''Thomas von Erfurt
und die Sprachlogik des mittelalterlichen Aristotelismus," Sitzungsberichte der
Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich, 1943.
14Sheehan, loc. cit., p. 6.
15Jbid.
respect to this question Husserl informed Natorp that Heidegger had

just married a Protestant woman by the name of Elfride Petri)6
When he returned from the army Heidegger continued to
lecture in Freiburg. He offered courses on a great variety of subjects
ranging from St. Paul and St. Augustirre to Aristotle. All of these
lectures were developed with the help of a phenomenological method
which, although derived from Husserl's conception, was nonetheless
also completely different from it. Husserl had focused mainly on
theoretical issues; Heidegger was concerned then mainly with the
area of "everyday life." Heidegger also rejected the transeendental
reduction and had no need for a transeendental subject. In 1925
Heidegger would give a careful descriptm of how he understood
Husserl's own conception of phenomenology and why he hirnself
preferred to develop this method in a completely different direction.17
Weshall retum to this in one ofthe chapters to follow.
Already at that time, the basic concern of Heidegger's own way
of thinking was with the meaning of Being which determines all
modes of Being of the beings. At some time between 1919 and 1922 it
must have occurred to Heidegger that the human reality, taken in its
everyday life, must be the subject matter of a careful philosophical
examination if one is ever to find the proper access to the study of
Being itself; a fundamental ontology that concerns itself with the
mode of Being of man, the being that _asks the basic ontological
question, is to prepare the way to a genuine ontology. And
furthermore, both the fundamental ontology and the ontology proper
must be developed in close contact with the great texts of our Western
philosophical tradition; these texts are to be reread in a radical
manner and the basic words that occur in these texts must be
reinterpreted in such a manner that what was still unthought in
these texts can be retrieved.18
In 1922 Heidegger was appointed extraordinary professor of
philosophy in Marburg, where at that time Nicolai Hartmann was
the leading philosopher. In Marburg, Heidegger also met Rudolf
Bultmann who became a very close friend and with whom Heidegger
l6Jbid., p. 7.
17Jbid., p. 8. Cf. Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time.
Prolegomena, trans. Theodore J. IGsiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1985, pp. 27-131.
18cf. Theodore J. IGsiel, "The MissingLink in the Early Heidegger," in Joseph
J. Kockelmans, ed., Hermeneutic Phenomenology:
Lectures and Essays.
Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1988, pp. 1-40.
BEING AND TIME
cooperated in several joint ventures. In the same year he also built

his cabin in Todtnauberg in the Black Forest. Whenever he was free
he would go to his cabin to think and work. The greater part of Being
and Time was written in Todtnauberg; and the same is true for many
of his other lecture courses and books.19
When Heidegger got the basic idea for Being and Time is not
known to me; it must have been some time between 1919 and 1922.
The basic idea of Being and Time seems to have been developed for
the first time in an Introduction to a book on Aristotle which was
written in 1922. This idea then regularly returns in lectures and
lecture courses, such as the lecture "Dasein and Being-true," "The
Concept of Time," and above all his course of 1925, Prolegomena to
the History of the Concept of Time. 20 I shall return to these lectures
in a subsequent chapter. Being and Time was completed on April 8,
1926 and appeared in 1927 in the journal Jahrbuch fr Phnomenologie und phnomenologische Forschung, founded by Husser1.21
In 1928 Husserl retired and Heidegger was named his
successor, upon Husserl's recommendation.
Heidegger had
cooperated with Husserl closely since 1916. Gradually Heidegger had
moved away from Husserl in order to develop his own conception of
phenomenology. Husserl was aware of this development and
regretted it. Yet Husserl fully realized the quality of Heidegger's
thinking and, thus, wholeheartedly recommended him as his
successor. At that time they still cooperated closely as is clear from
their effort to write the essay on "Phenomenology" for the
Encyclopaedia Britannica tagether and from Heidegger's edition of
Husserl's Lectures an Inner Time Consciousness.22
In 1929 Heidegger participated in the Kant Conference in
Davos and defended there his own Kant interpretation against the
criticism formulated by Ernst Cassirer who at that time was
considered to be the leading neo-Kantian philosopher. Heidegger
also published in that year his book, Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics. On June 24, 1929 he delivered his inaugural address
19Sheehan, loc. cit., pp. 7-12.
20Sheehan, loc. cit., pp. 12-15; Kisiel, "The MissingLink," pp. 20-39.
21 Jahrbuch fr Phnomenologie und phnomenologische Forschung (Halle),
8(1927), pp. i-xi and 1-438.
22Cf. Walter Biemel, "Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica Article and

Heidegger's Remarks Thereon," in Frederick Elliston and Peter McCormick,
eds., Busserl. Expositions and Appraisals. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1977, pp. 286-303; Sheehan, loc. cit., p. 15.
under the title, What is Metaphysics? In the same year Vom Wesen
des Grundes was published. In 1930 Heidegger gave a special lecture
On the Essence of Truth in which there is a first indication of a basic
turn (Kehre) in his thinking, a turn away from the ontology of Dasein
toward an attempt to think the happening of the truth of Being
itself.23
In 1933 Heidegger made the mistake of letting hirnself be talked
into accepting the position of Rector of the University. After Hitler
had grasped power in Germany the influence of national socialism
was present everywhere, including all universities.
Drastic
measures were being prepared to bring the universities under the
influence of the Party and to use the university for the propagation of
Nazi ideas. It was at that time thought in Freiburg that Heidegger,
because he was already then considered Germany's leading
philosopher, would be the only one who because of his reputation
could stand up against the attempt on the part of the Party to destroy
the spirit of the university. Heidegger's colleagues approached him
on this issue, but at first Heidegger rejected this offer politely but also
firmly. His colleagues, however, insisted and after long reflection
and after seeking counsel from close friends, Heidegger reluctantly
accepted the nomination and joined, as he knew he had to do, the
Party. For nine months Heidegger tried to negotiate between what he
thought to be his duty as Rector and the demands which the Party
placed upon him. Realizing that things would not work out at all, he
resigned in February of 1934, nine months after his appointment.
Like all other government offleials Heidegger remained a nominal
member ofthe Party until1945.24
Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi party and the Nazi
movement in general has been discussed time and again over the
years. There are people who defend the view that Heidegger was a
23Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1927). Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1951; English: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James
S. Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969. Vom Wesen des
Grundes (1929).
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1929; English: The Essence of
Reasons, trans. Terence Malick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969.
Was ist Metaphysik? (1929). Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1955; English: What is
Metaphysics?, trans. David Farrell Krell, in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings,
ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: Rarper & Row, 1977, pp. 95-116. Vom Wesen
der Wahrheit (1930, 1941). Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1961; English: On the
Essence of Truth, trans. J ohn Sallis, in Basic Writings, pp. 117-41.
24Cf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, On the Truth of Being. Reflections on Heidegger's
Later Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 262-72.
BEING AND TIME
devoted foliower of Hitler, whereas others defend the position that he

never was a Nazi, but merely had affiliated hirnself for a short time
with the Party because he conceived that to be a condition for his
acceptance of the position of Rector of the University. It is extremely
difficult to sort out the truth of the matter. For those who would like
to defend Heidegger against unjust attacks on grounds that have
realiy nothing to do with the issue, there are the many notes, letters,
and short essays that Heidegger wrote during the years 1933 through
1945. Forthose who defend the position that Heidegger was a devout
foliower of Hitler, there are the many facts that speak against such a
theory, above ali the fact that Heidegger was made a persona-nongrata between 1934 and 1945. Yet in my view a few points can be
made on the matter:
1) There were a number of actions which Heidegger took which
certainly are not condonable; these actions involve letters, speeches,
brief essays, and administrative decisions.
2) I take it that Heidegger was an ardent nationalist and also a
socialist (within Iimits); yet one should realize that Heidegger shared
these two convictions with virtualiy ali Germans ofthat generation.
However, this does not at ali entail that he agreed with the basic ideas
of National Socialism as defended by the NSDAP. As a matter of fact
that "philosophy" was criticized and branded by Heidegger on many
occasions.
3) Although several authors have defended the thesis that
Heidegger's involvement with the Nazi movement, is no more than a
logical outflow of his philosophy, I must say that I have been unable
to find any arguments for such a view. There are a few texts that
could be interpreted to substantiate the position just mentioned, but
they are rare and aliow for a quite different interpretation. I have
discussed some of these texts elsewhere and shalllimit myself here
to referring to my previous remarks on the subject.25
4) Heidegger has been accused of anti-semitism. I have been
unable to find evidence for this. It is true that there were actions,
speeches, and letters that seem to support the thesis. Yet it seems to
me that this is so only if such actions, speeches, and essays are taken
out of the context in which they occurred. Many of these actions and
texts are suchthat almost everyone can find in them what he or she
may be looking for.
5) When it is ali said and done (if such a way of speaking makes
sense in this context), it must be said that Heidegger is one of the
25Jbid.
10
greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. The man lived under

extremely difficult and complicated circumstances and, like many
great thinkers, was not a very practical person. Many of the views
that are attributed to Heidegger, were in fact shared by most
Germans; yet these views for the Germans of that_time did not at all
have the meaning that many critics now attribute to them.
We can say with certainty that during the thirties Heidegger
gradually drew away from the Nazi movement. Soon he would be
forbidden to take part in international conferences, and for some time
it was made virtually impossible for him to publish anything. At any
rate from 1934 to 1947 he published very little. His book on Hlderlin
and two essays, one on Plato and one on truth, are exceptions.
In 1945 after the occupation of Freiburg by the French army,
Heidegger was removed from his position as professor of the
University. Between 1945 and 1951 he devoted hirnself to his work
and gave a number oflectures outside the University. In 1951 he was
reinstated but shortly thereafter he retired. Yet he continued to
lecture and write. Some of the lecture courses presented during
these difficult years belong tothebest he hasever written.26
Heidegger died on May 26, 1976 in Messkirch.
ll: On the Origin and Development of Being and Time'Z'l
1. The Basic Change in Heidegger's Thinking After 1916. At
the age of 27 Heidegger had already established hirnself as an
outstanding scholar. Two books and several articles had clearly
shown that he had a solid knowledge of systematic philosophy as weil
as of its history since Plato and Aristotle. Between 1916 and 1926
drastic changes would take place in Heidegger's thinking; from an
outstanding scholar who was fully familiar with the philosophical
tradition, he developed into one of the most original thinkers of our
26Martin Heidegger, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitt (1934).
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983, in which Heidegger's memoir of 1945, "Das
Rektorat: Tatsachen und Gedanken," is included. For its interpretation see
Graeme Nicholson, "The Politics of Heidegger's Reetoral Address," Man and
World, 20(1987) 171-87; F. Fedier, "Trois attaques contre Heidegger," in
Meditations, 3(1961), 151-59; Heidegger: Anatomie d'un scandale. Paris: Laffont,
1988.
27For what follows here see Theodore J. Kisiel, "Heidegger's Early Lecture
Courses," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, A Campanion to Martin Heidegger's "Being
and Time," pp. 22-39; ''The MissingLink in the Early Heidegger" quoted in note 18
above.
BEING AND TIME
11
century. Several factors have played an important role in this

development: Heidegger's concern with religion and theology (St.
Paul, St. Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard, Otto, Bultman), his vast
and deep knowledge of the philosophy of Aristotle, his
reinterpretation of the meaning of phenomenology, his knowledge of
hermeneutics and the hermeneutic tradition, his constant concern
with literature from Pindar and Sophocles via Hlderlin and
Dostoevsky to George, Rilke, and Trakl, his deep insight into German
idealism and its neo-Kantian reinterpretation, his contact with
Dilthey's works, etc.
For a long time relatively little was known about the manner in
which Heidegger's thinking developed during those years and what
elements really have played important parts in this development.
The publication of most of Heidegger's lecture courses and the
archives in Marbach have made it possible to get a better insight into
Heidegger's path of thinking. Kisiel has succeeded in establishing a
reliable list of courses and seminars which Heidegger actually
delivered and conducted between 1919, the time Heidegger returned
to the University after having been in the army because of WW I, and
1923, when we for the first time see an outline of what later would
become Being and Time.28
2. ''The Idea of Philosophy and the Problem ofWorld Views."
In 1919 Heidegger gave a course on "The Idea of Philosophy and the
Problem of World Views." In this course Heidegger focused on the
"hermeneutic situation" of philosophy, as he found it in 1919, and
tried to determine his own approach to philosophy in regard to
philosophy, understood as a doctrine of world views (Dilthey), on the
one hand, and philosophy, understood as an original and basic
science (Aristotle, Kant, Husserl), on the other. At the same time,
Heidegger also made an effort here to come to terms with the
philosophy of values as this was developed in neo-Kantianism,
mainly by Windelband and Rickert. The neo-Kantians occupied some
kind of middle position between the two extremes mentioned, insofar
as they tried to develop philosophy as a system of values which would
provide us with the scientific means for developing one's own world
view. Heidegger makes it quite clear that he finds a philosophy of
world views completely unacceptable. His reading of Husserl's
article, "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science," may have influenced
28Theodore J. Kisiel, "Heidegger's Early Lectures," pp. 28-29; "The Missing

Link," pp. 20-27.
12
him in this move.29 Genuine philosophy has nothing to da with world

views. Rather it is an original and basic science which is radically
different from all other sciences, and it is a science that is capable of
justifying its own "foundations." Heidegger then tried to define the
subject matter of philosophy by means of an historical and critical
examination of traditional solutions to the problem. In this part of
his lectures Heidegger shows his preference for asking pertinent
questions: Does philosophy really have a subject matter? How is its
matter given? What does "there is something" really mean?
Heidegger also shows here already a preference for the use of
impersonal sentences: es wertet (it values), es weltet (it governs), es
gibt (it gives, there is), etc. Heidegger may have been influenced in
this by the typical langnage use of Meister Eckhart. We also find
here a first indication of the important role that Aristotle's
conception of aletheia (truth) as non-concealment will have in his
later thinking. But most importantly, in this lecture course
Heidegger time and again appeals to everyday experiences that
everyone can have in his environing world (Umwelt). This is clearly
a deliberate effort on his part to get away from a type of philosophy
that is concerned exclusively with the theoretical and perceptual
dimension of our lives as we for instance find it in Husserl. Dilthey's
philosophy of life may have inspired Heidegger to make this move.
Yet, in this move Heidegger may also have been influenced by E.
Lask who was the first to realize the phenomenological problern of
the theoretization of experience, but appears to have been unable to
find a non-theoretical solution for the problem.30 Kisiel has described
the importance which Heidegger attributes to this notion in the
following terms:
Theoretization de-signifies, de-historicizes, unlives and
unworlds our most original experiences. Philosophy's
radical quest for a pretheoretical something, not only a
worldly but also a preworldly something, makes the primal
science at once a supratheoretical science. Philosophy
must counter the theoretical tendency of other sciences to
unlive the world and replace it with concepts, by
29Edmund Husserl, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," in Peter McCormick
and Frederick Elliston, eds., Husserl: Shorter Works. Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1981, pp. 166-97. Husserl's article was translated by Quentin
Lauer.
30Theodore J. Kisiel, "Heidegger's Early Lectures," p. 30.
BEING AND TIME
13
formulating 'recepts' (Rckgriffe) which root back in the

life-contexts underlying the sciences. The primal sense of
this pretheoretical preworldly something must be seen
phenomenally, i.e., purely intuitively. We must learn how
to experientially live such lived experiences in their
motivations and tendencies. In short, we must come to
understand life.
For life is not irrational, it is
understandable through and through. Phenomenological
intuition as the living of primal experiences is hermeneutic
intuition.31
3. "Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion. ''32 Similar
ideas are found in the other courses which Heidegger taught in 1919
and 1920. In the fall of 1920 we see a "new" element appear in
Heidegger's reflections, namely in his course, Introduction to the
Phenomenology of Religion, which to some degree was inspired by
Otto's book on the holy_33 The course consisted clearly of two parts,
one devoted to an introduction to the phenomenon of factical lifeexperience (8 lectures), and the other concerned with a
phenomenological interpretation of original Christianity in St. Paul's
Epistles to the Galatians and Thessalonians. In this second part
Heidegger first explained in what sense original Christianity
constitutes a factical life-experience, in order then to show that
Christianity, as a factical life-experience, is primordial temporality.
Thus the first part of the course contains a phenomenological
analysis of a very important phenomenon often forgotten in our
Western tradition; in Heidegger's view this phenomenon was
understood very well, although unthematically, by the early
Christians, namely life in its here-and-now facticity, the factical
experience of life. In Being and Time we shall encounter this same
phenomenon under the title Dasein, Being-in-the-world, ek-sistence.
Sheehan has pointed to the parallels that exist between
Heidegger's approach to early Christianity and his approach to
Greek philosophy. In both instances Heidegger discovered a level of
experience that was lived in an unthematized way, but which in later
31Ibid., pp. 30-31.
32For what follows here cf. Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger's 'Introduction to

Phenomenology of Religion', 1920-21," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., A
Companion, pp. 40-62.
33Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John Harvey. London: Oxford
University Press, 1923.
14
ages was covered up; this level of experience can be rediscovered only
by a de-construction of the tradition, which often appears "violent." It
is important to note that in both cases this experience was pretheoretical and that it was an experience of self-exceediilg, one of
being drawn out beyond one's ordinary self-understanding. However
different the two cases may be, what they have in common is a
movement taken as a dynamic interplay of presence and absence.
The difference between the two experiences consists in this that in
early Christianity this movement was understood in terms of
temporality, whereas the early Greeks interpreted this movement in
terms of disclosure or truth.34
The course begins with a reflection on what philosophy is and
on the pre-questions (Vorfragen) that must be asked before one can go
any further. In Heidegger's view the true meaning of philosophizing
is always to stay with these prior questions. Of these prior questions
in his view the very questionability of life itself, of the factical
experience of life, is the most fundamental one. It is in this
experience that the elusive ground is to be found out of which
philosophy develops and to which it also must return. Heidegger will
later in Being and Time repeat this statement, but there he
substitutes ek-sistence for the factical life-experience, as we shall see
later. (SZ, 38)
If one begins the philosophical reflection from the factical
experience of life one realizes soon that a complete transformation of
philosophy will be necessary. One will see that what is needed then
is a radical turning away from all philosophies that are built on the
relation between man as a stable subject and beingness as the stable
presentness of the beings; this turning away from all philosophies
implies a turning into the primordial experience of being thrown into
nothingness within which the beings become present in a
meaningful manner; this experience is the event (Ereignis), the
movement of presence and absence. With some hesitation Heidegger
at first called this event the factical experience oflife.35
This experience of life cannot be identified with a mere cognitive
experience; it is man's overall concern and coming-to-grips with the
world. Furthermore, it is not to be described in terms of a simple
subject-object relation. That which is experienced and lived in this
experience is the world, i.e., the world of meaning in which we find
ourselves (Umwelt), the world we all share (Mitwelt), as weil as each
35Sheehan,Ibid., p. 47.
BEING AND TIME
15
individual's own world (Selbstwelt). And the one who has the
experience is not a knowing subject, a pure ego, but the historical self
with its factical experience oflife. What binds world and self tagether
is not just an intentional relation, but rather the fact that each self in
essence is Being-towards-the-world and that world is, gets opened
up, and becomes revealed only in and through man's Being-towards.
In other words, what holds the two tagether is not a cognitive but an
ontological relation. 36
All things that are experienced in the factical experience of life
have in common that they all have meaning or significance. And
every form of human experience has the form of care and concern.
Thus factical experience of life is concern for meaning and
meaningfulness which must be qualified by the following
characteristics: 1) in each case it corresponds to a certain attitude, 2)
it is always "falling," 3) as far as relation is concerned it is
indifferent, and 4) it is self-sufficient.
It is clear that if the subject matter studied with the help of the
method of philosophy, namely phenomenology, is the factical
experience of life, phenomenology, taken in the sense of Husserl,
must be reinterpreted. The most important change consists in the
turn to the historical. For the factical experience of life is inherently
historical. For Heidegger philosophy is therefore first of all the
return to the primordial historical. The methodical implications of
this move toward the primordial historical can be shown by an
analysis of the meaning of experience in the expression "experience
of life." Experience (Erfahrung) can be taken in the sense ofthat
which is experienced as well as in the sense of the experiencing of
that which is so experienced. These two sides of the experience
cannot be separated; they are bound tagether in the basic structure of
the human self. This implies that the term "phenomenon," too,
signifies not just that which is experienced, but equally the mode of
experiencing of what is experienced. 37
The correlation between the experiencing and the experienced
is worked out by Heidegger with the help of three distinct but
inseparable moments of meaning: first there is the primordial
meaning which is had in the content of what is experienced
(Gehaltssinn), then there is the relational meaning contained in the
primordial "how" of the act of experience (Bezugssinn), and finally
there is the "how" or way in which the relational meaning is carried
36Jbid., pp. 47-48.
31Jbid., pp. 48-50.
16
out and brought to completion (Vollzugssinn).3 8 In Heidegger's view

the latter is the core of what is called "phenomenon." The
phenomenon in turn is tobe characterized by its time-character. In
other words, phenomenology must thematize the very temporal
enactment of the event of meaning that comes-to-pass in each
concrete experience of life. Thus phenomenology cannot limit itself
to that which the experience intends, nor to the relations that are
established in the act of experience. Heidegger often refers to this
enactment by the term "how." For him all philosophical questions
are basically questions of the "how," and thus also questions of
method, provided method be understood in the Aristotelian sense of
met-hodos, pursuit of a certain matter. This met-hodos appears for
Heidegger tobe closely related to temporality ifit is nottobe identified
with it. The manner in which temporality and the historical cometo-pass is both the theme and the met-hodos of Heidegger's new
phenomenology. 39
Sheehan has pointed out that in the distinction between
meaning as content, meaning as relation, and meaning as
enactment one may perhaps see a first and "primitive" articulation of
the later distinction between being (in the sense of a being, in Greek
on), the beingness of this being (in Greek ousia), and the event of the
coming-to-pass of the truth of Being or Being-itself (das Sein selbst).
That which the tradition called beingness (ousia, essence) and
presented in various transformations, shows the mode ("how") of
presentness of whatever is meaningfully present; hence it is the
"how" of relationality, although this element of relation is usually
forgotten. "To retrieve beingness, in all of its forms, as a
phenomenon of relationality is to have uncovered the implicit but
mostly forgotten phenomenological basis of traditional ontology."40
But this is obviously only the first step in phenomenology. One must
next try to uncover the very enactment of this relationality in its timedetermined character. Because of the negativity (the "not yet") that is
inherent in time, the uneavering of the enactment of such a
relationality is a retrieve of the problern of the nothing in traditional
ontology. And to move into this area is to turn away definitively from
all philosophies presented thus far, "and to enter the area of man's
38Jbid., pp. 50-51; cf. Kisiel, "The MissingLink," pp. 21-22.

39Jbid., p. 51.
40Jbid.
BEING AND TIME
17
temporal projectedness into the 'nothing' whence beings become

meaningfully present."41
In the second part of the course Heidegger then focuses on a
phenomenological interpretation of a few letters by St. Paul; the
Epistle to the Galatians and the two Epistles to the Thessalonians
were chosen because they are the oldest Christian documents, which
even predate the Gospels. Since they are the oldest documents
available they may perhaps reveal the original features of the
Christian experience of life. Many contemporary philosophers
conceive of religious phenomena in terms of the irrational.
Heidegger rejects this view, held among others by his later colleague
Rudolf Otto, and suggests to approach these religious phenomena in
terms of the factical experiences of life, and particularly in terms of
the temporality and historicity of these experiences. For Heidegger
the "historical" is an authentic "stretch of eksistence" into its past; it
is not a past which eksistence drags along behind itself as a piece of
luggage, but a past that is experienced historically, so that eksistence
really possesses it as well as itself within the horizon of expectations
which it has already projected ahead of itself.42 "The historical" is
therefore the having-of-oneself by the enacting of one's own eksistence in historical contexts. This concernful, historically enacted
self-having is the "how" of man's Being. The phenomenological
explication of the "how" of this enactment of experience, according to
its basic historical meaning, is the main task of a phenomenological
reflection on the phenomenon of eksistence.43
In the second part of this course Heidegger thus focuses on the
enactment of the early religious experience and specifically on the
how (Wie) of that enactment; he focuses in other words on the
religious si tuation insofar as this is enacted historically
(vollzugsgeschichtliche Situation). The term "situation" must here
be understood phenomenologically; thus it does not mean a natural
and spatial something, nor an objectifiable historical context of
meaning. The term "situation" rather anticipates what later in
Being and Time will be made explicit in the context of a discussion of
conscience and resolve, namely the openness that ek-sistence is on
the basis of a decision to accept oneself as finite. (SZ, 299) Here in
41[bid., p. 52 (with one minor change).
42Cf. Martin Heidegger, "Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers' Psychologie der
Weltanschauungen," in Wegmarken. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976, p. 31,
quoted by Sheehan, p. 61, note 10.
18
Heidegger's reflection on the Epistles of St. Paul he is concerned

mainly with the factical experience of life that structures the
religious situation, as well as with the specification of that
situational experience in terms ofits temporality.44
In his interpretation of I Thessalonians, Heidegger points out
first that in the first twelve verses of the letter various forms of the
verb genesthai (to have become) and the verbs mnaomai (to remember) and oida (I know) are used. Genesthai refers to the basic state of
being of St. Paul as well as of the Thessalonians, their "already
having become." This "already having become" is not to be taken in
the sense of some past that is gone, but rather as the whole of what is
operative and determinative of their present now. Their "already
having become" is their present Being.
But equiprimordial with this "already having become," or
genesthai, there is also an eidenai-dimension, some kind of
experiential knowledge.
The knowledge meant here is the
comprehension of the situation that comes out of the factical
experience of life. These two moments of genesthai and eidenai are
always found together. The genesthai-dimension is specified by St.
Paul in terms of affectivity where he speaks of tribulation as well as
joy. Sheehan has observed correctly that in these reflections several
themes of Being and Time are anticipated: the typical interpretation
of the past as Gewesenheit, the conception of Verstehen (the knowhow, the knowing one's way araund in one's own Being andin one's
world) and its relation to Befindlichkeit (affective disposition), and
finally the relation between Befindlichkeit and Verstehen, on the one
hand, and Gewesenheit and Zuknftigkeit, on the other.45
Be this as it may, from his reflections on the relationship
between genesthai and eidenai Heidegger derives then his second
basic thesis, namely that the original Christian experience generates
primordial temporality and lives out of it.46 This second thesis is
discussed in the context of St. Paul's teaching on eschatology in
chapters 4 and 5 of I Thessalonians and in chapter 2 of II
Thessalonians.
Heidegger approaches this issue by formulating two questions:
1) If it is true that St. Paul and the Thessalonians were bound
tagether in one common religious experience, what is it that makes
44Jbid., p. 53.
45Jbid., pp. 54-55.
46Jbid., p. 55.
BEING AND TIME
19
this experience possible? 2) If it is true that the Christian experience

is a factical experience of life, how is God present in that facticallifeexperience? Heidegger derives his answer to the first question from
an analysis of I Thessalonians 1:10: "You have turned to God and
away from idols in order to serve a living and true God and to wait for
His Son from Heaven." In this text St. Paul suggests that the
"turning" and the "serving" receive their meaning from the unifying
Christian experience of waiting for the Parousia. The term
"parousia" is here not to be taken in the common Greek sense in
which it was used by Plato and Aristotle; in that tradition the term
means Beingness as presentness. In St. Paul the word has a strictly
eschatological meaning. Yet the term "parousia" and "eschaton"
should not be taken in the Jewish sense of the term, either. In St.
Paul's Epistles the word means Jesus' second coming in glory. Thus
the Christian relation to the Parousia is basically not the awaiting of
some future event. The structure of the Christian hope does not at all
have the character of an awaiting (Erwartung). In I Thessalonians
chapter 5 Paul writes that he needs not to write to them concerning
the chronoi and the kairoi, for they know already that the day of the
Lord will come like a thief in the night. The question of the "when" of
the Parousia, the chronos (Zeit, time) and kairas (Augenblick,
critical moment) is unique in that it is answered without a reference
to objective time; rather the question is bent back and referred to the
factical experience of life. The attitude in regard to the Parousia is
furthermore not one of waiting for, but rather one of being awake.
This explains that the Christian's state of wakefulness in the factical
experience of life means a constant, essential, and necessary
uncertainty. In other words the Christian meaning of eschatology
which St. Paul specifies here has shifted from the expectation of a
future event to a presence before God; Heidegger speaks here about a
context of enacting one's life in uncertainty before God who remains
unseen. Thus the attention has shifted from the when to the how,
from the when of the event to the how of man's eksistence. St. Paul
maintains the imminence of the Parousia; yet this imminence now
characterizes the how of the factical experience of life, namely its
essential uncertainty.47
Thus starting from a context of the enactment of the factical
experience of life before the hidden God, Heidegger's thinking is led
to primordial temporality. In other words, the meaning of facticity
appears to be temporality and the meaning of temporality is
47Jbid., pp. 55-58.

determined by starting from one's basic relation to God. One is in
each case becoming, in the uncertainty of the future (Zukunft), what
one already has become. Christian life is nothing but the living
through of this uriique temporality; only from out of this temporality
can the meaning of God be determined. No objectivist conceptions of
time can ever be of use in this context.
Sheehan is of the opinion that Heidegger's conception of
temporality and historicity which we shall encounter later in Being
and Time was developed in outline already in 1920-21 and that this
conception issued from his interpretation of the factical experience of
life in early Christianity.48 Obviously, in the course of 1922 Heidegger
discussed a number of other themes which will appear later in Being
and Time; we find for instance a first indication of his view on resolve
which is said here to have its root in being-awake; in addition we find
the expression "the anticipation of death" (das Vorlaufen zum Tode)
which here is discussed in a context that is quite different from that
found in Being and Time. Yet Sheehan also warns us that it is risky
to speak of these connections because in other courses of the same
period it becomes clear that Heidegger's ideas were "inspired" often
by different sources which are employed in different contexts.49
We must now turn to the next phase in Heidegger's
development, namely the introduction to a projected book on Aristotle
that as such was never completed.
4. The "Introduction" to the Book on Aristotle.50 In 1922
Heidegger began to realize that it would not be easy for him to find a
good position in philosophy, if he were not to be able to publish a good
book. Thus under the influence of academic pressures he announced
a book on Aristotle which he hoped to write on the basis of two
courses on Aristotle which he had just delivered. In October of the
same year he composed an Introduction to this book which was to
appear in Husserl's Jahrbuch fr Philosophie und phnomenologische Forschung. This Introduction tagether with some of the
chapters of the projected book were sent to Marburg where Heidegger
was considered for a position as "extraordinarius in philosophy with
the rights and status of a professor ordinarius." The themes treated
48Ibid., pp. 58.
49Jbid., pp. 58-59.
50For what follows, see Theodore J. Kisiel, "The MissingLink," pp. 27-38. The
archives in Marbach has an incomplete copy (22 pages) of Heidegger's
"Introduction;" the rest is lost. In what follows I paraphrase Kisiel's reconstruction
ofthe content ofthis important document.
BEING AND TIME
21
in this Introduction constitute the first major step toward Being and
Time. Both Sheehan and Kisiel have described the origin and the
content of this "Introduction" in detail, insofar as today we have
textual evidence of it. In this document one finds basic concepts that
will receive a central position in Being and Time, a clear indication of
the hermeneutico-phenomenological method to be used in the
investigation of the basic issues, the distinction between the
development of a fundamental ontology on the one hand and the
destruction of the history of metaphysics on the other; one finds also
the notion of the public "one," the concept of falling, the idea of the
original anticipation and grasp of my own death, etc. It is also
clearly indicated there that all of this is to lead to a new, "ontological"
way of access to the temporality of human existence. The basic
concern of the Introduction, however, seems to have been more
methodological than thematic. Although religious and theological
ideas were mentioned, it nonetheless is the case that Heidegger
wanted to explain in what sense for him philosophy is totally
independent oftheology.51
In the "Introduction" Heidegger first stated that his
interpretations of the ontology and logic of Aristotle are concerned
with the history of ontology, as the doctrine of Being, and with the
history of logic, as the science of the ways in which Being is said and
spoken. These interpretations presuppose as the condition of their
possibility the hermeneutic situation of the interpreter and, thus, we
must first make this hermeneutic situation, from which the
interpretation flows, sufficiently manifest. The hermeneutic
situation mentioned implies a certain point of view (Blickstand), a
certain line of sight (Blickrichtung), as well as a breadth of vision
(Sichtweite) that goes with them.52
The situation in which the past is appropriated by means of
interpretation, is always that of a living present. The idea that we
have of philosophical research, of its object and methodical approach,
decides in advance our attitude in regard to the history of philosophy.
At the root of our hermeneutic situation, therefore, lies the decision
in regard to the question of what philosophy is supposed to be. The
answer to this question will somehow be projected into the history of
philosophy.
Thus we must begin with the question of what philosophy is.
The subject matter of philosophical investigation is our factic life; it is
5lJbid., pp. 39-40; cf. Sheehan, "Heidegger's Early Years," pp. 11-15.
52Jbid., pp. 27-28, and note 34.
22
human Dasein questioned in its mode of Being. Philosophy's

questioning must thus be oriented toward an effort to camprehend
the basic movement of factic life, in which life is concerned about its
Beingin the concrete temporalization ofits Being. Factic life must be
shown as it actually is, as hard and difficult; the metaphysical
tradition has usually tried to portray it as easy in an effort to comfort
and encourage people. Philosophy must turn to its own history, not
to increase its knowledge, but instead to increase this knowledge's
questionability which reflects the questionability of life itself which,
in turn, flows from the fact that human life is affiiction. Philosophy
is nothing but the actualization of the basic movement of factic life;
this explains why philosophical investigation must co-temporalize
the very Being oflife itselfin its own actualization.S3
Yet, Heidegger continues, it is not possible here to work out the
basic structure of facticity in a systematic and complete manner; we
can merely indicate here the hermeneutic situation and bring the
most important constitutive elements into our "fore-having." The
basic movement of factic life consists in caring, being open to and
oriented toward something, namely the temporally particular world
in which we find ourselves. Our caring has the character of a
preoccupation and that which we are preoccupied with, is the world.
This world appears first as surrounding world (Umwelt); but it also
appears as with-world (Mitwelt) and self-world (Selbstwelt). Our
caring preoccupation with the world is characterized by a certain
familiarity and habituality; it is thus always guided by its own way of
seeing, namely by circumspection; circumspection is always in
harmony with the way in which the world already has been
interpreted. But the movement of life has also the inclination to give
up this circumspection for the sake of careful inspection and
investigation; this has first the form of a simply-looking-atsomething, but eventually it may develop into research and science.54
Our concernful preoccupation with the world is not just an
indifferent fulfillment of our original intentionality to the world. In
this movement there is also the propensity for us to become totally
absorbed in the world. This inclination is the expression of a basic
tendency of factic life to turn away from its true self; it has the
tendency of fallenness (Verfallen). Fallenness has three dimensions:
temptation, tranquilization, and self-alienation. Due to fallenness
which applies to both circumspective concern and scientific
53Jbid., p. 28.
54Jbid., p. 29.
BEING AND TIME

inspection, factic life is for the most part not lived by each individual
as it in truth is; instead it is usually lived in a certain averageness of
the public "they." It is the "one" who factically lives the life of each
individual. In the world in which Dasein is absorbed, and in the
everyday averageness in which it is preoccupied with the world, life
conceals itself from itself. One sees this most clearly in the way factic
life stands before death. 55
The ontological structure of facticity is constituted by the fact
that in our everyday concern we flee from death and are seized by
affliction and pain before our impending death.
If Dasein
deliberately seizes its own death which is certain, then life in itself
becomes visible. Death provides us with a peculiar sight on life
which leads it to its ownmost present and past. Thus the ontological
problematic of the Being of death, and particularly the vision which it
provides us with, are the phenomena from which the temporality of
man's Dasein is tobe unfolded. Furthermore, it is from the meaning
of temporality that the basic meaning of the historical is to be defined;
the latter can never be understood from a careful analysis of the work
in which historians actually engage. 56
The genuine Being of life can thus be approached via a detour
which runs counter to the movement of falling. Heidegger calls this
mode of Being of life eksistence (Existenz). Eksistence is always a
possibility for every concrete factical life; it is one way of
temporalizing its facticity and of bringing it to full development in its
temporality. One can only indirectly indicate what eksistence is,
namely by making the actual facticity questionable, and by the
destruction of the concrete facticity in its particular motives,
inclinations, and tendencies. One gains insight into factic life by
means of a negation of its eksistentiell fallen position, so that one can
arrive at an insight into its eksistentiell possibilities.57
By now it should be clear that philosophy can no Ionger be
defined as a casual occupation with principles and generalities. It is
itself radical interrogation and investigation. "As such it is 1) the
55Ibid., pp. 29-30.
56Jbid., p. 30.
51Jbid., pp. 30-31. The term "eksistentiell" refers to the concrete manner in
which something that is a basic constitutive element of Dasein's Being
(=eksistential), is realized in the life of an individual human being. What is
eksistentiell is always also ontic, whereas what is eksistential is always
ontological. Cf. William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to
Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 49-50.
24
explicit actualization of the interpretive tendencies already operative

in the basic movements of the life which 'goes about its being'."58
Philosophy must in addition 2) attempt to bring the decisive
possibilities of factic life into sight and try to camprehend it radically
and clearly without any concern for world views. From this it is
clear that philosophy, because it assumes the skepticism which is
typical for any form of radical questioning, must be fundamentally
atheistic. Philosophy is thus the very "how" of life's own, indigenous
exposition; it is the interpretation of the meaning of life on the basis of
the ways in which factic life temporalizes itself and so speaks with
itself. As such philosophy is fundamental ontology. It is from this
ontology that all regional ontologies derive their ground and the
meaning of their problems.
Insofar as philosophy is the
fundamental ontology of facticity, it is also the categorial
interpretation of the ways in which this facticity of life is articulated
(logic). "Ontology and logic are to be taken back to their original unity
in facticity and understood as developments of fundamental
research, which we shall call phenomenological hermeneutics of
facticity."59 This investigation must take the concrete interpretations
which are already at work in factic life in their temporalized unity,
from the insights of circumspective concernful dealing with things
and caring to the more extreme insights of affliction; it must also
make them categorially transparent in their fore-having and foreconception. This type of investigation is phenomenological insofar as
it regards the field of its subject matter as a whole, as a phenomenon
which is to be characterized in its full intentionality; thus this
phenomenon includes the relational meaning, the meaning that is
had as the content of each experience, and the meaning as actualized
and temporalized.60 Intentionality which Busserl understood mainly
as a cognitive relation, is understood here as caring which is the
basic preoccupation of life. Phenomenology is radical philosophical
research; thus it is not just a propaedeutic science that serves merely
to clarify the basic concepts of philosophy descriptively. 61
The idea of a phenomenological hermeneutics of facticity
includes the task of both logic and ontology; it includes first a doctrine
58Jbid., p. 33.
59Jbid., p. 32.
60The phenomenon thus includes what was called earlier:
Bezugssinn, and Volzugssinn.

61Kisie1, loc. cit., pp. 32-33.
Gehaltssinn,
BEING AND TIME
25
of formal and material objects, a science, but at the same time a

doctrine that focuses on the "logic of the heart" as well as the "logic of
pretheoretical and practical thinking." Our next task consists in an
effort to understand what kind of historical investigations belong to
such a hermeneutics and why Aristotle should have the central place
in such investigations. To explain this Heidegger begins here with a
comparison between the experience of factical life and the
investigations of philosophy. The idea of facticity implies that only
one's own facticity which implies the facticity of one's own time and
generation, is the authentic and proper subject matter of research.
Yet because of its fallenness factic life is lived for the most part in an
inauthentic way, in what is transmitted and handed on to it, and
appropriated by it only in an average way. And even that which has
been brought to authentic possession soon falls back again in the
customary form ofthe "one." Now since philosophy is only an explicit
interpretation of factic life, its forms of inquiry are affected by the
same inclinations of factic life.
In other words, the phenomenological hermeneutics of facticity
equally begins in a manner in which factic life has already been
interpreted for it; this interpretation is assumed without further
discussion as something that is self-evident and obvious without an
explicit appropriation of its origins; thus this hermeneutics, too,
begins inauthentically.
Philosophy in 1923 still operated
inauthentically on the basis of insights taken over from Greek
philosophy and the Christian conception of what it means to be
human.
Over the centuries philosophers in the West have
interpreted these insights in different ways and even anti-Greek and
anti-Christian tendencies may have played an important role here.
Yet in the final analysis all these conceptions are such that they
maintain the same basic way of seeing and the same kind of
interpretation. Phenomenological hermeneutics must loosen the
hold of this still dominant interpretation, uncover its hidden motives
and unexpressed tendencies, and find its way back by means of
deconstructive regression to the original motivating sources of
explication. Hermeneutics can materialize this task only by means
of destruction. Philosophical research is essentially "historical;" yet
it is equally essentially critical in regard to its history. Its destructive
confrontation with its history is not added merely as an illustration of
how things once were. "The destruction is rather the way in which
the present in its basic movements has to be confronted in order to
26
assume original custody of one's past, to safeguard one's roots, in

short to be." 62
The complex and basic forces which constitute the present
situation in regard to its facticity can be called the Greek and
Christian interpretation of life which also includes the anti-Greek
and anti-Christian tendencies. Heidegger explains in what sense
this is true not only for early Christian and medieval philosophy but
also for the philosophical anthropologies of Kant, German Idealism,
and the reactionary movements which German idealism provoked in
the 19th century.63
Mter a brief exemplification of these basic ideas with the help of
the re-interpretation of the Greek idea that man is a zoion logon
echon, Heidegger states that the Christian interpretation of the
human life perhaps has shown much richer life-contexts than that of
Aristotle. Yet in his view, this was possible only because in that
interpretation one could derive the fundamental interpretation from
experiences that presuppose the religious faith.
"Viewed
philosophically, it must be said that all of the later psychology
remains completely behind Aristotle. When it comes to original
explication, what Aristotle accomplished has never again been
attained." This explains why Aristotle had to receive a special place
in Heidegger's own investigations; obviously, this implies that the
common interpretation of Aristotle's psychology be subjected to a
radical and thorough "destruction" in the sense indicated above. 64
For Aristotle, so understood, primordial Being is life. Life is the
Being of man. Since life usually is given a broader meaning,
Heidegger prefers to say that the mode of Being of human Dasein is
facticity. Facticity includes the Being of the world in which life is
factically lived. Facticity is neither world nor life, but rather the
relation between them. The world is there to the extent that the living
being is there. Human Dasein lives by occupying itself with a world.
Life (zoe) is Da-sein in its world. Ofthis world only the immediate
surrounding world is known; the restlies in darkness. By means of
its preoccupation human Dasein illuminates and makes visible what
was formerly concealed. It is this process to which the Greek term
aletheia refers. The following three Aristotelian theses must be
understood from the perspective of this conception of aletheia,
62Jbid., pp. 34-35.
63Jbid., p. 36.
64Jbid., p. 36.
BEING AND TIME

"truth." 1) The first form of aletheia is aisthesis, in which one
receives and accepts the world. 2) The real bearer of aletheia is logos
as judgment which can be true or false. 3) The highest forms of
aletheia, in which aletheia achieves its arete, are techne, episteme,
phronesis, sophia, and nous.65
In contemporary philosophy these Aristotelian ideas and theses
are usually understood from an epistemological point of view in
which Aristotle's genuine understanding becomes lost completely.
For Aristotle theoretical knowledge is not a privileged way of
knowing and Being; being is not a mere correlate of (theoretical)
knowledge. One must ask first what for Aristotle the basic motives
for knowing are, and what the basic sphere is in which knowing is
first encountered. Heidegger promised to examine these questions
with the help of concrete texts, beginning with chapter I of the first
book of Aristotle's Metaphysics where Aristotle hirnself demonstrates
how the philosophical investigation emerges naturally from the
common preoccupations of factic life.66
In 1923 Heidegger gave his last course in Freiburg before he
moved on to Marburg. This course was entitled, "Hermeneutics of
Facticity." In this course Heidegger explained that facticity does not
mean the mode of Being of man taken as the object of some
immediate intuition, but rather the mode of Being of man insofar as
he lives in his own time and his current "there" (Da). The term
hermeneutics does not mean here exegesis or commentary as in
Hellenism and Christianity, nor a theory of interpretation in the
sense of Schleiermacher, Boeckh, and Dilthey, but rather the
systematic effort to disclose one's facticity which thus far had
remained undisclosed. Finally, hermeneutics is not some form of
description in function of some theory of rational man, but rather a
matter of awakening eksistence to and for itself.
Heidegger then explained what is to be understood by "historical
consciousness" and what attitude one has to adopt in regard to it; he
also discussed the philosophical views which are predominant today.
But soon thereafter he focused mainly on the world of movement that
is human eksistence. To explain this complex phenomenon
Heidegger called for a return to Greek philosophy, especially to
Aristotle. Yet in order to understand Aristotle genuinely one must
first subject the entire philosophical tradition to the process of
destruction. During the last two lectures of the course Heidegger
65Jbid., pp. 37-38.
66Jbid., p. 38.
28
presented the students with what appears to be a first outline of the

structure of Being and Time. In these final lectures many basic
expressions which would occupy a privileged position in Being and
Time are mentioned and briefly discussed: Being-in-the-world,
everydayness, readiness-to-hand, meaningfulness, curiosity, forehaving, "as," resolve, having-been, etc.67
5. The Time Lecture of 1924.68 In July of 1924 Heidegger
delivered a lecture to the theologians at the University of Marburg.
In this lecture he mentioned again a number of ideas which would
later play an important part in Being and Time. These ideas are all
structured araund the question concerning the Being of time.
Heidegger ultimately defends the thesis there that Dasein insofar as
in each case it is as whiling, gives time because it is time. This
thesis is introduced by reflections in which the mode of Being of man,
taken as Dasein, is laid out in detail, even though without adequate
explanation and justification. The mode of Being of man taken as
Dasein is again defined as Being-in-the-world. His primary mode of
Being in the world is that of concern. Yet the mode of Being
characteristic of man is care. The temporal character and structure
of care is explained in outline. The problern of death and conscience
are mentioned, etc. I plan to discuss the content of this lecture in
greater detail in chapter XI of this book.
After the lecture was delivered Heidegger continued to work out
the basic ideas briefly discussed in this lecture with the intention of
eventually completing a book that later indeed would appear as Being
and Time. In 1925 he gave a course under the title, Prolegomena to
the History of the Concept of Time. 69 In this course, which was
published posthumously and is now also available in English, one
can see clearly that in 1925 Being and Time was nearing completion.
Division I of part I of Being and Time is found there almost in its
entirety, whereas Division II is discussed in outline. Drafts of part of
the second part of the book were already completed, also. But it would
still take another year before Heidegger could send the manuscript of
the greater part of part I to the printer. At that time Heidegger had
hoped to publish the rest of the book in the near future. Yet for
67Jbid.
68Martin Heidegger, "Le concept de temps (1924)," trans. Michel Haar and
Mare B. de Launey, in Martin Heidegger, ed. by Michel Haar. Paris: Edition de
l'Herne, 1983, pp. 27-37.
69Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans.
Theodore J. Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
BEING AND TIME

several reasons he later rejected this plan and as far as we know the
relevant sections of the rest of the book have never been written in a
final form, even though some sections of this part of the book have
appeared elsewhere.
lll: Purpose and Structure of ''Being and Time."

Linguistic Peculiarities
1. Purpose and Structure of Being and Time. 70 Being and Time
is a truly innovative work and it was immediately recognized as
such. According to many it may very well be the most important
contribution to philosophy written in the twentieth century. The book
was supposed to have had two major parts, both subdivided into three
major subdivisions. Yet in 1927 the book was published in an
incomplete form, partly due to time pressures, partly as a
consequence of difficulties which Heidegger had been unable to solve
at that time. In its present form the book contains only the first
major subdivisions of the first part.
In Being and Time Heidegger attempts to apply "hermeneutic
phenomenology" to an analytic of man's Being, and carefully
explains the sense in which hermeneutic phenomenology is to be
understood. In Heidegger's opinion philosophy's main concern is to
be found in the question concerning the meaning of Being. This
question is to be dealt with in ontology; yet such an ontology is to be
prepared by a fundamental ontology which must take the form of an
existential analytic of man's Being which is to be understood as
Being-in-the-world. It is particularly in this fundamental ontology
that the hermeneutic phenomenological method is to be employed.
At the outset the author makes it quite clear in Being and Time that
what is to be understood by hermeneutic phenomenology is not
identical with Husserl's transeendental phenomenology.
He
explicitly claims the right to develop the idea of phenomenology in his
own way, beyond the stage to which it had been brought by Husserl
himself. On the other hand, it is clear also that Heidegger sees the
indispensable foundation for such a further development in
Husserl's phenomenology. The reason why Heidegger was unable to
follow Husserl more closely is to be found in Husserl's conception of
the transeendental reduction and his idea that the ultimate source of
70Cf, also William J. Richardson, "Heidegger's Way Through
Phenomenology to the Thinking of Being," in Thomas Sheehan, Heidegger: The
Man and the Thinker, pp. 79-93.

all meaning consists in transeendental subjectivity which as such
originally is world-less. This explains why Heidegger tries to
conceive man's Beingas Being-in-the-world.
As the title of the book suggests the concept of time occupies an
important place in Being and Time. Already in the brief preface to
the book Heidegger indicates how Being and time are to be related.
"Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question
concerning the meaning of Being... Our provisional aim is the
interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding
whatsoever of Being." (SZ, 1)
In the first division of Part I Heidegger takes as his guiding
clue the fact that the essence of man consists in his ek-sistence; that
toward which man stands out is the world; thus one can also say that
the essence of man is Being-in-the-world. The main task of this first
division now is to unveil the precise meaning of this compound
expression; but in so doing the final goal remains the preparation of
an answer for the question concerning the meaning of Being.
Heidegger justifies this approach to the Being question by pointing
out that man taken as Being-in-the-world is the only being who can
make hirnself transparent in his own mode of Being. The very
asking of this question is one of this being's modes of Being; and as
such it receives its essential character from what is inquired about,
namely Being itself. "This entity which each of us is hirnself and
which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being we
shall denote by the term 'Dasein'." (SZ, 7) Thus the technical term
"Dasein" which usually is left untranslated, refers to man precisely
insofar as he essentially relates to Being.
The preparatory analysis of Dasein's mode of Being can only
serve to describe the essence of this being; it cannot interpret its
meaning ontologically. The preparatory analysis merely tries to lay
bare the horizon for the most primordial way of interpreting Being.
Once this horizon has been reached, the preparatory analysis is to be
replaced by a genuinely ontological interpretation. The horizon
referred to here is temporality which thus determines the meaning of
the Being of Dasein. This is the reason why all the structures of
man's Being exhibited iri the first division are to be re-interpreted in
the seco~d as modes of temporality. But even in interpreting Dasein
as temporality, the question concerning the meaning of Beingis not
yet answered; only the ground is prepared here for later obtaining
such an answer. Being and Time was thus meant to lay the
foundations for an ontology (metaphysics) and, with Kant, to stress
the finitude of man in any attempt to found metaphysics.
BEING AND TIME
31
In Being and Time Heidegger uses the phenomenological

method. For him phenomenology (legein ta phainomena: to let what
shows itself be seen from itself) is that method by means of which we
let that which of its own accord manifests itself, reveal itself as it is.
The "thing itself' tobe revealed in Being and Timeis man taken as
Dasein. Thus Being and Time attempts to let Dasein reveal itself in
what and how it is, and the analysis shows concretely that the
genuine self of Dasein consists in the process of finite transcendence
whose ultimate meaning is time.
Characteristic for Dasein is its comprehension of Being and this
is the process by which Dasein transcends beings in the direction of
Being, and comprehends all beings, itself included, in their Being.
This explains why the essence of Dasein can also be defined as
transcendence. It should be stressed here at once that the process of
transcendence is inherently finite. For, first of all, Dasein is not
master over its own origin; it simply finds itself thrown among
beings (thrownness). Secondly, thrown among beings, Dasein must
concern itself with these beings and, thus, has the tendency to lose
itself among them (fallenness), and to forget its ontological
"destination." Finally, transcendence is a process which inherently
is unto Dasein's end, death. The ground of the negativity which
manifests itself in these modalities is what Heidegger calls "guilt"
which is not to be understood here in a moral sense.
The basic structure of finite transcendence consists of
understanding (Verstehen), i.e., the component in and through
which Dasein projects the world, ontological disposition or mood
(Befindlichkeit), i.e., the component through which Dasein's
thrownness, fallenness, and the world's non-Being are disclosed,
and logos (Rede), i.e., the component through which Dasein ean
unfold and articulate "in language" what understanding and
original mood disclose. These components constitute a unity insofar
as transcendence essentially is care (Sorge): ahead of itself Being
already in the world as Being alongside beings encountered within
the world. When this unity is considered as a totality, it is
understood as coming to its end, i.e. death. Finally, that which gives
Dasein to understand its transcendence as well as its finitude and
"guilt" and thus calls it to achieve its own self, is what Heidegger
calls the voice of conscience. To achieve itself Dasein must let itself
be called toward its genuine self, i.e., the process of finite
transcendence. The act in and through which Dasein achieves
authenticity is called resolve (Entschlossenheit).
32
Heidegger finally shows how care itself is founded in time

insofar as the basic components of care, namely ek-sistence,
thrownness, and fallenness, inherently refer to the three ekstases of
time, namely future, past, and present. By transcending beings
toward Being Dasein comes to its true self (Zu-kunft, coming-up-to,
future), but this self is always already as having been thrown forth
(past), and concerns itself with beings, thus making them manifest
and present (present).
Interpreted from the perspective of
temporality, resolve manifests itself as retrieve (Wiederholung); it
lets the process of finite transcendence become manifest as
historical. By fetehing itselfback time and again, Daseinlets its own
self be in terms of its authentic past; in addition it also is as
constantly coming toward its authentic self. It is thus in this
complex process that Dasein hands over to itself its own heritage and
thus finds its true self.
In Being and Time Heidegger gives clear evidence that he is
exceptionally weil informed about the history of philosophy. Between
1919 and 1926 he bad already dealt with the works of several great
philosophers. In the lectures which he presented in these years he
discussed at great length works of Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas,
Scotus, Thomas of Erfurt, Descartes, Kant, Regel, Kierkegaard, and
Dilthey. It is obvious that Heidegger was excellently acquainted with
the basic ideas of these important authors; yet he sometimes speaks
about their ideas in a way that at first is perplexing to say the least.
Many people have criticized Heidegger for bis lack of historical sense
in that he appears to attribute ideas to philosophers of the past that in
bis critics' view they could not possibly have held. Yet these critics
should have realized that it was not Heidegger's intention to make a
contribution to the history of philosophy and to engage in philological
and historical interpretation and critique. In bis "historical"
meditations he always tried to find and to clarify important problems
and themes with which he was occupied at that time and to present
bis own viewpoint on these issues. In bis reflections on the ideas of
great thinkers of the past Heidegger is not concerned with presenting
their ideas faithfully and critically; rather he assumes that one has
already engaged in this kind of research. Heidegger's main question
is one of how these great ideas can be retrieved and given a place
within our own actual thinking about the same or related problems.
BEING AND TIME
33
2. Heidegger's Use of the German Language. 71 Finally a word

about Heidegger's use of the German language is in order. Many
people find it extremely difficult to read Being and Time and even
many of his countrymen have great difficulty coming to grips with
the ideas Heidegger tri es to develop in Being and Time. Many
Germans are even of the opinion that Heidegger writes atrocious and
bombastic German. His language contains many individualistic
peculiarities and characteristics and seems to some degree to have
undergone the influence of the regional dialect.
Heidegger moreover likes to use archaic expressions. And
whenever the current language seemed to him to be inadequate for
the proper expression of his ideas, Heidegger forged new words in
the manner of a poet. Some people have said that Heidegger often
writes bad poetry. Furthermore, this practice of creating entirely
new words and expressions for entirely new ideas has often been
termed presumptuous arrogance. Heidegger has even often been
ridiculed for this use of the German language. In the thirties in
some circles one used to imitate Heidegger's use of language by
employing expressions such as "The thing things," "The world
worlds," and "Man mans," etc.
Yet when one Iooks more carefully at the matter, then it will
become clear that Heidegger tried to create a new philosophical
terminology which would be adequate to the new ideas he was
developing by following procedures used by the great thinkers who
preceded him. It is very weil possible that Heidegger's use of the
German language is sometimes deficient from a literary point of
view; it is certainly the case that Heidegger's German is not the most
beautiful German ever written; it even may be true that his
inventiveness sometimes carries him too far. Yet in the view of
many scholars Heidegger did succeed in constituting a philosophical
terminology which is excellently suited for an adequate expression of
his often very profound and important thoughts.
Heidegger's word derivations are frequently far-fetched and
they certainly are not always correct if one looks at them from the
perspective of a scientific etymology. Heidegger would have been the
first person to admit and grant this. Yet he would have raised the
71Cf. Jan Aler, "Heidegger's Conception of Language in Being and Time," in

Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., On Heidegger and Language.
Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 33-62.
34
question (and in his later works he has actually done so) 72 of whether
it is possible to engage in, and make a contribution to, a philosophical
etymology that makes an effort to come to a better understanding of
basic philosophical words and their relevance for our own way of
thinking.
Many expressions which the reader at first sight will find
strange and puzzling, resulted from a "literal" translation of typical
Greek expressions used by Aristotle; this is true particularly for
formal and relational expressions; the "for the sake of which" is
Aristotle's hou heneka, the "toward which" is Aristotle's pros ti, the
"in the virtue of which" is his kath-ho, etc. Similar remarks can be
made for basic nouns and verbs. Other basic terms and expressions
of Heidegger's philosophy have their origin in his knowledge of the
German mystical tradition (Meister Eckhart), German theology
(Luther), the philosophies of Kant and above all Regel. Finally, that
part of the terminology which is manifestly derived from the Latin
language originated from his knowledge of Augustirre and the entire
medieval tradition.
As a matter of fact it is possible to make a distinction in Being
and Time between two large groups of technical terms and
expressions. On the one hand, we find a certain nurober of Latin
words and phrases as well as expressions derived from them. These
usually refer to the formal dimension of his thinking. To this group
belang terms such as "structure," "mode," "modality," "character,"
"constitutive," "deficient," "construction," "destruction," "reduction,"
"negation," "motive," etc. On the other hand, there are many words
which have been derived from the Greek language. These technical
expressions usually belang to the core of Heidegger's philosophical
vocabulary. To this group belang expressions such as the formal,
relational expressions mentioned above, but also expressions such as
the following: unconcealment (a-letheia), issue (Austrag, diaphora),
Beingness (Seiendheit, Wesenheit, ousia), being (on), category,
ekstasis, ontological, ontical. Then there are many technical
expressions and terms which either belang to, or are derived from,
ordinary German but which one does not often encounter as
technical terms in the works of other philosophers, even though
Heidegger obviously also uses numerous technical terms which all
German philosophers before him have used. To the group of words
that are typical for Heidegger the following belang: care (Sorge),
72Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Heidegger on Metaphor and Metaphysics," in
Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 47(1985), 415-450.
BEING AND TIME
35
concern (Besorgen), Dasein (Being-there), equipment or tool (Zeug),

involvement (Bewandtnis), ontological disposition or moodness
(Befindlichkeit), project (Entwurf), conscience (Gewissen), to temporalize (zeitigen), etc. Moreover, Heidegger quite frequently
constructs rather complex phrases in order to express with accuracy
the complex but basic eksistential character-istics of Dasein's mode
ofBeing.
The crucial terms of his whole reflection on man, the words
"eksistence" and "transcendence" do not quite harmonize with our
division, since they belonged originally to the formalizing
terminology that is typical for our Latin scholasticism. However, as
far as their content is concerned, "eksistence" (standing-out-toward)
and "transcendence" (going beyond) represent the key terms
outlining the entire horizon of Heidegger's conception of the mode of
Being of man taken as Dasein.
As far as the strange expressions which seem tobe tautologies
in the form of the forma etymologica such as "Das Ding dingt," "die
Welt weltet," "die Zeit zeitigt," are concerned, it should be noted first
that the forma etymologica is used quite commonly in German in
expressions such as to play a play, to sleep the sleep of the just, etc.
Secondly, Heidegger uses these expressions only when the German
language does indeed contain a noun and a verb of the same stem or
root. In the cases mentioned there is indeed a German noun Ding
(thing) and a verb dingen (to engage, to ask for), Welt (world) and
welten (to hold sway, old German for walten), Zeit (time) and zeitigen
(to mature, to ripen), etc. It is true that in the etymological figure
Heidegger uses the verb in a meaning related directly to that of the
corresponding noun. The sentences mentioned thus mean: "To let
the thing be a thing and let it do what things do (namely to ask for the
proper world)", "To let the world be and do what a world does (namely
to hold sway over the entities that appear within it)", "To let or make
time be." I always avoid using the parallel English expressions for
the simple reason that in many instances there is no corresponding
etymological figure in English because the relevant verbs or nouns
are missing. There is no English word "to thing," "to world," and "to
time," etc.
In his use of the traditional philosophical terms one can observe
that Heidegger uses them often with a certain freedom. When it
suits him, he derives a new word from an existing traditional term;
yet one should realize that such practice is not unusual in German;
other philosophers have often done the same. Thus Heidegger
speaks of "eksistential" and "eksistentiell"; and in addition to the
36
adjective "eksistential" he also uses the noun "Eksistenzial," to

indicate the typical categories to be used in the articulation of the
mode of Being of Dasein. Heidegger also speaks of ontic in Opposition
to ontologic; a way of speaking is ontic when it is concerned with
onta, beings; on the other hand, a way of thinking or speaking is
ontological when it belongs to the philosophical discipline "ontology."
Moreover, it often happens that a standard term receives a new
meaning; this is the case with eksistence and transcendence. In
such cases Heidegger generally remains faithful to the way the
technical terms have been formed. For example, he describes
"Existenz" as "standing out toward," "standing open for," etc., since
"Existenz" can be taken to belong to "ex-sistere ." Realizing the
confusion this terminology would cause he later used the expression
"Ek-sistenz," an expression which for that reason I have been using
all along. Be this as it may, Heidegger's attention to themes or issues
suggested by original parts of certain words manifests itself also in
his habit of hyphenating some basic expressions, such as "ek-stasis."
Such splitting of words into syllables often increases the plasticity of
the relevant expressions.
The living vernacular offers Heidegger even greater
opportunities and he often takes full advantage of it. Boldly, but also
cautiously, he lets hirnself be guided by the genius of the German
language which in this regard is very similar to the Greek language.
Yet it is important to note first, that it is striking that he avoids as
much as possible the customary technical terms. Thus such words
as "soul," "body," "spirit," "consciousness," "subject," "object,"
"intellect," "will," "emotion," "feeling," "perception," "intellection,"
etc. are not used in Being and Time as technical terms, even though
they may once in a while appear at places where Heidegger speaks of
the opinion of other thinkers.
Heidegger sometimes attributes two different meanings to
words which are taken tobe synonymaus in everyday parlance. For
instance, he opposes anxiety (Angst) to fear (Furcht);he paraphrases
both of them in a way which does not completely correspond to their
generally accepted meanings.
In addition, Heidegger often enlarges his carefully chosen
vocabulary with refined differentiations by using appropriate prefixes
and suffixes. In the process he then creates new German words; yet
in these cases he creates new words in a way which always conforms
to the rules governing analogous cases in the German language.
At times Heidegger introduces obsolete or forgotten terms, such
as for instance Befindlichkeit (the state of finding oneself in a certain
BEING AND TIME

disposition); this term was still used in the 17th century; I shall
translate the term by ontological disposition or moodness.
Sometimes variations of a basic word appear tagether in one and the
same context to accentuate the common root; for instance, he speaks
of das sich berhrende Hinhren, "the listening (away from one's
own self toward the 'they') that fails to hear (what is really being
said)."
Occasionally Heidegger also assigns new meanings to existing
words. The German verb zeitigen means "to mature" or also "to
bring to maturity." Heidegger gives it the meaning of "letting time
be," "to create the structures of time." In this way he gives the word a
more profound meaning than it usually has in everyday speech and
draws attention to something that may, or even must, have been at
the root of the accepted meaning. A typical example of such a
linguistic creation which follows the general rules of word derivation
in the German language and yet leads to a completely new word with
a totally different meaning, is Entfernung. This word is composed of
the privative prefix ent-, the stem fern (far), and the common ending
-ung. Heidegger uses the word in the sense of "removing distance,"
"bringing close," whereas the word usually is taken in the sense of
distance.
Heidegger does not only create new words through combination
but sometimes he also detaches a component from generally accepted
combinations of words; for instance, he gives the word Zeug the
meaning of equipment which by itself it hardly ever has, even though
it has that meaning in certain compounds, such as Schreibzeug for
pen.
Yet in all these cases Heidegger extremely rarely violates the
grammar of the German language in these changes and new
creations. When he does so-for instance, where he creates the
present participle "gewesende," for "actually being in the process of
having-been," from the past participle "gewesen," "having been,"-he
apologizes for taking such liberties and tries to indicate why in his
view they are unavoidable in a certain context.
These few remarks, of course, do not exhaust all the linguistic
peculiarities of Heidegger's use of language in Being and Time. One
would have to consider also the dialectical features that occasionally
are found in his use of language as well as the strange way in which
he often constructs his sentences. Yet the examples given, which I
derived from a study by Jan Aler, are offered here as examples of
Heidegger's attitude toward the technical use of language.
38
We must now still ask the question of why Heidegger assumed

this attitude in regard to the philosophical use of language. In an
effort to answer this question, one must keep in mind that
Heidegger's ultimate aim in Being and Time was to build up a new
ontology and that he considered an analytic of the mode of Being of
man, taken as Dasein, a necessary condition for such an ontology.
The method which he followed in the analytic is hermeneutic
phenomenology, which permitted him to adopt the usual
philosophical terminology in the purely formal part of the work. On
the other hand, as far as the content of the book is concerned the
phenomena had to be described in the analytic of Dasein in harmony
with the demands of hermeneutic phenomenology, that is, as they
manifest themselves immediately and, therefore, as they are "in
themselves."
Yet human beings have opinions about almost everything,
including themselves. These have often been developed during the
course of many centuries and they were often deeply influenced by
traditional philosophy and the sciences. Heidegger's analysis of
Dasein's mode of Being is not at all concerned with the opinions one
has about things and human beings, but rather with letting things
and human beings appear and manifest themselves as they are. We
are used to expressing the accepted views in a commonly accepted
language; this language does not always express what truly is, but
usually alone that which is thought about them. If one wants to
describe unambiguously that which manifests itself primordially as
it is in itself, one is practically forced to develop a new terminology.
Thus Heidegger's linguistic peculiarities can be explained, at
least in part, by the fact that it is necessary to reduce the cultural
world phenomenologically to the world that immediately presents
itself. Yet wherever Heidegger finds hirnself compelled to avoid the
accepted words and technical terms and where he, thus, is forced to
find or create new possibilities of expression, he always tries to
adhere as much as possible to the rules of the German language and
idiom or to procedures that are used in analogous cases elsewhere in
German. Very often also he searches in the history of the German
language for obsolete and forgotten words which can express that
which shows itself immediately in the hermeneutic analysis.
On other occasions he attempts to endow existing words with a
more primordial meaning by going back to Greek and sometimes
even Latin expressions or linguistic procedures. The reason for this
is that the old Greek philosopherB were less influenced by culture
and therefore must have been much closer to the primordial
BEING AND TIME

phenomena than we are. For instance, Heidegger conceives of
aletheia "etymologically" as un-concealedness (a-leth-eia). Later he
uses this "etymology" to "confirm" his own interpretation of what
truth eksistentially is, namely "to be as discovering," to which the
state of discoveredness or unconcealedness corresponds. Although
Heidegger does not claim that the Greeks ever understood it in this
manner, his interpretation of the term appears to be supported by his
hermeneutico-phenomenological analysis of truth. His explanation
of the word aletheia is meant to clarify the "original" content of this
term and this procedure can be defended, especially if one can
explain how this conception of truth had to lead of necessity to its
generally accepted interpretation. (SZ, Beetion 44) Whether the
Greeks ever intended this or not, one can say that the structure of the
word points in this direction, and this is precisely the point which
Heidegger considered important.
After these introductory observations we must now turn to
Heidegger's own "Introduction" to Being and Time which is devoted
to an exposition of the question concerning the meaning of Being. (SZ,
140)
CHAPTERII
THE NECESSITY, STRUCTURE, AND PRIORITY
OF THE QUESTION OF BEING
(Being and Time, Sections 1-4, pp. 1-15)
1: Introductory Refl.ections
For most people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike, a

first contact with Being and Time must have led to an unexpected
experience and perhaps even to estrangement. For there is
something very paradoxical about Being and Time. On the one hand,
the book Iooks very much like every other basic text in philosophy; it is
somewhat like Aristotle's Metaphysics, Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason, or Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The book begins by
stating its aim, describes the basic problern to be studied, the method
to be employed, the various issues that will be raised in the order in
which they will be discussed, and then proceeds to deal with these
issues in a systematic fashion. Speaking generally, one could say
that the book certainly is very weil "constructed" and composed on the
basis of a clearly defined outline; it is orderly and systematic;
wherever relevant, it relates to the existing literature; briefly, in
many respects it Iooks like a solid treatise in philosophy. Yet the book
also shows signs of having been written under stress and perhaps
even in a hurry, connected with academic pressures. But this aspect
the book also has in common with most of the classical treatises just
mentioned. Kant's Critique of Practical Reason was written in a very
short period of time and Hegel's Phenomenology was still being
written while the first part was already being printed.
But on the other hand, the reader also quickly realizes that in
many respects this is a very unique book. One even may become
bewildered when one realizes that the book does not seem to speak
about anything one is already familiar with, and that it nonetheless
also appears to deal with something with which everyone should be
acquainted. The book claims to be dealing with the question of the
meaning of Being from the perspective of time. (SZ, 1) It is said that
most people think that they already know what Beingis so that the
issue need not be raised again. Yet Heidegger gives convincing
42
reasons for why the question concerning the meaning of Beingis to

be raised time and again. But the strangest thing is that the book
itself never treats the question concerning the meaning of Being as
such. Instead the book appears to be some kind of a philosophical
anthropology which tries to answer the question of what it means to
be a human being. Yet the reader is quickly told that this is not the
true aim of the book. Issues about the human reality are raised only
to prepare the question of the meaning of Being. Furthermore, as far
as the human reality itself is concerned, none of the common themes
usually dealt with in philosophical studies of man, are touched upon;
Heidegger does not speak about the body, the sexes, the soul, the nous
or the logos, the senses, the intellect, the emotions, the will, the
imagination; there does not seem to be a concern with psychology,
aesthetics, ethics, or politics; also religious issues are never
mentioned. Rather the book speaks about the human reality in terms
of complex technical expressions which in this context never have
been used in this way before: Dasein (there-being), eksistence,
transcendence, affective disposition (Befindlichkeit), understanding
in the sense of knowing one's way about (Verstehen), "they," "self,"
"guilt," "conscience," "death," "resolve," "world," etc., but also such
formal expressions as ontic, ontologic, eksistential and eksistentiell,
Being-ready-to-hand, Being-present-at-hand, etc. For most readers it
takes quite some time before they are so used to this new terminology
that they can begin to focus on what is being said by means of these
expressions.
Many scholars have already discussed the sources from which
this book appears to flow: Aristotle, St. Paul, St. Augustine, medieval
philosophy, Luther, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Husserl, etc.
Yet all ofthem had also to admit that this book is highly original and
approaches the Being-question in a manner never employed before.
On the other hand, there are also people who have said that
Heidegger claims for hirnself an originality which really is not his,
in view of the fact that what he has to say about the human reality
has already been said by others before. Yet when everything in this
regard is said and done, it must be admitted that, after all, this is one
of the most outstanding and original philosophical treatises of the
20th century.
THE QUESTION OF BEING
43
II: Some Presuppositionsl
In Being and Time Heidegger tried to establish a meaningful

relationship between ancient Greek philosophy and modern thought.
In the process he attempted to maintain basic ideas from both
positions in regard to the meaning of philosophy as weil as to
overcome others. In this process of "retrieve" Aristotle and Kant
appear to be the leading players. Heidegger wonders how Aristotle's
concern with the question concerning the meaning of Being can be
related to Kant's concern with the scientificity of philosophy and,
thus, with method and foundations.
In Being and Time and other works of the same period
Heidegger was convinced that the question of the meaning of Being,
which is to be dealt with in ontology, is to be prepared by a
fundamental ontology which is concerned with the mode of Being
characteristic of man as Dasein. At that time he was also of the
opinion that phenomenology must be the method of ontology and that
phenomenology can fully justify the scientificity of ontology. Thus
ontology must apply the phenomenological method in order to be
capable of being a genuine science. (SZ, 31, 153, 230) This idea is
developed in much greater detail and also much more systematically
in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and The Basic Problems of
1 In what follows, throughout the entire book, I shall make use of Macquarrie's
and Robinson's translation of Sein und Zeit (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1963): Being
and Time (London: SCM Press, 1962). Yet in some cases I shall make minor
changes in the translation to achieve greater clarity or to correct errors. All
references to this work in my text are to the 7th edition of the German original
whose pagination is maintained in the 19th edition and is indicated in the
marginal nurober of the English translation. Following the common practice Sein
is translated as Being, whereas Seiendes is translated as being or also as entity.
For the reflections to follow, cf. William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through
Phenomenology to Thought. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 27-46, and passim;
Gethmann, Carl Friedrich, Verstehen und Auslegung. Das Methodenproblem in
der Philosophie Martin Heideggers. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann,
1974, pp. 1-126; Schulz Walter, "ber den philosophiegeschichtlichen Ort Martin
Heideggers," in Otto Pggeler, ed., Heidegger. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch,
1969, pp. 95-139; Karl Lwith, Zu Heideggers Seinsfrage. Sitzungsberichte der
Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1969; Lehmann, K., Vom Ursprung
und Sinn der Seinsfrage im Denken Martin Heideggers. Versuch einer
Ortsbestimmung. Philos. Dissertation, Gregoriana, Rome, 1962.
44
Phenomenology. 2 In the latter work Heidegger wrote that phenomenology is the label for the method of scientific philosophy and that to
explain what the idea of phenomenology means is tantamount to
clarifying the concept of scientific. philosophy. 3
In Heidegger's view, in philosophy it is impossible to develop a
method independent from the subject matter to be disclosed by the
method. Any genuine method is based on viewing in advance and in
the appropriate manner the basic constitution of the "object" to be
disclosed and of the domain within which it is to be found. Thus any
genuinely methodical consideration which is not just an empty
discussion of techniques, must give information about the kind of
Being of the being which is to be taken as the theme. (SZ, 303) In the
positive sciences this information follows with necessity from the
a priori synthesis which each science "freely" projects (SZ, 356-364);
in ontology this information is to be derived from that peculiar
synthesis which as the comprehension of Being is constitutive of
Dasein's own Being. (SZ, 15 ff.) This is the reason why in philosophy
every effort to deal with the method of philosophy itself implies a
dilemma: this effort comes either too early or too late. For strictly
speaking the method of ontology can be determined adequately only
after the process of thought has reached its destination and its
subject matter has been articulated. Yet on the other hand it is
precisely this process of thought which is to be conducted
methodically. Solving this dilemma is one of the basic problems of
every philosophy which concerns itself explicitly with its method.
Somehow the basic problems must be solved at the very beginning
and yet they cannot be solved definitively except at the end. Thus at
the beginning one can do no more than make some provisional and
suggestive remarks; these are then to be reconsidered toward the end
ofthe philosophical reflection. (SZ, 303, 15ff.) Heidegger justifies this
way of proceeding by means of a reference to the hermeneutic
character of all finite understanding and to the hermeneutic circle
which all research about ontological issues appears to imply. (SZ, 58, 152ff.,314(,436()
2Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1927). Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1951; English: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James
C. Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962; Die Grundprobleme
der Phnomenologie (1927), ed. by F.-W von Herrmann.
Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1975; English: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans.
Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
3Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems, pp. 1-23; 324-330.
45
Cancern for method and methodology has been a characteristic

of modern philosophy since Descartes. In view of the fact that the
deductive method in principle is incapable of clarifying the basic
axioms of any given deductive system, from the very beginning there
was the question of whether it would be possible to develop a new
science which as prima philosophia could give an ultimate foundation to some basic insights from which then all of our theoretical
knowledge could be derived according to principles and laws.
Since all rationalist and empirieist attempts in this direction
had failed, Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason attempted to provide a
theoretical framework which would lay the foundation for philosophy
as weil as for all other sciences. Thus the Critique does not contain
the system of science, but is concerned primarily with its method. 4
The possibility of scientific knowledge is explained only when reason
can develop for itself a method which will both guide and bind reason
itself in all of its theoretical endeavors. This implies that the method
to be developed must be of a totally different nature than the methods
employed in the formal and empirical disciplines; thus the new
method cannot be either analytic or empirical. According to Kant the
great discovery of the modern age from which philosophy and science
must learn a lesson is that "reason has insights only into that which
it produces after a plan of its own."5 What is needed then in Kant's
view is a transeendental logic, a philosophical reflection on the
projective achievement of reason by which reason provides itself with
an a priori framework which is the necessary condition of our
theoretical knowledge of all objects.
What is completely new in this view is not the reference to the
fact that there is to be an a priori of some kind, but the fact that in the
question concerning our knowledge a priori the stress is placed on
method, which alone can guarantee the necessity and universality of
all of our scientific insights. In Kant's view the proper application of
the "transcendental" method alone is capable of closing the gap
between subject and object to which Descartes had pointed and which
both rationalism and empiricism had been unable to bridge.
Knowledge of objects is possible only if the transeendental method is
capable of showing that the objectivity of the object is projected in
advance by reason itself. In the final analysis the projection of this
4Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1965, B, xii.
5Jbid., B, xiii.
46
objectivity is the reason why all of our theoretical knowledge

constitutes a harmonious unity and can be developed into a system.6
Between Fichte and Husserl various forms of transeendental
philosophy were developed. They all have Kant's basic concern in
common and share his view that there is to be a highest principle of
all synthetic judgments a priori which has fundamental
implications for the systematicity of all genuine knowledge. The
difference between the various forms of transeendental philosophy is
to be found in the concrete manner in whieh eaeh author or group of
authors has tried to eoneeive of the a priori synthesis and the
principle which founds its unity.7
From his earliest works it is clear that between 1914 and 1930
Heidegger coneeived of hirnself as one who was seriously coneerned
with the development of transeendental philosophy as found in Kant,
the neo-Kantians, and Husserl. Thus it wastobe expected that in the
first sections of Being and Time we would find an attempt by
Heidegger to formulate his own position in regard to the basic
problems of transeendental philosophy, even though it would not be
stated explieitly in so many words.S
However, if we now turn to the opening sections of Being and
Time it seems at first that Heidegger is really interested in a quite
different problematie. He begins there by stating that Being and
Time will be concerned with the question concerning the meaning of
Being and with the interpretation of time as the transeendental
horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being. (SZ, 1, 39) On
several oceasions he explieitly suggests that his main eoncern is with
the eategorial multiplicity of the various modes of Being which
presupposes what we really mean by the expression "Being" (SZ, 11),
the Being of beings, the "material meaning" of Being in general (SZ,
27), Being and its derivatives (SZ, 35). However, on other oceasions it
becomes apparent that his basic eoneern is rather with the neeessary
and a priori eondition of the categorial multiplicity of the various
modes of Being. (SZ, 230; ef. 212-230, 436-7) Although the latter,
transeendental problematie is less explicit in Being and Time than
the categorial-ontological problematie described in the opening
seetions of the book, there cannot be any doubt that the
6Jbid., B, 735-36.
7Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 14-21.
8Martin Heidegger, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus. Ein kritischpositiver Beitrag zur Logik, in Frhe Schriften, vol. I, pp. 1-119; KM, section IV, pp.
211-255; The Basic Problems, pp. 122-76.
47
transeendental problematic is nonetheless the one to which the

expression "the question concerning the meaning of Being"
ultimately refers.9
It is generally known that Heidegger's concern with the Being
question was influenced historically by Brentano's work on
Aristotle.lO According to Brentano, Aristotle divides "being" in four
different, but somehow related ways; and of these ways the division of
"being" into the ten categories is the most important. Yet if Being can
be said in a multiplicity of significations, which one then is the
guiding and basic signification? What does "Being" really mean?ll
One should realize that the fundamental problems with which
Heidegger was concerned in Being and Time and other works of the
same period are problems which did not really exist for the entire
Aristotelian tradition. In Heidegger's view these problems and their
possible solutions presuppose the transeendental framework of
modern philosophy. For according to the Aristotelian tradition the
Being question which is implicit in the ontological-categorial
problematic can be solved in principle by an appropriate doctrine of
analogy. For Heidegger such a solution is in part inadequate.
Although the classical doctrine of analogy contains part of the
solution of the problern in that it is capable of explaining at least one
condition to be fulfilled if any division of "being" into categories is to be
meaningful, it nonetheless leaves unanswered the basic question of
what we really mean by the expression "Being." Secondly, without
any justification all classical theories of analogy take "natural being"
as the primary analogate from which the basic meaning of Being is
then tobe derived.12 Classical tradition as weil as modern philosophy
failed to examine the possibility of taking the very Being of man as the
primary analogate.13 But most importantly, the entire problematic is
without any "ground" as long as the transeendental problern has not
been solved satisfactorily. Thus Heidegger can write "Basically, all
ontology, no matter how rich and firmly constructed a system of
categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its
9Martin Heidegger, KM, pp. 211ff.; "My Way to Phenomenology," in On Time
and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Rarper & Row, 1972, pp. 74-82;
Letter to Richardson, Heidegger, pp. xiii-xiv.
lOF. Volpi, Heidegger e Brentano. Padova: Cedam, 1976.
llOn Time and Being, p. 74; Letter to Richardson, op. cit., p. xi.
12The Basic Problems, pp. 17-19, 67-76, 99-112, 112-121, 154-176.
13Jbid., pp. 122ff.
48
own-most aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of

Being, and conceived of this clarification as its fundamental task."
(SZ, 11)
It is undoubtedly true that in Being and Time and related works
Heidegger was indeed concerned with showing that the temporality
of Dasein is the principle of the division of Dasein's own modes of
Being, and that time as temporalized by Dasein is the principle of the
division of the meaning of Being into possible significations of Being
(namely Being as ek-sistence, Being as present-at-hand, Being as
ready-to-hand, etc.), so that a description of the various interplayings
of the three dimehsions of temporality can be taken as guiding-clues
for the division of the significations of Being. (SZ, 350-366)14 Yet one
should realize also that all of this does not constitute Heidegger's
basic concern. (SZ, 230) Toward the end of Being and Time Heidegger writes: "The distinction between the Being of ek-sisting Dasein
and the Being of beings, such as reality, which do not have the
character of Dasein, may appear very illuminating; but it is still only
the point of departure for the ontological problematic; it is nothing
with which philosophy may tranquillize itself." (SZ, 436-7) And it is
for that reason that the book ends with questions which point to work
still to be done: Is there a way which Ieads from primordial time to
the meaning of Being? Does time itself manifest itself as the
transeendental horizon ofBeing? (SZ, 437)
That which constitutes the determining unity of the multiplicity
of the various modes of Being is something which is to be determined
"critically"; it cannot just be postulated. There is to be some final
"ground" which as identity of difference can be taken as the
foundation of the difference. The question concerning the meaning of
Being is answered adequately only when the various modes of Being
with which man is confronted can be justified. This is possible only
when a naive realist as weil as a dogmatist position has been given
up in favor of a transeendental perspective in the sense of Kant. As
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics clearly shows, with respect to
the latter problematic, Heidegger's main concern was to substitute a
"transcendental ontology" for the Kantian and neo-Kantian
transeendental logic; and this implies a fundamental reinterpretation of Kant's conception of the transcendental, a priori
synthesis. 15
14Cf. Otto Pggeler, "Heideggers Topologie des Seins," in Man and World,
2(1969), 331-357, pp. 337-345.
15KM, section 45.
49
Being and Time was meant to lead up to the transeendental

problematic and, thus, in that book the problematic itself is not
explicitly dealt with, so that the question concerning the meaning of
Being remains unanswered there. Yet in the notion of Being implied
in the comprehension of Beingwhich is constitutive of Dasein's own
Being, the answer to that question is already contained implicitly.
What later will be called "Being itself' is found in Being and Time
merely in the form of "world" in that "Being itself' always reveals and
conceals itself concretely in the form of a given world. From this
general perspective it becomes clear why Heidegger later could say
that in Being and Time both the classical conception of the
transcendentalia and a new conception of truth, namely the "truth of
Being," played an important part.16
In this connection it should be noted also that the
transeendental problematic plays an equally important role in
Heidegger's conception of the ontological difference. The expression
"ontological difference" is not found in Being and Time itself, but the
problematic hinted at by this expression most certainly constitutes an
essential part of the book's basic concern; this is clear from both The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology and On the Essence of Ground.17
Sometimes Heidegger characterizes the difference by means of the
distinction tobe drawn between a being and its Being. Some authors
have interpreted the meaning of this distinction as a further
development of Kant's distinction between the a posteriori and the
1 6Martin Heidegger, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus, in

Frhe Schriften, pp. 131-353, p. 344; KM, pp. 119-129, 18-22, 69-72; What is a Thing?,
trans. W. B. Barton, Jr. and V. Deutsch. Chicago: Regnery, 1967, pp.181-184, 242243; What is Called Thinking?, trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray. New
York: Rarper & Row, 1968, pp. 242-244; Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 31-41; M. Brelage,
Transzendentalphilosophie und konkrete Subjektivitt. Eine Studie zur
Geschichte der Erkenntnistheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965,
p. 199. For the relationship between "world" and "Being" cf. Joseph J.
Kockelmans, The World in Science and Philosophy. Milwaukee: The Bruce
Publishing Company, 1969, pp. 69-71 and the literature discussed there.
17The Basic Problems, pp. 318-324; The Essence of Reasons (Vom Wesen des
Grundes), trans. Terrence Malick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1969, pp. 26ff.; Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Ontological Difference," in Joseph J.
Kockelmans, On Heidegger and Language. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1972, pp. 195-234; for what follows cf. also Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 41-45 and
KM, pp. 242-47.
50
a priori.18 Yet such an interpretation overlooks what is most typical

of Heidegger's entire way of thinking, namely the attempt to reflect
on the relationship between the transeendental synthesis and the
categorial-ontological problematic. The identity presupposed by the
ontological difference is first the categorial identity of those beings
which have the same mode of Being; yet this identity in turn
presupposes the transeendental identity of the a priori synthesis as
its necessary condition. Heidegger alludes to this dual principle of
identity in Vom Wesen des Grundes where he distinguishes between
the ontic and the ontological conceptions of truth.19
At any rate, the categorial-ontological difference is the
difference between a being and its Being, between the Beingness
(ousia) of a being and this being itself (on). On the other hand, the
transcendental-ontological difference refers to the distinction
between the meaning of Being, the truth of Being, Being-itself (Sinn
von Sein, einai) on the one hand, and the Beingness of a being (die
Seiendheit eines Seienden, ousia) on the other. Already in the second
section of Being and Time Heidegger speaks of his attempt to
examine the meaning of Being (Sein als Sein) by examining a being
(namely Dasein) in its Being (Seiendheit). (SZ, 5ff.)20
In Heidegger's thought the two differences are often taken in
some combination. The essential point then is to realize that the
categorial-ontological difference is founded upon the transcendentalontological difference in harmony with the general thesis that Sinn
(meaning) is that within which the Understandability of something
must maintain itself. (SZ, 151) Finally, one should notice also that
Beingness can be correctly called the "ground" of a being, but that
Being itself can never be conceived of as ground. (SZ, 152)21
These introductory reflections on some of the presuppositions
which play an important part in Heidegger's investigations
concerning the subject matter and the method of ontology, however
incomplete and inadequate in themselves, may suffice to put us on
the "right way" in our attempt to come to a better understanding of
18K.-0. Apel, Dasein und Erkennen, p. 71 (quoted in Gethmann, op. cit., p. 41
and p. 342, note 45).
19The Essence of Reasons, pp. 27-29; William J. Richardson, op. cit., pp. 174-75.
20Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. Pfullingen: Neske, 1961, vol. I, p. 654;
An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim. Garden City: Doubleday
and Company, 1959, pp. 25ff.
21An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 70ff.
51
what Heidegger understands by fundamental ontology and "hermeneutic phenomenology."

ID: The BasicProblem ofHeidegger's Philosophy:
The Question ofthe Meaning ofBeing
According to Heidegger, "every thinker thinks only one single
thought. This essentially distinguishes him from the scientist.
Research constantly needs new discoveries and ideas; otherwise,
science would lapse into stagnation and falseness. A thinker needs
only one single thought.. .. "22 As we have seen already, it is not
diffi.cult to discover such a focal point in Heidegger's own thinking.
This is the question concerning the meaning and truth of Being.
Man alone of all existing things experiences the wonder of all
wonders, namely that there are beings and that it is Being that lets
them be what they in fact are. 23 There is perhaps no better way to
describe the basic difference between Heidegger's and Husserl's
conceptions of philosophy than to cantrast this sentence with a
parallel statement in Husserl's writings: "The wonder of all
wonders is the pure ego, its pure consciousness."24 The same
fundamental difference can also be expressed in terms of both
authors' interest in the history of philosophy. In Heidegger the
history of philosophy plays an essential role, as we have seen already;
in Husserl's phenomenology this role is of minor importance.
Furthermore, Heidegger is oriented mainly to the pre-Socratics,
Plato and Aristotle, German idealism, and Nietzsche; these are
thinkers whom Husserl seldom if ever mentions; Husserl appeared
to have been inspired more by Hume, Kant, and Descartes.
In the first section of Being and Time Heidegger implicitly
suggests that he is the first thinker in the whole history of philosophy
since Aristotle to have raised the question concerning the meaning of
Being as a serious and even as the most fundamental problern of
philosophy. Although there is no doubt whatsoever that Being itself
represents the persistent theme of Heidegger's thinking, there have
been a nurober of scholars who have failed to see this. This is one of
the reasons why at first his thinking has been subject to so many
22what is Called Thinking?, p. 50 (my translation ofWD, p. 20).
23Was ist Metaphysik?, "Einleitung," p. 12; cf. An Introduction to Metaphysics,
pp. 43-77.
24Edmund Husserl, Ideen, vol. III, p. 75.
52
misinterpretations. These misinterpretations are reflected in the

various labels with the help of which one has tried to characterize his
thought. Same authors have described Heidegger's philosophy as a
form of existentialism (a label which fits Sartre's philosophy), as a
philosophy of existence (as defended by K. Jaspers), as a
philosophical anthropology of the kind of Scheler, as metaphysics in
the classical sense, or as an ontology. Heidegger has protested
against all these labels, in some cases directly from the start, in
others only in the course ofhis develpment after 1930. From the very
beginning Heidegger has made it quite clear that his philosophy is
essentially different froni those proposed by either Scheler or Jaspers.
For him, the human eksistence is neither the primary nor the
ultimate philosophical issue. The belief on the part of some that
Heidegger was a philosopher of existence was due to some degree to
the fact that Being and Time remairred incomplete and that the basic
issue of the ontological difference between a being, its mode of Being,
and Being itself was not raised explicitly. Heidegger hirnself had
planned to use the analytic of Dasein's eksistence as an "Introduction" to the study of the question concerning the meaning of
Being; the non-appearance of the later parts of the book hid the true
meaning of the work. Furthermore, the outstanding quality of the
published sections of the book was responsible for the fact that the
analytic of Dasein's eksistence began to have an enormaus influence
on studies of the human reality. This again reinforced the idea that
Being and Time really was meant to be a philosophical anthropology.
Be this as it may, Heidegger begins the introduction to his book
with the observation that the question of the meaning of Being has
been forgotten. It was indeed the question which gave a stimulus for
the investigations of Plato and Aristotle; yet since that time the
question has been forgotten as a theme for actual investigation. But
this is not all. On the basis of the Greeks' initial contributions toward
an interpretation of Being, a dogmatic position gradually developed
which not only declared the question about the meaning of Being to be
superfluous, but even sanctioned its complete neglect. As such Being
resists every attempt at definition. It was therefore widely accepted
that this most universal, and hence undefinable, concept does not
require any definition, since everyone uses it constantly and claims to
understand what he means by it. In this way, that which the Greek
philosophers found continually disturbing as something very obscure
and hidden, has taken on a clarity and self-evidence such, that if
anyone today were to ask about the question of Being, he is
immediately charged with an error in method. (SZ, 1-2)
53
At the beginning of Being and Time, Heidegger continues, it is

not yet possible to give a detailed account of the presuppositions and
prejudices that are constantly supporting the beliefthat an inquiry
into the meaning of Being is not necessary. These pre-judgments are
rooted in traditional ontology itself and it will not be possible to
interpret that ontology adequately until the question concerning the
meaning of Being has been clarified and answered. (SZ, 2-3)
Heidegger intended to do the latter in the second part of his book; but
until now this part has never appeared. Yet what Heidegger would
have liked to have said there i!l known from other publications such
as Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, What is Metaphysics?, On
the Essence of Ground, On the Essence of Truth, Introduction to
Metaphysics, and several of his posthumously published lecture
courses.2 5
Heidegger discusses these presuppositions in Being and Time
only to the point at which the necessity for restating the question
concerning the meaning of Being becomes clear. In his view there
are three such presuppositions: 1) It has been maintained for a long
timethat Beingis the mostuniversal concept.26 But the universality
of Being is not that of a class or a genus. The term "Being" does not
mean the highest genus; it does not define that realm of entities that
is uppermost when these entities are articulated conceptually
according to genus and species. Thus if it is said that Being is the
most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is also the one
which is clearest, or that it needs no further discussion. In
25Cf. Phnomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen

Vernunft, ed. Ingtraut Grland. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977; Metaphysische
Anfangsgrnde der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, ed. Klaus Held. Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1978; Der Deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling) und die
philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart, ed. Ingraut Grland. Frankfurt:
Klosterman, [to appear]; Hegels Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. Ingtraut
Grland. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980; Aristoteles: Metaphysik IX, ed.
Heinrich Hni. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981; Parmenides, ed. Manfred S.
Frings. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 182; Heraklit, 2 vols. ed. Manfred S. Frings.
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979, Schelling's Abhandlung ber das Wesen der
menschlichen Freiheit, ed. Hildegard Feick. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1971; cf. also
the works on Nietzsche quoted above.
26Aristotle, Metaphysics, B, 4, 1001a21; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, 94, 4, c.
54
Heidegger's view, it is rather the darkest of all, and the history of

philosophy shows this clearly. CSZ, 3)27
2) It has been maintained also that the concept of Being is
indefinable. This, too, is derived from its supreme universality.28
For every real definition must specify the relevant genus and the
specific difference; now Being is the "highest genus" and
furthermore there can be no specific difference outside Being. In
other words, in our philosophical tradition it was held that Being
cannot be derived from higher concepts; nor can it be presented by
means of lower ones. But, Heidegger asks here, does this imply that
Being no Ionger is problematic? In his view, this is not at all the
case. The only thing we can derive from this state of affairs is that
Being cannot have the character of a being. Thus we cannot apply to
Being the theory of definition as presented in traditional logic.
Furthermore, the fact that Being cannot be defined does not eliminate
the question of its meaning. (SZ, 4)
3) Finally, it is generally held that Being is of all concepts the
one that is self-evident. Whenever we get to know something or make
assertions about it, whenever we comport ourselves toward beings,
even toward ourselves, some use is made of Being. And this
expression is held to be intelligible without further examination, just
as everyone understands the phrase, "The sky is blue." Yet,
Heidegger contends, the use of "is" makes also manifest that in every
way of comporting oneself toward entities as beings, there lies
a priori a problem, even an enigma. For the very fact that we already
live in some understanding of Being and that nevertheless the
meaning of Being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary
to raise this question again.
Heidegger concludes these reflections with the observation that
by considering these prejudices it has become clear not only that the
question ofthe meaning ofBeing Iacks every answer, but also that the
question itself still Iacks direction. If the question is to be asked
again, we must fitst try to work out an adequate way of formulating
it. (SZ, 4)
27Cf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, On the Truth of Being. Reflections on Heidegger's

Later Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 45-72.
28Cf. B. Pascal, Penseeset Opuscules. Paris: Flammerion, 1913, p. 169.
55
N: The Formal Structure ofthe Question ofBeing

The question concerning the meaning of Being is to be
formulated carefully. If it is a fundamental question, or perhaps
even the fundamental question, it must be made transparent in an
appropriate manner. In order to achieve this we must explain first
very briefly what belongs to any question as such, so that from this
general perspective the question of the meaning of Being can be made
manifest as a very special question with its own distinctive character.
Every question is a looking-for (Suchen). Every seeking is
guided beforehand by what is thought. Every inquiry is an
understanding seeking for a being with regard to the fact that it is
and with respect to what it is. This understanding seeking can take
the form of an explicit investigation (ein Untersuchen); this term
should be taken here as a process that lays bare what the question is
about and determines it. Now, any inquiry, as an inquiry about
something, has its own that which is asked about (sein Gefragtes).
But all inquiry is also somehow a questioning of something (ein
Anfragen bei); so in addition to what is asked about, every inquiry
alsohasthat which is interrogated (ein Befragtes). Furthermore, in
what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the
asking (das Erfragte); this is what really is intended in the question;
with this the inquiry reaches its goal. If one wishes to know
something about the energy state of an electron (that which is to be
found out by the question), I must turn to an examination of certain
spectra (that which is interrogated); that which is asked about is the
electron.
In our case, the question about the meaning of Being is to be
formulated. We must therefore discuss it with an eye to these three
same structural elements of every inquiry. Inquiry is here too a kind
of seeking; it must be guided beforehand by what is sought. So the
meaning of Being must already somehow be available to us. We
always conduct our activities in an understanding of Being. Out of
this implicit understanding arise both the explicit question about the
meaning of Being and the tendency that leads us toward its
conception. We do not really know what Being is. But if we ask
"What is Being?", we keep within an understanding of the "is" even
though we are unable to fix conceptually what this "is" signifies. We
do not even know the horizon in terms of which this meaning is to be
grasped and determined. But this vague and average understanding
of Being is still a fact. However much this understanding of Being
may fluctuate and grow ever dimmer, its very indefiniteness is itself
56
a positive phenomenon which needs to be clarified. An investigation

of the meaning of Being cannot be expected to give us this
clarification already at the very beginning. If we want to obtain the
clue that we need for our interpretation of this average understanding of Being, we must first develop this initial concept of Being.
In light of this initial concept and the ways in which it may be
explicitly understood, we can then make out what this obscured and
still unilluminated understanding of Being really means, and what
kind of obscuration of the meaning of Being is possible and perhaps
even inevitable.
Furthermore, this vague average understanding of Being may
be so infiltrated with traditional theories and opinions about Being
that these remain hidden as the proper sources of the prevailing
understanding. What we seek when we inquire into Being is not
so mething entirely unfamiliar, even if in the beginning we cannot yet
grasp it at all conceptually.
In our question concerning the meaning of Being, that which is
asked about is Being itself; it is that which determines beings as
beings, that in the direction of which (woraufhin) beings are always
already understood, however we may discuss them in detail. The
Being of the beings is not itself a being. If we are to understand the
problern of the meaning of Being, our first philosophical step consists
not in telling stories; that is to say, we cannot define beings as beings
merely by tracing them back to their origin, to some other being, as if
Being had the character of some possible being. Hence Being as that
which is asked about must be exhibited in a way of its own; it must be
essentially different from the way in which the beings are discovered.
Accordingly, what is to be found out by the asking-the meaning of
Being-also demands that it be conceived of in a way of its own; we
must determine it conceptually in a way that essentially contrasts
with the concepts in which the beings acquire their determinate
signification and meaning.
Now, ifit is true that Being constitutes what is asked about, and
Being means the Being of beings, then the beings themselves appear
to be what is to be interrogated. They are, so to speak, questioned
with respect to their Being. But therefore it is necessary that .these
beings must, on their part, have become accessible to us just as they
are in themselves. Now there are many things which we designate
as beings, and we do so even in various senses. Everything we talk
about, everything we have in view, everything to which we comport
ourselves in any way, is a being or is a set of beings. What we are
ourselves is also a being. In which beings now is the meaning of
57
Being to be discerned? Can we just choose a set of beings or does

some particular being have priority when we ask the question
concerning the meaning of Being? Which being shall we select as
our guiding clue and in what sense does it have priority in this
regard?
If the question about the meaning of Being is to be formulated
explicitly and developed in such a way that it becomes completely
transparent, then any treatment of the kind we have in mind, would
require us to explain how Being is looked at, how its meaning is to be
understood. Looking-at-something, understanding and grasping
it-all these ways of behaving are constitutive of this kind of inquiry
and, therefore, also of the modes of Being ofthat particular being that
we who ask the question, are ourselves. Thus to work out the
question of the meaning of Being adequately, we must make this
being, the inquirer, transparent in his or her own mode of Being.
The very asking of the question itself is a mode of Being of a
determinate being; and as such this being gets its essential character
from what is inquired about, namely Being itself. This beingwhich
each of us is hirnself or herself and which includes "inquiring into
the meaning of Being" as one of the possibilities of its own mode of
Being, we shall indicate from now on with the term Dasein, "Therebeing." Thus if we want to formulate our question explicitly and
transparently, we must first give a proper explanation of this being
mentioned, namely Dasein, with regard to its own mode of Being.
(SZ, 5-7)
V: The Ontological Priority of the Question ofBeing

Until now, Heidegger continues, we have tried to show that the
question concerning the meaning of Being is to be asked again and
formulated more carefully with the help of arguments that are
justified by Being's venerable origin, by the lack of a definitive
answer, and even by the question itself. One will ask now what
purpose this question is supposed to serve. Is it a liiere matter of
pure speculation, or is it rather of all questions both the most basic
and the most concrete?
Being is always the Being of beings. The totality of beings can,
in accordance with its various domains, become a field of scientific
investigation. Every science, however, actually has its crisis in its
basic concepts. Among the various disciplines everywhere today
there are freshly awakened tendencies to put the relevant research
on new foundations. This is so for mathematics, physics, biology, the
58
human sciences, and even theology.

This research on the
foundations of the different sciences is the main task of the various
corresponding regional ontologies. Now it is evident that these
regional ontologies remain themselves naive and opaque if in their
research into the Being of the different beings in question, they fail to
discuss the meaning of Being in general.
The question of the meaning of Being therefore aims at
ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the
sciences which examine the beings as beings of such and such a type
and, in so doing, operate with an understanding of Being in advance,
but also for the possibility of those regional ontologies themselves
which are prior to those ontical sciences and which provide their
foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly
constructed a system of categories it may have at its disposal,
remains blind and misguided in its basic aim, if it has not first
adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this
clarification as its fundamental task. (SZ, 8-11)
In the preceding reflections it was said that every science has
the manner of Being which that being has that we ourselves are.
This being we have denoted by the term "Dasein." Scientific research
now is not the only manner of Being which this being can have, nor
is it the most fundamental and original manner of Being of Dasein.
On the other hand, Dasein is a being which does not just occur
among other beings. It is precisely as being distinguished from all
other beings by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue
and a task for it. This implies that Dasein constitutively has a
relationship to that Being; this relationship, however, is not a
relationship constituted in and by our knowledge only, but a
relationship of Being (ein Seinsverhltnis). Thus there is some way
in which Dasein understands itself in its mode of Being, and to some
degree it does so even explicitly. It is peculiar to this being that with
and through its own mode of Being this Being that is proper to it is
disclosed to Dasein itself. The understanding of Being thus is a
definite characteristic of Dasein's mode of Being. One could then say
that Dasein itself is precisely as being pre-ontological: it is in such a
way that it always already has some understanding of Being.
This mode of Being that is proper and characteristic of Dasein
and towards which Dasein in one way or another always comports
itself, we call eksistence. Thus it will be clear at once that our radical
investigation concerning a possible answer to the question about the
meaning of Being, and also every regional ontology, must take its
point of departure from a fundamental ontology and that this
59
fundamental ontology must have the form of an eksistential analytic

of the mode of Being of Dasein.
For, if to interpret the meaning of Beingis our task, then Dasein
is not only the primary being to be interrogated; but it is also that
being which already comports itself, in its own mode of Being,
towards that which we are asking about, when we raise the question.
But in that case the question concerning the meaning of Being is
nothing but the radicalization of the essential tendency-toward-Being
(Seinstendenz) which belongs to Dasein itself as such, namely its preontological understanding ofBeing. (SZ, 12-15)
VI: Man's Radical Comprehension of Being

Summarizing the preceding reflections one could perhaps say
that man has always some comprehension of Being, even before he
asks the question concerning the meaning of Being. No matter how
dark Being itself may be to us, still in our most casual interaction
with other beings, they are sufficiently open to us so that we may
experience that they are, concern ourselves about what they are and
how they are, concern ourselves about the truth of them. We
camprehend somehow what makes them be what they are, and this
is their Being. Every sentence that we utter contains an "is." Our
very moods reveal to us that each of us "is" in such and such a way.
We must camprehend then, no matter how obscurely, what this "is"
means, eise all this would have no meaning.
This radical comprehension of Being, however, even if
undeniable, is notforthat reason articulated by means of any clear
concept.
It is still pre-conceptual and for the most part
undetermined; therefore it is inevitably vague. If one maintains that
all knowledge is conceptual, then even though beings may be known,
the mode of Being through which they are what they are, and which
man comprehends, still remains unknown. Finally, this preconceptual comprehending of Being is unquestioning; for the Being
that thus yields itself, is so obvious that it calls no attention to itself
and, thus, raises no questions. Vague, undefined, unquestioning,
the comprehension of Being is nevertheless an irreducible fact which
the ontological research accepts in order to be able to begin. 29
As a matter of fact, it is our pre-conceptual comprehension of
Being, even though it itself is unquestioning, that makes the beingquestion possible. For to question is to search, and every search is
29KM, pp. 204-205; SZ, 5.
ro
polarized by its end-term. One could not ask, then, what Being
means, unless one somehow comprehended the answer already.
The task of pursuing the Being-question, then, is reduced to this:
what is the essence of the comprehension of Being that is rooted so
deeply in man. 30
It is this comprehension of Being that for Heidegger most
profoundly characterizes the human reality. "Man is a being who is
immersed among beings in such a way that the beings which he is
not, as weil as the being that he hirnself is, have already become
constantly manifest to him .... "3 1 This fact explains why Heidegger
prefers to designate the questioner who questions Being by a term
that suggests this unique prerogative which distinguishes it from all
other beings, namely its comprehension of Being as such: Dasein,
There-being, the presence and openness among beings.
Dasein must here be understood completely ontologically and
not just anthropologically. The analytic of Dasein is not meant
primarily to say something about the human reality, but ratherabout
its comprehension of Being and about Being itself. Dasein is to be
understood as an irruption (Einbruch) into the totality of beings by
reason of which these beings as beings may become manifest. "On
the basis of this comprehension of Being, man is There through
whose Being the revealing irruption among beings takes place .... "32
In other words, Dasein is the "There" of Being among beingsDasein Iets beings be, it manifests them, thereby making all
encounter with them possible. lt follows then that, correlative to the
referential dependence of Dasein on beings, there is a dependence of
beings on Dasein in order that they may be manifest. In letting
things be manifest, however, Dasein obviously does not create them;
Dasein merely discovers them as what they are. Although in the
first sections of Being and Time Heidegger does not explicitly state
the relationship between Dasein and Being, it is nonetheless clear
from other publications of the same period that Dasein is merely the
"place" where Being itself manifests itself in the concrete form of
world and that it is Being as world that in the final analysis lets the
beings be manifest as what they in fact are. Yet Being cannot let the
beings be what they are, if it were not for the Dasein of man.
30KM:, p. 207; sz, 5, 7.

31KM:, p. 205.
32KM, p. 206.
61
Now if it is by the irruption of Dasein among the beings that

these beings become manifest, then it is not difficult to understand
how Dasein lets these beings be (seinlassen). In letting them be
manifest, Dasein liberates them from concealment and, hence,
makes them free. It is perhaps important to note here that Dasein is
not identical with man, although the relationship between them is
very intimate. Dasein is the ontological structure of man taken in its
intrinsic finitude. This structure will be explained in one of the
chapters to follow. 33
33Richardson, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
CHAPrERIII
THE TWOFOLD TASK IN WORKING OUT THE
QUESTION OF BEING. REFLECTIONS ON METHOD.
I: The Analytic ofDasein is to Make Manifest the Horizon for an

Interpretation of the Meaning ofeing as Such
In the preceding reflections, Heidegger continues, we have
indicated the tasks that are implied in the careful formulation of the
Being question; we have shown there not only that we must
determine which being is to serve as our primary subject of investigation, but also that the right way of access to this being must be
secured. We have already indicated which being must have the
privileged part in our examination of the question concerning the
meaning of Being; we must therefore now turn to the question of how
we are to conceive of this being; how are we to approach it and how
are we to interpret its meaning?
Wehave shown that Dasein both ontically and ontologically has
priority here; this may have suggested to some that Dasein must be
that being which is also given as ontically and ontologically prior, not
only in the sense that it itself can be grasped immediately, but also in
the sense that the mode of Being that is characteristic of it is
presented as equally immediate. Ontically, Dasein obviously is close
to us; it is even that which is closest to us, because we are it, each of
us. But because of this it is also that being that ontologically is
farthest from us. It is true that its ownmost Beingis suchthat it has
an understanding ofthat Being; in each case Dasein maintains itself
as if its Being has already been interpreted in some way. But this
pre-ontological understanding cannot be taken over as an ontological
guiding clue, for there is no guarantee that this way of
understanding its Being is that which also will emerge when one's
ownmost mode of Being is considered ontologically. For the kind of
Being that belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its
own Being pre-ontologically, it has the tendency to understand itself
in terms ofthat being to which it constantly comports itself, namely
the world. In Dasein's own understanding of its Being, the manner
64
in which the world is understood is reflected back ontologically upon

the way in which Dasein itself becomes interpreted. We shall
substantiate this latter claim in due time. (SZ, 15-16)
Thus although Dasein is ontically and ontologically in a
privileged position with respect to the Being-question, its own mode of
Being, its own categorial structure, remains at first concealed from
it. This explains why a thorough, philosophical interpretation of this
being will be confronted with peculiar difficulties which have nothing
to do with limits imposed upon our cognitive powers or with the lack
of a suitable way of conceiving it; rather these difficulties are
grounded in the kind of Being which belongs to this being.
But it is not only the case that Dasein always already has some
understanding of its Being; this understanding also grows or
deteriorates along with the kind of Being that Dasein in each case
possesses. The mode of Being of Dasein has been interpreted in
many ways. Furthermore, its way of behavior, its capacities, powers,
possibilities, and vicissitudes have been studied by different sciences:
philosophical psychology, anthropology, ethics, political science,
poetry, biography, and the science "history," and each of them has
done so in its own way. Assuming that these approaches indeed did
start from experiences that in the full sense of the term can be called
existentiell, then the question still must be asked whether these
interpretations of the mode of Being of Dasein were carried through
with the corresponding primordial existentiality. For it is one thing
to take one's point of departure from experiences that in each case
were genuine experiences of an eksisting Dasein; it is quite another
thing to interpret the mode of Being so revealed with the help of the
proper categories, i.e., in the case of eksisting Dasein, the proper
eksistentials. The pre-ontological existentiell interpretation of the
mode of Being of Dasein must become the subject matter of an
eksistential analytic of man's mode of Being as Dasein. Our
ontological interpretation of the mode of Being of Dasein will be
justified eksistentially only if the basic structures of Dasein have been
worked out with an explicit orientation toward the question of Being
itself. (SZ, 16)
Thus as far as the question of Being is concerned an analytic of
Dasein's mode of Being must remain our first task. But the problern
of securing the proper access which will lead to Dasein's Being
becomes even more urgent. We cannot just dogmatically construct
what we take to be the Being of Dasein, nor can we force any
categories upon Dasein which such an idea might suggest. We must
rather choose such a way of access and such a kind of interpretation
REFLECTIONS ON METROD
65
that this being can show itself in itself and from itself. (SZ, 16; cf. 28,
34) But this means that we must show it first in the way it is
proximally and for the most part, i.e., in its average everydayness.
In our investigations we must focus on those essential structures
which in every kind of Being that each factical Dasein may possess in
each case, persist as determinative for the character of its Being. In
this way it will be possible to bring the mode of Being of Dasein to
light, albeit also only in a provisional manner. (SZ, 16-17)
It should be noted that such an analytic of Dasein's mode of
Being remains oriented completely toward our main task, namely of
working out the question concerning the meaning of Being. Thus no
complete ontology of Dasein is envisaged here, nor some kind of
philosophical anthropology. But this investigation is not only
incomplete, it is also still provisional. It merely brings out the mode
of Being of this being without interpreting its meaning yet. It is
rather a preparatory procedure which is to make manifest the
horizon for the most primordial way of interpreting Dasein's Being.
In other words once the preparatory analytic of Dasein has been
completed it will have to be repeated on an authentically ontological
basis. (SZ, 17)
Heidegger next explains that for him the meaning of the Being
ofthat beingwhich he has called Dasein is tobe found in temporality.
If we are to demonstrate that this is indeed the case, then all the
structures which we shall discover in the preparatory analytic will
have to be re-interpreted as modes of temporality. This will be the
task of the second major division of part I of Being and Time.
Conceiving of the mode of Being of man in terms of temporality and
by claiming that Dasein is time, we still have not yet found an answer
to the question concerning the meaning of Being itself, but we
certainly will have provided in this way the ground for obtaining
such an answer. (SZ, 17)
We have already indicated, Heidegger continues, that Dasein
has a pre-ontological mode of Being as its ontic basic structure.
Dasein is in such a way that it is something that understands
something like Being. In the reflections to follow we hope to show
that any time Dasein tacitly understands and interprets something
like Being it does so with time as its standpoint. Thus we must bring
time to light as the horizon for all understanding of Being. In other
words, time must be unfolded primordially as the horizon for every
understanding of Being and it must in addition be explicated in
terms of temporality which is the mode of Being of Dasein that
understands Being. It stands to reason that the conception of time
66
that will be obtained in this way must be distinguished from our

everyday conception of time as weil as from the philosophical
conceptions of time that have been maintained from Aristotle to
Bergson. Thus it will be our task also to explain how the ordinary
conception of time and the traditional philosophical concepts of time
developed from original temporality. (SZ, 17-18)
For many centuries one has used time as a criterion for naively
distinguishing various realms of beings. We make a distinction
between temporal beings such as natural and historical entities, nontemporal beings such as spatial and numerical relationships, and
supra-temporal or eternal entities. We are used to contrasting the
timeless meaning of the proposition with the temporal course of our
propositional assertions. Thus time, in the sense of "Being in time,"
has functioned in the West often as a criterion for distinguishing
various realms of beings. Yet until now no one seems to have asked
the question of why time has come to have this distinctive ontological
function. Heidegger is thus fully aware of the fact that in contrast to
the commonly held view his own treatment of the question of the
meaning of Being must show "that the central problematic of all
ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time, if rightly seen and
rightly explained," and why this is the case. (SZ, 40; cf. 18)
But if Being is to be conceived in terms of time, and if its various
modes and derivatives must become intelligible in their respective
modifications and derivations by taking time into consideration, then
Being itself is made visible in its "temporal" character. Yet, as we
have indicated already, in that case the talk is about Being, not the
beings, and "temporal" no Ionger just means "being in time." From
this point of view even the non-temporal and the supra-temporal
must then be temporal in their mode of Being. But be this as it may,
the manner in which Being and its various modes have their
meaning determined primordially in terms of time, will be called
Being's temporal determinateness.
Thus the fundamental
ontological task of interpreting the meaning of Being as such implies
that we work out the temporality of Being so that the question
concerning the meaning of Being will first be answered concretely in
the exposition ofthe problematic oftemporality. (SZ, 18-19)
The question concerning the meaning of Being cannot be
answered with the help of some isolated statement. The question
must be considered in its entire historical context so that the answer
can make full use of the possibilities which the ancient philosophers
have made ready for us already. Finally, if the answer to the
question of the meaning of Being is to provide us with a clue for our
own research in fundamental ontology, it cannot be adequate until
we have been brought to the insight that the specific kind of Being
characteristic of the ontology of the past, has been made necessary by
the character proper to Dasein. (SZ, 19)
li: Heidegger's Concern with Method
We have seen that Heidegger was concerned with methodological issues from the very beginning of his career. This interest
led him in 1909 to Husserl's phenomenology which in turn still may
have enhanced his concern with methodology. When Heidegger in
1909 started to read Husserl's Logical Investigations he had hoped
that Husserl's phenomenology would help him solve the problern
which the study of Brentano's book on Aristotle had raised for him:
If that which is in Being has several meanings (on, ens), what then
does Being itself mean in its unity (einai, esse)? Yet when Heidegger
began to realize that Husserl had made a turn from his original
"realism" in the direction of a form of transeendental idealism, it was
clear to him that the phenomenological method would have to be
rethought rather thoroughly. It was also soon obvious to him that
Husserl's concern with transeendental subjectivity would not help
him at all solve the Being-question, but rather would bar the way to
approaching this all important issue. Instead of focusing all its
attention on consciousness, phenomenology, in his view, would have
to focus on aletheia, the process of discovering, "truth." His study of
Jaeger's book on Aristotle's development and the subsequent study of
the works of Aristotle set him on that path.
In chapter I we have seen that in 1911 Heidegger had had plans
to go to Gttingen to study with Husserl, but financial difficulties
prevented him from doing so. Luckily for Heidegger in 1916 Husserl
hirnself moved to Freiburg. Heidegger immediately established
contact with him and began to work with him closely. Yet in his own
courses almost from the beginning Heidegger began to employ a
conception of phenomenology that was notably different from that
developed by Husserl. In all of these courses Heidegger used a
phenomenological method even though these courses were
concerned with the thought of Parmenides, Kant, Fichte, 19th
century philosophy, etc. After World War I, Heidegger resumed
teaching and lectured on St. Paul, St. Augustine, and above all on
Aristotle. In these courses again a phenomenological method was
used between 1919 and 1929. Yet as far as we know between 1916 and
1925 no official account of this method was ever presented.
68
In his published work, Heidegger mentioned the

phenomenological method for the first time in Being and Time.
When one year before his death The Basic Problems of
Phenomenology appeared (in 1975) it became clear that in 1927
Heidegger had discussed the method of phenomenology in that work
as well, but in a manner that is notably different from the one used in
Being and Time. But what is most remarkable hereisthat in both
works, Being and Time and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology,
Heidegger gives us only a preliminary explanation of phenomenology
and in both cases he also promises to present us with a definitive and
systematic treatise on phenomenology, in each case to be developed
toward the end of each work. Yet in both cases we only have the
preliminary treatise on phenomenology, but not the full-fledged
account. We do not know what the content ofthe systematic treatise
on phenomenology promised in Being and Time would have been.
As far as The Basic Problems of Phenomenology is concerned, we
have at least the titles of the part on phenomenology as well as the
titles of its four main chapters; for these have been included in the
"Outline of the Course." The section tobe devoted to phenomenology
was entitled: "The Scientific Method of Ontology and the Idea of
Phenomenology." This section was tobe divided into 4 chapters: 1)
The Ontical Foundation of Ontology: the Analytic of Dasein as
Fundamental Ontology. 2) The A Priori Character of Being and the
Possibility and Structure of A Priori Knowledge. 3) The Basic Components of the Phenomenological Method: Reduction, Construction,
Destruction. 4) Phenomenological Ontology and the Concept of Philosophy.l It should be noted that although the conceptions of phenomenology explained in both works are quite different from one another,
there nonetheless is no contradiction. The method described in Being
and Time is the method of fundamental ontology which has the
character of an analytic of the mode of Being of Dasein; on the other
hand, the method described in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
is the method of ontology proper. This latter conception of
phenomenology was later given up by Heidegger.
Finally, in 1979 a lecture course was published which
Heidegger had delivered in 1925 when he was already deeply involved
in the actual writing of Being and Time. The book contains the first
"outline" of the content of Being and Time. 2 This part of the book is
lMartin Heidegger, The BasicProblems of Phenomenology, pp. 23-24.
2Martin Heidegger, History ofthe Concept ofTime. Prolegomena, pp. 135-320.
preceded by a long preparatory part, entitled "Meaning and Task of
Phenomenological Research"3 which itself is still preceded by a very
short Introduction which explains the title of the course, the subject
matter to be treated, and the roethod to be used. His treatise on
phenomenology proper consists of three long chapters. Heidegger
first describes there the origin and first developroent of
phenomenological research. He then discusses the fundamental
discoveries of phenomenology, namely intentionality, the categorial
intuition (kategoriale Anschauung), and the original meaning of the
term "a priori." Heidegger next gives a brief explanation of the name
of phenomenology and explains its basic principles. Finally, in a
third chapter he subjects Husserl's conception of the phenomenological roethod and phenomenology itself to a radical criticism.
In Heidegger's opinion, the basic weakness of Husserl's
phenomenology consists in the fact that the mode of Being of
consciousness was never systematically exaroined, that the mode of
Being of that which is intended was misinterpreted, and finally that
the question concerning the meaning of Being was never explicitly
asked and discussed.4
After these very brief and schematic observations on the
historical side of Heidegger's concern with method and methodology,
we must now again return to Being and Time.
lll: The Character of Being and Time's Section on Method

Wehave seen that Being and Time begins with an introduction
which is similar to the introductions found in many classical
treatises on metaphysics. The book opens with a brief description of
the task to be accomplished, the road to be taken, and a provisional
division of the subject matter. The goal to be achieved in the book is a
critical reflection on the question concerning the meaning of Being in
light of an interpretation of time as the transeendental horizon for
the question of Being. (SZ, l, 39) Since Beingis always the Being of
beings, the question concerning the meaning of Being is to be
approached by means of a careful study of the mode of Being of a
particular kind of being. In view of the fact that some comprehension of Being is already implied in the mode of Being ofthat being
3Jbid., pp. 13-131.

4[bid., pp. 90-131.
70
BEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME
which asks the question, namely Dasein, it is the Being of Dasein

which is tobe examined first. (SZ, 5-15)
As far as the road to be taken is concerned, Beidegger makes
two suggestions. The first recommends a "destructive retrieve"5 of
the metaphysical tradition; the other states that "hermeneutic
phenomenology" is the method of ontology. If one considers these
suggestions concerning the method to be employed, it is clear that
they, too, are similar to the Suggestions on method made by
Descartes, Kant, Regel, and Busserl. Analysis of Beidegger's text
reveals that this similarity is, indeed, intended, although one should
be aware of the fact that the concrete suggestions made in each case
are fundamentally different from what these other authors have
proposed in this regard, although there is in each case an important
element of agreement, also.
From the way Beidegger determines both subject matter and
method of ontology it is clear that he is trying to find and justify a
personal stance in regard to the entire philosophical tradition. In the
manner of the Westerntradition since Plato, Beidegger subscribes to
the view that ontology is a science. Like Descartes he defines the
scientificity of ontology by means of the method to be employed. 6 With
the entire modern tradition he admits that in a science, that which
counts is not what other thinkers have already thought, but that
which can be methodically justified in regard to the "things
themselves" tobe studied in that science.7 Heidegger even seems to
join Descartes, Kant, and Busserl in their negative evaluation of
philosophy's history, when he speaks about the need for a destruction
of the traditional content of ancient ontology.B (SZ, 22) Finally,
5Following Richardson I translate Wiederholung as re-trieve or retrieve. Cf.
Richardson, op. cit., p. 89.
6Rene Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rule IV, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, 2 vols. New
York: Dover Publications, 1931, vol. I, p. 9.
1Jbid., Rule III, p. 5.
Bcf. Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason
and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, Part I, op. cit., pp. 85-87; Meditations on
First Philosophy, Meditation I, op. cit., pp. 144ff.; Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to
Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Lewis White Beck. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc., 1950, pp. 3ff.; Edmund Husserl, Philosophy as Rigorous Science, in
Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin
Lauer. New York: Rarper and Row, 1965, pp. 7lff.; ldeas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. F. Kersten. The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1982, pp. 33-48.
71
Heidegger is deeply aware of the intimate relationship between

method and subject matter in ontology and, thus, seems to subscribe
to the view that it is incorrect to conceive of method in a purely
instrumental fashion. This intimate relationship appears to imply
that the explication of the immediately given is to be mediated by
what is already somehow implicitly contained in what is given
immediately, without, however, being explicitly thematized there.
(SZ, 15ff., 7f., 152f., 314f.)9
Yet at the same time Heidegger makes it abundantly clear that
he does not share any of these views without major modifications.
Ontology is a "science", indeed, but it is a science whose scientificity
has nothing in common with either the formal or the empirical
sciences.IO Secondly, although it is true that as a science ontology is
to be defined in its scientificity by means of the method to be
employed, yet this method cannot possibly be conceived of as
consisting in deduction (Descartes) or description (Husserl). Rather
this method is to be conceived of as being both transeendental and
hermeneutic.ll It is true, also, that no philosopher canthink without
both explicitly standing in a tradition and taking a critical stance in
regard tothat tradition. Yet this critical attitude is not a rejection of
the tradition, but rather a "destructive retrieve" of what was worth
being thought about in that tradition. (SZ, 22)12 Finally, although it is
true that method and content are intimately intertwined in ontology
and that the mediation of the immediately given presupposes that
what guides the explication takes its clues from what is already
somehow present in the immediately given, the latter is not to be
found in some anticipation of Hegel's absolute Truth, but rather in
the finite "truth of Being" which functions as the necessary synthesis
a priori in all finite understanding.
If these reflections are correct, it is obvious that the destructive
retrieve and the phenomenological method cannot be taken to be
independent and unrelated procedures; rather both procedures
belong intimately together13 and the one (hermeneutic phenom9 Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. Baillie. London:
Allen & Unwin, 1964, Introduction, pp. 131ff.
lOMartin Heidegger, The BasicProblems of Phenomenology, pp. 1-4, 11-15.
llMartin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 211255; cf. SZ,
37-8.
12Cf. The Basic Problems, pp. 21-23.

13Jbid., pp. 19-23. Heidegger characterizes phenomenology here with the help of
the following three Iabels: reduction (the turn from a being toward its Being),
72
enology) cannot possibly achieve its goal without the other

(destructive retrieve). Just as hermeneutic phenomenology is the
methodical development of what is constitutive of Dasein's
understanding as such (SZ, 142-153), so destructive retrieve is no
more than the methodical correlate of the retrieve which is
constitutive ofDasein's search for its authentic self. (SZ, 316-323)
W: Destructive Retrieve and Hermeneutic Phenomenology

In the Introduction to Being and Time, after indicating that
ontology is concerned with the Being question and is to be prepared by
a fundamental ontology which takes the concrete form of an analytic
of Dasein's Being, Heidegger turns next to the question concerning
"the right way of access" to the primary subject of investigation,
namely Dasein. He stresses the point that this problern is a very
difficult one, because Dasein is to be taken as something already
accessible to itself and as something yet to be understood. We must
thus be able to explain how and why Dasein itself can be grasped
immediately, although the kind of Being which it possesses is not to
be presented just as immediately, but is to be mediated by explanation
and interpretation. (SZ, 15)
Dasein is in such a way that it is capable of understanding its
own Being; yet it has the tendency to do so in terms of those beings
toward which it comports itself proximally. And this means that its
"categorial structure" remains to some degree concealed. Thus the
philosophical interpretation of Dasein's Being is confronted with very
peculiar difficulties. Furthermore, Dasein has been made the
subject of both philosophical and scientific investigations. Thus there
are already many ways in which Dasein has been interpreted. It is
not clear how all of these interpretations can go together. This
complexity makes the problern of securing the right access which
will lead to Dasein's Being even a more burning one. W e have no
right to resort dogmatically to constructions and to apply just any
idea of Being to Dasein, however self-evident such an idea may be,
nor may any of the "categories" which such an idea prescribes be
forced upon Dasein without proper ontological consideration. (SZ, 16)
construction (the projection of a pre-given being upon its Being and its structures),
and destruction (the critical analysis of the concepts which are handed down to us,
in light of the original sources from which they have been derived). It is important
to note that in this work which is not concerned with fundamental ontology, the
term "hermeneutic" is not mentioned.
73
1. Destructive Retrieve. In Heidegger's view temporality

constitutes the meaning of Dasein's Being. (SZ, 17ff.) Temporality is
also the condition which makes historicity possible as a temporal
mode of Beingwhich Dasein itself possesses. Historicity stands here
for the state of Being which is constitutive for Dasein's coming-topass as such. Dasein is as it already was and it is what it already
was. Dasein is its past, not only in the sensethat it possesses its own
past as a kind of property which is still present-at-hand; Dasein is its
past particularly in the way of its own Being which comes-ta-pass out
of its future on each occasion. Regardless of how Dasein is at a given
time or how it may conceive of Being, it has grown up both into and in
a traditional way of interpreting itself; in terms of this tradition it
understands itself proximally and, to some degree at least,
constantly. Its own past, which includes the past of its generation, is
thus not something which just follows along after Dasein, but
something which already goes ahead ofit. (SZ, 19f.; cf. 372ff.)
But if Dasein itself as weil as its own understanding are
intrinsically historical, then the inquiry into the meaning of Being is
to be characterized by historicity as well. The ownmost meaning of
Being which belongs to the inquiry into Being as an historical
inquiry, points to the necessity of inquiring into the history ofthat
inquiry itself. Thus in working out the question concerning the
meaning of Being one must take heed of this pointing, so that by
positively making the past his own, he may bring hirnself into full
possession of the very possibility of such inquiry.
When a philosopher turns to philosophy's own history he must
realize that this tradition constitutes that from which he thinks as
well as that from which he, to some degree at least, must try to get
away. Yet Dasein is inclined to fall prey to its tradition. This
tradition often keeps it from providing its own guidance whether in
inquiring or in choosing. When a tradition overpowers one's own
thinking it often conceals what it really tried to transmit. Dasein has
the tendency to take what the tradition hands down to it as being selfevident. This blocks the access to those primordial sources from
which the categories, concepts, and views handed down have been
drawn. Dasein is in fact so caught in its own tradition that in
philosophy it often confines its interest to the multiformity of the
available standpoints of philosophical inquiry; but by this interest it
seeks to hide the fact that it has no ground ofits own to stand on. The
state in which philosophy's concern about the Being question finds
itselftoday, is the clearest evidence of this tendency.
74
Thus in the inquiry of the question concerning the meaning of

Being one has to have a ground of his own and yet one's thought
must carefully heed its own philosophical tradition. Both these
demands are met in the "destructive retrieve." One must "destroy" in
the tradition what is philosophically unjustifiable and maintain
those primordial experiences from which any genuine philosophical
insights ultimately flow. The meaning of the retrieve is not to shake
off the philosophical tradition, but to stake out the positive
possibilities of a tradition and keep it within its proper limits. (SZ, 2023) By the re-trieving of a fundamental problern we understand the
disclosure of its original potentialities that long have lain hidden. By
the elaboration of the potentialities, the problern is transformed and
is thus for the first time in its intrinsic content conserved. To
conserve a problem, however, means to retain free and awake all
those inner forces that render this problern in its fundamental
essence possible.14
It is obvious that in these reflections Heidegger takes a critical
stance with respect to Descartes, Kant, and Husserl whose positions
in regard to the philosophical tradition are too negative. In this
regard Heidegger's position is closer to that adopted by Hegel. The
only point in which he does not follow Hegel in this respect consists
in the fact that Hegel saw the various philosophical perspectives
developed in the past as elements of an organic unity or system and
that, thus, some form of necessity is constitutive for "the life of the
Whole." In Heidegger's view, philosophy's history does not bind the
philosopher who lives today with the necessity of the unbreakable
laws of the Hegelian dialectic; rather, the philosophical tradition,
like every other form of tradition, delivers and liberates man. The
answer to a philosophically relevant question consists in man's
authentic response to what in philosophy's history is already on the
way to him. Such a response implies, at the same time, his
willingness to Iisten to what is already said and the courage to take
distance from what he has heard. This makes a certain criticism of
the past necessary in philosophy. Yet such a criticism should not be
understood as a break with the past, nor as a repudiation of
philosophy's history, but as its adoption in the form of a
transformation and adaptation to the requirements of the world in
which we live and of what in this world has been handed down to us.
Heidegger, thus, does not deny the necessity to re-think every
l4Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 242-243; William J. Richardson,
op. cit., pp. 90-93.
75
"experience," to mediate it and transcend it. Yet he does deny that

this should be done from the perspective of the absolute knowledge of
the Absolute. In his opinion, each "experience" is to be mediated
from the perspective of Being. It is in this finite perspective that man
understands his own Being in its full potentialities so that he can
compare each mode of Being, present in each "experience," with the
whole of possibilities and thus understand its genuine, limited
meaning. Furthermore, it is within this finite perspective that one
can "let things be seen from themselves andin themselves," because
within this perspective, by projecting the things upon this a priori
synthesis, one can show them in their full potentialities so that the
concrete mode of givenness as found in a given "experience" can
appear in its true and limited sense.15
Reidegger obviously maintains that the philosophical reflection
should be methodical and critical.
Although he rejects
presuppositionlessness (Russerl) and absoluteness (Regel), he does
not reject method and rigor. The first, last, and constant task of our
philosophical reflection is never to allow our pre-judgments to be
dominated by merely arbitrary conceptions, but rather to make the
relevant themes secure scientifically by working out our anticipatory
conceptions in terms of "the things themselves." (SZ, 153) In other
words, the destructive retrieve is guided by a hermeneutic
phenomenology which in each case allows for a careful comparison
of the claims made by thinkers of the past with the "things" to be
reflected upon.1 6 I shall return to the relationship between retrieve
and phenomenology in section 5.
2. Phenomenology: The Method of Ontology. From Reidegger's
own development, as witnessed by his earliest publications (19121927), Being and Time, Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie,
and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, it is clear that he had a
solid knowledge of the history of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle,
Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Regel, the entire
neo-Kantian tradition, Russerl). We may thus expect that as far as
the question concerning the method of ontology is concerned, section
7 of Being and Time contains a systematic attempt to determine
ontology's method in reference to the authors just mentioned. Yet, at
first sight at least, this expectation is not fulfilled. Section 7 makes
the impression of not being thought-out as carefully as many other
15Cf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, The World in Science and Philosophy, pp. 23ff.
16The BasicProblems of Phenomenology, pp. 19-23.
76
sections of the book. The conception of phenomenology is explained

not with reference to Regel or Husserl, but merely with the help of
some brief comments on the expression phenomenon and logos of
which the compound expression consists. On the other hand, Heidegger states explicitly that section 7 gives no more than a
provisional characterization of the method which is to be reexamined and further developed at a later stage. (SZ, 28, 34, 34 7)
Upon closer investigation, however, it becomes clear that this
first impression is unjustified and that the Introduction to Being and
Time contains all the information on ontology's method which may
be Iegitimately expected at that stage of the investigation. Yet it is
undoubtedly important that any commentary on the introductory
reflections on method carefully heeds all the methodological
reflections which in harmony with the eirewar character of all
ontological investigation, are found on many pages of the book and
other related works of the same period.
In Heidegger's opinion the question of the "right approach" is a
very important one in ontology. (SZ, 15-16) Ontology must deal with
its subject matter by employing the phenomenological method. The
concept "phenomenology" is no more than a methodological concept:
it does not characterize the subject matter of ontology, but merely the
manner in which ontology must treat its subject matter. What is
meant by phenomenology can be explained by means of a reference to
the maxim: Zu den Sachen selbst. Thus Heidegger points to Husserl
for a first specification of the method of ontology. In Heidegger's
interpretation Husserl's maxim: To the things themselves, implies
that ontology avoid all free-floating constructions, all artificial and
accidental findings, all seemingly justified conceptions, and all
adherence to pseudo-problems. Heidegger admits that this first
characterization of the phenomenological method is almost trivial
and that perhaps it can be applied to any method to be employed in
any type of scientific research. It appears that Heidegger deliberately
wished to keep his remarks on phenomenology as "formal" as
possible in order to avoid giving the impression that the term
"phenomenology" was to be taken to refer to a historical position in
philosophy. In his view it is dangerous to seek help from
methodological conceptions of the past. (SZ, 27)
In his letter to Richardson (1962) Heidegger provides us with the
following information. The concept of phenomenology contained in
section 7 of Being and Time was prepared by the immediate
experience of the phenomenological method which was provided to
him through his conversations with Husserl. In the development
77
which subsequently took place the two basic words of Greek thought:
[ogos (to make manifest) and phainesthai (to show oneself) played an
iroportant part. A careful study of some sections of the works of
Aristotle had led him to the view that aletheuein is to be understood
as a process of revealment and, correspondingly, that truth is to be
characterized as non-concealment, to which all self-manifestation of
beings pertains. Furthermore, it became clear to him also that the
question about Being under the guise of presence is to be developed
into the question about Beingin terms of its time-character. Once
aletheia and ousia were re-interpreted in this manner, the meaning
and scope of the principle of phenomenology became clear. The
xnaxim "to the things themselves" does not refer to intentional
consciousness or the transeendental ego; instead Being is to be the
first and last "thing-itself' of thought. Meanwhile Husserl had
developed his own conception of phenomenology as a distinctive
philosophical position according to a pattern set by Descartes, Kant,
and Fichte which leaves no room for the historicity of thought. Thus
the Being-question, unfolded in Being and Time, had to part company
with this philosophical position; yet the unfolding of that question
was effected on the. basis of a more faithful adherence to the very
principle of phenomenology as Husserl originally conceived it.
Heidegger concludes his reflections with the remark that these
developments constituted a tangled process which at that time was
inscrutable even to himself.17
Thus from Being and Time as well as from his later reflections
on the development of his work, it is clear that Heidegger felt that he
should give tribute to Husserl, particularly to Husserl's original
conception of phenomenology as contained in Logical Investigations;lB yet on the other hand, he makes it quite clear also that he
had to take distance from Husserl's transeendental idealism,
systematically developed in the first volume of Ideas. Thus he could
write in Being and Time: "Our comments on the preliminary
conception of phenomenology have shown that what is essential in it
does not lie in its actuality as a philosophical trend. Higher than
actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology only
by seizing upon its possibility." (SZ, 38) Anyone who subscribes to the
historicity of all human thought and yet adheres to the view that in
ontology all problems are to be examined in the light of "the things
17Letter to Richardson, pp. x-xvi.
lBsz, 38 note; On Time and Being, pp. 74-82.
78
themselves," will understand immediately that even the reflections

on ontology's method necessarily imply the destructive retrieve.
At this point it is tempting to subject the relationship between
Husserl's and Heidegger's conceptions of phenomenology to careful
scrutiny, but I have finally decided to refrain from any attempt in
that direction in that it has become clear to me that it is totally
impossible to do justiee to such an encompassing task within the
eonfines of this ehapter.19 However, to clarify Heidegger's eonception
of phenomenology it seems important to focus at least on one issue
which occupies a central position in a comparison of hermeneutic
phenomenology with transeendental phenomenology. For Husserl
transeendental subjectivity is the universal constitutive force.
Transeendental subjectivity performs the constitution and is at the
same time the ground of everything that will be so constituted. "The
phenomenological explication of this monadie ego-the problern of its
constitution for itself-must in general inelude all problems of
eonstitution. And in the final aeeounting this eonstitution of the self
for the self eoineides with phenomenology as a whole."20 If all
transeendental Being is really no more thari the life of the ego, the
problern of Being's eonstitution eoineides with the self-eonstitution of
the ego.21 Onee the eonstituting subjeet is understood exhaustively,
everything eise is so understood as weil.
Heidegger, on the other hand, does not subscribe to the view that
the universal eonstituting foree is tobe found in the human subjeet;
rather this foree is to be found in "the truth of Being," whereas
Dasein merely plays a subordinate part in its eonstituting aehievement. Dasein is that in whieh the eonstitution eomes-to-pass. Thus
for Heidegger the problern of man's understanding ultimately
presupposes the eoming-to-pass of the eonstituting "truth of Being" in
Dasein. In other words, the meaning of Being is not aceessible to
19Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 45-52, 85-92, 102-108, 123-126, 135-153, 200-236, passim;
cf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967, pp. 330-334; Ludwig Landgrebe,
Phnomenologie und Metaphysik, Hamburg: Schrder, 1949, pp. 83-100; Paul
Ricoeur, Busserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1967; "Phenomenologie et hermeneutique," in Man and World
7(1974) 223-255; Joseph J. Kockelmans, "World-Constitution. Reflections on
Husserl's Transeendental Idealism," in Analeeta Husserliana 1(1971) 11-35.
20Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1960, p. 68.
21Paul Ricoeur, op. cit., p. 113.
79
transeendental subjectivity by means of the latter's constitutive selfdisclosure, but it must be "wrested" free and made explicit from the
comprehension of Beingwhich comes-to-pass in Dasein's Being. (SZ,
36) Thus to explain something phenomenologically means to make it
explicitly comprehensible by means of the a priori comprehension of
Being through which Dasein understands Being unthematically.
Ontological investigations must be oriented first toward a being,
namely Dasein; but they must then be steered away from this being
and led back to this being's Being. This step of the phenomenological
method is called the phenomenological reduction. Yet this tuming
away from being is still a negative step. In addition, a positive step is
to be taken which has the character of an achievement. Being is not
just found in beings as pebbles in a brook; it must be brought1 into
view by means of a projection. To project a given being upon its Being
and its structures is the task of the phenomenological construction.
Such a projection presupposes that there is a transeendental a priori
framework in which the projection can take place; this is the truth of
Beingwhich comes-to-pass in an implicit form in the comprehension
of Beingwhich is constitutive of Dasein's Being.22
The Being of being for Husserl is posited in the subject and by
the subject, whereas the subject as transeendental is self-positing.
For Heidegger, on the other hand, the Being of being is indeed posited
in Dasein: "Only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an
understanding of Being is ontically possible) 'is there' Being." (SZ,
212) Yet the Being ofbeing is not posited by Dasein, but by the truth of
Beingwhich functions as the transeendental a priori synthesis.23
3. Phenomenon. Heidegger begins his own explanation of what
is to be understood by phenomenology with the remark that the
expression itself has two basic components: "phenomenon" and
"Iogos." In his view a preliminary conception of phenomenology can
be developed by characterizing what one means by the term's two
components and by then establishing the meaning of the name in
which these two components are put together. (SZ, 28)
The concept of phenomenon is first determined purely formally
as "that which shows itself," the manifest. Now a being can show
itself in many ways, depending in each case on the kind of access one
has to it. Furthermore, a being can show itself as something which
in itself it is not. Then it Iooks like something eise; but it is not this
23Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 45-52, 135-140, 185-203, and passim.

being. This kind of showing-itself is called semblance. It is
important to observe that when phenomenon signifies "semblance,"
the primordial signification of the term (namely phenomenon as the
manifest) is already included as that upon which the second
signification is founded. (SZ, 28f.)
Both phenomenon and semblance must be distinguished from
what is called appearance. When we speak about an "appearance"
we arenot speaking about something which shows itself, but about
something which announces itself in something eise which shows
itself, although that which so appears does not show itself. Examples
of appearances are for instance: symptoms, signs, symbols, etc. In
this case, too, that which announces itself is never a phenomenon,
although its appearing is possible only by reason of the showing itself
of something eise and, thus, by reason of a phenomenon in the proper
sense ofthe term. (SZ, 29-31)
Until now we have limited ourselves merely to defining the
purely formal meaning of the term phenomenon and distinguishing
phenomenon from semblance and appearance. W e have not yet
specified which entities we consider to be phenomena and have left
open the question of whether what shows itself is a being or rather
some characteristic which a being has as far as its Being is
concerned. In order to be able to answer this question, Heidegger
makes a distinction between the ordinary and the phenomenological
conception of phenomenon, both of which are then defined with an
explicit reference to Kant. Phenomenon in the ordinary sense is any
being which is accessible to us through the "empirical intuition."
Formulated again within the perspective of the Kantian framework
the phenomenon in the phenomenological sense is that which
already shows itself in the appearance as prior to the phenomenon in
the ordinary sense and as accompanying it in every case. Even
though it shows itself unthematically, it can nonetheless be brought
to show itself thematically. Thus the phenomena of phenomenology
are those beings which show themselves in themselves, Kant's forms
of intuition. In other words, the phenomena in the phenomenological sense refer to the conditions of the possibility of the objects
of experience. (SZ, 31) In section 5 to come, I plan to clarify these
references to Kant from Heidegger's own perspective.
4. Apophantic Logos and Truth. In the introduction to the
section on method Heidegger stresses the point that the element
"-logy" in the expression "phenomenology" refers to the scientific
character of the investigation concerning phenomena. (SZ, 28) In an
essay on method, therefore, the scientificity of phenomenology is to be
81
Jllade thematic. One may thus say that phenomenology does not
Jllerely indicate the approach to, but also the clarifying mode of
determination of, the subject matter of ontology. In other words, two
elements are contained in the concept of phenomenology: one
dealing with the question of how the things are to be discovered and
another concerned with the question of when such discovery may be
taken tobe adequate, i.e., when a discovery may be taken tobe true.
Thus we may expect that section 7B contains a provisional analysis of
the concept of truth. To this end Heidegger tums toward Aristotle
who in his opinion originally conceived of truth as the unhiddenness
of what is present, its unveiling, its manifesting-itself.24 The analysis shows that the phenomenological conception of phenomenon
implies a conception of truth which is notably different from the one
found in Kant as weil as from that developed by Husserl. Heidegger
contends that the classical definition of truth as agreement is
concerned with a derivative conception of truth, whereas Husserl's
thesis that truth is tobe defined in terms ofperfect, i.e., apodictic and
adequate evidence,25 is unacceptable. (SZ, 212-230)
Section 7B begins with a reference to the fact that for Plato and
Aristotle the concept "logos" has many, competing significations,
none of which at first sight seems to be primordial. And yet the term
appears to have a basic meaning in light of which all other,
derivative meanings can be understood. One could perhaps say that
the basic signification of logos consists in articulating discourse
(Rede). But such a translation remains unjustified as long as one is
unable to determine precisely what is meant by this expression and
indicate how from this basic meaning all other significations of the
term can be derived. (SZ, 32)
Logos is related to legein which means to make manifest what
one is talking about. As such it has the same meaning as
apophainesthai. Logos lets something be seen, namely what the talk
is about; and it does so for those who are somehow involved in the
discourse. Logos furthermore Iets something be seen from the very
thing the talk is about. In logos as discourse (apophansis) what is
said is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive
communication, in what it says, makes manifest what the talk is
about and makes it accessible to others. When in this context logos
24Sz, 32 note; On Time and Being, pp. 79-80; Letter to Richardson, pp. x-xii.
25Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 12.
82
becomes fully concrete, then discoursing, as letting something be

seen, has the character of speaking. (SZ, 32-3)
Furthermore, because logos is a letting something be seen, it
can therefore be true or false. But it is of the greatest importance to
realize that truth cannot be understood here in the sense of an
agreement between what is and what is said. Such a conception of
truth is by no means the primary one. The Greek word for truth is
aletheia and this means unconcealment. The being-true of the logos
as aletheuein means that the beings about which one is talking must
be taken out of their original hiddenness: one must let them be seen
as something unhidden (a-lethes); this means, the beings must be
discovered. And only because the function of the logos as apophansis
lies in letting something be seen by pointing it out, can it have the
structural form of a synthesis. Here "synthesis" does not mean a
binding together of representations or the manipulation of psychical
occurrences from which the pseudo-problem arises of how these
bindings, as something inside, agree with something physical
outside. Synthesis here means letting something be seen in its
togetherness with something, letting it be seen as something. When
something no Ionger takes the form of just letting something be seen,
but always harks back to something eise to which it points, so that it
Iets something be seen as something, it thus acquires a synthesisstructure, and with this it takes over the possibility of covering up.
Being-false amounts to deceiving in the sense of covering-up: putting
something in front of something eise in such a way as to let the
former be seen, thereby passing the latter off as something which it is
not. (SZ, 33-4)
Seen from the perspective of the enormous task in regard to the
tradition, particularly in regard to Aristotle, Kant, and Husserl,
which Heidegger appears to have set for hirnself here, section 7B
seems to be disappointing. First of all, it is not very clear precisely
what the basic issue is with which Heidegger is concerned.
Secondly, the section seems to suggest that methodical thought in
ontology is not really necessary in view of the fact that a simple
letting-be-seen seems to suffice.26 Yet one should realize once more
that section 7 contains merely the provisional conception of
phenomenology, which later is to be developed further, once the
analytic of Dasein has reached its conclusion. Secondly, what
Heidegger suggests in section 7B is to be understood from the
26Cf. Hans Albert, Traktat ber kritische Vernunft. Tbingen: Mohr, 1968, p.
145; cf. Gethrnann, op. cit., p. 93.
83
perspective of what will be said later about the precise function of

theoretical knowledge (SZ, 59-62), about "reality" (SZ, 200-212), and
particularly about disclosedness and truth (SZ, 212-230). Finally
Heidegger explicitly indicates that the reflections contained in section
7B were inspired by a careful study of Aristotle.27
When all of this information is taken together it becomes clear
that the real meaning of section 7B consists in the following: a being,
whose ontological conception becomes manifest to Dasein (alethes),
is, as far as its mode of becoming manifest (logos apophantikos) is
concerned, dependent upon Dasein's disclosure. The identity
expressed in the apophantic logos rests on the synthesis a priori (the
truth of Being) and at the same time presupposes a difference with
which Dasein's disclosure is concerned and which accounts for the
fact that all finite letting something be seen really is a letting
something be seen as. It is the latter which demands methodic
justification and most certainly does not exclude it.28
5. The Preliminary Conception of Phenomenology. From the
interpretation of the words "phenomenon" and "Iogos" it becomes
clear that there is an inner relationship between the things meant by
these words. Taken as legein (=apophainesthai) ta phainomena, the
expression "phenomenology" means: to let that which shows itself be
seen from itself the very way it shows itself. This is the formal
meaning of the term phenomenology which expresses the same
thing as the maxim formulated earlier: to the things themselves.
(SZ, 34-5)
But what is it that phenomenology is to "Iet us see"? Wehave
seen already that this question must be answered if we are ever to be
able to go from a purely formal conception of phenomenon to the
phenomenological conception. What is it, therefore, that by its very
Being must be called a "phenomenon" in a distinctive sense? What is
it that is necessarily the theme whenever we try to exhibit something
explicitly? Obviously, it is something that proximally and for the
most part does not show itself; it is something that lies hidden in
contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show
itself. Yet at the same time it must be something that belongs to what
thus shows itself, and it must belong to it so essentially as to
constitute its very meaning and ground.
27Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias, c. 1-6; Metaphysics, Z; and Eth. Nicom. Z.

28Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 113-114; cf. 107-114.

History of philosophy shows us that that which remains hidden
in a specific sense, which relapses and gets covered up time and
again, is not this or that being, nor this or that kind of being, but
rather the Being of these beings. Being can even be covered up so
extensively that it becomes forgotten and there no Ionger is any
question which arises about it and its ultimate meaning. In other
words, that which demands that it become a phenomenon, and
which demands this in a distinctive sense and in terms of its
ownmost content as a thing, is precisely that which phenomenological philosophy wants to make the very subject matter and theme
of its own investigations. But if phenomenology is Dasein's way of
access to what is to be the theme of ontology, it is clear that the
phenomenological conception of phenomenon as that which shows
itself must refer to the Being of the beings, to its meaning, its
modification, and its derivatives. (SZ, 35, 230)
For phenomenology to be possible and necessary, something
must be manifest and something eise, inherently connected with the
manifest, must still be hidden. That which is manifest essentially
implies both truth as unconcealment and immediacy. Thus being,
taken as phenomenon, means being taken in immediate unconcealment. In view of the fact that each being can show itself in different
ways, depending upon Dasein's manner of approach (SZ, 28), the
showing-itself always and necessarily implies some form of
mediation in that the manner of approach to the things appears tobe
constitutive of what will show itself as the manifest. Therefore,
phenomenology means the methodical mediation of the immediacy of
the truth of the phenomena.
Here Heidegger takes his point of departure in the conviction
that before things appear to us, they obviously "are" already. The
basic question is not whether there are "real" things; there obviously
are "real" things, because otherwise nothing at all would appear to
us. The fundamental question is connected rather with the necessary conditions which must be fulfilled in order that things can
appear to us the way they do, so that it will be possible to ask the
question of what their appearance precisely means. When beings
appear to us, they always appear as either this or that. They can
appear to us in many ways; how they in fact will appear to us
depends upon the kind of access we have to them in each case (SZ,
28). In the final analysis, the question of how a being will appear to
us, depends upon the a priori synthesis from which this being is
taken in each case; all letting be seen as presupposes some synthesis
a priori. (SZ, 34) When a being appears to us in its "genuine" mode of
85
Being, when it appears to us "the way it really is," it appears to us

from the perspective of the transeendental synthesis a priori, which
consists in the meaning or the truth of Being. Thus the expression
"to show itself' can be applied meaningfully in ontology to both a
being and to its Being. Thus we can now determine the concept of
phenomenon more adequately: phenomenon in the ordinary sense of
the term is not a being, but the showing-itself of a being; phenomenon
in the phenomenological sense of the term is not the Being of a being,
but the showing-itself of this being in light of the truth of Being. The
immediacy of Dasein's relation to a being is to be mediated by the
truth of Being; for a being to show itself to Dasein, there must be a
transcendental, a priori horizon which consists in the truth of Being.
In other words, the showing-itself of the beings is conditioned by the
truth of Being. The showing-itself of a being is really a being-brought
to show-itself on the basis of the a priori synthesis. There is a
showing-itself of a being (phenomenon in the ordinary sense) if and
only if there is an a priori horizon within which this being can show
itself as that which it really is. This showing-itself of beings is
precisely the immediacy which every methodical mediation must
presuppose; that which is mediated by the method is the
phenomenon in the phenomenological sense of the term. Yet there
can be an explanation of phenomena (phenomenology) only if there is
a transeendental ontological synthesis, i.e., the truth of Being. Thus
it is clear that phenomenology is possible only as ontology.29
Heidegger hints at all of these implications when in defining
the term phenomenon in the strict sense he does not use the
expression: das Sich-selbst-teigende (that which shows-itself), but
das Sich-an-ihm-selbst-zeigende (that which shows itself with respect to itself). This "an" implies that in what shows-itself there is
some difference; it is this difference in the immediacy of the
phenomenon which requi'res the mediation to be brought about by the
methodical approach. 30 (SZ, 35fi) This difference is to be determined
for both the phenomenon in the ordinary sense and the phenomenon
in the phenomenological sense. The phenomenon in the ordinary
sense, the being, shows-itself; yet it manifests itself in such a way
that the "activity" implied in the showing is not the activity of the
being itself. It shows itself in the framework of an apriori synthesis;
it shows itself as something. The showing is accomplished with
29Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 46-7; Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 93-107.
30Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 99-101.
86
respect to it; it is even constitutive for the it-self of the being that the
showing is accomplished with regard to it. This occurs by means of
the "projection" of Being accomplishe<l by Dasein; in that case the
being is "explained" as being from the perspective of the a priori
comprehension of Being. On the other hand, the a priori structures,
i.e., the Being of a being, do not show themselves from themselves
either; they show themselves in their founding function only in the
being which is so founded; yet they show themselves in the process of
founding as that which gives it its foundation. The Being of a being
again manifests itself "an ihm" in the sense that here, too, the immediacy of its showing is mediated by the being as well as by the
truth of Being. Thus the immediacy of the phenomenon taken in both
the ordinary and the phenomenological sense does not exclude, but
precisely requires the mediating, methodical explanation; nor does it
presuppose that the question concerning the meaning or truth of
Being be solved in advance. 31
Heidegger thus agrees with Regel that the necessary immediacy of the things themselves does not exclude but precisely
requires the employment of method. The mediation, however, does
not take place through the reflection of the subject taken as
consciousness, but through Dasein for whose Being some
comprehension of Being is constitutive; nor is the reflection guided by
an anticipation of the absolute Truth, but merely by Being as the
process of the coming-to-pass of the truth.
6. Hermeneutic Phenomenology. The ontological problematic
which is concerned with the conditions of the possibility of the being's
showing-itself, i.e., with the truth of Being, requires that the
reflection on method not Iimit itself to determining the way in which
the meaning of Being can be investigated (ontology); it must explain
also how Dasein is to be examined in its relation to the things in the
world. Thus a treatise on the method of ontology demands o n
transeendental grounds that an introductory analytic of Dasein be
developed. Says Heidegger: "Because phenomena, as understood
phenomenologically, are never anything but what goes to make up
Being, while Being is in every case the Being of some being, we must
firstbring forward the beings themselves if it is our aim that Being
should be laid bare; and we must do this in the right way." (SZ, 37)
With respect to the subject matter of phenomenology one could
say indeed that phenomenology is the science of the Being of beings; it
is in this sense that phenomenology may be called ontology. Yet in
31Jbid., p. 101.
explaining the task of ontology we have already referred to the
necessity of a fundamental ontology which has to take the form of an
ek-sistential analytic of Dasein. Fundamental ontology must prepare
our investigation of the question concerning the me;;tning of Being.
Thus that which phenomenology is concerned with first is the Being
of Dasein. This Being which is now concealed, was once revealed; it
has slipped back into oblivion; it is revealed now again, but in a
distorted fashion so that man's Dasein now seems to be what in fact it
is not. It is precisely inasmuch as Being is not seen that
phenomenology is necessary. For Dasein to reveal itself of its own
accord as that which it is and how it is, it must be submitted to
phenomenological analysis in order to lay the Being of Dasein out in
full view. Such a laying-out necessarily takes the form of an
interpretation; this is the reason why phenomenology is essentially
hermeneutical. (SZ, 37)
The term "hermeneutic" seems to have its historical origin in
biblical exegesis. Later it was applied to the interpretation of the
meaning of historical documents and works of art. As the
expression is used here by Heidegger it no Ionger refers to documents
and results of man's artistic activities, but to man's own Being. But
what does it mean to interpret a non-symbolic fact such as man's
Being? Interpretation focuses on the meaning of things; it
presupposes that what is to be interpreted has meaning and that this
meaning is not immediately obvious. Dasein obviously has meaning
and this meaning allows for interpretation. For as ek-sistence
Dasein is essentially related to its own Being as that which
continuously is at stake for it. In view of the fact that Dasein as eksistence is oriented toward possibilities which reach beyond itself,
Dasein is capable of interpretation. But Dasein's Being also requires
interpretation. For just as Being has the tendency to fall into
oblivion, so man's Being has the tendency to degenerate.
The phenomenology of Dasein is even hermeneutic in three
different senses. It is hermeneutical first because (as we have just
seen) in this particular case phenomenology cannot be anything but
interpretation. It is hermeneutic also in the sense that by uneovaring
the meaning of Being and the basic structures of Dasein the
conditions on which the possibility of any ontological investigation
depends become worked-out. And finally, insofar as Dasein, because
of its ek-sistence, has ontological priority over all other beings,
hermeneutic, as the interpretation of Dasein's Being has also the
specific meaning of an analytic of the ek-sistentiality of Dasein's ek-
88
sistence. And this latter is the sense which is philosophically

primary. (SZ, 37 -38)
By specifying the phenomenological method with the help of the
concept of hermeneutic Heidegger again makes any interpretation of
his claims very difficult. Hermeneutic has a relatively lang and
complex history to which Heidegger does not really relate his own
efforts. 32 Furthermore, hermeneutic is often taken as the method
characteristic for the humanities, whereas the term is taken here to
refer to the method of fundamental ontology. Yet one should note
again, that in section 7 Heidegger merely developed a preliminary
conception of the method of ontology. What is said here about
hermeneutic must be understood from the perspective of his view on
understanding (SZ, 142-160), temporality (SZ, 301ff.), and the
implications of all of this for the so-called hermeneutic circle. (SZ, 7,
152f., 311ff., 436-7) In an attempt to understand what Heidegger
precisely means by hermeneutic, one must begin by bracketing all
treatises which deal with hermeneutic as the doctrine of the method
of explanation.33
Heidegger first states that hermeneutic means the business of
explanation (SZ, 148-153); explanation (Auslegung) determines the
methodical sense of the phenomenological "description." We have
seen that phenomenon in the phenomenological sense consists in the
Being of beings; this shows itself only by means of a methodical
mediation. Explanation therefore is the methodical procedure
throU:gh which the Being of beings as well as the basic structures of
Dasein's Being are made accessible to Dasein's understanding. (SZ,
37) Explanation is concerned ultimately with the meaning of Being;
thus the task of hermeneutic is an ontological one. Yet the meaning
of Being must be made known to Dasein's understanding. Although
Dasein is to be characterized by its comprehension of Being, the
meaning of Beingis still somehow hidden for it. This fact explains
the possibility as well as the necessity of a method for ontology.
Dasein's comprehension of Being does not exclude the methodical
mediation, but makes it both possible and necessary. This is the
reason why Heidegger can say that hermeneutic, as the interpretation of Dasein's Being, has the specific sense of an analytic of the eksistentiality of ek-sistence. (SZ, 38, cf. 436)
32Cf. E. Palmer, Hermeneutics. Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1969.
33Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz. New
York: Rarper and Row, 1971, pp. 29-31.
89
Hermeneutic characterizes the specific character of that

method which is determined by the fact that the thing to be
investigated by it, always already functions as a condition for its
application, so that the quest for the "thing itself' coincides with the
quest for the conditions of the possibility of the investigation of the
things through method. This leads us to the second characterization
of hermeneutic: it becomes a "hermeneutic" in the sense of working
out the conditions on which the possibility of any ontological
investigation depends. (SZ, 37)
From all of this it follows that hermeneutic is the
methodological, fundamental concept of ontology as such. Because
the questio:ri concerning the meaning of Being is oriented toward that
which, as the transeendental synthesis a priori conditions all
knowledge of whatever there is, the method of the investigation
concerning the meaning of Beingis conditioned by the very subject
matter of the investigation. And in view of the fact that the subject
matter of the investigation is always already "there" in Dasein's
primordial comprehension of Being, the method must have the form
of an explanation (Auslegung) in which what is constitutive of
Dasein becomes explained by Dasein and for Dasein. The explanation found in Being and Time constitutes a form of man's hermeneutic-transcendental questioning. 34
The hermeneutic character of the phenomenological method is
intimately connected with the transeendental conception of the
philosophical method as such. The meaning of Being for which
ontology searches is knowable only through the fact that as a
condition it itself must function as the a priori synthesis in that
process in which a being of the mode of Being of Dasein constitutes
the beings which do not have that mode of Being. Thus Being
becomes methodically accessible only as that which is constituting in
the effective constitution of beings which occurs in Dasein's
understanding. Heidegger replaces an absolute conception of the
a priori by a regulative one. The meaning or truth of Being is not
something absolute from which the Being of beings can be deduced;
the meaning of Being is not a universal principle of deduction or
construction, but merely the universal horizon of explanation.
The reason Heidegger employed the expression "hermeneutic"
to characterize the regulative conception of the a priori, is the
similarity that appears to exist between the efforts of the person who
34Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. II, p. 415; cf. Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 114118.

tries to discover the meaning of a text and that ofthe philosopher who
is concerned with the question concerning the meaning of Being. Yet
the determination of the phenomenological method as hermeneutical
really follows from the theme itself that is to be examined. Ontology
is transeendental because it conceives of the Being question in a
fundamental ontological manner as the question concerning the
meaning of the unthematic comprehension of Being which is
constitutive of Dasein's Being. Being can be comprehended
thematically only on the basis of this a priori comprehension of
Being. Thus in order to make the Being question explicit, it is
necessary first to develop an analytic of Dasein's ek-sistentiality
which must have the form of a hermeneutic. Being itself which is
"there" in Dasein's comprehension of Being, must be explained from
this Being-there. The analytic taken as a hermeneutic of facticity is
thus a "methodical" component or element of transeendental
ontology. But this means that hermeneutic phenomenology is really
"founded upon" ontology and not the other way around. 35
35sz, 72 note; Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 118-122.
DIVISION I
THE PREPARATORY FUNDAMENTAL
ANALYSIS OF DASEIN
(Being and Time, pp. 41-230)
In the Introduction to Being and Time it was explained that in

the question about the meaning of Being the beings which are
interrogated primarily are those entities that have the characteristic
mode of Beingof Dasein. Now, human beings can be examined in
different ways in different sciences; thus we must explain first, at
least in outline, the peculiar character of the eksistential analytic of
Dasein and distinguish it from other kinds of investigations that are
concerned with human beings. This will be our first task. We must
then turn to a set of reflections which are meant to bring to light a
fundamental structure in Dasein, namely its Being-in-the-world.
This structure is something "a priori"; furthermore, it is not pieced
together, but always and constantly given as a whole. Yet in this
whole various constitutive moments can be distinguished. As we
make an effort to make these moments, as phenomena, stand out we
must keep the whole constantly in view. Thus after explaining the
overall structure, Being-in-the-world, we shall then turn to the
following items as objects for analysis: the world in its worldhood,
Being-in-the-world as Being-with and Being-one's-self, and the
structural components of Being-in as such. W e shall conclude these
preparatory reflections by showing that the eksistential meaning of
Dasein is care. (SZ, 41)
CHAPTERIV
ON THE NATURE AND TASK OF THE PREPARATORY
ANALYSIS OF DASEIN'S BEING. BEING-IN-THE
WORLD AS THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF DASEIN
1: Exposition of the Task ofthe Preparatory Analysis of

Dasein's Mode ofeing
In the preceding chapters we have made an effort to explain the
subject matter to be dealt with in Being and Time as weil as the
method tobe used in doing so. We must now turn to the eksistential
analytic of Dasein's mode of Being and, as was indicated before, we
shall do so in two phases; first there is a preparatory analysis of
Dasein's Being (SZ, sections 12 through 44) which will be followed by
the temporal interpretation of the Being of Dasein (SZ, sections 45
through 83).
Before we can begin with our analysis it is necessary first to

clarify in greater detail what is meant by Dasein and how its mode of
Being is to be understood. Yet before we can turn to this issue it may
be good first to indicate briefly what our task in this preparatory
analytic of Dasein's Being precisely consists in. In an effort to define
this task Heidegger begins with a brief reflection on the theme of the
analytic.
He teils us that the preceding reflections have already indicated
that we ourselves are the beings to be analyzed. The Being of each
human being is in each case "mine." In other words, in their very
Being these beings relate and comport themselves toward their own
Being; they are consigned to their own mode of Being. That which is
for every such being the basic issue is its own Being. (SZ, 41-42) This
way of characterizing the mode of Being of Dasein Ieads to two
insights: 1) The mode of Being of this being, namely Dasein, consists
in its to-be. Its what-it-is (Wassein, essentia), insofar as we can
speak of this at all, must be understood in terms of its own Being
(existentia). Heidegger realizes the ambiguity which the term
"existence" causes here. Normally existentia refers to the act of
actually being real, being present at hand; here in the eksistential
94
analytic the term is taken in its literal sense for the act of standing
out; we thus shall write it always in such a manner that this notion
is clearly expressed; instead of "existence" we shall use "eksistence"
as Heidegger in his later works suggests we do.
We can thus say that the "essence" of Dasein consists in its
eksistence, in its standing-out-towards, and as we shall see later, in
its transcendence. Yet all the characteristics which one can
attribute to Dasein cannot be understood as if they were properties
present at hand which belong to another entity that is present at
hand. These characteristics are in all cases for Dasein possible ways
for it to be. Its entire what-it-is, all the Being-such-and-such of this
being, is primarily Being. In other words, it is impossible to conceive
of Dasein in terms of natural or man-made things. Heidegger will
later explain this point by suggesting that things are to be determined
by categories whereas the mode of Being of Dasein is to be articulated
with the help of eksistentials. (SZ, 42) 2) That Beingwhich is an issue
for this being in its own Being, is in each case mine. When one
addresses Dasein one must always use either I or you. Furthermore,
each Dasein must in each case decide about the way in which it in
each case will be mine. Thus that Being for which its own Being is
an issue, comports itself towards its own Being as its ownmost
possibility. As a matter of fact, in each case Dasein is its possibility
and it has its possibility, but it never has it as a property and as
something that is just present at hand. Since Dasein is in each case
essentially its own possibility, it can always choose itself and win
itself, or it can also lose itself; in other words Dasein can be either
authentic (in the sense that it is then its own genuine self), or
inauthentic; but both authenticity and inauthenticity are grounded in
Dasein's mineness. It should be noted here that being inauthentic is
not a lower degree of Being or a less Being. Dasein, even if taken in
its fullest concretion, can still be characterized by inauthencity. (SZ,
42-43)
The two basic characteristics of Dasein just described clearly
show that in our analytic we are concerned with a very peculiar
domain, in that Dasein does not have the mode of Being that is
characteristic for the beings that are merely present at hand within
the world. The proper way to present this being is not at all evident;
to determine what form its presentation is to take, is itself an
essential part ofthe ontological analytic ofDasein. (SZ, 43)
Dasein thus has in each case to determine itself.
In
determining itself as a being Dasein must always do so in light of
some possibility which it is itself and which, in its very Being, it also
THE NATURE OF THE ANALYSIS OF DASEIN'S BEING
95
somehow understands. This constitutes the formal meaning of

Dasein's eksistential constitution. Thus if we are to interpret the
Being of this being ontologically, the problematic of its mode of Being
must be developed from the eksistentiality of its eksistence. Yet this
does not mean that Dasein is to be construed in terms of some
particular concrete possible idea of eksistence. At first Dasein must
not be interpreted in our analysis from the perspective of some
special and definite way of eksisting either; rather it must be
uneavered in terms of the undifferentiated character which it has
proximally and for the most part; it thus must be uneavered in its
everydayness, in its average everydayness.
This average
everydayness makes up what is ontically closest to Dasein. Yet it has
time and again been passed over in the explication of Dasein's mode
of Being. Thus that which ontically is closest and well known, is
ontologically the farthest and not known at all, because its ontological
signification is constantly overlooked. To uncover it properly will be a
difficult task. (SZ, 43-44)
One should also realize that if one analyses Dasein's mode of
Being by starting from its average everydayness, one will be able to
discover Dasein's formal ontological structure which is equally
constitutive for the Being of Dasein when it is in the authentic mode.
Thus the structures which will be discovered by starting from
Dasein's average everydayness are structurally indistinguishable
from those one will discover later by starting from the authentic
Being of Dasein.
The basic notions with the help of which the mode of Being of
Dasein is made explicit and to which the analytic of Dasein gives rise
are obtained by considering Dasein's basic structure of eksistence.
And, Heidegger continues, because Dasein's characters of Being are
defined in terms of the eksistentiality of Dasein's eksistence, we call
these basic notions eksistentials to distinguish them from the
categories with the help of which the mode of Being of things is
articulated. (SZ, 44)
From these reflections it should be clear that the analytic of the
Being of Dasein is essentially different from anthropology,
psychology, biology, and even theology. But, Heidegger adds, in
setting the analytic off against these human sciences on the ground
that they all fail to give an unequivocal and ontologically adequate
answer to the question of the mode of Being which belongs to those
beings which we ourselves are, we do not mean to pass judgment on
the positive work that is being done in these disciplines. (SZ, 45-50)
Finally, in view of the fact that the interpretation of Dasein's Beingin

its average everydayness is not identical with the description of some
primitive stage of Dasein through which one can become acquainted
empirically through the science "anthropology," it is clear also that
the eksistential analytic intended here is to be distinguished from the
scientific interpretation ofprimitive Dasein. (SZ, 50-52)
ll: Eksistence, Transcendence, and World

In his eksistential analysis Heidegger has introduced a small
number of technical expressions with which many people will be
unfamiliar. For some people the struggle with these new terms
becomes eventually so important that for them understanding Being
and Time seems to become identical with getting to know the basic
categories and eksistentials with the help of which Heidegger
explains his views. Wehave encountered already the term "ontic" for
anything that has to do immediately with the beings as such. A
methodological approach is said to be ontic if it focuses on the beings,
the things. On the other hand, it is said to be ontological if it focuses
on the meaning and Being of these beings or things.
If we articulate the mode of Being that is characteristic of man
as Dasein, then we must do so with the help of eksistentials, not with
the help of the categories which are the basic notions with the help of
which we articulate the mode of Being of beings, things.
Many other technical expressions could be mentioned here. We
shall discuss them when they are introduced. Yet before moving on
to the next section of Being and Time it seems important by way of
introduction to say a few words about the meaning of the terms
"eksistence," "transcendence," and "world."
Heidegger has identified the mode of Being characteristic of
man with the eksistentiality of his eksistence. Dasein is said to be
such that its essence, its mode of Being, is its eksistence. This
expression indicates that Dasein has to make itself be what it will be.
Dasein must accomplish this by transcending the beings with which
at first it is always concerned, in the direction of the world and
ultimately also in the direction of Being. Thus to say that the essence
of Dasein is its eksistence is tantamount to saying that the essence of
man is transcendence. Now since transcendence means going
beyond beings in the direction of the world, saying that the essence of
man as Dasein is transcendence is also tantamount to saying that
his essence is to be Being-in-the-world. Before we turn to a
systematic explanation of what is meant here by Being-in-the-world,
Iet us first focus on transcendence and world.
fJ7
In the preceding chapters we have seen already that the

comprehending understanding of Being which most profoundly
characterizes man as Dasein, is not simply some form of theoretical
k.nowledge, but Dasein's manner of Being as such which essentially
includes some comprehension of Being. As a radical comprehension
of Being, Dasein is such that in its own Being, i.e., that by which it is
what it is, it is to be concerned about Being. Thus this comprehending of Being constitutes the ontological structure of Dasein.
This comprehension of Being includes its own Being as well as that
of all other beings. Thus as a being, Dasein enjoys some primacy
among the beings. It is this manner of Dasein's Being that is called
eksistence. Thus eksistence is possible only on the basis of a
comprehension of Being. Eksistence for Heidegger means: to be in
that relationship to Being which we have just called comprehending.
Comprehension constitutes the inner possibility of eksistence and
eksistence constitutes the inner possibility of Dasein. Now human
eksistence was also called transcendence.l It is this notion of
transcendence that in the final analysis also determines the
transeendental character of this investigation. Let us see briefly why
this is so.
In Being and Time and related works, Heidegger focuses
mainly on the movement of transcendence in which Dasein
transcends beings in the direction of Being. Transcendence is
interpreted there to be closely related to both freedom and truth. In
On the Essence of Truth as well as in The Essence of Reasons these
relationships are unfolded in detail.
Transcendence means surpassing.2 That which executes the
action of surpassing and remains in the conditions of surpassing is
called transcendent. As a happening, surpassing is proper to a
being. Formally one can construe transcendence to be a relationship
which stretches from something to something. The surpassing
implies something toward which the surpassing occurs; this is
usually, but improperly, called the transcendent. Taken in the
common sense transcending refers to a spatial happening.
But transcendence can also be understood as the basic
characteristic of human Dasein, as the basic constitutive feature of
Daseinthat occurs before all behavior. If one were to choose the term
"subject" for the being which all of us are, and which we here
lKant und das Problem der Metaphysik, pp. 204-208 (E. 233-348); cf.
Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 33-37.
2The Essence of Reasons, p. 35.

understand as Dasein, then transcendence denotes the essence of the
subject, the basic structure of its subjectivity. To be a subjeet then
means tobe a being inandas transcending. But perhaps it is better
not to introduee the notion of subject; transeendenee eannot be
defined in terms of a subjeet-object relationship. Transeendeut
Dasein surpasses neither a boundary which stretehes out before the
subjeet and forees it to remain in itself (immanenee), nor a gap
whieh separates it from an objeet. Moreover, objectified entities are
not that toward whieh the transeending oeeurs. That whieh is
surpassed are simply the beings themselves, i.e., every being that
ean beeome uneoneealed to Dasein, even and precisely the very being
as which Dasein itself eksists.
In surpassing Dasein first attains to that being that it itself is;
what it attains to is its self. Transeendeuce thus constitutes selfhood.
But transcendenee obviously also touehes on beings whieh Dasein
itself is not. It is important to note here that whatever being Dasein
may transeend, it never transeends a random aggregate of objeets;
whatever is transcended, it is always transcended as a totality.
Surpassing always occurs totally. It is there with the fact of Dasein's
Being-there.
But if it is not a being or some beings toward whieh
transeending oeeurs, how then is this toward which to be defined?
That toward whieh Dasein transeends beings is the world so that we
ean now define transcendenee as Being-in-the-world. World coeonstitutes the unified structure of transeendence; the eoncept of
world is called transeendental precisely beeause it is part of
transeendenee's structure. Thus we use the term "transcendental"
to designate everything that belongs in its essenee to transeendenee,
everything that owes its inner possibility to transcendenee. For the
same reason we can eall the explanation of transeendenee a
transeendental investigation. A philosophy whieh treats the
transeendental as a mere standpoint, even as an epistemologieal
standpoint, eannot give us a real clue as to what the term
"transeendental" means. But this is not to deny that Kant, in
partieular, recognized the "transcendental" as a problern of the inner
possibility of ontology, although for him the term has also a critical
meaning. For Kant, the transeendental has to do with the
"possibility" of (in the sense ofthat which makes possible) the kind of
knowledge which does not illegitimately "go beyond" experience, i.e.,
which is not "transcendent," but is experience itself (nicht
93
"transzendent," sondern Erfahrung selbst).S Thus the transeendental provides us with a restrictive, yet positive delimitation (definition)
of the essence of nontranscendent knowledge, i.e., of the ontical
knowledge which is accessible to man.
If the essence of
transcendence is construed more radically and universally, it will
then be necessary to work out the idea of ontology more primordially.
We defined transcendence as Dasein's Being-in-the-world. In
this expression the term "world" is to be understood not ontically as
the totality of all beings, but rather ontologically, i.e., as the totality of
meaning as which Being now manifests itself concretely to us today.4
Let us therefore see now how in 1927 Heidegger understood the
concept of world.
In his essay, On the Essence of Ground,5 Heidegger discussed
several meanings of the concept "world." In his view, "world" is
philosophically a basic concept. In such cases the popular meaning
of the world is seldom the essential and primordial one. The
essential meaning of such basic words remains usually hidden and
if they are ever expressed conceptually then this is done with
difficulty.
Yet part of the essence of "world" shows itself already in the PreSocratic philosophers. For them the Greek word, kosmos, did not
mean any particular being, nor the sum of all beings, but rather the
how in which being in its totality is. Heraclitus mentions another
essential feature of kosmos; he understands the world in terms of the
basic ways in which humans factically eksist. 6 These few remarks
reveal already several important things: 1) World means a how of
the Being of the beings rather than these beings themselves taken as
a unity. 2) This how defines the beings taken as a totality; in the
final analysis world is the possibility of every how as Iimit and
measure. 3) This how in its totality is in a certain sense primary. 4)
This primary how in its totality is itself relative to Dasein. Thus the
world belongs strictly to human Dasein, although it encompasses all
beings, Dasein included, in its totality. 7
3Jbid., p. 41.
4For the preceding see The Essence of Reasons, pp. 35-45.
5Jbid., pp. 47-85.
6Cf. H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin:
Melissos. Fragment 7 and Parmenides, Fragment 2.
7The Essence of Reasons, pp. 47-51.
de Gruyter, 1954.
100
In the Christian era the word "kosmos" came to signify a basic

type of human eksistence. In the Epistles of St. Paul kosmos houtos
does not mean primarily the condition of the "cosmic," but rather the
condition and the situation of man, the character of his position in
regard to the kosmos and of his evaluations of what is good. Kosmos
was for the early Christians the mode of Being of man in the how of a
way of thinking that is estranged from God. St. Paul sometimes
speaks of the wisdom of the world in Opposition to God's wisdom. The
world, this world, refers to human Dasein that is involved in a
particular historical form of eksistence in opposition to another form
of eksistence that already had begun. For St. John, who uses the
term very often, the word "kosmos" simply stands for the basic form
of human Dasein that is estranged from God; sometimes it even just
means the character of the Being of man as such. Sometimes
kosmos means the whole of mankind without any further
distinction. 8
The influence of the early Christian conception of world left its
traces on medieval philosophy and theology. In St. Augustine the
world "mundus" sometimes means the whole of creation; but it very
often also means those humans who delight in the world, the
impious.9 On the other hand, those who are just are not called the
world, because they really are with God. This conception of world
could have been drawn directly from the first chapter of the Gospel of
John.IO Aquinas, too, uses mundus sometimes as synonymaus with
universe or the whole of creation; yet he also uses it for the worldly
way ofthinking about what is.ll
In the tradition of Wolff and the metaphysics of his school
"world" was defined as the series of actually existing, finite things
such that the series is not part of something else. Here world is
equivalent to the totality of all that is just preserit at hand in the sense
of all created things. This means that the notion of world cannot be
understood fully except under the condition that one accepts the
proofs for the existence of God. At any rate, in this conception of
BJbid., pp. 51-53.

9st. Augustine, Opera (ed. Migne), 1842, vol. IV.
lOJohn, 1:10.
llSt. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II II, 187, 2, ad 3. The Essence of

Reasons, pp. 53-57.
101
world, world is explicitly opposed to both God and any other

individual being or group of things.12
In the conception of world as we find it in the metaphysics of the
School of W olff a full understanding of the concept of world
presupposes both the School's ontology and natural theology. Kant in
his effort to lay the foundation of any acceptable form of metaphysics,
had to change that conception of world, even though in his
anthropology Kant maintained the School's conception of world, yet
without its typical Christian connotations. In his Dissertation of 1770
Kant wrote: "Taken as a terminus, world is essentially related to
"synthesis." "Just as in dealing with a complex of substances,
analysis only ends with a part which is not a whole, i.e., with the
simple, so synthesis only ends with a whole which is not apart, i.e.,
with the world."13 Later he added to this that the parts of the world
are substances (its matter), that these parts must be coordinated (its
form), and that the parts must constitute an absolute totality of
conjoined parts. As for the notion of absolute totality Kant observed
there that this totality appears to be an easily understandable
concept, especially when it is formulated negatively. If one looks at it
more carefully, however, one will see that it confronts the
philosopher with a crucial problem. Kant thought about this problern
for a long time and in the Critique of Pure Reason he later explained
why the totality of the world is problematic from several points of
view: 1) To what is the totality presented by the term "world" related?
2) What is it that is presented by the concept? 3) What character does
the proposing presentation of such a totality have? What is the
conceptual structure of the concept of world? In his answer to these
questions Kant completely transformed the problern of world.14 Kant
still takes the totality which is presented in the concept of world tobe
the totality of finite things present at hand. But Kant no Ionger
defines finitude in relation to God's creating act. Instead, he
explains the finitude of all things by pointing out that they are things
only insofar as they are possible objects of finite knowledge; they are
objects of a knowledge that must let things give themselves as already
present at hand; they give themselves in man's sensory perception
(finite intuition) and thus are present only as appearances, "things in
appearance." If the same things are understood as the possible
12aumgarten, Metaphysica (1743), section 354, p. 87.
13Jmmanuel Kant, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis,
sections 1 and 2. (Cassirer edition of 1912, vol. II).
102
"objects" of an absolute and creative intuition, Kant calls them "the

things in themselves." Since the unity of the appearances necessarily depends on a factically contingent givenness, this unity is for
us always conditioned andin principle incomplete. We can however
think the manifold of appearances as complete, but then we make
present to ourselves an aggregate whose content and reality cannot
in principle be intuited. Thus the concept of world is not really a
concept of human understanding but rather an idea of reason. It is
transcendent. The notion of world is that idea of reason in which the
absolute totality of objects accessible to finite knowledge can be
presented a priori. The notion "world" then only means the totality or
aggregate of all possible appearances, the aggregate of all objects of
possible experience.15
From what has been said thus far about Kant's conception of
world, it becomes clear in what sense Kant really has transformed
the concept. Heidegger explains this transformation in such a way
that at the same time the three questions raised earlier can be
answered. 1) The concept of world is no Ionger taken in the sense of
the totality of all (finite) things in themselves, but rather in the
ontological (= transcendental) sense of the aggregate of all things as
appearances. 2) What is exhibited in the concept of world is not a
coordination of substances but rather a Subordination of the
conditions of synthesis ascending to the unconditioned; this second
thesis follows from the fact that Kant defines each transeendental
idea ofreason as "the concept ofthe totality ofthe conditions ofa given
conditioned ... , thus a pure concept of reason can generally be
explained through the concept of the unconditioned insofar as the
latter contains a ground of the synthesis of the conditioned."16 3) The
concept of world is not to be defined as a rational representation
which is conceptually undetermined, but rather as an idea, i.e., a
pure synthetic concept of reason; in other words, it is not one of the
concepts of the understanding.17
As an idea, the concept of world is the representation of an
unconditioned totality. This totality remains related to the
appearances which are the sole possible objects of finite knowledge.
Thus world taken as an idea is transcendent; it surpasses the
15Jmmanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, B, 391; Was heisst: sich im
Denken Orientieren? (1786), in Werke (Cassirer ed. 1912), vol. IV, p. 355; The
Essence of Reasons, p. 69.
16CPR, B, 390.
17CPR, B, 367, 379, 384, 860, and passim.
103
appearances in such a way that, in their totality, it is directly related

back to them. Transcendence in Kant always means the surpassing
of experience. As such it can still have two meanings: first it can
simply mean to go beyond what is given within experience, namely to
go beyond the manifold of appearances; in this sense the world is
transcendent. But transcendence can also mean to step outside of all
appearances considered as the domain of finite knowledge and
represent the possible entirety of all things insofar as they are the
object of the intuitus originarius of the creating God. The concept
"world" in Kant thus constitutes the Iimit of human knowledge; it
denotes finite human knowledge in its totality. It even ultimately
signifies the totality of the finitude of man's mode of Being_l8
In addition to this "cosrriological" concept of world Kant also
uses world in the sense of the existence of man within his historical
communi ty .19 In the context of his pragmatic anthropology he
speaks about "knowing the ways of the world," "to have a world and
act like someone who has it," etc. In his view, both these expressions
refer to man's eksistence; yet the first person only knows the ways of
the world, only understands the game, whereas the latter has played
the game. World is here the name for the "game" of everyday Dasein
and for Dasein itself. Kant also speaks here about worldly wisdom in
opposition to personal wisdom and about knowledge about the world
in opposition to school wisdom. Finally he mentions philosophy in
accordance with the concept of world in opposition to philosophy in
the scholastic sense. The former is the concern of the "ideal teacher,"
who tries to reach the divine man in us. In these cases the concept of
world is that concept which concerns what is necessarily of interest
to everyone.2 World thus serves here as the name for the mode of
Beingof human Dasein. World means here human beings in their
relationship to the beings taken as a totality.
Heidegger concludes these retrieving, historical reflections with
the observation that in his view it is thus wrang to use the expression
"world" either as a name for the totality of allnatural things (natural
concept of world) or as the name for the community of men (personal
concept of world). Ontologically essential to the meaning of world is
that it must aim at explaining human Dasein in Dasein's
relationship to the beings taken in their totality. World appears to
18CPR, B, 434, 446-448, 600 note. Cf. The Essence of Reasons, pp. 69-75.
19Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht abgefasst (1800,
second edition). (In the Cassirer edition, vol. VIII, p. 3).
104
belang to a structure of interrelationships which characterize Dasein

as such; this structure is called Being-in-the-world. This notion is
stilltobe explained in what follows.21
111: Man's Being-in-the-World

Originally Heidegger had intended to divide Being and Time
into two large parts. In the first part an interpretation of man's
mode of Being was to be given andin this interpretation the focus
would have to come from Dasein's temporality. He also wanted to
show in this part that time is to be conceived as the transeendental
horizon for the question concerning the meaning of Being. The
second part would then critically examine the history of ontology, on
the basis of the insights gained in the first part; here Heidegger
hoped to pay special attention to the philosophies of Kant, Descartes,
and Aristotle.
Actually, however, only the interpretation of man's mode of
Being has been published. The question concerning the meaning of
Being and the question regarding the relation between Being and
time remained unanswered; the same is true for the problems which
Heidegger had planned to discuss in the second part of the work in
connection with the history of ontology. In the works published after
Being and Time, Heidegger returned to different problems which
originally he had intended to consider in Being and Time. Among
these issues the ontological difference, the question of the meaning of
Being, and his critical retrieve of the philosophy of Kant must be
mentioned specifically.
Later we shall return to the question of why the last portion of
the first part as well as the whole second part of Being and Time were
never published. At present we shall limit ourselves to the
interpretation of man's mode of Being as this is found in the first part
of Being and Time. It is important to stress once again that these
considerations must be read from a strictly ontological perspective;
what follows will therefore not present a complete philosophical
anthropology. The reflections to follow have as their sole purpose to
prepare an answer to the question concerning the meaning of Being.
(SZ, 39-40)
As we have seen already, Heidegger expresses the mode of

Being characteristic of and proper to man with the technical
expression "eksistence" (Existenz). This term means "standing-out"
21Jbid., pp. 79-85.
105
(ek-sistere). It is characteristic of man that in order to realize his

own self, man has to "come out" of hirnself and turn to the world. As
a matter of fact, man is primordially and essentially directed to the
world and therefore every manifestation of his Being is a way to
relate hirnself to the world. Man is primordially and essentially an
"intentional," self-transcendending Being.
Only through his
familiarity with the world does man as Dasein become himself. His
mode of Being is therefore Being-in-the-world.
Since this Being-in-the-world is the first and fundamental
feature which we encounter as we look at Dasein, the analysis of
human eksistence has to start with the explanation of Being-in-theworld. From this first and fundamental relation we must then try to
understand all other characteristics of man's Dasein. (SZ, 52-3) The
expression, "Being-in-the-world" indicates a single, primordial
phenomenon which contains a plurality of constitutive, structural
elements. A thorough investigation of these structural elements of
man's Being-in-the-world will allow us to clarify the genuine
meaning of the mode of Being proper to Dasein. These elements are
1) "Being-in," 2) the Being of the being that is in the world, and 3) the
world in which this being is. As we shall see presently a careful
analysis of the first element will lead us to the second and the third.
(SZ, 53)
The preposition "in" usually indicates a relation of the contained
to its container; for example, the chair is in the room and the room is
in the house. Dasein evidently is not in the world in the same way in
which a match is in a box. With respect to the match, the preposition
"in" merely indicates a spatial relation between two or more beings;
but in the expression "Being-in-the-world," the preposition "in"
indicates that man's Being can be understood only through Dasein's
essential relationship to the world. Without the organized and
structured other-than-man, which we call the "world," Dasein can
neither be nor be understood. Hence when we say that Dasein means
Being-in-the-world, this statement does not merely express an actual
situation; rather it expresses something about Dasein's own mode of
Being itself, which cannot be without this essential relation to what is
other. (SZ, 53-54)
Thus instead of referring to a spatial relation, the preposition
"in" here indicates a familiarity with, and also a Being with. In this
case, "in" and "with" express that Dasein is acquainted with
something, is used to something, is conversant with something, and
that it takes this something to heart. This, of course, does not mean
that one should not accept a certain spatiality as far as Dasein is
106
concerned. There certainly is such a spatiality and we shall have to

speak about it later. At present we merely want to say, Heidegger
continues, that the expressions "Being-in" and "Being-with" must be
understood in the sense indicated above. (SZ, 54-56)
Dasein's Being-in can take on many different forms, all of
which could be analyzed here phenomenologically. All these
modalities, however, appear to be concrete ways of a fundamental
form of Being-in which Heidegger calls concern (Besorgen). Like
Being-in and Being-in-the-world, this Being-concerned-with is also
an eksistential, i.e., a fundamental and constitutive element of the
basic structure of the mode of Being that is proper to Dasein. (SZ, 57)
The transeendental relationship of Dasein to the world thus assumes
primarily and primordially the form of Being-concerned-with. For
this reason a careful study of primordial concern will be a suitable
guide toward a total interpretation of man's own mode of Being as
Dasein.
IV: Concern as the Primordial, Theoretical Knowledge as a
FoundedMode ofBeing-In
We have seen that in the compound expression, "Being-in-theworld," the word "in" has the meaning of "being familiar with," or
also of "being accustomed to." Thus Dasein is, essentially seen,
familiar with the world and this Being-alongside-the-world means
concretely and factically that Dasein is normally absorbed in the
world (fallenness). Dasein's factical mode of Being is such that its
Being-in-the-world has always dispersed itself or even split itself up
into definite ways of Being-in. The multiplicity of these ways can be
clarified by the following examples: having to do with, producing,
attending, looking after, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating,
considering, discussing, determining, etc. AU these ways of Beingin have concern (Besorgen) as their common kind of Being. (SZ, 5657) All concrete forms of Being-in can thus be characterized
generally as forms of concern.
Classical philosophy almost without exception has assumed
that knowing the world theoretically is the original and basic mode of
Dasein's concern; and Dasein itself according to its own facticity
shares this view, namely that knowing the world is the fundamental
mode of its own Being-in-the-world. In both classical philosophy and
Dasein's everyday understanding the ontological structure of Dasein,
namely its Being-in-the-world, was never explicitly explained. That
is why many people have thought of knowledge in terms of a relation
107
which exists between one entity (the world) and another entity (the
soul or the mind), both according to their own modes of Being
understood as merely present-at-hand. Thus, in every metaphysics
of knowledge a subject-object-opposition is presupposed. For what is
more obvious than that in knowledge a "subject" is related to an
"object"? Thus, the encompassing phenomenon of Being-in-the-world
has for the most part been represented exclusively by one single
example: knowing the world theoretically. Because knowing has
been given the priority here, our understanding of Dasein's mode of
Being was led astray. That is why we must show now that knowingthe-world is really a founded mode ofDasein's Being-in. (SZ, 57-59)
In traditional epistemology there is first given a being called
"nature"; this being is given proximally as that which becomes
known. Knowing as such is nottobe found in this entity. Knowing
belongs solely to those entities who know. But even in these entities,
namely human beings, knowing is not present-at-hand and
externally ascertainable as bodily properties are. Now, inasmuch as
knowing belongs to these entities, it must be inside of them. But if
knowing is proximally and really inside, there comes immediately
the problern concerning the relation between subject and object. For
only then can the problern arise of how this knowing subject comes
out of its inner "sphere" into one which is "other and external," of
how knowing can have any object at all, and of how one must think of
the object itself so that eventually the subject knows it without
needing to venture a leap into another sphere. But in any of the
numerous varieties which this approach may take, the question of
the kind of Being which belongs to this knowing subject is left entirely
unasked, although whenever its knowing is examined, its manner of
Being is already included tacitly in one's theme. Of course, we are
sometimes assured that we are certainly not thinking of the subject's
"inside" and its "inner sphere" as a sort of "box." But when one asks
for the positive signification of this "inside" or immanence in which
knowing is proximally enclosed, then silence governs. And no
matter how this inner sphere may be interpreted, if one does no more
than ask how knowing makes its way "out of" it and achieves
"transcendence," it becomes evident that the knowing which presents
such enigmas will remain problematic unless one has previously
clarified how it is and what it is.
With this kind of approach one remains blind to what is already
tacitly implied even when one takes the phenomenon of knowing as
one's theme in the most provisional manner: namely, that knowing
108
is a mode of Being of Dasein taken as Being-in-the-world, and is

founded ontically upon this state of Being.
If we now ask the question of what shows itself in the
phenomenal findings about knowing, we must keep in mind that
knowing is grounded beforehand in a Being-already-alongside-theworld, which is essentially constitutive for Dasein's Being.
Proximally, this Being-already-alongside is not just a fixed staring at
something that is purely present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world, as
concern, is fascinated by the world with which it is concerned. lf
knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the
present-at-hand by observing it, then there must be first a deficiency
in our having-to-do with the world concernfully. When concern
withdraws from any kind of producing, manipulating, etc., it puts
itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode
of just sojourning-alongside and dwelling-upon. This manner of
Being toward the world is one which lets us encounter beings withinthe-world purely in the way they look (in ihrem Aussehen-eidos) ..
On the basis of this manner of Being and just as a mode of it, looking
explicitly at that which we encounter is possible. Looking at
something in this way is a definite way of taking up a direction
towards something. It takes over a viewpoint in advance from the
entity which it encounters. Such looking-at enters the mode of
dwelling autonomously alongside beings within the world. In this
kind of dwelling as holding-oneself-back from any manipulation or
utilization, the perception of the present-at-hand is consummated.
Perception is consummated when one addresses oneself to
something and discusses it as such. This amounts to interpretation
in the broadest sense which implies determination and expression
with the help of propositions. But in all these cases knowing is not to
be conceived of as a procedure by which a subject provides itself with
representations of something which remain stored up inside as
having been thus definitely appropriated, and with regard to which
the question is to be put of how they agree with actual reality.
When Dasein directs itself toward something and grasps it, it
does not somehow first go out from an inner sphere in which it has
been proximally encapsulated, but its primary manner of Being is
suchthat it is always "outside," alongside beings which it encounters
and which belong to the world already discovered. And furthermore,
the perceiving of what is known is not a process of returning with
one's booty to the inner box of consciousness after one has gone out in
order to grasp it. Even in perceiving, retaining, and preserving,
Dasein which knows, remains outside, and it does so as Dasein. In
109
knowing, Dasein achieves a new status of Being towards the world

which has already been discovered in Dasein itself. This new
possibility of Being can develop autonomously; it can become a task to
be accomplished in the different sciences. But a commercium of the
subject with a world does not get created for the first time by
knowing, nor does it arise from some way in which the world acts
upon a subject. Knowing the world is a mode of Dasein's Being
which is founded upon its Being-in-the-world. (SZ, 59-62)
In this passage Heidegger really accomplishes two different but
closely related things which are of vital importance for a correct
understanding of man. First of all, he tries to show that knowingthe-world theoretically is a derivative mode of man's Being-in-theworld. If knowing-the-world is a special mode of our Being-in-theworld, then it can be shown easily that the subject-object-opposition is
not a fundamental datum of our immediate experience. This
opposition comes about merely on the level of reflection.
Furthermore, if the subject-object-opposition is not fundamental, it is
easy to show that the farnaus epistemological problern with which
Descartes and Kant struggled is really a pseudo-problem.
But in addition to this first thesis, namely that theoretically
knowing-the-world is only one particular mode of Dasein's concern
for the world, Heidegger also tries to show that in man's primordial
concern with the world there is found a kind of "knowledge" which is
quite different from what we normally call knowledge, namely
theoretical and scientific knowledge. Heidegger shows the difference
between our concernfully knowing the world and our theoretical
knowledge of the world not only from the viewpoint of man's
approach to the world, but also from the viewpoint of the world itself.
He carefully analyzes the difference which undeniably exists between
the world of Dasein's everyday concern and the derivative world as
found in the sciences. The primordial world has its center in Dasein
itself and originally coincides with our personal environment
(Umwelt) insofar as this is experienced in our concernful dealing
with the things and our fellow-men in the world. Heidegger shows
convincingly that the things found in our world are given primarily
not as physical objects which simply are lying there "before our
hands" (Vorhanden), but as usable things or utensils of some kind,
as equipment which refers to possible applications within a
"practical" world and, thus, is "ready-to-hand" (zuhanden). Things
of this kind inherently refer to one another and form systems of
mutual references of meaning. World and things are very closely
related here, and yet the world itself is not a thing, nor the sum of all
110
things, but rather the totality of meaning toward which all

equipment points by its very structure. What we call the world is the
totality of all mutual reference-systems within which every thing is
capable of appearing to man as having a determinate meaning
(Sinn). (SZ, 63-88) It is to that notion of "world" that we must turn in
our next chapter.
CHAPrERV
ON THE BEINGOF THE WORLD

(Being and Time, Beetions 14-18, pp. 63-88)
I: The World and Its Being. Introductory Observations!

In the preceding chapter we have already indicated in a
provisional way what Heidegger understands by world and how his
conception of world relates to those defended in our Western
pbilosophical tradition. Here we must follow Heidegger's own effort
to explain what world is, as we find this in Being and Time. In the
German edition this chapter is entitled, "Die Weltlichkeit der Welt."
It is difficult to translate this expression in such a way that the
translation indeed expresses what Heidegger had in mind. The
"literal" translation of the expression would have been: the world-liness of the world. Yet the expression "worldliness" means the
condition of being worldly, i.e., of being devoted to worldly affairs to
the neglect of religious duties or spiritual needs. Since Heidegger
most certainly is not advocating "Iove for the world and its
pleasures," the translators, Macquarrie and Robinson, rejected this
translation and went instead for "worldhood." This is a word that is
now obsolete. Yet it has the advantage of having the meaning meant
by Heidegger, namely the state or condition of a world. One could say
that a world can change in its worldhood. Richardson correctly
suggests translating the term according to its meaning and function
in Heidegger's philosophy, i.e., as the Being of the world.2 I shall use
"the Being of the world" where it is essential to avoid
misunderstanding; yet I shall also use the expression "worldhood"
Ion Heidegger's conception of world cf. William Richardson, Heidegger, pp.

52-58; Walter Biemel, Le concept du monde chez Heidegger. Louvain:
Nauwelaerts, 1950; Fernand Couturier, Monde et etre chez Heidegger. Montreal:
Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1971; Eugen Fink, Sein, Wahrheit, Welt.
Vor-Fragen zum Problem des Phnomen-Begriffs. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1958;
Eugon Vietta, "Being, World, and Understanding.
A Commentary on
Heidegger," The Review of Metaphysics, 5(1951-52), pp. 157-72.
2Ibid., p. 52.
112
which here always has the meaning of the mode of Being

characteristic of the world.
When Heidegger wrote this section of Being and Time he was
fully aware of the fact that one can introduce people to an ontological
conception of world in several ways. In Being and Time he selected
the approach which takes its starting point in the notion of concern.
Several people have criticized Heidegger for his approach to the
problern of world on the ground that he deals with the basic issues
with the mentality of a carpenter or a shoemaker. The fact that
Heidegger's father was to some degree indeed a carpenter may have
something to do with the examples Heidegger sometimes gives. Yet
from the context it is obvious that these examples were meant to show
the nature of world as such. Also, from Heidegger's effort to retrieve
the meaning of world, discussed in the preceding chapter, it is
obvious that he indeed was concerned mainly with the discovery of
the Being of the world as such.
Be this as it may, in Being and Time Heidegger begins with the
remark that it is very difficult to answer the question of what the
world really is. A first but very superficial answer could be obtained
by enumerating all the things that are in the world. It stands to
reason, however, that one will never succeed in saying what the
world really is by assuming that the world just is the sum total of all
beings in the world.
One could, of course, go about the issue more systematically by
distinguishing different domains of beings, determining which of
these is the most fundamental domain, and then trying to explain its
properties. Even this, however, would not Iead to an insight into the
mode of Being of the world, not even if one were to use the data
gathered by the social sciences. For the proper character of things is
known from the world and not the world from the things. (SZ, 63-64)
If then the world cannot be understood as a characteristic of the
things because the things presuppose the world, is it then perhaps
possible to discover what the world is in its own Being by considering
it as a characteristic of Dasein's own mode of Being? (SZ, 64) Of
course, this question does not immediately eliminate all difficulties,
for this change in point of view raises a whole set of new questions.
Is the world not ultimately a determination of the being that does not
belong to the order of Dasein? But in that case how can this being be
defined as a being within the world? Is the world then perhaps
nonetheless an eksistential of Dasein's Being? But does it not follow
then that each Dasein has its own world? Does not the world become
something merely subjective? How can there still be a common world
113
in which we all live? And if we raise the question about the world,
what world do we have in mind? Neither the common nor the
subjective world, but rather the worldhood of the world as such. How
does one meet this worldhood?
In these suggestive questions Heidegger's intention begins to
assume a more concrete form. The real problern here is the worldBeing of the world, the worldhood of the world, i.e., that which
constitutes the world as such, regardless of whether it is my world or
your world, or even our world. These questions also indicate that the
world is not to be taken as the sum of things, but as another
structural element of Dasein's mode of Being. The word "world" has
for Heidegger here an ontologico-eksistential meaning: it says
something about the mode of Being of a being whose essence is
eksistence.
We have already seen that the distinction between "ontic" and
"ontological" is derived from the distinction between being and Being.
One can regard a being simply as it manifests itself at first sight; one
then takes an ontic standpoint; this standpoint is related to on, ens,
being. But one can also try to understand the mode of Beingof the
beings, that which makes a being be what it is, its fundamental and
constitutive structure. In this case one does not stop with the being
as it is immediately given, but one tries to understand this being as
being, i.e., the mode of Being proper to this being, in short its Being.
This way of looking belongs to the ontological order. But as we have
seen already, it is also important to keep in mind that in addition to
the beings, and the Being of each kind of being (ousia, beingness),
there is also still Being itself to be mentioned. It is to prepare an
answer to the question concerning the meaning of Being itself that
the analytic of Dasein's mode of Beingis necessary. The beingness of
Dasein is to be b:rought to light in order that then the question
concerning the meaning of Being as such can be asked in a meaningful manner.
Be this as it may, by saying that the word "world" has an
ontologico-eksistential meaning, Heidegger wants to indicate that he
does not intend to Iimit his search to a mere description of what
human beings ordinarily call "world." Rather he wants to discover
its essential structure. He also wants to express that this structure is
founded upon human eksistence, on the mode of Being that is
characteristic of man as Dasein. "Ontologically 'world' is not a way
of characterizing the beings which Dasein essentially is not; but it is
rather a characteristic of Dasein itself." (SZ, 64) "Worldhood" is in
itself an ontological concept because it indicates the structure of a
114
constitutive moment of Being-in-the-world, which itself determines

Dasein's eksistence. If we inquire about the world from this
perspective, we consider it in an ontologico-eksistential way, so that
the term "world" has an ontologico-eksistential meaning, too. (SZ, 64)
In this way Heidegger shows the direction in which he wants
us to look for a solution to the problern concerning the Being of the
world. In his attempt to explain and justify his viewpoint, Heidegger
starts by accurately circumscribing the different meanings which
the term "world" can assume.
1. As an ontic term, "world" signifies the totality of the beings
which can be present within the universe.
2. As an ontological term, "world" can mean the Being of the
world taken as the totality of all beings. In a derivative way "world"
can also be used in this sense in reference to a particular realm
encompassing a particular group of beings; for instance, the "world"
of the mathematician or the "world" of the physicist.
3. "World" can also signify that "wherein" Dasein concretely
lives, my or your personal world, or our common world. Here the
term "world" is again taken in an ontic sense, because it refers to
Dasein as a being and assumes that no effort has been made yet to
bring the intrinsic structure of Dasein's Being to light. In this case
Heidegger speaks of the pre-ontological, concrete-eksistentiell
meaning of "world." It should be recalled here that Dasein, as
eksisting, necessarily is somehow related to, and also has some
knowledge of, its own Being. This knowledge which is essential for
Dasein as eksisting, however, is not yet explicit and thematic, and for
this reason Heidegger calls it a pre-ontological understanding.
Moreover, Dasein as eksisting is Being-in-the-world; but since this
Being-in-the-world is taken here only as a concrete fact, this
understanding of Dasein's own Being and therefore also this
understanding of the world is a pre-ontological eksistentiell understanding. If one would have understood Dasein here according to its
essential structure and not just as a concrete fact, this
understanding would have been called eksistential and not concreteeksistentiell.
4. In its ontologico-eksistential sense "world" means the Being
of the world, the worldhood, which is the subject matter of the
present inquiry. (SZ, 65) This sense is ontological because it explicitly
and thematically aims at the Being of the world, and it is eksistential
insofar as it is to be understood as a structural element of Dasein's
own Being which is Being-in-the-world. In cantrast to Dasein, which
Heidegger calls "worldly," Heidegger refers to intraworldly beings as
115
"belonging to the world" (weltzugehrig). The terms "intraworldly"

and "belonging to the world" thus indicate the distinguishing
features of the presence of things in the world to man. (SZ, 64-5)
Anyone who has gone through the history of philosophy and has
focused on the problern of world, will have noticed that the world has
never been understood as a structural element of Dasein's own
Being. The brief summary of this history which we have presented
in the preceding chapter shows this most clearly. The reason for the
absence of this conception of world lies in the fact that Dasein itself
has never been regarded as Being-in-the-world. When the problern of
the world is considered at all, it is usually restricted to a certain
< group of beings within the world, for instance, nature; yet even
nature itself has never been discovered explicitly as such. Nature as
studied by physics, is considered to be the basis for the other domains
of beings which, in cantrast to the domain of nature, are then called
the domains of values. We hope to explain later that such a
conception of nature as the basis for all other domains of beings, can
arise only through a change of Dasein's primordial viewpoint with
respect to the world, a change through which the world is deprived of
its worldhood. At any rate, this much should be clear, that nature as
the categorial aggregate of certain structures of Being possessed by a
certain group of beings within the world cannot possibly explain the
worldhood of the world. (SZ, 65-66)
ll: The Mode ofBeing of the Beings Within The World

Before a positive answer can be given to the question of the mode
of Being proper to the world, we must first speak about the mode of
Being characteristic of the beings within the world. Our everyday
eksistence is, according to Heidegger, characterized by concern, our
concernful dealing with beings within the world. In these dealings
and preoccupations Dasein is not primarily interested in mere
knowledge but in action, in manipulating things and putting them to
use. Our theoretical knowledge is only a derivative mode of this
primordial concernful Being-in-the-world (SZ, 59-62); we shall return
to the change from concern to theoretical knowledge in one of the
chapters to follow.
Let us now Iimit ourselves provisionally to the question of how
exactly beings within the world are present to Dasein in its
concernful preoccupation with them as things. For this purpose we
must carefully analyze and describe our own concernful dealings
with beings within the world. It is difficult to describe the
116
phenomenon of concern correctly because of the obstacles created by

all kinds of prejudices which we have already formed in our everyday
life. (SZ, 67)
Moreover, one could also object that such an analysis would be a
waste of time because it obviously deals with matters that everyone
knows already. What could be moretrivial than knowing that in our
daily concem we deal with things? However, this objection takes for
granted that we already know what precisely makes a thing be a
thing. In what does the thinghood of the thing really consist? Some
think that it lies in the reality or materiality of the things, which
could then be further explained through extension; for others, things
are objects of value. Yet the things which we encounter in our
everyday concernful preoccupations clearly do not appear to us as
material objects or as objects of value. Starting from either view
Ieads us to overlook the typical character of things.
In this regard Greek thought was more primordial than ours
because the Greeks were closer to that which primordially appeared
to man. The ancient Greeks spoke about pragmata in reference to
that with which one has to do in one's praxis, one's concernful
preoccupation with things. Following the ideas of the ancient Greeks
Heidegger calls everything we encounter in our everyday concern a
piece of equipment, gear (Zeug). In this sense one still speaks of
equipment or gear for fishing, working, or playing in reference to the
things used "in order to" fish, work, or play. Thus everything that in
any way serves an "in order to ... " will be called a piece of equipment
from now on. The question now is: What is characteristic of equipment, what constitutes the mode of Being of equipment as such, what
is it that makes equipment equipment?
A tool is never by itself, but it is always found in reference to
other equipment. What constitutes the unity of this equipmental
manifold? Each separate piece of equipment is something "in order
to ... ", it "serves to ... " The various modalities of this "serving to ..."
characterize the "in order to ... ," the meaning of the equipment.
Thus the various pieces of equipment are connected by their "in order
to ... "; and this "in order to ... " gives the equipment manifold its
unity. (SZ, 68) The "serving to ..." necessarily includes a reference
and assignment to something eise.
In order to make progress with our analysis we must therefore
consider first a concrete equipment manifold and pay special
attention to the totality of the mutual references. Heidegger takes a
room as an example to clarify the point. Each piece of equipment in
the room is as such defined through its references to other pieces of
117
equipment. Moreover, one does not meet first the separate pieces of
equipment and then add them up in order to construct the room from
them as a unity, but one first encounters the room as such. Only in
and through this totality do the separate things receive their proper
meaning. Our knowledge of the room does not have to be explicit or
theoretical, for a certain preknowledge of what the term "room"
designates is sufficient to understand what is present in the room.
(SZ, 68-9) Accordingly, a particular piece of equipment does not show
itself and cannot be understood without the equipment manifold to
which it belongs; this manifold has to be previously discovered.
The terms "to know" and "to understand" refer here to that kind
ofknowledge which is still completely and immediately related to our
concernful preoccupation itself. For example, one uses a hammer in
the right way without explicitly understanding the proper mode of
Being of this piece of equipment. In our everyday life we do not know
the hammer theoretically as "simply given" and "merely there," but
we know how to use it. By using the hammer in the right way within
a certain equipment manifold, Dasein has appropriated it in the most
suitable way, for the hammer is not there to be looked at, but to
hammer with. By using the hammer, Dasein in its everyday
concernful preoccupation with things, has to submit to the
assignment that is constitutive for this piece of equipment, namely,
its "in-order-to."
By using the hammer, Dasein discovers its manipulability
(Handlichkeit); this term indicates the hammer's relationship to the
hand (manus, hand). A piece of equipment is a thing that is "ready
to hand" (zuhanden); it possesses "readiness-to-hand": "The kind of
Being which equipment possesses-in which it manifests itself in its
own terms-we call 'readiness-to-hand'." (SZ, 69) The fact that each
piece of equipment can be used "in order to ..." gives it its own Being,
its own character, its own "in itself' (An-sich).
By saying that our ordinary knowledge of pieces of equipment
and materials is not theoretical knowledge which later somehow
would be changed into practical knowledge, we do not intend to state
that our everyday concernful preoccupation with beings within the
world does not imply a standpoint and view in regard to equipment.
On the contrary, our concernful preoccupation really includes a
certain view of the equipment which immediately discovers the
fundamental assignment of each piece of equipment, its peculiar
reference to its "in order to .... " Our concernful preoccupation with
things uses the piece of equipment according to the reference which
manifests itself in its "serving to," its "being good for," its usability.
118
Heidegger calls this way of looking which Dasein has in regard to

equipment "circumspection" (Umsicht). Circumspection is Dasein's
overall view of the mode of Being characteristic of the things around
us that helps us to make or use or even recognize a piece of work, in
which precisely their "in order to ... " is discovered. (SZ, 69)
Before we proceed with this analysis of a piece of equipment a
few observations seem to be important. First of all, in this analysis,
as in many others, Heidegger very often uses expressions such as:
the "in order to ... ," the "for the sake of which ... ," the "toward which
... ," "that in virtue of which ... ," "that from which ...." As we have
seen already, these and similar expressions were created by
Heidegger in his reflections on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics.3
They are "creative" translations of expressions such as pros ti ... ,
kath'o, to ek tinos, hou heneka, etc. Secondly, one should note also
that Heidegger has not made an effort here to define the thinghood of
the thing, but rather the mode of Being characteristic of pieces of
equipment. It is undoubtedly true that in our everyday concern we
encounter things as pieces of equipment; this explains why
Heidegger, who is trying to develop an ontologico-eksistential
conception of world, focuses on pieces of equipment. The reason for
his doing EO isthat pieces of equipment cannot be understood except
in an equipmental context, a set of relationships, some kind of a
"world."4
Be this as it may, the proper character of equipment, its
"readiness to hand," is not explicitly evident in our everyday
concernful dealing with things. In its concern Dasein is not
primarily occupied with the equipment itself but with the piece of
work that is to be produced by it. It is the work to be done that makes
Dasein go to the above-mentioned referential totality; the work itselfis
present first. (SZ, 70) But the work whose realization is previously
projected has itself also the characteristic of being an equipment,
insofar as it also is "meant for ... " and is to "serve to ... ".
In the piece of work we do not only discover a constitutive
reference to its "what for," its usability, but also a reference to the
material which Dasein uses, a reference to the "whereof." A tableis
3Cf. Chapter I, section III, 2 above.
4For the meaning of the term "thing" and the relationship between thing and
world in Heidegger's later philosophy, see Joseph J. Kockelmans, Heidegger on
Art and Art Works. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1985, pp. 112-117, 122-124, 184, 199, and
passim.
119
made of wood or iron and as such it refers to "nature." Thus nature

is primordially discovered in the piece of work as the material out of
which it is made; nature is always co-discovered in the referential
totality. (SZ, 70)
Later, of course, nature can also be the theme of a special
consideration, but it primarily appears in our everyday concernful
preoccupation with things, i.e., in its necessary relation to
equipment. The field, the woods, the hill, all stand first in function of
the equipment of our daily concern: the fields are there for wheat or
vegetables, the forest for timber, and the hills for grapes. Finally,
each piece of equipment and each piece of work refers also to Dasein
itself for which it exists as such; equipment and work are there for
me, for us, for all. (SZ, 70)
The important point in these considerations is that in our
everyday concernful dealings the things do not appear first as a kind
of pure world stuff, so to speak, as "raw beings" which subsequently
somehow would receive a "form" of some kind. Things appear
primordially as "ready to hand." A sign of this is that when we meet
something new we always ask immediately what it is for. We put
ourselves always in a perspective that immediately reveals to us
fundamental references to tools and materials. In our everyday life
we are first of all concerned with things in our concernful
preoccupation. Of course, we can later change our perspective and
regard the things only as "merely there," by abstracting them from
the references that are constitutive for the mode of Being of
equipment as such. But in that case, we must first change our
primordial attitude toward things. The primordial characteristic of
being "ready to hand" of the beings within the world is not an
invention of philosophy, but indicates the Being that is characteristic
of, and proper to, equipment as such. (SZ, 71-72)
ID: Th.e Worldly Character of the Environmental World

Reference and Sign
What then, one may ask, has all this to do with the question of
the mode of Being of the world? First of all, Heidegger continues, it
should be evident that the world itself cannot possibly be a being
within the world. On the contrary, the world is precisely that which
makes all beings within the world as such possible, for it is always
necessarily presupposed by them. (SZ, 72)
What then is the mode of Being proper to the world? Andin
what sense can one say that there is a world? If Dasein is

fundamentally and in essence Being-in-the-world and always has an
implicit understanding of its own Being, then it seems to follow that
Dasein also has necessarily a certain understanding of the world.
Hence, by analyzing Dasein as Being-in-the-world in its relation to
beings within the world, it must be possible to understand something
of the world "wherein" our everyday concernful dealing with things
occurs.
Such an analysis demands that we first elucidate the
innerworldly character of these beings more precisely. The
traditional conceptions that start from things as simply given are
deficient here. Their defect is that they take off from presuppositions,
while giving the appearance that they do not presuppose anything.
The simply given thing is not primordially given, but a reduced and
abstract being that no one encounters directly in this form. It is
really a piece of equipment which by abstraction is reduced to an
object of theoretical knowledge. Of course, this knowledge is also a
way of Being-in-the-world, but it is not our primordial way. Our
primordial way of Being-in-the-world is our dealing with pieces of
equipment in our everyday concern. (SZ, 72)
The innerworldly character of things in the world manifests
itself most clearly when the equipmental order is disturbed. This can
happen in at least three different ways:
1) First, a piece of equipment can become unusable, so that it is
no Ionger good for what it was originally meant to serve. We become
aware of this, in the first place, in our concernful preoccupation itself
and by understanding what is immediately connected with our
concern. The thing that has become unusable, the broken hammer
for example, draws attention, and its pure Being-there now becomes
conspicuous. (SZ, 73) It has lost its equipmental character and asks
for repair or replacement so that it, or something else, can be ready to
hand again.
2) Secondly, when a piece of equipment that should be there
appears to be missing, the pieces that are there become obtrusive.
Through the absence of the one the others also become unusable; they
are no Ionger ready to hand but appear now as merely given and just
being there.
3) It can also happen that a piece of equipment that was lost
suddenly reappears and by its presence asks Dasein to produce a
certain piece of work. If this is impossible at that moment because
Dasein is already busy with something eise, the equipment can then
become disturbingly obstinate and an obsession to Dasein.
121
In all these cases a being that, strictly speaking, should be

ready to hand appears to us now as merely given and as merely being
there. At such moments Dasein becomes clearly aware of the special
character of what is ready to hand: that which is conspicuous as
unusable, that which is obtrusive through the absence of something
eise, and that which is obstinate in presenting itself at a moment
when it cannot be used, can be conceived as "merely given" only in
function of a more primordial readiness to hand. (SZ, 73-74)
As we have seen above, the mode of Being proper to the
equipment with which we deal in our everyday concern must be
determined through reference. On closer examination, however, it
appears that our concern is not primarily oriented toward this
referential character; it uses it without explicitly aiming at it. The
referential character comes to the fore only in special cases. In our
everyday concernful preoccupation with things the referential
character is recognized, but the ontological structure of equipment is
explicitly understood only in reflective thought. What is experienced
implicitly can be made explicit. In this explication the worldhood of
the world must finally come to the fore. (SZ, 75)
The worldly character of equipment manifests itself clearly only
when an unusable piece of equipment begins to appear as merely
given, i.e., at the moment when the equipment is deprived of its
worldly character. This fact shows that the world cannot be the sum
of things. Generally speaking, one can state that the references
which are constitutive for Dasein's world cannot be thematically and
explicitly understood by a Dasein which is still absorbed in its
concernful preoccupation with things. If one wants to meet what is
ready to hand as it is "in itself," then it should precisely not be
obtrusive and not conspicuous.
This non-obtrusiveness and
inconspicuousness are negative expressions for positive aspects of
what is ready to hand. What constitutes the equipment as it is "in
itself' is the fact that it is daily ready to hand without ernerging from
the referential whole of its being "in itself' as a merely given being.
(SZ, 75-6)
However, if the world can appear in concern, then it must have
been discovered previously to Dasein in some way or other. For if the
encounter of Dasein with what is ready to hand is to be possible, then
the world must already have been discovered. Thus the world
appears explicitly as that "wherein" Dasein already was and to which
it later also can return explicitly. Dasein cannot encounter
equipment save insofar as the equipment already belongs to Dasein's
world, for what is ready to hand would be meaningless if it were not
122
interwoven with this worldly structure. Accordingly, Dasein in its

circumspective concern operates in a totality of equipmental
references, and this circumspective concern presupposes a certain
familiarity with the world. How is this familiarity possible and how
can the worldly character of the beings within the world be explained
by it? (SZ, 76) It will be necessary at this point to study more carefully
the phenomenon of reference in order to be able to answer these
questions.
As we have seen above, any piece of equipment has meaning
only within a totality of references, and it has become clear also, to
some degree at least, that there must be a relation between this
referential totality and the world. There must, therefore, be a way
from the phenomenon of reference to the worldhood of the world. In
order to be able to show more clearly the referential character proper
to equipment, one can best begin by contemplating a piece of
equipment in which two different references are present at the same
time, such as for instance in signs. (SZ, 76-77)
The word "sign" can designate many kinds of things, but in the
first instance, signs appear to be pieces of equipment whose specific
character as equipmei:lt consists in indicating. In our everyday life
we find such signs in traffic signs, signposts, boundary markers,
water buoys, signals, banners, and the like. Showing or indicating
can be defined as a kind of referring and referring itself is, if taken as
formally as possible, a form of relating. But relation cannot be
conceived of here as the genus for the kinds of references which may
become differentiated as sign, icon, symbol, expression, signification,
and so on. A relation is something formal that is constituted by a
process of formalization which may take its point of departure from
any concrete kind of context. The formally general character of
relation can be brought to the fore, when we realize that every
reference is a relation, but not every relation is a reference; that every
indication is a reference, but not every reference an indication, and
finally that every indication is a relation, but not every relation an
indication. This being the case, it becomes evident that, if we are to
investigate such phenomena as references, signs, or even
significations, there is nothing to be gained by characterizing them
as relations. One may even ask the question of whether relations,
because of their formally general character, do not have their
ontological root in the phenomenon of reference. (SZ, 77)
Therefore, even if the present analysis is to be confined to the
interpretation of the signs as distinct from the phenomenon of
reference, as suggested by our analysis of an item of equipment, even
123
within this Iimitation we cannot properly investigate the full

roultiplicity of possihle signs. For among them there are indices,
numhers, pointer-readings, warning signals, symptoms, signs
which refer to something in the past, signs to mark something, signs
by which things can he recognized, all having different ways of
indicating, regardless of what may he serving as such a sign.
Furthermore, from such "signs" we must still distinguish traces,
residues, memorials, documents, testimonies, significations,
appearances, expressions, symhols, etc. Ohviously these phenomena
can he formulated quite easily hecause of their relational character.
But what we shall find in this way in the end says nothing that is
roore than the easy schema of content and form. It is for this reason,
Heidegger says, that we intend to restriet ourselves to an analysis
and description of signs which-from the viewpoint of our common
language-are signs in an authentic and, moreover, original way, in
order to focus not on their reference-structure as such, which theyas we have seen-have in common with every item of equipment, hut
on the characteristic traits of the reference-structure of the sign as
such. (SZ, 77-78)
Let us, therefore, Heidegger continues, take as an example the
turn-signal which a hus or a car uses to indicate the direction it will
take at an intersection. This sign is an item of equipment which is
ready to hand for the driver in his concern with driving as well as for
those who are not traveling with him and make use of it either hy
yielding the right of way or hy stopping. This sign thus is ready to
hand within the world in the entire equipment-context of vehicles
and traffic regulations. It is equipment for indicating, and as equipment, it is constituted hy references. It has the character of the "inorder-to ... " of every equipment; hut in addition to this it has also its
own definite serviceahility: it is for indicating. This indicating
which is characteristic of the sign can again he determined as a kind
of referring-to, hut then this referring is different from the
ontological structure of the sign as equipment. (SZ, 78)
Referring taken as indicating is rather founded on the
ontological structure of equipment, thus on the "serviceahility-for"
which is characteristic of equipment as such. But a thing may he
Serviceahle without for that matter heing a sign. As equipment, a
hammer, too, has a certain serviceahility, hut this does not make it a
sign. Indicating, as a form of referring, is a way in which the
toward-which of a serviceahle thing hecomes concrete; it determines
an item of equipment as for this concrete "toward-which." On the
other hand, the kind of reference we have in "serviceahility-for," is a
124
characteristic trait of equipment as equipment. That the "towardwhich" of a serviceable thing is made concrete here in the form of
"indicating" is accidental for the constitution of an equipment as
such. In this example the difference between the reference of
Serviceability and the reference of indicating is already roughly
indicated. These two certainly do not coincide; and only when they
are united does the concreteness of a definite kind of equipment
manifest itself. It is certain that indicating differs in principle from
referring, taken as a constitutive characteristic of equipment as
such; but it is certain also that the sign is related in a distinctive way
to the kind of Being which is characteristic of whatever equipmental
totality may be ready to hand in the environment. Thus we may
conclude that in our concernful dealing equipment-for-indicating is
utilized in a very special manner. The meaning and the root of this
special manner must be clarified next. (SZ, 78-79)
A sign indicates. What precisely is meant by this? In
answering this question one must focus on man's typical kind of
dealing which is appropriate to equipment for indicating, and see
what this teaches us about the readiness-to-hand characteristic of
that kind of equipment. The appropriate way of dealing with a sign,
such as a turn-signal, certainly does not consist in staring at it, or
explicitly identifying it as an "indicating thing." Nor is such a sign
authentically encountered if we turn our glance in the direction
which the signal indicates, and focus on something present at hand
which is found in the region indicated. Such a sign seems rather to
address itself immediately to man's circumspection which is
characteristic of his concernful dealing with things, impelling it to
bring into an explicit survey whatever the environment may contain
at that moment. Such a survey obviously does not grasp the sign's
readiness-to-hand, but tries to bring about an orientation in the
environment. (SZ, 79)
But if it is true that signs of this kind make some environment
accessible to us in such a way that our concernful dealing receives an
orientation, then it is evident that a sign does not stand in the
relationship of indicating to just one other thing or some other things
in concreto; it is rather a piece of equipment which explicitly brings
an equipment totality within the range of our circumspection. In
other words, signs indicate two things: first the environment
wherein one lives and where one's concern dwells, and then the
typical way in which man is involved in something. (SZ, 79-80; cf. 66)
Be this as it may, it appears thus that signs are pieces of
equipment which in addition to referring to a possible equipment
125
totality also indicate something. This indicating is founded upon the

equipment structure, the "in-order-to" of the equipment as such and
concretizes the "toward-which" of its serviceability. Furthermore,
the sign's indicating, just as the equipmental character of everything
that is ready to hand, functions in an equipment totality, i.e., in a
whole context of references. Finally, a sign is not merely ready to
hand tagether with other pieces of equipment, but its readiness-tohand precisely makes the environment in each concrete case
explicitly accessible for circumspection. Thus a sign is something
ontic which is ready to hand and which in addition to being this piece
of equipment also explicitly indicates the ontological structure of
what is ready to hand as a whole, i.e., the structure of certain
totalities or "worlds," and in the final analysis "the" world. (SZ, 80-83)
It is clear, therefore, that the reference structure as such is
indeed a necessary, but not a sufficient characteristic of a sign as
sign, because that structure is characteristic of every item of
equipment. The distinguishing characteristic of a sign is that it, via
this general reference structure, indicates something, points to
something within a concrete context of references; in indicating
something concrete the sign also points to this referential totality and
finally even to the world, or at least to a certain world. The final
meaning of this indicating and pointing-to consists in the fact that it
makes a certain environment or referential totality explicitly
accessible for circumspection by pointing in a certain direction,
indicating an orientation, making possible a differentiation, making
a structute understandable, etc. (SZ, 82)
IV: Destination and Meaningfulness. The Beingof the World

What is ready to hand always manifests itself as a being within
the world, as a being that belongs to the world. That which
determines what is ready to hand as such, its readiness-to-hand,
therefore, has somehow a relationship with the world and its
worldhood. Moreover, as we have seen, whenever we encounter
anything, the world itself has already been discovered previously. As
pre-discovered, the world precedes the discovery of the individual
beings within the world.
The question now is one of how the world can let the ready to
hand be encountered as such? (SZ, 83) Wehave already discovered
two modes of reference: the Serviceability of equipment and the
usability of materials. The "in-order-to" of Serviceability and the
"what-for" of usability always determine the possible ways in which
126
the fundamental reference, proper to any piece of equipment as such,

can be made concrete. Usually these concretizations are called
properties; for example, we say that an arrow has the property of
being able to indicate something, and that a stone has the property
that one can use it in building a house. However, this is not a correct
way of speaking: merely-given-beings have properties, but the readyto-hand has appropriatenesses and suitabilities. The appropriateness of a piece of equipment determines its properties; thus the
suitability of the hammer for hammering determines the form and
the weight of its head and handle.
We also have to distinguish between Serviceability and
appropriateness; Serviceability is the necessary condition for the
appropriateness of the equipment. The reference or assignment of
the hammer determines its appropriateness and suitability, and the
latter determine its properties. A thing is suitable-for ... because as
ready-to-hand it is determined by the "in-order-to ... " of its
serviceability. Serviceability and suitability are therefore related to
each other as necessary condition and concrete realization. The
mode of Being that is proper to what is ready-to-hand is characterized
by a referential structure; it has in itself the character of "beingrelative-to ... ". For example, the hammer is essentially relative to
and involved in hammering. This being-relative is not a secondary
or accidental characteristic of what is ready to hand, but defines
precisely its mode of Being. Heidegger calls this "being-essentiallyrelative-to ... " the Bewandtnis, which we perhaps may translate by
being-destined. (SZ, 83-84)
This destination includes that which is destined for and that for
which it is destined. Through its destination one can adequately
determine the mode of Being that is proper to something which is
ready to hand. (SZ, 84) The destination implies something that is
destined for ... , namely the piece of equipment or the material, as
well as that for which it is destined, namely the work to be done with
it. The hammer is destined for hammering, the hammering can be
destined for making furniture, the furniture for holding books, the
books for reading, and so on. The "what-for" of a piece of equipment
is ultimately determined by the totality of all these partial
destinations. Since an infinite series of destinations is impossible,
there must be a last "what-for," that itself is no Ionger destined for
anything eise. This last "what-for" can only be Dasein itself. Dasein
is the ultimate "what-for" in which all references included in
destination find their final term. Dasein in its concern discovers
intraworldly beings as having a certain destination.
127
Heidegger calls this form of Dasein's discovering of beings

within the world Bewendenlassen, i.e., letting be destined, or briefly
Zetting be, making possible and allowing the encounter with the
beings. In order that a being within the world can be ready to hand
Dasein must first discover its destination within a given totality of
destinations. In this way Dasein does not produce the mode of Being
and the actuality of the equipment, but only unveils it; thus letting-be
is a necessary condition for the encounter with beings as ready to
hand. (SZ, 84)
This letting-be can take place in different spheres; and at each
time a particular kind of destination of the beings within the world
appears. In the sciences it Ieads to beings whose kind of destination
is totally different from the one encountered in the letting-be of our
everyday concern. In any case, the beings are never first discovered
as "raw beings," or as mere things; they manifest themselves
primordially as beings with a certain destination, and they can
manifest themselves only with this destination once the latter has
been discovered by Dasein's letting-be. (SZ, 85)
Accordingly, the mode of Being proper to what is ready to hand
is its being-destined-for. If such a being is to be discovered, the
totality of destinations proper to the multitude ofthe beings within the
world involved of which this piece of equipment is a part, must have
been discovered previously. Precisely this pre-discovery of a complex
of destinations brings to light the worldly character of the beings. But
this is not all: the discovery of the complex of destinations which
must Iead to the discovery of the final "what-for," is ultimately based
on a fundamental projection of Dasein; in this "that-for-and-towardwhich ... " (das Woraufhin), Dasein discovers its world. This
fundamental projection opens the domain "wherein" Dasein
discovers its world. This fundamental projection opens the domain
"wherein" Dasein unveils the constitutive references of equipment,
thereby discovering the beings within the world and freeing them as
such. (SZ, 86)
Dasein itself must be characterized essentially by a certain
understanding of Being in Dasein's own mode of Being itself. On the
other hand, Dasein is essentially Being-in-the-world. But in that
case it always already has a certain understanding of the world.
This understanding of the world, as considered above, can now be
explained as follows: that wherein Dasein understands itself
beforehand in the mode of referring itself, isthat for which it has let
the beings be encountered beforehand. The "wherein" of an act of
understanding which refers itself is "that for which" one lets the

beings be encountered in the kind of Being that belongs to their
destinations; and this "wherein" is the phenomenon of the world.
And the structure of "that to which" Dasein assigns and refers itself
is what makes up the worldhood of the world. (SZ, 86)
Heidegger's term "wherein" should not be understood here in a
spatial sense. The term here merely indicates the being-with and the
being-open-to which are essential to Dasein. By remaining within
the references which_ this "wherein" includes, Dasein discovers the
destination of the beings within the world, their being ready-to-hand.
At the same time Dasein discovers its Being as a Being-able-to-be
insofar as it learns to understand its own eksistence by grasping the
references as a priori conditions and foundations of its own activities.
For this reason one could also speak about the referential character
of all the references included in the "where-in" as signifying
(bedeuten). If the totality of all signifying relations is called total
meaningfulness, then this term can be suitably used to indicate the
worldhood of the world, the essential structure ofthat "where-in" in
which Dasein is eksistent. (SZ, 87)
All this enables us to have a better understanding of Dasein's
Being-in-the-world. In its familiarity with the context of references
to which it itself contributes, and which determine the character that
is proper to the world, Dasein is the ontic condition for the possibility
of discovering the beings within the world. These beings, as beings
that are ready-to-hand, are always encountered in that world and
can thus make themselves known as they are in themselves. (SZ, 87)
Dasein is in this way defined as such: along with its own Being, a
context of ready-to-hand things is essentially co-discovered. Dasein,
insofar as it is what it is, has always related itself already to a world
which it encounters, and this reference to, and dependence on, such
a world belongs essentially to Dasein's own Being. The context of
references itself, however, which is familiar to Dasein, includes the
ontological condition that makes it possible for Dasein's
understanding to bring to light meaning and significance. These, in
turn, form the basis for words and language. (SZ, 87) We shall
retum to language in one of the chapters to follow.
Concluding we may say thus that under the heading of the
worldhood of the world, Heidegger investigates the world of Dasein in
its everydayness in contrast to the derivative world of the sciences.
World has its center in Dasein itself and originally coincides with our
own environmental world (Umwelt) insofar as this environment is
experienced in our lived experiences. Heidegger shows impressively
how the things within this world are given not as physical objects
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which simply occur as obviously present-at-hand (vorhanden), but as

usable things or pieces of equipment (Zeuge) which refer to possible
applications within our "practical" world and are thus ready-to-hand
(zuhanden). Things of this type refer to one another and constitute
reference-systems and only within these systems does the meaning of
these things become manifest.
Heidegger's investigation of the things in their surrounding
world shows how closely things are related to the world, and how
closely both are connected with man as Dasein. Heidegger also
shows that the world is not a thing, nor the sum total of all things,
but rather the a priori totality of meaning toward which the different
pieces of equipment point by their structure, their "for-what's." What
we call "the world," taken in the strictest and mostoriginal sense, is
the totality of all mutual reference-systems within which everything
is to be put by man as Dasein in order for it to be able to appear to man
as having such determinate meaning. Dasein first builds up this
world by means of its concern (within the context of a historical
community) and then lives and dwells in it.
CHAPTERVI
SPATIALITY AND SPACE

BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AS BEING-WITH
In this chapter I should like to discuss two issues which

Heidegger treats in different contexts. The issue of Dasein's
spatiality is raised in connection with the notion of world and
particularly with the "aroundness" of our environmental world. The
section on Dasein's Being with others is devoted to an issue that is
dealt with independently of the notion of world and seems to form a
preparation for the second part of the next chapter, namely the
everyday Being of the "there" of Dasein. I have nevertheless brought
these issues tagether in this chapter merely for "aesthetic" reasons;
both issues can be discussed briefly so that bringing them tagether in
one chapter would result in a better balance with respect to the length
of the chapters of this book. In view of the fact that both issues are
presented herein the order in which they appear in Being and Time,
the reader should not encounter a serious difficulty in following
Heidegger's own train of thought.
In the explanation of the Being-in structure which is proper to
Dasein as Being-in-the-world, it was pointed out that this Being-in
should not be understood in a spatial sense. Yet Dasein obviously
does possess a certain spatiality. Furthermore, in the preceding
reflections it was not stressed either that each of us is in the world
tagether with other human beings and that the world thus is our
common world. An explanation of our Being with others and our
Dasein with others is essential to come to a better understanding of
the "who" of Dasein in its everyday concern. But before turning to
these issues let us first focus on spatiality and space. Here we shall
consider the spatiality of the beings within the world first in order
then to focus our attention on "space" itself. (SZ, 102)
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SECTION 1: SPATIALITY AND SPACEl

1: The Spatiality of the Beings Within the World
If space somehow belongs to the world, then beings within the
world must have spatiality. This point was already implicitly
affirmed in our analysis of the ontological structure of beings within
the world. Among the things which are ready-to-hand there are
some which are proximally ready to hand; indeed, the concept of
closeness is implied in the expression "ready to hand". This closeness is, of course, different in each concrete case and, as should be
clear from the foregoing, this closeness cannot be measured by
yardsticks- or derived from "pure" space.
The closeness of equipment is regulated by the use we make of
it. Things which we frequently use are closer to us than others
which we rarely need. Dasein in its concernful dealings with things
gives each piece its proper place according to the importance it has in
life. Each piece of equipment has its place within the totality of the
equipmental context of our everyday concern. Thus the closeness of
equipment is primordially defined by an organization whose ordering
principle lies in Dasein's activities.
The space which arises in this way has no relation to geometric
space, of which we shall speak later. The various places of space, in
the sense in which we take it here, do not all have the same
importance; their hierarchy is determined by the degree of necessity
which the pieces of equipment have for the work that is to be done.
"Place" therefore means here the location which Dasein gives to
a piece of equipment within a certain equipmental context in function
of its destination with regard to the work to be done. The various
places in a certain space are thus related in the same manner as
pieces of equipment within a certain equipmental context. (SZ, 102-3)
This means that the space involved is neither homogeneaus (because
there is a privileged topos) nor isotropic (because there is a privileged
direction); this space. is not isometric either.
Be this as it may, before Dasein can assign places, a certain
region (Gegend) is tobe discovered in which they will appear in the
intended connection. U sually such a region is said to be the sum
total of all the places; it appears, however, that the region is rather
lCf. George F. Sefler, "Heidegger's Philosophy of Space," in Philosophy Today,
17(1973), 246-54; Ch. H. Seibert, "On Being and Space in Heidegger's Thinking."
Phil. Diss. DePaul University, Chicago, 1972.
SPATIALITY AND BEING-WITH
133
the necessary condition for the assignment of places. One should

keep in mind that a place is never an isolated point, sufficient unto
itself; a place necessarily means a relation to other places. Being
remote from one another, orientation, and position in reference to
one another always presuppose the relevant region. (SZ, 103)
The given hierarchy of places within a certain region
determines the typical character of Dasein's world, which Heidegger
calls "the aroundness" (das Umhafte). As we have seen already, the
hierarchy of places itself is dependent on the function and destination
of each piece of equipment that has its place in the hierarchy. Hence
the places cannot be deduced from pure distance since the latter
excludes all forms of hierarchy and does not consider the worldly
character of space. Thus it follows that space cannot be understood
separately and independently from the beings that occupy the space.
On the contrary, space gets its meaning from these beings. Dasein
does not first discover space itself, but rather the places; that is to say,
in our everyday concern with beings within the world, space is given
in the form of places which the different pieces of equipment occupy
within a certain equipmental totality.
Dasein thus discovers the places of the things that are "merely
there," but it assigns places to those things that areready to hand. In
this way I discover the place of the sun in the sky, but I assign a place
to my pen within the equipment totality needed for writing. Dasein
meets the region only in its own action; the discovery of this region,
however, is connected with the discovery of the referential context in
which each piece of equipment becomes meaningful to Dasein. (SZ,
103-104)
As in the case of what is ready to hand, Dasein in its everyday
concern is familiar with the region, the work domain, without
grasping it explicitly as such. Only the deficient modes of concern
make the region explicitly conscious to Dasein; for example, only
when a piece of equipment appears not to be present, does Dasein
become conscious ofits place as place. (SZ, 103-104)
II: Dasein's Spati.ality

People usually think that first there is empty space, and that
this space is subsequently filled in some way. According to
Heidegger, however, worldhood is the basis for the referential
relations between pieces of equipment, and these relations, in turn,
are the foundation for the various places. In all this Dasein exercises
a spatializing function; Dasein makes place and spaces be. Since we
134
have defined the spatiality of what is ready-to-hand in terms of the

place which it occupies, the question arises of how we are to describe
Dasein's own spatiality. Would there not be the same difference
between these two forms of spatiality as between the modes of Being
that are proper to the two beings to which they belong? Dasein's
Being in space, at any rate, must be conceived in terms of the
relations which unite Dasein with its familiar ready-to-hand things.
The spatiality of its own Being-in is determined by the activities of
removing distances (Ent-fernung), i.e., bringing-close, and of giving
directions (Ausrichtung), i.e., situating. (SZ, 104-105)
First of all, Dasein makes distance and farness disappear
wherever feasible. We may even say that Dasein essentially removes
distances; it brings beings close so that they become ready to hand.
In doing so, Dasein implicitly discovers distance, for distance
appears to Dasein only insofar as Dasein brings close. A point is not
away from another point; for a point cannot bridge the distance, it
cannot make it larger or smaller, it does not bring close. Distances
manifest themselves only to Dasein's activities of bringing close. In
everyday life this bringing close is always a question of circumspective, concernful dealing with things. By bringing beings
close, Dasein wants to make these things available to itself and keep
them so. In a derivative sense the different forms of theoretical
knowledge also have something ofthis bringing-close. (SZ, 105-106)
Accordingly, in Dasein there is an essential tendency to
closeness; speed records, radio, television, planes, and space travel
can be viewed in this perspective. But this bringing close itself does
not yet give Dasein explicit awareness of space. In everyday life,
remoteness is never understood as sheer distance; all judgments of
concernful Dasein refer to its concernful dealing with beings within
the world and are more concerned with lived estimates, such as a
stone's throw, than with the exact measurements of the sciences.
Even when Dasein uses scientific measurements and views, it
understands them only in terms of its everyday concernful dealing
with things. For example, one hour is for Dasein primordially not a
duration of sixty minutes, but the time needed to perform this or that
work.
If the estimate of Dasein does not coincide with that of the
sciences, it should not be said that therefore it is wrong or subjective.
If, for example, the distance of three miles is ten times as long for a
sick person as for a healthy one, the former is not necessarily
mistaken, for he needs indeed ten times as much energy as the
healthy person to go that distance. This form of subjectivity has
135
nothing to do with arbitrariness; it is nonsense to oppose to Dasein's

world a "world in itself' as the only real world. The world which
Dasein discovers in its concernful dealings with things is the "real"
world: "Dasein's circumspective 'bringing together' in its everyday
concern discovers the 'true world,' the beings near which Dasein, as
eksisting, is already." (SZ, 106)
The spatiality of Dasein, which is essentially Being-in-theworld, is not to be compared with scientific space; the distances of
Dasein's concernful living cannot be compared with objective
measurements, either; rather they are defined only by that activity of
Dasein in which it concernfully deals with things and by the
directing intention that created them. Dasein's bringing close does
not consist in placing a thing closer to the body, but in placing it
within the sphere of things that are ready to hand, i.e., by making
this thing itself ready to hand. The bringing closer is not oriented
toward our body but toward the center of our everyday concern. It is
even false to state that our body occupies a place similar to the places
of other "material bodies." The place of my own body should also be
understood only in terms of these activities of bringing close. (SZ, 107)
When Dasein speaks of here it does not mean a point of space,
but only the where-at of its present occupation. Dasein is not a being
that is closed in itself; it is always already there (Da), near a piece of
work to be done. Its here is only the center of all theres. Forthis
reason Dasein never moves according to the demands of geometry
from one point to another; Dasein can only change its here.
Likewise, Dasein cannot cross over certain distances, for these
distances are not fixed but precisely projected from the place where
Dasein in each case is concernfully active. Dasein cannot eliminate
distances either; it can do no more than change them. (SZ, 107-8)
As Being-in-the-world Dasein brings-close and at the same time
situates. It has the character of directionality. (SZ, 108) Whenever
Dasein brings-close, a certain situation is implied within a region.
This situating brings to light directions and regions which Dasein
can subsequently use. By its eksistence Dasein brings close and
situates regions, and in doing this it is led by its circumspection.
Fundamentally both bringing close and situating are based on
Dasein's Being-in-the-world itself. (SZ, 108-110)
In our consideration of the world we came to the conclusion that
Dasein as Being-in-the-world already has discovered a world. This
discovery frees beings within a certain referential context: Dasein
Iets beings be (Bewendenlassen) by discovering them within a given
referential context for a totality of destinations. Dasein is guided in
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this by circumspection, which in turn presupposes knowledge of the

total meaningfulness as the worldhood of the world. We have seen
also that the beings are not attained in their spatiality unless Dasein
itself spatializes. By establishing a context of references Dasein
discovers spatiality, i.e., the place of a piece of equipment within the
referential context and through this context within the region in
which this context is situated. What is ready to hand is not first
a-spatial but it already has a place which by virtue of its own
destination is determined for it.
There is no question here yet of geometrical space, but only of
the place which belongs to a piece of equipment within an
equipmental totality. Dasein gives itself and the equipment a place, it
assigns the places, makes room for what is ready to hand, discovers
the place that is proper to each being, even though a spatial
determination is always proper to the totality of characteristics of the
beings within the world. Dasein's spatializing activity is an
eksistential. Because of this fundamental characteristic, Dasein can
instaU itself in space, it can assign a place to beings and, when
necessary, also change this place again. (SZ, 111)
In Heidegger's view, therefore, space is not in the subject, nor is
the world in space. But, one may ask, is it possible to conceive of
space as being neither subjective (Kant) nor objective (Democritus)?
Heidegger says that there appears to be a third possibility: "Space is
rather 'in' the world insofar as space has been discovered by the
Being-in-the-world which is constitutive for Dasein." (SZ, 111) Space
is neither subjective nor objective; one must say rather that Dasein
spatializes. Because Dasein is neither a pure ego nor a pure subject,
traditional subjectivism is radically transcended. Since, however,
Dasein itself spatializes, space is an a priori element, in the sense
that Dasein's mode of Being founds the discovery of space, a discovery
which is possible only in Dasein's encounter with things.
Strictly speaking spatiality is never conceived as such, but it
remains attached to what is ready-to-hand and therefore also to
Dasein's concernful dealing with things. Space is discovered
primordially only by concernful Dasein and remains as such
connected with the spatiality, i.e., the places, of pieces of equipment.
But because of this discovery, because of this presence of spatiality,
Dasein can develop a theoretical science of pure space, namely
geometry.
Heidegger does not claim that these answers fully solve the
problems of space, but he only wanted to shed light on the function of
space in the structure of Dasein's daily concern. He appears to
137
approach the problern in the right way because space is primordially

present in our everyday life; and only by starting from this
primordial presence can we obtain knowledge of space as such. The
preceding analyses make us understand how space is primordially
encountered, but the fundamental problern of the ontological
meaning of space itself remains still unsolved.2
The sciences certainly are not able to solve this basic problem,
either, for scientific space abstracts from every relationship of space
to the world. The places which have their own role and their own
character in the world are stripped of all individuality in the eyes of
the sciences. In this way, spatiality loses its typical character of
destination. In the sciences the world in which Dasein concernfully
lives changes into a scientific world, into "nature" as the correlate of
the empirical sciences, and so what is ready to hand is ultimately
reduced to an extended being that is merely there. Thus the
homogeneous and isotropic space of the sciences deprives the
environment of what is ready to hand of its worldhood.
In our era, however, we are so strongly influenced by the
sciences that we find Dasein's primordial attitude toward space
difficult to understand. Heidegger's main intention here was to try to
make us understand this primordial attitude. (SZ, 110-113)
SECTION 2: BEING-IN-THE-WORLD AS "BEING WITH"

1: ''Being With.'' and ''Dasein With Others"
The preceding chapters have merely offered a preliminary idea
of Being-in-the-world. In the analyses of the world's worldhood and
spatiality, the whole phenomenon of Being-in-the-world was always
included in our considerations; but the constitutive structure of
Being-in-the-world did not stand out as distinctively as the
phenomenon "world" itself. The ontological interpretation of the
world came first because Dasein in its everyday life is not only in the
world but also related to it in a very special way. For this reason it
was necessary also to devote a few considerations to spatiality and
space. Now, however, we must pay attention to the other constitutive
2In his later works Heidegger often returns to the notion of space, particularly
in its relationship to time and Being. Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling
Thinking," in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York:
Harper and Row, 1971, pp. 143-61; On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz.
New York: Harper and Row, 1971, pp. 101-108; On Time and Being, pp. 14-24.
138
structures of Being-in-the-world. Two of these structures are

indicated by "Being with" (Mitsein) and "Dasein with others"
(Mitdasein), which are just as primordial as Being-in-the-world
itself. Only after considering these structures will it be possible to
answer the question of "who" the Dasein is of everyday, concernful
living. (SZ, 113-114)
Concerning "Being with," others are as equiprimordially
present to Dasein as equipment is: in our dealing with beings within
the world the presence of others is discovered at the same time
because they also are involved in these pieces of equipment. A house
belongs to someone, it is inhabited by someone, and built by someone.
It is therefore absurd to think that Dasein first encounters equipment
and only afterwards, by abstraction and reflection, the others. We did
not mention the others explicitly in the preceding analyses, but they
were always implicitly present; for the world cannot possibly be
understood without any relation to them. As Being-in-the-world, our
eksistence is already a Being tagether with others. (SZ, 116)
What exactly is this "Being with" and what does it make
fundamentally possible? At first one would be inclined to interpret
"Being with" as the co-presence of two simply given beings, in the
sense in which even two marbles in a bag suffice to constitute a copresence. What makes "Being with" possible, however, is not the
spatial proximity of two beings but their mutual relation. Where no
mutual relation is possible there can be no "Being with." In other
words, "Being with" is proper to Dasein.
The term "with" indicates a community: if I want to be "with"
someone, there must be a certain communion between him and me.
What we have in common binds us together. Sometimes even
community is conceived of as ifit had a spatial aspect so that whoever
is closest to me is then "with" me. This is, of course, a false idea
because it transfers a way of looking at things to Dasein. Things that
aretagether often do constitute a unity, but this unity has nothing to
do with a community. Genuine community has nothing to do with
space; for example, travelers in the same plane are often strangers to
one another, while a friend away in Africa can be very close to me.
Another view of "Being with" regards a common nature as the
basis of Being together. This could perhaps be defended, but one
would have to be able to indicate clearly what is to be understood by
"nature." To bring to light the different characteristics of "Being
with," it is probably best to start from concrete examples. Before
doing so, however, it will be necessary to devote our attention to
Sartre's critique of Heidegger's approach.
139
Sartre has serious objections to Heidegger's way of thinking3

and his critique appears to be very useful for a correct understanding
of Heidegger's intention. 4 According to Sartre, one should never pass
from the ontological to the ontic Ievel in considering topics such as
these; therefore, one can never confirm a general theory with
concrete examples.
However, Sartre's objection arises from the fact that he
misunderstands the meaning which Heidegger attaches to the terms
"ontological" and "ontic." The ontologicallevel is not distinct from the
ontic Ievel, but precisely is the Ievel which contains the essential
structure of the ontic, which Sartre wrongly identifies with the
concrete. Heidegger hirnself never speaks of the concrete since this
immediately makes one think of the abstract; the antithesis between
the concrete and the abstract is both meaningless and wrang here.
There is no antithesis whatsoever between the ontological and the
ontic. In this sense Heidegger says that "Dasein is ontically
distinctive in that it is ontological." (SZ, 12)
Such a statement becomes meaningless if one separates the
ontic from the ontological as the concrete from the abstract and the
immanent from the transcendent. For Heidegger, that which makes
the Being of things and of Dasein intelligible is ontological. In an
ontological understanding of a being one tries to grasp the essential
structure which makes this being possible as such. As long as this
understanding is not yet explicit, it is called preontological; properly
ontological understanding is found in ontology, which raises the
question of the meaning of Beingin a radical way. In view of the fact
that Being is intimately related to the beings it is clear that the
ontological belongs essentially to the ontic. (SZ, 13)
In the ontological examination of the existentiell, one tries to
make manifest that which is characteristic of ontic eksistence. The
fundamental structures of Dasein are not abstract structures
constituted by men, but real structures present in each concrete
Dasein. Heidegger always starts from the ontic; ontology only
explicates what is included in the ontic as in the root which makes
ontology possible. Sartre, however, separates them, so that his
3Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological

Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956, pp. 244250.
4Cf. Walter Biemel, Le concept du monde chez Heidegger. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1950, pp. 67-74.
140
antithesis between the concrete and the abstract remains locked up

within traditional metaphysics.
Secondly, Sartre thinks that the difference on this point between
Hegel and Husserl, on the one hand, and Heidegger, on the other,
lies in this that for the former "Being with" expresses an Opposition
while for the latter it means primarily a solidarity.5 This is incorrect
in the sense that Heidegger does not yet want to speak about the
various types of man's "Being with," but only about the conditions
which make possible love as weil as hatred, solidarity as weil as
indifference. Every relationship with others presupposes already
"Being with." For Heidegger, "Being with" does not necessarily mean
to live in harmony, but only that man from the first moment of his
eksistence lives in. a certain openness in which the other is already
enclosed. Only because of this fundamental openness to the other are
the different types of"Being with" possible.
But Iet us now try to understand "Being with" concretely
through an example taken from daily life. When two people admire a
painting and are similarly affected by it, this harmony of feelings
brings them closer together, it develops a bond between them which
could become the root of a community. What exactly occurred there?
Together, the one with the other, they looked at a painting. The one
entered the domain which was being unveiled by the other; the being
which became manifest in it to the one also became manifest to the
other. Thus the one shared with the other that which had become
open to him in his world and thereby shared that world itself with the
other.
This sharing of one world is what constitutes their Being
together. Because of the fact that they share one world they have
something in common, viz., this world. On the basis of this common
possession of one world, a community can be constituted according to
the different modalities of "Being with," which range from Iove to
hatred, from solidarity to indifference.
As we have pointed out above, what is "ready to hand" in
everyday life always refers to an other as to its maker or its user. For
this reason there is never any completely isolated Dasein. As soon as
Dasein discovers the world, it has also already discovered the other
who co-exists with him, who is also in the same way open to other
beings and who, therefore, insofar as he shares in the same world,
enters into a mutual relation with Dasein.
5eing and Nothingness, pp. 245-247.
141
"Thus Dasein's world frees beings which not only are quite
different from equipment and things, but which also, in accordance
with their mode of Being as Dasein, themselves are 'in' the world as
'Being-in-the-world' and are at the same time encountered in an
intraworldly way. These beings are neither 'merely there' nor ready
to hand; on the contrary, they are like the Dasein itself which frees
them: they are there too, and are there with it." (SZ, 118) "By reason
of this 'with'-like (mithaften) Being-in-the-world, the world is always
the one that I share with others. The world of Dasein is our world, a
'with-world' (Mitwelt). 'Being in' is 'Being with' others. Their
intraworldly 'Being in itself is 'Dasein with others' (Mitdasein)."
(SZ, 118) Heidegger refers here to "Being with others" by means of
two different words: Mitsein, i.e., my Being with others, and
Mitdasein, i.e., the being "open" (da) of the other to me and other
people. Seen from my standpoint the other's way of Being is "Dasein
with" me and others. I can discover the others as co-existent because
I myself am "Being with," that is, I share with them my openness to
things and the world.
Although "Being with" them presupposes an equality of nature,
co-existence is possible only because this equality of nature applies to
beings which by their nature are open to whatever manifests itself to
them and which therefore can share the world that is common to
them.
The basic mistake of modern philosophy since Descartes lies,
according to Heidegger, in the fact that it understands the human
"subject" too narrowly. Modem philosophy starts with a pure subject
to whom it later tries to give a world; and still later it tries to bring
this subject in contact with others. Such post-surgical constructions
of the world and of man's fellow subjects are arbitrary and
meaningless. Preoccupied lest it presuppose anything whatsoever
regarding the subject's essence, modern philosophy fails to
camprehend Dasein in its complexity, that is, as a being which is
already Being-in-the-world, which is open to other things and other
beings of the mode of Dasein and which co-exists with them.
Heidegger intends to avoid this fundamental mistake. For this
reason he does not divorce man from the world or conceive the world
as a sum of things, but starts from Being-in-the-world and attempts
to attain from there a more profound vision of the world.
Heidegger characterizes the way men act toward one another as
"solicitude" (Frsorge). Solicitude, too, indicates an eksistential
characteristic of Dasein and encompasses all modalities of men's
behavior toward one another. Thus it includes much more than
142
what is usually conveyed by the term "solicitude." To neglect

someone, to be against someone, and to hate someone-these are
possible forms of solicitude.
As we have seen, Dasein is related to what is "ready to hand"
through its everyday "concern," and this concern's own vision of
things is called "circumspection." With respect to other human
beings, Heidegger speaks of "solicitude" (Frsorge) and "attention"
(Rcksicht). This last term has tobe taken in a very broad sense so
that it can also indicate the more negative modes of "regard."
"Being with" discloses the eksistence of others to us. This
disclosing of the others' eksistence is also a co-constitutive element of
"meaningfulness" (Bedeutsamkeit): The others' disclosedness,
constituted beforehand with their "Being with," also goes to make up
meaningfulness, that is, worldhood. (SZ, 123) For this reason we
cannot first isolate a world of things in order to add a world of
subjects to it later; the eksistence of others is co-present with the
equipment encountered in our everyday concern. The world's
structure of worldhood is such that others are not present in it as
"free-floating subjects" next to other intraworldly beings, but
manifest themselves in the world in their own Being and do so in
terms of what is "ready to hand" in the world. Dasein is primordially
with the others; it is therefore not correct to make the others'
constitution dependent upon empathy as Scheler and Husserl have
done.
One could object that Heidegger's view of"Being with" leaves no
more room for the phenomenon of "Being alone." His reply is that
"Being alone" is essentially a separation of oneself from the others
and therefore is not possible without a certain understanding of the
others. Separation and isolation presuppose the existence of others
so that "Being alone" is possible only on the basis of a previous "Being
with." CSZ, 121)
II: The ''Who" ofDasein in its Everyday Concern

After these remarks about "Being with" we must now try to find
an answer to our initial question: Who is Dasein in its everyday
concern? The answer seems very simple: I myself, of course.
Selfhood is essential to Dasein. But what precisely is that "I myself'?
What is this selfhood? In ordinary speech "self' refers to a real being
which, despite the many changes it undergoes, continues to.remain
itself. However, we have repeatedly emphasized that Dasein is not a
thing among things and that its Being is not even given once and for
143
all. Dasein also Iacks permanent characteristics such as those

ascribed tothingsthat are "merely there." How then is selfhood tobe
understood? Moreover, one has also to keep in mind that the words
"in its everyday concern" are deliberately part of the question. Is it
not possible that the "I myself" which I would like to be is not the "I
myself'' which I am in everyday life? Can the "I" not lose itself and is
the "I" of everyday life not always an "I" that has already lost itself?
(SZ, 114-115)
In our consideration of "Being with" it became evident that
Dasein in its everyday concern is radically and inexorably dependent
on the others. (SZ, 126) If I ask myself to whom I am really subject
and upon whom I am precisely dependent, this question cannot be
answered. In everyday life my eksistence seems to be necessarily
heteronomaus without my being able to concretely indicate who
determines this heteronomy. In the morning I have to be at the
station on time; I have to be in school or at work on time; I have to
sleep during the night and work during the day if I want to succeed
with my business.
Of course, I can withdraw from these
"obligations," but this withdrawal merely binds me immediately with
other fetters inherent to these other possibilities of my Being which I
then want to realize. The unnamable tyrant upon whom I am
inescapably dependent is a neutral and impersonal subject; this is
the "they" (das Man). In my everyday life I have to bow to the
dictatorship of the impersonal "they." This "they" is the "subject" of
my everyday eksistence, which at all moments and on all occasions of
my life dictates what I should do and should be. In my everyday life
the "I" is fully submerged in the "they."
The "they" cultivates averageness as the norm of everything. It
has only one yardstick, which is used for everyone and everything on
every conceivable occasion. This averageness must always and
anywhere be respected. If anyone deviates from this norm, he is
condemned and called to order with all possible means. Total
leveling down, even in the smallest details, is its ideal. No one is
allowed to keep personal secrets, for everyone has to be open to
everyone and merge with all others. Because the "they" does not
tolerate any critique ofits authority in any matter, the personal sense
of responsibility is taken away from everybody. Whatever decision I
face, the "they" have long ago prescribed what should be done in such
a case. Since the "they" is responsible for everything, no one has
really any responsibility at all. U nder this yoke of bondage it is not
possible any Ionger to be oneself; in exchange for this, the "they" gives
security, tranquillity, and guarantee. Under the dictatorship of the
144
"they" everyone is someone eise and no one is himself. The "they" is

actually the "nobody" to whom every Dasein has already surrendered
itselfin everyday life. (SZ, 128)
As long as one lives in this way, the self of one's own Dasein
and the selves of others have not yet found or lost themselves. They
are there in the way of inauthenticity and failure to stand by
themselves.
These remarks, however, should not be misunderstood. What
has been said here about the "they" has a very real sense. "This way
of Being does not imply any lessening of Dasein's facticity, just as the
'they,' the 'nobody,' is by no means nothing at all. On the contrary,
in this kind of Being, Dasein is an ens realissimum, if by 'reality' we
mean a being having the character ofDasein." (SZ, 128) Nor is it the
intention here to reduce Dasein to a thing that is "merely there." The
"they" is a mode of Being proper to Dasein, even though this mode is
precisely that in which Dasein is not itself. The "they" also has
nothing to do with a kind of "general subject" or "collective subject" in
the sense in which it is sometimes used in sociology. "The 'they' is
an eksistential, and as a primordial phenomenon, it belongs to
Dasein's positive constitution." (SZ, 129) It is also important to note
that these considerations of the "they" do not have an immediate
ethical character. (SZ, 175-76)
The self of everyday Dasein is the "they-self." It must be
carefully distinguished from man's authentic self. As "they-self,"
Dasein in its everyday concernful dealing with things is already
"dispersed." This dispersal characterizes the "subject" that is
concernfully absorbed and lost in the world of its immediate
surroundings. If Dasein in its everyday life is familiar with itself as
a "they-self,'' this means at the same time that the "they" essentially
determines the first interpretation of the world and of Being-in-theworld.
Everything therefore that has been discovered above about the
world and beings within the world, as weil as everything that thus
became clear concerning Dasein and Dasein-with, presupposed that
Dasein was taken in its primordial mode of Being, in the way of the
"they-self." (SZ, 129)
CHAPTERVII
''BEING IN'' AS SUCH. THE FUNDAMENTAL

STRUCTURE OF DASEIN
1: Dasein's Disclosednessl
From the very start the eksistential analysis of Dasein has been
guided by Being-in-the-world. The purpose of the analysis was to
bring to light through the phenomenological method the unitary
primordial structure of Dasein's Being, in terms of which its
possibilities, its modes of Being, can be determined. Until now this
analysis has placed emphasis on the structural aspect called "world"
and attempted to answer the question of "who" Dasein is in everyday
life. At the very beginning, we spoke in an introductory fashion about
"Being in."
We now want to examine the structural element of "Being in"
itself. The outcome of this examination will shed a completely new
light on what has already been said. At the same time we hope to
have an opportunity to emphasize again the unity of the structure of
Dasein's Being, for this unity could easily have been obscured by the
necessity of making distinctions. (SZ, 130-31) We should keep in
mind that the different structural elements of Dasein's Being are all
irreducible and equiprimordial, although they are considered and
clarified one by one. (SZ, 131)
In our further explanation of the "Being in" proper to Being-inthe-world, we start from what we have already discovered regarding
"Being in." These discoveries were mainly expressed in negative
statements. We must now try to describe "Being in" in positive terms.
In this positive description emphasis will be put on the Da of Dasein,
i.e., its openness to the world. As we have indicated above, this Da
has nothing to do with a spatial here or there, for such spatial
indications refer only to beings within the world. The spatial "here"
and "there" are possible only through a Da, i.e., if there exists a being
lFor the interpretation of Dasein's openness and its three eksistential
components see William J. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 58-71.
146
that as Dasein has disclosed spatiality. Dasein's own Being is

characterized by openness. The particle Da "refers to this essential
openness. By reason of this openness, this being (Dasein), tagether
with the 'Being there' of the world, is 'there' for itself." (SZ, 132)
This existential-ontological structure of the human being,
namely, that it is in such a way as to be its own Da (=openness), can
also be expressed by saying that man is a lumen naturale, a "natural
light." Dasein itself is "enlightened"; as Being-in-the-world, it is
"lighted" in itself in such a way that it is itself a "place of light."
Things that are "merely present" and concealed in darkness can
come to light only through a being that is itself "lighted."
We must now ask ourselves how the Da of Dasein, its openness,
is constituted. Here also we will discover constitutive elements
which, although they form an unbreakable unity, will have to be
studied one by one. Heidegger expresses these elements in the
following words: "We see the two equiprimordial constitutive modes
of being Da in 'understanding' and 'disposition' ... 'Ontological
disposition' and 'understanding' are characterized equiprimordially
by logos." (SZ, 133) We must now see what is tobe understood by these
terms, "disposition" (Befindlichkeit), "understanding" (Verstehen),
and "logos" (Rede).
ll: Ontological Disposition

In this existential-ontological discussion, what is meant by
"disposition" is ontically something very familiar, our mood. No
matter what we do, we already find ourselves in a certain mood.
Heidegger carefully avoids the words "sentiment" and "emotions"
because, according to him, these expressions speak in terms of an
unacceptable Opposition between "soul" and "spirit." Moreover, the
use of the terms "sentiment" and "emotion" easily conveys the
impression that sentiments and emotions, and the soul connected
with them, are regarded as merely secondary elements subordinated
to the absoluteness ofthe spirit or reason (ratio). In this way one fails
to pay attention to the great importance sentiments and emotions
possess for correctly understandi~g man's own Being. Besides, one
usually omits explaining what is meant by "spirit," "soul" and "life,"
so that everything remains vague. Finally, such considerations
divorce man as "subject" from the world.
It is likewise incorrect to consider Sentiments and emotions as
something purely "subjective" that would exist inside man and thus
be opposed to the things outside him, which alone would be
THE FUND.AM:ENTAL STRUCTURE OF DASEIN
147
"objective." For, by doing that, one would again disregard the

fundamental relationship between man and other beings.
Accordingly, the term "affective disposition" should be taken to
refer to that characteristic of Dasein whereby it always seems to be
enlightened in one way or another about its own position among the
things to which it is naturally open. Because of this basic disposition,
man realizes his own situation in the world: "Every way of acting of
historical man, whether stressed or not, is 'tuned' to an affective
disposition and by this attunement raised to being in its totality."2 It
cannot be denied that affective or ontological disposition is something
primordial which is characteristic of our being human.
It is difficult to say precisely in what the ontological structure of
"disposition" consists because our thematic knowledge of all that is
connected with man's "frame of mind" always falls short.
Undoubtedly disposition communicates something to us about our
own mode of Beingin relationship to the other as a whole; but it is
very difficult to determine why one is disposed, or "tuned," in a
determinate way and what this disposition tells us about ourselves
and the other. The "original disposition" informs man about his
position in the midst of things in the world. (SZ, 134) Contained in
this "insight" are different elements that must be carefully
distinguished.
First, in his disposition man is aware of his own Being, of the
fact that he is. Without wanting to be, and without freely having
chosen tobe, man is. His Being appears to him as a Being "thrown";
he appears to hirnself to be thrown among things. In disposition
man becomes conscious not only of the fact that he is, but also of the
fact that he has tobe, that his Being has tobe realized by hirnself as a
task. (SZ, 135)
Second, the fact that man is in this or that disposition depends
on the modalities of the involvement which he always has with
things in the world. Affective disposition is an implicit, continuous
"judgment" regarding man's self-realization. Hence man can be
disclosed to hirnself in a primordial way more through disposition
than through theoretical reflection. However, if man ek-sists, is as
Being-in-the-world, then disposition must also disclose to him not
only his own Being as being "thrown" but also the Being of other men
and things. (SZ, 137)
It was mentioned previously that man, in his everyday concern,
encounters the beings within the world as things ernerging from the
2Qn the Essence ofTruth, p. 18.
148
horizon of the world taken as a referential totality. But this is

possible only if the world has been disclosed as such beforehand.
Precisely because the world is given to man beforehand, it is possible
for him to encounter the beings within the world as such. This prior
disclosedness of the world is constituted by one's disposition; the fact
that man is openness in the direction of the other in the world is
given to man in the most original way, through that fundamental
and primordial "feeling" ofhis "Being there." (SZ, 137-138)
m: Primordial Understanding
Not only does man possess an existential possibility of being
always "in a disposition," his mode of Being is determined
equiprimordially by his "understanding." This "understanding" is to
be conceived of not as a concrete mode of knowing but precisely as
that which makes all concrete modes of knowing possible. On the
level of the "original praxis" this primordial understanding always is
already present in disposition, and all understanding in its turn is
connected with disposition.
This original understanding has reference not so much to this
or that concrete thing or situation as to the mode of Being
characteristic of man as Being-in-the-world.
In original
understanding the mode of Being characteristic of man manifests
itself as a "Being-able-to-be." However, man is not something
present-at-hand that possesses its Being-able-to-be by way of an extra;
he hirnself is primarily a Being-able-to-be. This Being-able-to-be,
which is essential for man, has reference to the various ways of his
being concerned for others and for things and of his concern with the
world. But, in all this, man always realizes in one way or another
hisBeing-able-to-be in regard to hirnself and for the sake of himself.
(SZ, 143)
According to Heidegger, the term Verstehen (to understand)
can be related to the word Vor-stehen, in the sense of prae-stare, to
stand before a thing in order to master it. To be able to take hold of
something is a form of Being-able-to-be. In primordial understanding this "power to be" is not a limited power but Dasein's essential
possibility ofbeing able to eksist. Dasein always is what it can be; it is
its possibilities. (SZ, 143)
lt is important to note here that a clear distinction is to be made
between eksistential and logical possibilities. The logical possibility
indicates that what is not yet nevertheless can be; this logical beingpossible is less important than being-actual and being-necessary.
T:HE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF DASEIN
149
The eksistential possibility, on the other hand, is the most primordial

and the ultimate, positive ontological characterization of Dasein. (SZ,
143-144) This fundamental possibility has to do with the different
rnodalities of concernful dealing with things and of solicitude while,
at the same time, it also constitutes the realization of Dasein itself.
That Dasein essentially isaBeing-able-to-be does not mean that
Dasein is not actually "real," but only that, as it actually eksists, it
aiways is certain possibilities and consequently excludes others. By
choosing one particular possibility, Dasein has to abandon others. It
is in this sense that Dasein is essentially a Being-able-to-be. This
ability is given to Dasein with its own Being. Dasein is thrown into
this ability and as such it is a "thrown possibility through and
through." (SZ, 144) Through primordial understanding these
possibilities become clear to Dasein so that it can take them up and
materialize them.
Original understanding always pertains to man's Being-in-theworld as a whole. That is why man's "moodful" understanding
brings to light not only man hirnself as Being-able-to-be but also the
world as a referential totality. By revealing the world to man, his
primordial understanding also gives him the possibility of
encountering the beings within the world in their own possibilities.
That which originally was ready-to-hand (zuhanden) is now
explicitly discovered in its "serviceability," its "usability," and so on.
Accordingly, primordial understanding always moves in a
range of possibilities; it continuously endeavors to discover
possibilities, because it possesses in itself the eksistential structure of
a "project." In his primordial understanding man projects hirnself
onto his ultimate "for the sake of which"; but this self-projection
necessarily implies at the same time-and equally originally-a
world-projection. (SZ, 145) In his original understanding man thus
opens and frees hirnself in the direction of his own Being but, at the
same time, also in the direction of the world. For this reason
primordial understanding implies essentially a certain view-a
"sighting" of things, of fellow men, of the world as a whole, and
evidently also of man's own mode of Being. To the extent that man's
view is concerned with "equipment," fellow men, himself, or the
world as a whole, this "sight" appears in each case in a different
modality. (SZ, 146-147)
Thus primordial understanding, which is always inseparably
connected with affective disposition, always has the character of an
interpretive conception in which man discloses hirnself as Beingable-to-be in the different modalities that are possible for him. This
150
interpretive conception, which is equiprimordially oriented to the

other, is as such not yet explicitly articulated in understanding.
However, it can develop in that direction by means of explanation
(Auslegung). In and through explanation understanding appropriates comprehendingly that which is already understood by it. In
explanation understanding does not become something different; it
becomes itself. Man does not acquire further information about what
is already understood. Explanation is, rather, the.development ofthe
possibilities that were projected in understanding. (SZ, 148)
Perhaps what is meant here can best be explained by taking
one's starting point in man's everyday concernful dealing with
things. In each concrete form that can be adopted by the "original
praxis," man's concernful dealing with things within the world
implies an original understanding of those things and of man
hirnself as Being-in-the-world, an understanding which at first is not
articulated. However, this form of understanding can be further
explained so that what is ready to hand comes explicitly into that
sight which understands it. In this case the "circumspection"
characteristic of man's concernful dealing with things discovers
intramundane things by unraveling and thereby explaining them.
In the final analysis all preparing, arranging, repairing, and
improving are enacted in such a way that what was ready to hand
circumspectively in its serviceability, that is, in its "in order to," now
is taken apart, unraveled, and thus ex-plained. That which has been
taken apart in this way, in regard to its in-order-to, thereby receives
the structure of "something as something." To the circumspective
question as to what this particular ready-to-hand thing may be, the
circumspectively explanatory answer is that it serves such and such
a purpose. By explicitly pointing to what a thing is for, we do not
simply designate that thing; what is designated is understood as that
as which we are to take that particular thing. The "as" constitutes
the structure of the explicitness of each thing that is understood. It is
the constitutive element of what we call explanation. If in dealing
with what is environmentally ready to hand we explain it circumspectively, we "see" it, for instance, as a hammer, a table, a door, a
car, a bridge. However, what is thus explained need not necessarily
be taken apart in an explicit enunciation (Aussage). Any mere
prepredicative using and thus "seeing" of what is ready-to-hand is in
itself already something that understands and explains. The
articulation of what is understood in the explaining and bringing
close of each thing within the world with the help of the guiding clue
"something as something"-is there before any explicit statement is
THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF DASEIN
151
made about it. Thus the as does not emerge for the first time in the
explicit statement but it only gets expressed and enunciated therein.
This is possible only because that which is enunciated was as such
already at man's disposal. (SZ, 149-50)
If we never perceive things within the world which are ready to
band without already under,standing and explaining them, and if all
perception Iets us circumspectively encounter something as something, does this not mean that at first something purely present at
band is experienced and is later interpreted as a door, a house, and
so on? Evidently this is not the case. Man's explanation does not
throw a meaning over some "naked" thing that is present at hand,
nor does it place a value on it. The thing within the world which is
encountered as such in the original understanding that is
cbaracteristic of man's concernful dealing with things, already
possesses a reference that is implicitly contained in man's counderstanding of the world and thus can be articulated by
explanation. In our original understanding what is ready-to-hand is
always already understood from a totality of references which we call
"world"; but this relationship between wbat is ready to hand and the
world need not be grasped explicitly in a thematic explanation,
although such an explanation is evidently, at least in principle,
always possible. If the thematic explanation occurs, it is always
grounded in the original understanding. In this sense one can say
tbat our "having" intramundane things-as weil as any "seeing" of
tbem and the "conception" of them to be found in the explanation-is
founded on an earlier having, on an earlier sighting, and in apreconception, all of which are characteristic of our original
understanding. (SZ, 148-149, 150-151) It is to this state of affairs that
Heidegger has given the name of "hermeneutic situation."
At any rate, in the pro-ject (Ent-wurf) cbaracteristic of original
understanding, a thing is disclosed in its possibility. The character
of this possibility corresponds in each case with the mode of Beingof
the thing which is understood. Intramundane tbings are necessarily projected upon the world-that is, upon a whole context of
meaning, a totality of references to which man's concern as Beingin-the-world has been tied in advance. When things within the world
and the mode of Being characteristic of man are discovered and come
to be understood, we say that they have meaning. But what is
understood is, strictly speaking, not the meaning but the thing itself.
Meaning is that in which the intelligibility of something maintains
itself. Thus, meaning is that which can be articulated in the
disclosure of understanding. The concept of meaning contains the
152
formal framework of what necessarily belongs to that which can be

articulated by our understanding. Meaning is a project's "uponwhich," which can be structured by our original understanding, and
from which each thing as this or that becomes understandable.
Meaning is therefore the intentional correlate of the disclosedness
which necessarily belongs to our original understanding. Thus only
the mode of Being characteristic of man "has" meaning insofar as
the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world can be "filled" by the things
which are discoverable in that disclosedness. There can be a
question of meaning only within the dialogue between man and the
things in the world. Because meaning is the disclosure of the
openness characteristic of man, his original understanding always
has reference to his Being-in-the-world as a whole; in other words, in
each understanding of the world man's ek-sistence is co-understood
and vice versa. (SZ, 151-153)
IV. Logos (Rede). Language and Speech.3

The third component of Dasein's disclosedness which is as
equally fundamental as understanding and disposition, is called
Rede by Heidegger. It is that eksistential component of Dasein's
Being because of which Dasein is capable of bringing to expression
that which it understands. The literal meaning of Redeis speech; it
can also mean language and discourse. Yet from the claims which
Heidegger makes it is clear that he is not dealing here with the act of
speaking or with language as spoken, but rather with the ontological
component of Dasein's Being which renders spoken language
possible. (SZ, 160-161) Richardson is of the opinion that one could
translate it by "articulateness"; in that case one could translate
spoken language by "articulation." Richardson hirnself prefers to
translate the term by logos, a suggestion made first by J oseph Mller
in his book, Existenzialphilosophie und katholische Theologie.4
Richardson's reason for translating Rede as logos is that the word
logos assumes ever increasing importance throughout the whole
evolution of Heidegger's thinking; the term is then to be understood to
refer to the process of making-manifest or letting-be-seen.5 In what
ensues I shall follow Richardson's suggestion.
3William Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 66-70.
4aden Baden: Verlag fr Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1952, p. 57.
5Richardson, ibid., pp. 66.
153
W e have seen that all explanation is rooted in the original

understanding of our "primordial praxis." That which is articulated
in this explanation and thus was already predelineated in the
original understanding as something articulable is what we call
"meaning." Insofar as enunciation, as a derivative mode of
explanation, is also grounded in our primordial understanding, it too
bas meaning; but this meaning cannot be defined as that which is
found "in" the enunciation along with the enunciating act. (SZ, 153-
154)
An explicit analysis of an enunciating act can take different
directions. One of the possibilities consists in showing how in an
enunciating act the structure of the as, which is constitutive for
understanding and explanation, is modified; in so doing one is able to
bring both understanding and explanation into a new light. If the
enunciating act is considered from this perspective, it soon becomes
clear that one must attribute three meanings to the enunciating act;
these are interconnected and originate from the phenomenon which
is thus designated.
In the first place e-nunciating means "pointing out," "showing."
In this we adhere to the original meaning of logos as apophansis,
that is, as letting things be seen from themselves. In the enunciating
statement "This hammer is too heavy," that which is discovered is
not a melmihg but a thing manifesting itself as ready-to-hand. Even
if the thing is not close enough to be grasped or seen, man's pointing
out refers to the thing itself and not to a representation ofit. What is
pointed out is thus neither a "merely" represented thing nor a
psychic state of the one who does the enunciating.
Enunciating also means "attributing." In each statement or
enunciation a "predicate" is attributed to a "subject"; the subject is
determined by the predicate. However, that which is enunciated is
not the predicate but the thing itself-in the example given, the
hammer. On the other band, that which determines is fourid in the
"too heavy." That which is shown in the enunciation taken in this
second signification of enunciation (that which is determined, the
thing, the hammer) has undergone a narrowing of content as
compared with what is shown in the enunciation taken in the first
sense of the term (the too heavy hammer). That is why each
attribution as such necessarily presupposes a pointing out, so that
the second signification of enunciation has its foundation in the first.
Therefore, the elements of the attributing articulation, namely,
subject and predicate, arise only within this pointing out. The
determination does not, in the first place, consist in a discovering,
154
but as a mode of the pointing out it restricts our seeing to what

manifests itself there; by this explicit restriction of our view, that
which was already manifest (the hammer) may be made manifest
explicitly in its being determined. The determination must, in the
first instance, take a step backward when confronted with that which
is already manifest (the too heauy hammer) in ordertobe able to let
that which was already manifest be seen in its further determinable
determinateness. Thus, the positing of subject and predicate, as well
as the attribution, are thoroughly "apophantic" in the strict sense of
the term. (SZ, 154-155)
Finally, enunciating means "communicating." As such it is
related directly to enunciation taken in the first and second
significations. It means letting someone see with us what we have
pointed out, by determining it. Letting someone see with us means
sharing with the other that thing which has been pointed out in its
determinateness. In so doing we share the intelligibility of the mode
of Being characteristic of such a thing by keeping it in that world in
which what has been pointed out can be encountered. Therefore, any
being expressed necessarily belongs as a correlate to enunciation as
communication; for, as something communicated, that which has
been shown in the enunciation is something that others can share
with the one who makes the enunciation, even though the thing
which has been pointed out and which has been determined is not
close enough for them to grasp or see. Once a thing is expressed, it
can be passed on in a further re-telling; but in that case what has
been shown may become veiled again, although even then one still
has the thing itself in view and does not affirm some "universally
valid meaning" which has been passed around. (SZ, 155-156)
Summarizing, we may conclude that a statement or
"enunciation" is a determining and communicating pointing out.
One may object to this view on the ground that enunciation is not very
likely tobe a derivative mode of explanation. Furthermore, it is not
clear just what in the explanation must change for explanation to
become enunciation. In order to cope with these difficulties it is
necessary to. make the following observations.
That enunciation is a derivative mode of explanation is evident
from the fact that explanation does not come about originally in a
theoretical, predicative judgment but is already present in our
concernful dealing with things in the "primordial praxis." The only
problern remaining then is to identify the modification through
which enunciation originates from our concernful explanation. In
our "primordial praxis" an intended thing-a hammer, for
155
instance-is at first ready-to-hand as a tool. If this thing becomes the

object of enunciation in the sense indicated above, then along with the
enunciation a modification of the character of the intentional
orientation must first be enacted. The ready to hand with which we
were originally concerned in our "practical" achievements changes
now into something about which we are going to enunciate
something. The necessary condition for this is that we orient
ourselves intentionally in what is ready to hand toward a certain
presence at hand. Through this new way of looking at, precisely that
which at first was ready to hand becomes concealed as ready to hand.
Within the discoverlog of a thing's presence at hand, which at the
same time is a concealing of its readiness to hand, the thing which is
encountered as present at hand becomes determined as present at
band in such and such a way. Only at this moment are we given any
access to "properties" or the like, which evidently are drawn from
that which is present at hand as such. In other words the as structure, which we have already met in the explanation, undergoes a
typical modification in enunciation. The as, whose fimction was to
appropriate what was understood, no Ionger refers to the totality of
references within which the "primordial praxis" comes about. As far
as its possibilities for further articulation are concerned, the as is
now cut off from the referential totality that constitutes my world and
is pushed back into the homogeneaus domain of what is merely
present at hand. Therefore the as characteristic of the enunciation
has as its function only the determining letting be seen of what is
present at hand. This leveling of the primordial as of our
circumspective explanation to the as in which something is
determined in its presence at hand is the specifying characteristic of
enunciation. It is only in this way that the possibility of a pointing
out, which merely looks at, comes about.
It is to be noted that between our concernful understanding of
what is ready to hand (in which the explanation, as it were, is still
completely implicit) and the extreme opposite, namely, the purely
theoretical enunciation of what is merely present at hand (in which
the explanation is clearly articulated) there are many intermediate
forms; a careful analysis of these is of great importance for the
philosophy of language. Although we will not deal with these forms
at this time, there is one thing upon which we must focus attention
because of its immediate pertinence to the main subject of this study.
(SZ, 157-158)
It was stated several times in the preceding discussion that

disposition and original understanding are the fundamental
156
eksistentials of that mode of Being which is characteristic of man as

Being-in-the-world. It was also said that original understanding as
such already contains the possibility of explanation, that is, of the
explicit articulating appropriation of what is understood. What is
called enunciation in the strict sense of the term appeared in the
foregoing analyses as a derivative mode of explanation. Only where
we dealt with the third meaning of enunciation, namely, the communication or expression, did we come across speech and language.
Language was mentioned there because it, too, via mood and original
understanding, is ultimately rooted in the essential openness
characteristic of the proper mode of Being of man as Being-in-theworld. In those analyses, however, we did not deal explicitly with the
discursively articulating logos (Rede), which is the immediate,
ontologico-existential fundament oflanguage. (SZ, 159-160)
Discursive and articulating logos, viewed eksistentially, is as
original as ontological disposition and original understanding. Its
essential function is to articulate discursively the intelligibility of
something. Only when the intelligibility is explicitly articulated can
the appropriating explanation come about, so that discursive logos,
in the final analysis, constitutes the fundament of explanation and
enunciation. What can be articulated in explanation is meaning. It
appears then that, properly speaking, one ought to say that meaning
is what can be articulated in and through logos. Furthermore, what
becomes articulated in discursive articulation as such can be called
the total meaning, which can be disclosed as a whole in various
particular significations. Thus these significations, taken as
articulations of the total meaningfulness, always carry meaning.
(SZ, 161)
However, if logos as the discursive articulation of the
intelligibility of all that is implicitly contained in man's concernful
dealing with things in the world, is a primordial eksistential of
disclosedness, which itself is primarily constituted by Being-in-theworld, then logos, too, must essentially have a specifically mundane
mode of Being. This mode of Being consists in the fact that the
totality of meaning of what is intelligible can be put into words in and
through logos. It is in logos that words can be attributed to
significa~ions; thus it becomes immediately clear that the view
according to which significations aretobe attributed to "word-things"
must be unacceptable. (SZ, 161)
The "enunciatedness" of logos is language. Taken as that in
which language has its mundane Being, the totality of the words and
of the other language structures that are systematically built up from
157
them is, once it is constituted, something which one encounters as

an intramundane reality, ready to hand for anyone who wants to
speak. It is true that language can be conceived of also as the totality
of all word-things that are present at hand, those which can be
brought together in a dictionary and whose usage can be described in
grammar and syntax. Eksistentially seen, however, language is the
"enunciatedness" of the logos, because that being whose disclosedness is articulated by logos has the mode of Being of a Being-in-theworld that is entirely committed to the world.
Discursive logos is therefore the "signifying" articulation of the
intelligibility of man's Being-in-the-world and of everything that is
essentially contained in it. Being-in-the-world is essentially Beingwith others. Through discursive logos this Being-with others takes
the form of inviting, warning, assenting, refusing, pronouncing,
consulting, promising, speaking on a person's behalf, and so on.
However, speaking is always the enunciation in regard to each other
of the discursive logos with respect to something. This logos does not
necessarily have to refer to a determining assertion; a command or a
wish can be the theme of logos, also. Whatever its concrete form may
be, the logos always has an intentional structure because it coconstitutes the disclosedness of man's Being-in-the-world. In all
forms of speaking there is something said as such, and this
"something said" is what language communicates. (SZ, 161-2)
It must be repeated here that in this context the phenomenon of
communication is to be taken in a very broad sense. Communication, insofar as it is explicitly enunciated-giving information,
for example,-is merely a special case of communication taken in
the original meaning of the term. In the communication which is
enunciated, our understanding of Being-in-the-world with others
becomes articulated. Communication is therefore never anything
like a conveying of experiences, opinions, or wishes from the interior
of our subjectivity to the interior of another's. Our Being-with others
is already essentially manifest in mood and understanding. In
discursive logos our Being-with others only becomes explicitly
articulated. In our discourse it becomes explicitly shared in an
appropriate way.
In discursive logos the intelligibility of our Being-in-the-world,
which is always connected with a certain disposition, becomes
articulated in significations. The constitutive elements of this
articulation are: what our speaking is about, what receives its shape
and form through it, communication, and making known to others.
However, these are not properties empirically found in each
158
language; they are, rather, the essential characteristics of the logos

rooted in original understanding and primordial disposition and
making anything like language precisely possible. It is more than
likely that in many factical linguistic forms some of these elements
remain implicit and unnoticed. The fact that not all of them always
receive verbal expression is merely an indication that in concrete
cases we always deal with one ofmany possibilities. (SZ, 162-163)
Attempts to bring the essence of language to light have been
limited for the most part to one or some of these elements. This is
why language is often characterized as "expression," "symbolic
form," "communication," "assertionf" or "the making known of
experiences." Clearly, even if these various characterizations were to
be added together, nothing would be achieved in the way of a
comprehensive conception of language. Such a conception can be
reached only by means of an accurate analysis of the mode of Being
characteristic of man as Being-in-the-world. (SZ, 163)
We still have to explain the relation between understanding and
logos. Todetermine this relationship Heidegger pointsout that logos,
taken as an eksistential component of the Being of Dasein, means the
capacity of letting be seen what understanding projects. It is through
logos that the total meaningfulness comes to word. (SZ, 161) The
world, taken as total meaningfulness, is projected by the eksistential
component of understanding; the eksistential component of logos is
the power of articulating total meaningfulness by letting-be-seen
meanings in eksistentiell situations; this is done by means of
concrete expressions which constitute language.
In Heidegger's view we can explain this relationship also by
considering two possible modes of logos, namely keeping silent and
being-attentive-to or attending. Keeping silent is an essential
possibility of logos. If two people are in discourse with each other, the
person who keeps silent can often make the other understand. The
person who talks too much has often little to say. On the other hand,
a person who keeps silent at the proper moment is often able to
communicate what he has to say. Thus keeping silent can be very
revealing. (SZ, 164-65)
As for attending, Heidegger distinguishes two types. The first
type consists in listening to others. Wehaveseen that Dasein's Being
is inherently a Being with others. As an eksistential component of
Dasein's Being, Being-with is the eksistential condition of all
eksistentiell dealings with others. Thus without Being-with all
dialogue and community would become impossible. But this also
means that the disclosedness of the world in and through Dasein's
159
understanding comes to pass not so much in Dasein, but in

Mitdasein, in Dasein with others. Logos, taken as the capacity of
letting-be-seen, has the same communal character as understanding: it is a letting-be-seen that comes to pass only together with
others and, thus, always has the form of communication. When, by
attending to others, Daseinlets-be-seen the project which it shares
with others, this attending, too, is a mode of logos. (SZ, 163)
The second type of attending occurs when Dasein attends to its
own self. Sometimes there is a letting be seen of Dasein which occurs
as if Dasein is listening to the voice of a friend hidden within itself
and telling it something about its own self. This form of attending,
too, is a mode of logos. In this case, attending constitutes the
primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open for its ownmost
Being-able-to-be. (SZ, 163) Later we shall see how this form of
attending can develop into an attending to the call of conscience,
when Dasein tries to achieve the totality of finite transcendence. 6
V: Dasein's ''Fallenness"
We have already mentioned that, according to Heidegger, the
Being-in-the-world, which essentially characterizes Dasein, is a
structure that can assume two different fundamental modalities, one
authentic and the other inauthentic. We have also pointed out that
what has been said above about the worldhood of the world and about
"Being in," describes that which immediately manifests itself to
Dasein in its concernful dealing with beings within the world. In
other words, we considered Dasein in its inauthenticity. In the
preceding pages we have examined the fundamental structure of
Dasein's openness, which is essential to Dasein in both ways of
Being. We now want to describe explicitly how the three eksistential
components of openness manifest themselves when Dasein has
fallen into the inauthentic form of Being.
Heidegger likes to refer to the inauthentic Being of Dasein as
"fallenness" (Verfallen). Explaining this term, he says that it "does
not express any negative evaluation, but is used to signify that Dasein
is first of all and for the most part 'at' (bei) the 'world' of its
concern .... Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as
an authentic Being able to be its own self, and has 'fallen' to the
'world'." (SZ, 175) The "world" is put in quotation marks to indicate
that there is no reference here to the worldhood of the world, but only
6Jbid., pp. 66-70.
160
to what we encounter within our referential totality, namely the

intraworldly beings with which we deal in our everyday concern and
which the "they" usually identifies with the world.
"Fallenness" includes two aspects: 1. Dasein understands its
own Being in terms of intraworldly beings and thus conceives of itself
as a substance possessing certain qualities; 2. the world which is
here present is the world of everyone, the world of the "they." The
intraworldly beings, which are then considered to constitute the
world, are only vaguely understood in the way the "they" generally
understands them. The world in which Dasein is absorbed here is
an impersonal world, just as its understanding of the world is also
an impersonal form of understanding. '"Fallenness' to the 'world'
means to be absorbed in Being with one another, insofar as this Being
is guided by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity." (SZ, 175) Idle talk,
curiosity and ambiguity are, for Heidegger, the three constitutive
elements of Dasein's openness in its inauthentic Being.
Dasein lacks its primordial power-to-be in its inauthenticity and
is likewise unable to realize its authentic self. "Fallenness" is not a
form of not-being. But it is ontically just as real as authentic
eksistence. But Dasein here realizes itself in an inauthentic way so
that it loses the typical way of Being which it should strive to obtain.
Each Dasein comes to authentic Being only by way of inauthentic
Being and even thereafter there always is a real possibility that it will
relapse into inauthenticity. Dasein then "falls" by losing its own way
of Being, it "falls" to the world as the totality of intraworldly beings.
By identifying itself with this "world," Dasein's Being becomes
as impersonal as this "world" itself. In this "fall" it loses its
authenticity, not its Being as such; only its way of Being becomes
different. "Dasein plunges out of itself into itself, into the
groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness. But this
plunge remains hidden from Dasein by the way things are publicly
interpreted [by the 'they']-to such an extent that its fall is
interpreted as a way of 'rising higher' and 'living concretely'." (SZ,
178)
Dasein, then, is not aware of its fall, but regards it precisely as
rising to a "concrete" form of life. Public opinion confirms this view
and defends it against the restlessness which the great questions of
life could possibly arouse in it. The "they" has the answer ready
before Dasein in its fallen condition gets a chance to become
disturbed. The tranquillity (Beruhigung) which arises in this way is
again one of the characteristics of Dasein's inauthenticity.
161
Paradoxically, however, there is always a certain whirl and

restlessness which dominates Dasein. Dasein wants to surrender
itself to this restlessness because it does not really feel satisfied with
the seeming tranquillity it possesses. It wants to have security, but it
also wants to "live"; it wants to plunge into everything that presents
itself in order to forget its emptiness. In spite of everything, it wants
to realize itself and thinks to have found its authentic self in the
illusion of an eternal restlessness. All this, however, is really but an
attempt to deceive itself. It remains blind to its authentic Being: It
has not been understood that understanding itself is a Being-able-tobe which must be made free in one's ownmost Dasein alone.
By cultivating this restlessness, Dasein becomes more and more
alienated from itself. This temptation to become more and more
alienated from itself is also characteristic of Dasein in its
inauthenticity. It feels attracted to empty and idle talk in which one
chatters about everything without really saying anything, and to
curiosity in which one gets interested in everything without ever
really coming into contact with anything. In this way Dasein
submerges increasingly more into an atmosphere of ambiguity and
equivocity, in which ultimately, through all the talking and
inquisitiveness, nobody knows any Ionger what actually is
happening. (SZ, 167-175)
Precisely this idle talk and this curiosity usually bring about
Dasein's "fallenness" by way of this atmosphere of ambiguity,
because this is the road of the least resistance. Typical of "fallenness"
is, however, that Dasein is tempted by the easy kind ofBeing proper to
the "they.;' This way of Being is characterized, on the one hand, by
tranquillity but, on the other, by the attractive alienation of the
"whirl" (Wirbel), the plunge into inauthenticity. (SZ, 178-79)
VI: Concluding Refl.ections

Although Heidegger's conception of ontological disposition and
understanding has received a very positive response from the
readers, his view on language, on the other hand, has been criticized
by many. Kelkel has discussed this criticism in detail and shown
that indeed there is a contradiction in Heidegger's conception which
he hirnself later would realize and resolve. In Being and Time
Heidegger describes logos as being inherently apophantic; Dasein's
logos lets something be seen independently of the structures of the
significations of the words of a language which it must employ in so
doing, and independently of the community which engages in
162
discourse on the basis of the logical and semantic systems which

constitute that language. Yet on the other hand, Being and Time as
a whole assumes that all speaking and discourse ultimately rests on
the "language of Being." Thus on the one hand, Heidegger defends
the view that discourse can produce meaning only to the degree that
meaning is already constituted in language; yet on the other hand,
language is described as being merely the enunciatedness of
Dasein's logos, i.e., language is said tobe the totality of meaning in
which logos has a worldly Being of its own, after it has been put into
words when "to significations words accrue." (SZ, 161) In other
words, in Being and Time, when speaking about logos, Heidegger
still maintains a totality of meaning which itself and taken as such
lies outside the domain of language and as such, therefore, is
intemporal and invariant. In Being and Time Heidegger only
succeeded in part in his effort to overcome the conception of meaning
defended by transeendental philosophy. When Heidegger later
realized this inconsistency he gave up the idea that Dasein "has"
language and showed that Dasein is merely the place where
"language speaks."7
Yet one should not exaggerate this criticism. It is indeed true
that in On the Way to Language Heidegger has made a systematic
effort to present an adequate conception of language and to "define"
the essence of language as the language of Being; it is true also that
he has tried there to think through all the essential implications of
this highly original view oflanguage. Yet this does not alter the fact
that the investigations concerning language presented in Being and
Time contain extremely valuable ideas. One should keep in mind
that some of the shortcomings of the conception of language unfolded
there are connected with the limited perspective from which Dasein's
logos was approached there. In other words, it was not Heidegger's
intention to unfold an "exhaustive" theory of logos. Furthermore,
already in 1927 Heidegger was aware of the fact that about the Being
of language many questions can be asked for -which Being and Time
does not give us an answer. (SZ, 166)
7Cf. Arion L. Kelkel, La legende de l'etre. Langage et poesie chez Heidegger.

Paris: Vrin, 1980, pp. 329-336 and the literature discussed there. Cf. also Joseph J.
Kockelmans, On the Truth of Being: Reflections on Heidegger's Later Philosophy.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 145-147.
CHAPTER VIII
CARE AND THE BEINGOF DASEIN.
REALITY AND TRUTH
1: Anxiety and Carel
The eksistential analytic of Dasein's mode of Being tries to bring

to light the structural elements of Dasein's own Being and to
consider them in detail. At the same time it must try to emphasize
the fundamental unity of all these structural elements. Having
described these structural elements one by one, we must now
consider how all these elements form a single whole, the primordial
totality ofDasein's entire structure. (SZ, 180)
From the preceding chapters it is clear also that it is possible for
Dasein to be in an inauthentic way as weil as in an authentic way.
Because so far we have only sketched the basic structural elements
from the perspective of Dasein's inauthentic Being, we must now
also answer the questions of what precisely is meant by authentic
Being and how Dasein can come to be authentic. In light of his
previous analyses, Heidegger thinks that a thorough analysis of the
phenomenon of anxiety (Angst) can answer the second question,
whereas a detailed study of care will be able to answer the first. Since
we intend to return to the phenomenon of anxiety in one of the
chapters to come weshall confine ourselves here to what is essential
to answer these two questions.
According to Heidegger, anxiety is a phenomenon which is
most suitable to the shedding of light on the unity of Dasein's
structural elements. The "entire phenomenon of anxiety shows
Dasein as actually eksisting Being-in-the-world. The fundamental
ontological characteristics of this being are eksistentiality, facticity,
lCf. William J. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 72-74, 79-80, 84, 196-199; Donald F.
Tweedie, The Significance of Dread in the Thought of Kierkegaard and
Heidegger. Boston: Roughton Mif'flin Company, 1954; Stephan Strasser, "The
Concept of Dread in the Philosophy of Heidegger," in The Modern Schoolman,
35(1957-58), 1-20; A. Silva-Tarouca, Die Logik der Angst. Innsbruck: TyroliaVerlag, 1953.
164
and Being-fallen." (SZ, 191) What Heidegger means by the terms

eksistentiality, facticity, and Being-fallen has been sufficiently
explained in the preceding chapters. Facticity is the technical term
for the phenomenon of Being-thrown; and eksistentiality indicates
that Dasein projects itself, through primordial understanding, to its
own possibilities. This self-projection is at the same time the
discovery of the beings within the world.
Heidegger believes that anxiety is "caused" by these
eksistentials; it places Dasein before its primordial Being-able-to-be.
For anxiety makes intraworldly beings disappear just as it also
makes Dasein's fellow beings irrelevant. "Anxiety .. . deprives
Dasein of the possibility to understand itself, as it 'falls,' in terms of
the 'world' and in the way things are publicly interpreted [by the
'they']. Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that whi~h it dreads,
namely, its authentic Being-able-to-be-in-the-world." (SZ, 187) In
anxiety Dasein experiences the nothingness of its own Being; it
realizes how much it costs to eksist and at the same time it
understands the precariousness of its eksistence.
II: Care2
The fact that Dasein is essentially a Being-able-to-be is

ontologically of exceptional importance. As such an ability Dasein is
always "ahead of itself." This does not mean that Dasein, as a Beingable-to-be, necessarily implies a relationship to those beings which it
is not, butthat Dasein's Being points to that Being-able-to-be which it
itself is. (SZ, 192) Dasein is always already ahead of itself in its
Being. (SZ, 191) Dasein is thus essentially defined by its Being-ableto-be. In this sense it is always ahead of what it actually is and it
cannot even realize itself without first anticipating this ability tobe.
Wehave already met this anticipating feature when we spoke about
primordial understanding; for this understanding proved essentially
to be a project. Precisely because Dasein possesses the ontological
structure of projecting, it can always be ahead of its actual Being;
and it will never cease to anticipate itself.
Every actual activity and every actual choice is made in
reference to a certain Being-able-to-be and is never more than a
realization of some ability. This having tobe ahead-of-itself can very
appropriately be integrated in the total structure of Dasein's Beingin-the-world. Dasein is always ahead ofitselfby being in a world and
2Cf. William Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 71-76, 82, 85-87.
CARE, REALITY, AND TRUTH
165
by being of necessity involved in it. This Being-ahead, the project,

constitutes what Heidegger calls "to ek-sist." In this sense, therefore,
to eksist means that Dasein is ahead of itself according to its Beingable-to-be. Dasein can realize its possibilities precisely because it is
involved in the world. Dasein cannot go beyond itself without being
"thrown" into the world. In other words, eksistence presupposes
facticity. Eksisting is always factical. "Eksistentiality is essentially
determined by facticity." (SZ, 192)
Dasein, which in this way is in a world into which it has been
thrown, always discovers itself there as absorbed in that which
immediately manifests itself there and with which Dasein deals
concemfully. Heidegger indicates this very concisely by saying that
Dasein's Being means "ahead-of-itself Being-already-in [the world]
as being-at [the beings encountered in the world]." (SZ, 192) Dasein's
having to be ahead of itself, while at the same time taking into
account the limits imposed by Being thrown into the world, and the
fact that it really is always absorbed in the things of the world
already, constitutes what Heidegger has called "care" (Sorge). Thus
care is the necessary consequence of:
1) eksistentiality, or the fact that Dasein always has to transcend
itself toward its own Being-able-to-be;
2) facticity, or Being-thrown;
3) and "Being fallen," that is, the necessity of always having to be
already "at" the things in the world.
Care is the unity of these three structural elements and has
little connection with what ordinarily is called "care." It is not a
condition of the mind but the fundamental structure of Dasein's
Being itself. Because Dasein's Being is care (Sorge), its dealing with
intraworldly beings is concem (Besorgen), and its relationship to its
fellow beings is solicitude (Frsorge);
In eksisting, i.e., being ahead of oneself toward one's Beingable-to-be, lies the eksistential-ontological condition for Dasein's
possibility ofbeing free for its authentic, eksistential possibilities. (SZ,
193) By transcending itself toward these possibilities, Dasein actually
makes itself free for these possibilities. Eksistentiality therefore is
also freedom. This primordial Being free always contains ultimately
the possibility of Dasein's authentic Being.
Care, therefore, is not the result of various ways in which
Dasein behaves toward other beings that have the character of Dasein
or even toward intraworldly beings; care rather refers to the
fundamental structural unity which a priori makes all ways of
Dasein's actual behaving possible. "As a primordial structural
166
totality, care lies eksistentially a priori 'before' every factual 'attitude'

and 'situation' of Dasein, that is, it always lies in them." (SZ, 193)
Heidegger expressly adds that this "definition" of Dasein is not
intended to reduce Dasein by way of care to something which belongs
solely to the perspective of practical pursuits. For care is precisely
the basis not only of practical pursuits but also of any theory.
"' Theory' and 'practice' are possibilities of Being for a being whose
mode ofBeing must be defined as 'care'." (SZ, 193)
Heidegger concludes his reflections on care with the observation
that in defining care as "Being-ahead-of-oneself-in Being-alreadyin ...-as Being-along-side ... " it has been made clear that even this
phenomenon is in itself still structurally articulated. Thus we must
ask further and further until we finally come to a still more
primordial phenomenon, which will provide us with the ontological
support for the unity and the totality of the structural manifoldness of
care. As we shall see later, reflections ofthat kind willlead us to the
phenomena of conscience, death, and temporality. Heidegger sees a
confirmation of the view of Dasein's Being as care in the
preontological way in which Dasein has often interpreted itself as
care, in the ancient cura fable, in Seneca, Herder, and others. (SZ,
197-200)
111: Dasein and Reality: Neither Realism nor Idealism

In classical metaphysics, the understanding of Being was,
according to Heidegger, oriented onesidedly to the mode of Being of
innerworldly beings. Furthermore too much attention was paid
there to what is present-at-hand-to such an extent even that being
was identified there with thing (res). Thus Being acquired the sense
of reality (a term derived from the word "res"). Since Dasein was
considered there in the same perspective, it too was conceived like all
other beings, as a real thing that is merely present-at-hand. (SZ, 201)
In this way the concept of reality received a peculiar priority over all
other concepts in the ontological problems with which classical
metaphysics concerned itself.
This priority, in turn, had several important consequences for
classical metaphysics. First of all, Dasein's own mode of Being could
no Ionger correctly be understood. Furthermore, the problematic of
Being was forced into an entirely wrong direction because classical
metaphysics did not start from a primordially given phenomenon.
Moreover, in the problern of reality several issues were mixed
and thereby confused. 1) Those beings which supposedly transcend
167
consciousness, are they indeed actually real? 2) Can we adequately

prove the reality of the "external world"? 3) To what extent can this
being, insofar as it is real, be known in its being-in-itself? 4) What is
the profound meaning of this Being called "reality"?
From an ontological point of view the last of these questions is
undoubtedly the most important one. Nevertheless it has never been
clearly formulated because it has always been associated with the
problern of the external world. That this could happen is, although
objectionable, quite understandable. For the analysis and description
of reality is obviously possible only if Dasein has an appropriate
access to reality. Now, according to the commonly accepted view,
philosophy has long held that reality can be understood only and
exclusively by theoretical knowledge which, as we have just seen,
takes place "in" consciousness. Thus, insofar as reality has the
character of being something independent of consciousness and of
something in itself, the question of the meanirig of reality becomes
necessarily linked with the question of whether reality can b e
independent of consciousness, and whether consciousness is able to
transcend itself and to know the real world the way it is "in itself."
The possibility of an adequate ontological analysis of reality,
therefore, depended for centuries upon how far that which is
supposed to transcend itself (namely consciousness) has been
clarified in its own mode of Being. In the attempt to do so
consciousness was quite arbitrarily understood as a "thinking
substance," so that the radical clarification of consciousness was to
be identified with the radical clarification of consciousness'
knowledge. (SZ, 202)
In the problern of knowledge, traditional metaphysics since
Descartes has always separated subject and object. It is, however,
not difficult to understand that whoever adopts such a point of view
must, sooner or later, in some way or other, hit upon Descartes'
epistemological problem. For whoever conceives of the world as
independent of man necessarily throws man back upon himself. If
one then speaks of knowledge of the world, he must interpret such
knowledge as a special process taking place "within" consciousness.
And the more univocally one maintains that knowledge is really
"inside" consciousness and has by no means the same kind of Being
as the intramundane things, the more reasonable and urgent the
question concerning the clarification of the relationship between
subject and object appears to become. For orily then can the problern
arise of how this knowing subject is able to come out of its inner
sphere into another which is "external" to it, and of how one must
168
think of the object itself so that the subject is able to know it without
having to take a jump into that other sphere. But in all of the
numerous varieties which this approach has taken, in the rationaHst
as well as in the empirieist tradition, the question concerning the
mode of Being characteristic of the knowing subject, that is
consciousness or mind, has been left entirely unasked, as we have
seen already. Furthermore, one is also confronted with the question
of how one can show that this process "inside" man can give reliable
knowledge about the "outside world." The existence of this world,
finally, is simply postulated without any justification whatsoever.
On the other hand, if knowing is viewed as a way of Being-inthe-world, then it does not have to be interpreted as a process in
which the subject makes "representations" of "outside" things that
are kept "inside" himself.
And the question of how these
"representations" can agree with reality then becomes a meaningless
question. (SZ, 62) Moreover, the questions ofwhether there really is a
world and whether its reality can be proven, become, likewise,
meaningless as questions asked by Dasein whose mode of Being is
Being-in-the-world. And who else but Dasein could possibly ask such
questions or try to answer them? (SZ, 202-203)
The confusion of what one wants to prove with what one does
prove, and with the means to carry out the proof, manifests itself very
clearly in Kant's "Refutation of ldealism." According to Kant, it is a
scandal of philosophy that the cogent proof for the existence of things
outside us has not yet been delivered. But for Heidegger, the basic
error of all attempts to find such a prooflies in the fact that they start
from the supposition that man is originally "world-less" and that he,
therefore, has to assure hirnself somehow of the world's existence in
and through philosophical reflection. Being-in-the-world then
becomes something that is based on opinion, reasoning, belief, or
some kind of "knowing already," whereas all knowledge is precisely a
mode of Dasein's Being, based on Being-in-the-world.
Accordingly, the problern of reality as the question of whether
there is an "outside world" reveals itself as an impossible question,
not because its consequences Iead to insurmountable difficulties, but
because the beings themselves considered in that question exclude
such a problematic. One does not have to prove that and why there is
an "outside world," but one has to explain why Dasein as Being-inthe-world tends first to bury the "outside world" epistemologically, in
order then to prove its existence. Heidegger feels that the explanation
for this state of affairs is to be found in Dasein's fallenness, for in
100
fallenness Dasein's primary understanding of Being is diverted to

beings which are already there. (SZ, 203-206)
Heidegger's Standpoint is in agreement with that of realism
insofar as it does not deny in any way that innerworldly beings are
there; but it is in disagreement with it insofar as realism thinks that
the reality of the world can and must be proved. In principle,
Heidegger even has a measure of preference for the standpoint of
idealism because idealism clearly realizes that Being cannot be
explained in terms ofbeings. However, even though Being cannot be
explained in terms of beings, we still have the obligation to
investigate the Being of consciousness, the question of the mode of
Being of the res cogitans. Only because Being is "in consciousness,"
i.e., is understandable by Dasein, can Dasein understand and
conceptualize such characteristics as the independence of Being, its
"in itself' so to speak, its reality.
If, then, idealism amounts to realizing that Being cannot be
understood and explained in terms of beings, that Being is
"transcendental" with respect to every being, then idealism offers the
only possibility to posit the problern in a genuinely philosophical
manner. But in that case Aristotle was just as much an idealist as
Kant. If, however, on the other hand, idealism amounts to reducing
all Being to a subject or a consciousness, then idealism is just as
naive as the most superficial form of realism. (SZ, 206-208)
Accordingly, we must conclude that the problern of reality, no
matter how it is approached, is to be included in Dasein's eksistential
analysis as an ontological problem, and not merely as an
epistemological issue. If the term "reality" indicates the Being of the
innerworldly beings, the res that is just there (and it would be very
difficult to assign any other sense to it), then, as far as the analysis of
Dasein's mode of Being which is called "knowing" is concerned, this
means that the innerworldly beings can be ontologically understood
only when the phenomenon of the world, which, itself, as an
essential aspect of the structure of Being-in-the-world, belongs to
Dasein's fundamental constitution. Being-in-the-world, in turn, is
ontologically tied up with the structural totality of Dasein's own mode
of Being, which is to be characterized as care.
These reflections outline the foundations and horizons which
must be clarified if an analysis of "reality" is to be possible. (SZ, 208209) As an ontological term, "reality" refers to innerworldly beings.
If it is used only to signify this way of Being, then "merely being
present-at-hand" and "being ready-to-hand" function as the modes of
reality. No matter how one conceives of the mode of Being of
170
"nature," all modes of Being of the innerworldly beings are ontologically founded in the worldhood of the world and, consequently, in the
phenomenon of Being-in-the-world itself.
Thus it follows that reality has no priority among the modes of
Being of innerworldly beings and that reality is a mode of Being
which is not even suited to characterize the world and Dasein. On
the Ievel of the interconnection of the beings in their ontological
foundation and on the Ievel of any possible categorial and eksistential
explication, reality refers back to the phenomenon of care.
The statement that reality is ontologically rooted in Dasein's
Being does not mean that an innerworldly being can be what it is in
itself only when, and only as long as, Dasein eksists. Of course, it is
true that only as long as Dasein is, i.e., as long as the understanding
of Beingis ontically possible, "is there" (gibt es) Being. If no Dasein
eksists, "independence" "is" not either, nor "is" there an "in itself."
In such a case, these expressions are neither understandable nor not
understandable, since innerworldly beings can then neither be
discovered nor lie hidden. In other words, one can say neither that
they are, nor that they are not.
Accordingly, the dependence of Being (not the dependence of
innerworldly beings) on the understanding of Being by Dasein, i.e.,
the dependence of reality (not the dependence of real beings) on care,
intends to express merely that beings as beings become accessible
only when there is understanding ofBeing by Dasein. But now, since
there are in fact beings that have Dasein's mode of Being, the
understanding ofBeing is possible as a being. (SZ, 208-209)
IV: On Truth3
According to Heidegger, the fundamental question of what
truth is can be approached in different ways, depending on one's
3Cf. William Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 211-254; W. Bretschneider, Sein und
Wahrheit. ber die Zusammengehrigkeit von Sein und Wahrheit im Denken
Martin Heideggers. Meisenheim: Hain, 1965; Henri Birault, "Existence et verite
d'apres Heidegger," in Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 56(1950), 35-87; J.
Beaufret, "Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Truth," in Frederick Elliston, ed.,
Heidegger's Existential Analytic. The Hague: Mouton, 1978, pp. 197-217; C. F.
Gethmann, "Zu Heideggers Wahrheitsfrage," in Kantstudien, 65(1974), 186-200; E.
Tugendhat, "Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit," in Otto Pggeler, ed., Heidegger.
Perspektiven zur Deutung seines Werkes. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969,
pp. 286-97; Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger. Berlin: de Gruyter,
1967.
171
point of departure. Because of the important discoveries that can be

made by approaching truth from more than one point of view,
Heidegger has incorporated the most important of these approaches
in Being and Time. He starts there from what the analytic of
Dasein's mode of Being has already disclosed and then concludes
that precisely the phenomenon of truth is that which constitutes
Dasein as Dasein. The phenomenological analysis of Dasein as
Being-in-the-world and eksistence appears to lead of necessity to the
essence of truth, and in this essence of truth Dasein's own mode of
Being finds its radical explanation.
Heidegger comes to a similar conclusion in On the Essence of
Truth by a different and shorter way. Here he explicitly starts from
the traditional definition of truth which was also briefly discussed in
Being and Time (SZ, 214) as the conformity of intellect and thing
(adaequatio intellectus et rei). After asking what precisely is to be
understood by conformity, he tries to determine there how,
ultimately, this conformity is intrinsically possible. Finally, he
attempts to give a definitive foundation to this possibility.
In his latest works Heidegger endeavors to clarify the essence of
truth from the history of the "clearing" of Being (die Lichtungsgeschichte des Seins),4 i.e., from the essence ofthat to which, in the
course of history, truth has led in the field of science, art, technology,
and philosophy.
The reflections on truth contained in Being and Time can be
interpreted in two entirely different ways, insofar as Heidegger's
conception of truth in 1927 still contained unresolved problems. One
could conclude from the text of Being and Time that, according to
Heidegger, the ultimate foundation of truth lies in Dasein's
eksistence. However, reading the same text from the perception of
the Letter on Humanism,5 it appears that Being itselfis the ultimate
4Martin Heidegger, Identitt und Differenz. Pfullingen: Neske, 1957, p. 47;

English: Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Rarper &
Row, 1969, p. 51.
5Martin Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit. Mit einem Brief ber
den "Humanismus". Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947; English translation of the
Letter by Frank A. Capuzzi and J. Gien Gray, in David Farrell Krell, ed., Basic
Writings, pp. 193-242.
172
foundation of truth, although this point is not yet explicitly made in

Being and Time or in the first version of On the Essence of Truth. 6
According to Heidegger, since Parmenides philosophy has tried
to connect truth closely with Being. Aristotle, too, did not distinguish
between searching for truth and investigating Being. (SZ, 213) The
famous conception of truth, which is traditionally attributed to
Aristotle, however, seems to have been formulated first by Isaac
Israeli. It can be formulated in the following two theses: 1) the place
of truth is judgment; and 2) the essence of truth lies in the conformity
of judgment and object or thing. According to Heidegger, this
conception has been maintained until the present, without any
serious opposition. Not only did medieval scholasticism take over
this view, but Descartes and Kant also adhered to it, though with
some reservations and changes. (SZ, 212-214)
Husserl, too, never doubted the classical definition of truth; he
accepted it as correct, although he gave it a different interpretation,
probably without even being explicitly aware of this. The meaning
and function of the classical definition of truth in Husserl's works
were different from those it had in classical philosophy, as is evident
from the fact that in this matter Husserl did not distinguish between
intellectual knowledge and sense knowledge, and did not hold that
the judgment alone is the true locus of truth. Of course, Husserl
accepted that truth is encountered in the judgment, also; but
according to him, this judgment is rooted in a pre-predicative
experience in which the contrast between sense knowledge and
intellectual knowledge is already transcended and in which the
problern of truth announces itself already in a primordial way.
According to Husserl, the problern of truth on the Ievel of prepredicative experience is more complicated because the notions of
"presence" and "evidence," which are essentially allied to the notion
of truth, are not univocal notions. Nevertheless, he maintained the
classical definition of truth on this level also, although, because of the
above mentioned analogy, its meaning differs from the one Aristotle
had given to it.7
Heidegger agrees with the main lines of Husserl's position in
this matter, but adds that Husserl limited hirnself to a theory of
6This is true at least for the lecture which Heidegger delivered in 1930. The
first edition appeared in 1943; the first paragraph of the concluding note was added
in 1949. Cf. William Richardson, Heidegger, p. 212, note.
7Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, 2 vols., trans. J. N. Findlay. New
York: Humanities Press, 1970, vol. II, lnvestigation VI, sect. 36-39.
173
truth, although in addition an ontology should have been provided to

give a foundation of this theory. In On the Essence of Truth Heidegger says that the crucial problern about truth does not lie in the
question of which things, which judgments, or which acts are in fact
true, or even in precisely what kinds of truths one has to distinguish
from one another. The primary task, he claims, is to define truth as
truth.S Undoubtedly, the question of the different levels of truth, its
eternity, its necessity, its absoluteness or its contingent character,
etc., are of great importance also, and they have to be discussed in a
, coherent theory of truth; but all this is not possible until a foundation
'l'has been provided by an ontological doctrine oftruth as truth.
From the different ways in which man gives expression to the

.::. idea of truth Heidegger concludes that the classical definition of truth
is undoubtedly meaningful. Truth is the "conformity" between thing
and intellect. If one speaks of true gold, one intends to say that a
certain piece of metal is really gold, i.e., that it corresponds to the
notion we have formed about genuine gold (adaequatio rei ad intellectum, conformity of the thing with an intellect). On the other hand,
we also call a judgment true, namely when it corresponds to the
thing which is judged (adaequatio intellectus ad rem, conformity of
the intellect with the thing).9 Thus Heidegger does not reject the
scholastic conception of ontological and logical (or epistemological)
truth. According to scholasticism, all knowledge has to be in
harmony with the things, and these, in the last analysis, have tobe
in harmony with the ideas that God had about them when He created
them. Hence logical truth has to be connected with ontological truth.
However, one should keep in mind that in these two cases there is a
question of two different intellects and, strictly speaking, also of two
different things.lO
Later the reference to the divine intellect was omitted, but
otherwise the scholastic conception was maintained in its original
form. Kant and Regel also spoke about logical truth as conformity of
8Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1961; English translation by John Sallis, in David Farrell Krell, ed., Basic
Writings, pp. 117-144. In what follows I shall refer to this essay by WW, and add
the page numbers of the German original and the page numbers of the translation
between brackets.
9Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 16, I, c; De Veritate, I, 1.
lOcf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, "Being-True as the Basic Determination of
Being," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., A Companion to Martin Heidegger's "Being
and Time." Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1986, pp. 145-160.
174
the intellect with the thing, and about ontological truth as conformity
of the things with the intellect. According to Kant, the truth of the
object is constituted by the transeendental subject while our
empirical knowledge is governed by the objects. In Hegel these two
aspects of truth became inseparable, and one is only an abstract
phase of the other. Yet the idea of conformity continued to define the
essence oftruth.ll
If, as it is generally done, one conceives of consciousness as
being identical with representation, the problems of truth become
insoluble, as is clear from the history of epistemology. Husserl was
right when he argued that the classical definition of truth is
meaningful only when one regards consciousness to be intentional.
Yet Husserl did not go far enough because in the final analysis it is
impossible to define truth in any way whatsoever without implying
an interpretation of the Being of the beings. If one does not
accurately indicate what intellect (Dasein) and thing (res) are in
themselves, any theory of truth remains empty and certainly without
a radical foundation.12 Moreover, the classical conception of truth
contains a series of implicit positions in regard to untruth and error,
which should have been made explicit and then also justified. Thus
it is clear that the classical theory of truth, even in the sense in which
Husserl corrected it, requires an ontology oftruth for its foundation.13
This ontology can best be presented by starting from the classical
conception of truth.
What exactly is meant by the conformity upon which this view is
based? Its explanation will immediately lead us to the ontological
presuppositions upon which this view rests. The conformity in
question is obviously an analogaus notion. We say, for example, that
two silver dollars are equal or in conformity with each other; on the
other hand, in my true judgment I am in conformity with the object
of my judgment. In the first case there is a conformity between two
objects based upon their participation in one and the same form. In
the second case there is no question of two material objects, but of one
material thing and a statement about it. How then can one speak
here of conformity? One could say that the judgment refers to "itself'
nww, 5-8 (118-21).

12ww, s-9 (121).
1aww, 9 (121-22).
175
in the piece of silver insofar as the judgment represents the object

under a certain aspect, just as it is,14
Closer investigation, however, shows that this form of
presentation has nothing to do with a representation by means of
signs or images (repraesentatio), but means that one places a thing
as it is before oneself (appraesentatio). In the judgment I intend and
aim at something other than the I. In this intending, this other, to
the extent that it is "tended to," and under the formal aspect in which
it is "tended to," is presented by me to myself and finds itself now
before me, that is, it is constituted as an object. This objectivation is
not the samein all cases; but it varies according to different kinds of
judgments. This point, however, need not concern us at present.
Every judgment and every statement related to a real thing
which they represent as it actually is, call forth a special form of
human behavior which characterizes Dasein's mode of Being and
distinguishes its mode of Being from that of all other beings. This
behavior is essentially tied up with reality in an intentional and
transeendental manner. But one cannot give a meaning to the real if
it is not first made present to man and if man has not first placed it
before hirnself and ifhe does not let it rise before him. This, however,
presupposes that man is openness, both to things and to himself, i.e.,
that man is Dasein, Being-in-the-world, eksistence. In this
perspective, representation, as a supposedly essential element of
every form of finite knowledge, makes no sense at all. Thus we see
that Heidegger expressly returns here to Husserl's idea of
intentionality, but interprets it in a different manner.15 Accordingly,
Heidegger accepts the correctness of the classical definition of truth
as Husserl tried to interpret it, but he claims that this view of truth
necessarily implies a certain vision of the mode of Being of man. He
attempts to clarifY this "vision" first (SZ, 212-220) and then goes on to
draw attention to other aspects ofthe issue. (SZ, 220-227)
In Heidegger's view, a statement or a claim is true, if and only
if, it reveals and uncovers a thing just as it is. A true statement
reveals the thing as it is in itself; it asserts and lets the thing be seen
(apophansis) in its uncoveredness. In the process of confirmation
the thing is made to show itself in its selfsameness; the confirmation
shows that the thing itself which now shows itself immediately is
indeed just as it was revealed in the statement or the claim.
14WW, 10-11 (122-24).
tsww, 11-12 (124-25).
176
This implies that Being-true is Being as uncovering; my claim

is true to the degree that it reveals and uncovers. At first sight, this
seems strange and rather arbitrary. Yet on closer inspection it
appears not to be as arbitrary as it seems to be; Heraclitus already
had suggested this idea and the Greek word for truth, namely
a-letheia, suggests the same idea, also. By "translating" aletheia by
un-hidden-ness or non-concealment no word mysticism is intended;
rather philosophical reflection must make an effort to preserve the
saying power of the most basic and elementary words; it must make
an effort to say how things in fact are, phrazon hopos echei, as
Heraclitus says. Furthermore, also in this case the task of the
philosopher is not to shake off the tradition, but to retrieve it and to
appropriate it in a primordial manner. (SZ, 219)
But what is more, to be as uncovering and revealing is not only
characteristic for my claims; it is first of all characteristic for Dasein
as such; Dasein is lumen naturale. (SZ, 133, 170; cf. 220-221) The
uncovering of my claims has its eksistential, ontological foundation
in the uncovering of me as Dasein. Uneavering or revealing is a
mode of Being for Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Dasein can reveal in
many ways, in circumspection, in theoretical viewing, in the
scientific way of thematizing things, etc. In these different modes of
Being things become uneavered and revealed. Thus Dasein, as
revealing, is true in a primordial sense; things insofar as they are
revealed are true in a secondary sense. The uncoveredness
(Entdecktheit) of the beings within the world is grounded in the
uncoveredness of the world in Dasein's own Da. Thus the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world is related to the disclosing which
is intrinsic in Dasein's own Being-in, taken as ontological
disposition, understanding, and logos. Dasein's own disclosedness
is the most primordial phenomenon of the truth. Everything eise is
true to the degree that Dasein discloses it. Only Dasein itself is "in
the truth." (SZ, 221)
That Dasein is in the truth means from an eksistential point of
view many things. First it means that disclosedness belongs to
Dasein's mode of Being essentially; it is because Dasein is as
disclosedness that beings can become disclosed. Thus Dasein is in
the full sense of the term the natural light. Yet since Dasein is
thrown, this disclosedness is inherently factical; this means that in
each case it is my disclosing. Furthermore, to Dasein's mode of
Being belongs projection; Dasein can project itself authentically or
inauthentically; the same is true for Dasein's projection of the
innerworldly beings. Finally, Dasein is lost in fallenness; thus
177
Dasein can equally be in untruth; the beings are then disguised and
shown in the mode of semblance. (SZ, 221-222)
It is thus essential that Dasein must explicitly appropriate what
has already been uncovered, defend it against semblance and
disguise, and assure itself of its own uncoveredness again and again.
Thus uncoveredness must always be wrested from the beings by a
kind of robbery; the beings are to be brought from hiddenness into the
open of non-concealment. Also the fact that Dasein is a thrown
projection explains why Dasein is both in truth and in untruth.
Finally, one should observe here that the truth of our claims
originates from Dasein's disclosedness. In other words, the truth of
our claims is a derivative modification of truth taken as Dasein's
revealing, so that the phenomenon of agreement or conformity is also
derivative in character. (SZ, 223) This thesis runs parallel to a thesis
we mentioned earlier to the effect that the hermeneutic as always
precedes the apophantic as; only the latter accounts for the theoretical explication of the structure of the truth. (SZ, 223-224) But let us
now return to the manner in which Heidegger relates truth and
freedom.
If it is true, Heidegger states, that our judgments are directed to
the things about which they attempt to say something, then one has
to ask why our judgments, as well as our entire knowledge, can and
must accept the real as their norm. Why does man "consent" to
adjust hirnself radically to the beings in his knowledge, his actions,
and his entire behavior? Why does he subject hirnself to the beings in
order to derive from them the substance and the norm of what he
knows and does?
Strictly speaking, one cannot really ask the question in this way,
because we are confronted with the fact that man does indeed obey
the real and that the beings do constitute the norm that governs his
knowledge and behavior. It is better therefore to ask under what
conditions such an attitude is possible. The answer is that it is
possible because man is free. For, if our behavior adjusts itself to the
beings, if it meets them as they are, then "the beings taken as they
are" have to be the norm that governs the open being, namely Dasein,
that faces them.
Remaining what they are, things present
themselves as they are, and this within the domain of that "open"
whose openness is not created by Dasein's representation, but merely
is taken over by it as a possible referential system. This "open" is for
/
178
Heidegger the world as the necessary horizon within whose limits

every concrete being can be truly brought to light by man.l 6
Man is essentially and primordially related to this always
already given "open," the world, and in each concrete form of
behavior this fundamental relation is, as it were, actualized.l7 In
this actualization man relates hirnself to the beings which, as beingpresent and manifest, are experienced as such. "What is thus, and
solely in the strict sense, made manifest was experienced early in
Western thought as that 'which is present' (ousia) and has long been
called Being."l8
Because man is open to hirnself and to the world as the "open,"
and ultimately because man is primordially open to Being as the
unconcealed, man is able to make particular things manifest as
these particular things, that is, as they are. The judgments and the
statements that follow these judgments, must be governed by the
beings that have become manifest in this manner. It is clear,
therefore, that neither judgment nor statement can be the original
locus of truth. The essential locus of truth lies in the primordial
relation in which beings become disclosed as they are. Dasein's
openness is a necessary condition for this primordial relation. This
openness must be regarded as the proper characteristic of freedom,
so that we can conclude that "the essence of truth is freedom."l9
In spite of the explanation given, this assertion may still seem
strange. One could say, of course, that man must be free in order to
be able to perform a certain action and therefore also free to make a
representative statement and, thus, to agree or to disagree with a
"truth." But the above mentioned assertion claims that freedom is
the essence of truth. By essence is meant here the basis of the inner
possibility of whatever is accepted and generally admitted as known.
But in the idea of freedom one does not think of truth and even less of
the essence oftruth. Moreover,' it seems that, by making freedom the
essence of truth, truth is left to man's discretion. Such a surrender
of truth to man's discretion fundamentally undermines truth by
basing it on the subjectivity of the human subject.
These and other similar objections, however, proceed from
assumptions that are foreign to what Heidegger really wants to say.
16WW, 11 (123).
11ww,
(123-24).
18WW, 11 (123-24).
I9ww, 12 (125).
179
The reason for the confusion lies in the fact that the objectors
tenaciously cling to certain prejudices concerning the essence of
freedom. They assume that freedom is primarily a characteristic of
man, that the essence of freedom is immediately evident, and that
everyone knows at once what man is. One of these prejudices is to be
e:xamined more closely here.20
The term "freedom" is usually taken to mean the possibility to
choose, "the random ability to go this way or that in our choice."21
Although it cannot be denied that freedom is to be found also in
choice, the essence of freedom does not lie there. Freedom means
~?essentially the absence ofnecessity together with a certain autonomy.
; Freedom means primordially that way of Being which enables man
< to liberate hirnself from "nature's" grasp. This negative aspect of
freedom, however, contains also a positive side. In my power to
escape from the grasp of facticity, the positive possibility of my
fundamental openness reveals itself equiprimordially and, by virtue
of this openness, I can orientate myself to the world and to my own
possibilities in regard to the innerworldly beings. This freedom is
primordially not a characteristic of man's activity, but, as Being-inthe-world, Dasein is openness; it transcends being necessitated and
has the positive possibility to transcend and to project. Primordially,
therefore, freedom indicates the Being ofman.22
To e:xplain the relationship between truth and freedom we must
return to the classical definition of truth which is to be given an
ontological foundation. W e have seen that the locus of truth is not
primordially in the judgment but in Dasein's eksistence itself.23 The
conformity between judgment and reality has been drawn from
concealment. For this purpose a certain light is needed; this is the
light of Dasein's eksistence which itself is openness. "Insofar as
Dasein is its disclosedness essentially and, as disclosed, discloses
and uncovers, it is essentially true." (SZ, 221) Taken in his essence,
man is openness and a light to himself; but equiprimordially he is
openness and light with respect to other beings. As eksistence,
Dasein is a natural light, a lumen naturale. Primordially disclosed,
Dasein, taken as eksistence, is equiprimordially disclosing and
thereby giving rise to meaning. (SZ, 133)
2frww, 12-13 (125-126).
21ww, 15 (128).
22ww, 15-16 (128-129).
2aww, 6-9 cn8-22).
180
The truth of the judgment presupposes truth as unconcealedness of the beings and the truth of human eksistence taken as that
which discovers things; and these two presuppose man's
fundamental openness. Hence, the truth of judgment ultimately
presupposes that man is "in the truth." (SZ, 221) "What is primarily
'true'-that is, un-covering-is Dasein." (SZ, 220) The task of Dasein
lies in "taking beings out of their concealedness and letting them be
seen in their unconcealedness [their un-coveredness]." (SZ, 218)
The untruth of the judgment can also be considered in the same
way. The being untrue of a judgment presupposes man's being
untrue, i.e., the being uprooted ofhis eksistence. (SZ, 220) This being
uprooted means that man no Ionger stands in truth as
unconcealedness, but stands in semblance (Schein). Reality does not
remain completely concealed here but, although it is to some extent
disclosed, it is distorted in one way or another. Thus the untrue
judgment merely explicates Dasein's standing in semblance. (SZ,
222)
Truth in the most primordial sense of the word is, therefore, an
eksistential of Dasein's own mode of Being. Thus we must conclude
that "Dasein, as constituted by disclosedness, is essentially in the
truth. Disclosedness is a mode of Being that is essential to Dasein.
'There is' (es gibt) truth only insofar as Dasein is and so long as
Dasein is. Beings are discovered only when Dasein is; and they are
disclosed only as long as it is." (SZ, 226) Does it follow from this that
all truth is merely subjective? If by "subjective" one understands the
idea that all truth, by virtue of its own essential way of Being, is
relative to Dasein's Being, then this question must undoubtedly be
answered in the affirmative. If, however, "subjective" is taken to
mean "left to the subject's discretion," then the answer must be
negative, because "dis-covering ... places the dis-covering Dasein
face to face with the beings themselves." (SZ, 227) Dis-covery aims
precisely at the beings as they are, and every judgment and
statement likewise aims at these beings as they are. The intended
being itself shows itself as it is in itself, i.e., it shows "that it, in its
selfsameness, is just as it gets pointed out, discovered, in the
statement as being." (SZ, 218) As ek-sistence, Dasein discloses reality
itself; it Iets the beings be for itself as they are.
"Letting be" sometimes means that one wants to renounce
something, but in the present context it means precisely the opposite.
"Letting be" here means to Iet the beings be as they genuinely are. It
implies also that one wishes to have something to do with the beings,
not in order to protect, cultivate, or conserve them, but only to Iet
181
them truly be what they are. This "letting be" takes things from
concealedness, it brings them to light and makes them participate in
the truth of Being.24 This "having something to do with beings" in
order to bring them to light does not become absorbed in beings. On
the contrary, it unfolds itself precisely in making room for the beings
in order that they can reveal themselves as what they are themselves
and precisely as they are, and in order that subsequently our
judgmerits and statements can find their norm in them.
If both truth and freedom are nothing but expressions of
Dasein's own mode of Being then it is evident that the essence of
;truth can lie precisely in freedom taken as openness. "The essence of
;freedom, seen from the viewpoint of the essence of truth, shows itself
as the "bringing out" of beings into unconcealedness." 25 It also
becomes evident then that the locus of truth is not in the judgment,
but in that which makes judgments and statements possible, i.e., in
primordial understanding and fundamental moodness.26
In Heidegger's own view, these few remarks about truth do by
no means exhaust this rich and important subject. As he sees it, at
this point of the analysis it is not yet possible to offer a definitive
solution for the most important problems. Such solutions become
possible only after the basic problern of ontology, i.e., the question of
the meaning of Being itself, has been discussed. Yet what has been
said here about truth is adequate to understand Heidegger's position
in regard to fundamental ontology provided one constantly keeps in
mind that in the coming-to-pass of the truth of Being, Being itself
occupies the privileged position.
24ww, 14-15 (126-28).
25ww, 15 (128).
2sww, 18-19 (130-33).
DIVISION II
DASEIN AND TEMPORALITY
In Heidegger's view, at this point the preparatory analysis of

the mode of Being of Dasein has been completed. We must now start
all over again and interpret the phenomena discovered thus far from
the perspective of time as the transeendental horizon of our
understanding of Being as such. This will Iead us to a whole new set
of interpretive reflections which "repeat" what we have seen already
in another tone scale so to speak. This will imply a rather drastic
change in terminology and a turning to issues not yet touched upon
in the foregoing pages.
In the preceding analysis Dasein was taken in its everydayness.
In its everyday concern with the beings within the world Dasein is in
a state of fallenness and Dasein encounters itself there in the form of
the "they"; this "they" is Dasein's inauthentic self. We must now ask
the question of how Dasein can achieve its genuine and authentic
self. To achieve authenticity Dasein need not withdraw from the
beings within the world; rather it must learn to adopt a completely
different attitude in regard to its ontic entanglement. "Authentie
eksistence is not something that hovers over everydayness that is
falling, but eksistentially it is simply a modified way in which
everydayness is apprehended." (SZ, 179) Heidegger's answer to the
question concerning Dasein's search for authenticity can be
explained only by focusing on the question of how the various
structural elements of Dasein's Being can be brought tagether in a
unified totality.
W e have seen already that the structural elements of Dasein's
Being are unified in care. Care was discovered by means of an
analysis of anxiety. In anxiety one does not shrink from some being
within the world, something specific, imminent, and dangerous,
that is either here or there. In anxiety Dasein is anxious about nonbeing and that which threatens it is nowhere. (SZ, 186) Dasein is
anxious about non-being, but this non-being is not just nothing. This
non-being is grounded in the world as such. (SZ, 187) In the
phenomenon of anxiety, which may occur only briefly on rare
184
occasions, the beings within the world which occupy Dasein. in its
everyday concern, become suddenly insignificant; at that moment, in
Dasein's ontological disposition, the dark horizon wherein the beings
within the world and also Dasein itself meet and which constitutes
the eksistential dimension of Dasein, becomes disclosed. Furthermore, what Dasein is anxious for appears to be its own self. "Anxiety
brings Dasein face to face with its Being-free-for ... (propensio in ... )
the authenticity of its Being, and for this authenticity as a possibility
which it always is." (SZ, 188) Anxiety thus brings Dasein before its
self as that being it has to be in the world as the coming-to-pass of
transcendence. In other words, anxiety is the understanding
disposition by which Dasein in its unity is disclosed to its self. (SZ,
188)
The unity which anxiety reveals is a synthesis of three
elements. Anxiety first discloses Dasein as a being that has to be in
the world, as a Being-able-to-be (Seinknnen): to be an inexhaustible
potentiality to transcend beings toward Being. As such Dasein is
always in advance of itself in anticipation. Then, anxiety also
discloses Dasein in its thrownness into the world; thus Dasein is a
process which always is already begun and yet still to be achieved.
Finally, anxiety discloses Dasein in its referential dependence on the
world. As we have seen already, anxiety thus discloses Dasein's
Being as care, taken in the sense of "ahead-of-itself, Being-already-in(the-world), as being-at (the beings encountered in the world)." (SZ,
192) It is in the phenomenon of care that Dasein's finitude and
transcendence are mediated.l
But what about the totality ofDasein's Being? Showing the unity
of Dasein's Beingis manifestly not tantamount to showing its totality.
Dasein's Being is a project that is spread out over time. Where
Heidegger spoke about care he had already said something negative
about Dasein's beginning: Dasein is thrown and as such it is not the
author of its self; it has been given over to itself to be. On the other
hand, as a process still to be achieved Dasein has also a not-yet that
still has to occur. About the end of the process nothing has been said
yet thus far. It is only when reflections on the end of Dasein have
been added, that weshall have brought to light the process as a whole
and, thus, revea_led the completeness of its finitude.2 To focus on
lCf. William Richardson, Heidegger,

2Jbid., pp. 74-75.
pp. 71-74.
OF "BEING AND TIME"
185
Dasein's totality by focusing on death is the first task which

Heidegger now sets for himself.
Once this task has been completed, Heidegger will turn to the
question of authenticity. Here we shall encounter the very special
difficulty that a human being can be authentic only in an eksistentiell
situation. Thus the question of authenticity is to be considered at two
different Ievels. Heidegger will have to say something about
authenticity as an eksistentiell potentiality, as weil as about the
eksistential structure that makes it possible. Heidegger decided to
treat the two issues in reverse order: first he considers the
ontological dimension of authenticity where he discusses Dasein's
authentic Being-unto-death. The eksistentiell potentiality is then
unfolded by an analysis of conscience, guilt, and resolve.S
Thus in what follows Heidegger will present us with an
ontological interpretation of the description of the mode of Being of
Dasein developed in the first division of Being and Time. In his view
(SZ, 232), an ontological interpretation is scientifically acceptable only
if it is able to work out all of its basic assumptions, i.e., the entire
hermeneutic situation. In the second Division Heidegger wants to
examine three basic assumptions. In his view, the condition of the
possibility of care taken in an ontological sense is the temporality and
historicity of the Being of Dasein. Thus only under the condition that
it can be shown that temporality is constitutive for the Being of
Dasein, can one maintain that the Being of Dasein can be described
as care. This is the first basic assumption made in the first division.
Yet before one can show that temporality and historicity, both of
which are constitutive of Dasein's Being, are the conditions of the
possibility of care, two other assumptions must be explained
(Auslegen) and "justified" ontologically. The first assumption is that
Dasein's Being is indeed a whole; the other is concerned with the
question of whether and how Dasein can be authentic. In discussing
these important issues Heidegger was to some degree inspired by
ideas from Regel, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Blonde!, and others.
3Jbid., p. 77.
CHAPTERIX
DEATH, CONSCIENCE, AND RESOLVE
1: Introductory Refl.econs
In the first Division of the book Heidegger had presented a

preparatory fundamental analysis of the Being of Dasein. In that
Division t:he following important issues were discussed: Dasein's
Being as Being-in-the-world, the worldhood of the world, Being-with,
the "They," Being-in as such with its three basic eksistential components, and care as the genuine Being of Dasein. At the beginning of
the second Division of the book Heidegger first reflects briefly on the
outcome of the preceding analysis and the task of a definitive,
primordial, and eksistential analysis of Dasein's Being which is still
to be delivered in the second Division. Section 45 thus deals with
what we have discovered already as well as what it isthat we arestill
seeking. (SZ, 231)
We haue seen that the basic state of Dasein is Being-in-the-world
and all of its structures center on disclosedness (Entschlossenheit).
The totality of Being-in-the-world taken as a structural whole
appeared to consist in care. By unfolding the phenomenon of care,
we have received an insight into the concrete constitution of Dasein's
eksistence, i.e., into its equiprimordial connection with Dasein's
facticity and falling.
What we are seehing still is the answer to the question concerning the meaning of Being as well as an answer to the question of how
this first question is tobe worked out in a radical manner. Now to
unfold the horizon within which Being can become intelligible is
tantamount to clarifying the possibility of having any understanding
of Being at all and, as we have seen already, this understanding
belongs to the very constitution of Dasein. Thus to understand the
Being question we must first interpret primordially Dasein in its
Being. CSZ, 231)
But to say that the Being of Dasein is care, does this mean that
one has already given a primordial interpretation of Dasein's Being?
A genuine, ontological interpretation must clarify and make sec11:re
188
the hermeneutical situation, i.e., the totality of the presuppositions

enclosed in the fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception ofthat
interpretation. To some extent we have done this already in the first
Division. Yetinordertobe primordial our interpretation must also
provide us with an explicit assurance that the whole of Dasein's
Beingis explained and show that all of its structural elements indeed
constitute a unity. (SZ, 231-232)
Heidegger quickly concludes that the preceding analysis of
Dasein's Being cannot lay claim to primordiality, because our forehaving never included more than the inauthentic, everyday mode of
Being of Dasein; furthermore, we always showed Dasein's Being as
being less than a whole. Thus the task now arises of putting Dasein
as a whole into our fore-having. Thus we must first raise the
question of this being's potentiality for being a whole. For as long as
Dasein is, there is in every case something still outstanding, which
Dasein can and will be. But to that which is so outstanding, the end
itself belongs; but the end of Dasein as Being-in-the-world is death.
This end determines in every case whatever totality is possible for
Dasein. And for our present aim not just any conception of death will
be adequate; what we need is an eksistential conception of death. But
in the case of man death has the character of Dasein itself; thus
death is only in an eksistentiell Being-towards-death; each human
being stands out towards its own death. By considering Dasein's
death in this way, the whole ek-sisting Dasein allows itself to be
brought into our eksistential fore-having. (SZ, 233-234)
But can Dasein also eksist authentically as a whole? The
authenticity of Dasein is to be determined with respect to eksistence,
to authentic eksistence. We can derive the criterion for this from an
ontological interpretation of conscience. Conscience, like death, even
demands a genuinely eksistential interpretation.
Such an
interpretation will show that Dasein has its authentic Being-able-tobe in that it wants to haue a conscience. This, too, is an eksistentiell
possibility which in each case must be made definite in an
eksistentiell way by each Dasein's own Being-towards-death. (SZ, 234)
Our eksistential analytic thus acquires its assurance as to the
constitution of Dasein's primordial Being, the moment we can show
that Dasein has an authentic potentiality for Being a whole. This
potentiality becomes visible there as a mode of care; and the
primordial ontological basis for Dasein's eksistentiality, taken as
care, is temporality. Thus the eksistential-temporal analytic of
Dasein's Being must now be confirmed concretely. (SZ, 234) This will
DEATH, CONSCIENCE AND RESOLVE
189
Iead to the insight that Dasein is also inherently historical and as

such it can and must develop the science of history. (SZ, 234-235)
ll: Dasein's Possibility of Being-A-Whole. Being Towards Death1
1. How to Determine Dasein's Being-a-Whole Ontologically? In
Heidegger's view, we must first try tobring the whole Dasein into our
fore-having. But this seems to be inconsistent with the ontological
meaning of care. The primary element in care is Dasein's Beingahead-of-itself. As long as Dasein is, right to its end, it comports
itself towards its own Being-able-to-be. This is true even for those
who eksistentielly have given up all hope and are now "ready for
anything." The Being-ahead-of-itself, as a constitutive structure of
care, teils us that in Dasein there is always something still coming
and outstanding, something still to be settled in one's own Beingable-to-be. As long as Dasein is as such, it has never reached
wholeness. The reason for this does not lie in any imperfection of our
cognitive powers, but rather in the very Being of this being. But is it
then not hopeless to try to understand Dasein's Being ontologically as
a totality? We shall think so as long as we conceive of Dasein as
something that is merely present-at-hand, so that what is still ahead
of it is not yet present-at-hand, and as long as we take death in a
biological sense. But as we shall see shortly, this is not the way we
should go about things. (SZ, 235-237)
When a Dasein reaches its own wholeness in its own death,
then it loses the Being of its "there" in death also. By its transition to
no Ionger being as a Dasein, it no Ionger has the possibility of
experiencing anything and thus of experiencing its own death. This
fact makes the death of other people so impressive. Dasein can have
lThere is quite a bit of Iiterature on Heidegger's conception of death and its
function in his eksistential analytic of Dasein. Yet most of it has appeared in
Japan in the Japanese language. There are also many essays in which
Heidegger's conception of death is compared with the view of other philosophers or
thinkers in both the East and the West. I shall Iimit myself here to some
publications that may be helpful to come to a better understanding of the meaning
and function of death in Being and Time. William J. Richardson, Heidegger, pp.
75-80, 83-83, 286-87; Th. Weiss, Angst vor dem Tode und Freiheit zum Tode in M.
Heideggers "Sein und Zeit." Innsbruck: Rauch, 1947; Gray, Glenn J., "Martin
Heidegger: On Anticipating My Own Death," in The Personalist, 46(1965), 439-58;
Ugo M. Ugazio, Il problema della morte nella filosofia di Heidegger. Milano:
Murisia, 1976; B. E. O'Mahony, "Martin Heidegger's Existential Analysis of
Death," in Philosophical Studies, 18(1969), 58-75; James N. Demske, Being, Man,
and Death. A Key to Heidegger. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970.
100
some experience of death because its Beingis inherently Being-withothers. Yet as we shall see, reflections on the death of another
person do not lead us to our goal, because the end of another human
being cannot be chosen as a substitute theme for our analysis of my
Dasein's wholeness. For in the dying of the other we can experience
only that remarkable phenomenon of Being which may be defined as
the change-over of a being that has the mode of Being of Dasein to
being no Ionger a Dasein: the end of the being qua Dasein is the
beginning of the same being as something merely present-at-hand.
(SZ, 238)
Heidegger explains that the deceased is obviously not just a
thing or a piece of equipment, and that those who remain behind are
somehow still "with" him or her; yet the authentic coming-to-an-end
of the deceased is precisely that which we can neuer experience.
"Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is
experienced by those who remain. In suffering this loss, however,
we have no way of access to the loss-of-Being as such which the dying
person 'suffers'." (SZ, 239) What we would like to know is the
ontological meaning of the dying of the person who dies, as a Beingable-to-be which belongs to his Being. But to this we have no access
even though we can imagine ourselves somehow in the role of the
other with respect to many other things. (SZ, 239) Thus we never can
take the other's dying away from him or make it our own. In dying
we can show that "mineness" and "eksistence" are ontologically
constitutive for death. Dying is not just an event; it is a phenomenon
to be understood. This means that we have to form a purely
eksistential conception of this phenomenon. (SZ, 239-241)
As Heidegger sees it, within the framework of this
investigation, the ontological characterization of the end and of
totality (Ganzheit) can only be provisional; to perform such a task it is
not enough to set forth just some merely formal structure of end-ingeneral and totality-in-general. In a footnote (SZ, 244) Heidegger
explains that even though the distinction between holos and pan,
whole and sum, has been familiar since the time of Plato and
Aristotle, no one seems to know anything about the systematic study
of the classification of the categorial variations which this division
entails. To such a thing it would be necessary to give a clarified idea
ofBeing-in-general first. (SZ, 241)
Most characterizations of totality and end are totally inadequate.
We must try to develop these concepts as eksistentials. For otherwise
it will be impossible to develop an ontological interpretation of death.
(SZ, 241-242) Furthermore, the eksistential concepts of wholeness, to-
191
tality, and end cannot be derived by means of a deduction; they are to

be derived from Dasein's mode of Being itself.
The outcome of our discussion of death can be formulated
provisionally in three theses: 1) There belongs to Dasein, as long as it
is as such, a not-yet which is constantly outstanding. 2) The comingto-its-end ofthat which as such is not yet at its end, has the character
of being no Ionger in the form of Dasein. 3) Coming-to-an-end
implies a mode of Being in which in each case the particular Dasein
cannot be represented by someone else. (SZ, 242)-Let us now try to
explain and justify these claims.
Heidegger begins his explanation by comparing the "outstanding" characteristic of Dasein, i.e., its permanently outstanding notyet, with the not-yet of the ripening fruit, the cessation of the rain,
and the disappearing of the moon in its last phase. Dasein ends in
death. Thus we must ask what then the authentic sense of death is
which is Dasein's end. One could be tempted to say that in death
Dasein simply is at its end; if we were to take the term "end" in the
expression "at its end" to mean "perfection" (fruit), "cessation" (rain),
"disappearance" (moon in last phase), etc., we would interpret
Dasein as a mere being ready-to-hand or present-at-hand; but in so
doing we would misinterpret Dasein completely. (SZ, 244-245) The
mode of Being of Dasein is characterized by eksistence, its ekstatic
Being-able-to-be because of which it is its own potentiality. It
constantly is what it can be; thus it constantly also is what it not yet
is, namely its end. Since the potentiality of Dasein inherently
includes in eksistential fashion its end, the death of Dasein must be
described not as a Being-at-an-end (Zu-Ende-Sein) but rather as the
Being-unto-its-end (Sein zum Ende) of Dasein. The latter expression
indicates that the end, death, always penetrates Dasein's entire
eksistence. Thus Heidegger can say that "death is a manner of Being
which Dasein assumes just as soon as it eksists .... " (SZ, 245) "As
soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die."2
But to say that Dasein's ending, in the sense of Being-towardsthe-end, must be explained ontologically in terms of Dasein's own
mode of Being (SZ, 245), does not yet immediately lead us to our goal.
For thus far we have merely shown that the not-yet which Dasein is
in each case, resists interpretation, if we take it as something that is
just still outstanding. A positive characterization of the phenomenon
under investigation will succeed only if it is unequivocally oriented
2From "Der Ackermann aus Bhmen," quoted in SZ, 245, note.
preceding commentary see Richardson, Heidegger, p. 75.
For the
192
towards Dasein's own mode of Being, i.e., the phenomenon of care.

(SZ, 246)
2. The Eksistential Analysis of Death Compared With Other
Possible Interpretations of Death. Preliminary Sketch of the
Eksistential Structure of Death. We must now try to distinguish the
eksistential analysis of death from other possible interpretations of
this phenomenon. Let us do so by indicating first what an
eksistential interpretation cannot inquire about. First of all we must
exclude every biological and physiological determination of life and
death; these are not meaningless; yet they are not pertinent to our
present task, because they are ontical in character. (SZ, 246)
Secondly we must exclude any medical interpretation of death, even
though such an interpretation may be ontological. Underlying every
ontical exploration of life and death, there is an ontological one. Yet
what we are interested in here is an ontological understanding of
death in light of an ontology of Dasein taken as such. Dasein
perishes like everything eisethat is alive; yet if dying stands for the
way of Being in which Dasein is towards its own death, then Dasein
as such never perishes.
Thirdly we have to exclude every biographical, ethnological, or
psychological interpretation of death. In such a typology of dying the
concept of dying is always already presupposed, insofar as such
interpretations merely explain the conditions under which Ableben
(living towards its end, passing-away) is experienced; furthermore, a
psychology of dying teils us so mething about the "living" of the person
who is "dying." Psychological investigations can tell us something
about the fact of dying and the manner in which a person can deal
with it. (SZ, 247)
Finally, our analysis is not meant to decide the issue as to
whether or not after death there is still another form of Being possible
for man. Questions of this nature can be asked meaningfully only
after death has been conceived in its full ontological essence. The
same is true for metaphysical considerations of death; questions of
how and when death "came into this world" and what meaning it
really has; these questions presuppose an understanding of the
character of Being which belongs to death, an ontology of beings
taken as a whole, and especially an ontological clarification of
negativity and evil in general. But these notions have not yet been
discussed here. (SZ, 248)
Concluding these considerations, Heidegger writes, we may
thus say that methodologically the eksistential analysis of death is
superordinate to the questions posed by biology, psychology, theodicy,
193
and a theology of death and dying. Yet looked at from an ontical point
ofview, the eksistential interpretation of death appears as formal and
empty. We should never forget that an eksistential definition of the
concept of death must remain unaccompanied by any eksistentiell
commitments. (SZ, 248-249)
We must now try to give a preliminary sketch of an eksistential
and ontological structure of Death. To this end we must interpret the
phenomenon of death as Being-towards-the-end, and we must do so
in terms of Dasein's basic structure which is care. Wehave defined
care in terms of a Being-ahead-of-itself, Being-already in-the-world,
and Being-alongside-beings which we encounter within the world.
(Section 41) Care thus comprises eksistence (the ahead of itself),
facticity (Being already in), and falling (Being alongside things).
Now if death indeed belongs to the Beingof Dasein, death (=Beingtowards"the-end) must be defined in terms of these characteristics.
The not-yet of the end of Dasein expresses eksistentially
something towards which Dasein comports itself. Death is
something not yet present-at-hand, not something that ultimately is
still outstanding, but something that always stands before Dasein; it
is something impending. It is not impending as the storm or the
visit of a friend is impending. Rather with death, Dasein stands
before itself in its ownmost Being-able-to-be. Dasein's death is the
possibility of no Ionger Being-able-to-be-there. This ownmost nonrelative possibility is at the same time the uttermost one. (SZ, 249-250)
Thirdly, as Being-able-to-be Dasein cannot outstrip the
possibility of death. Death is the possibility of the absolute
impossibility of Dasein. In other words, death appears to be the
possibility which is 1) one's ownmost, 2) non-relative, and 3) which
cannot be outstripped. As such, death is distinctively impending.
Dasein does not proeure for itself death subsequently and
occasionally; rather Dasein eksists as thrown into this possibility.
This thrownness into death reveals itself as anxiety. That about
which one is anxious is thus Dasein's Being-able-to-be-itself. This
should not be confused with fear of dying. (SZ, 250-51)
3. Comparison ofthe Everyday and the Eksistential Conception
of Death. Most people live as if they do not know about this Beingtowards-the-end which belongs essentially to Dasein's thrownness.
Dasein nevertheless is dying as long as it eksists, even though
proximally and for the most part it does so by way offalling. We must
focus on these implications in what follows. (SZ, 251-252)
We have seen in the preceding sections that the self of
everydayness is the "they"; it expresses itself in idle talk. This idle
194
talk can explain the way in which everyday Dasein interprets Beingtowards-death for itself. How does the "they" comport itself towards
death? Death is a mishap, constantly occurring. Death is one of
these things that occur within the world; many people die everyday;
one day we shall die too; yet right now it has nothing to do with us yet.
Secondly, one dies; death is an indefinite something which
proximally is not yet present-at-hand. It is no real threat. "One dies"
does not mean that I die; the "one" here is really nobody in particular;
dying belongs to nobody in particular. Death is just a public
occurrence which the "they" just encounters. We encounter death
once in a while as something that is actual in others; we do not think
of it as our ownmost possibility. Furthermore, when someone is
dying we talk him or her into the belief that he or she will escape
death and can return to tranquilized everydayness. (SZ, 252-253)
Death is thus really no more than a social inconvenience which we
shall soon forget for good. (SZ, 253-254)
Thirdly, everydayness and the "they" do not permit us the
courage to have anxiety in the face of death. In reality, this
indifference alienates Dasein from its ownmost-non-relative Beingable-to-be. The typical characteristics of falling which we encounter
here are temptation, tranquilization, and alienation. In this way
Dasein flees from death. Yet even in average everydayness death is
constantly an issue for Dasein even though this has the form of an
untroubled indifference towards the uttermost possibility of
eksistence. (SZ, 254-255)
In our preliminary eksistential outline, Being-towards-the-end
was defined as: 1) Being towards one's ownmost Being-able-to-be,
which 2) is not relative, and 3) not to be overcome. A being that has
the mode of Being of eksistence and also the mode of Being of relating
itself as Being-able-to-be towards this possibility, brings itself face to
face with the absolute impossibility of eksisting.
This characterization of Being-towards-death is seemingly
empty. In addition to this ontological characterization we have also
given an everyday type of interpretation of Being-towards-death. In
our everyday understanding of death what is mostly characteristic is
the fact that we try to evade death and escape from it, simply avoid it.
Such an evasion really conceals the true meaning of death.
Heidegger prefers to take the opposite road: he begins in our
everyday understanding and makes an effort to end up in a full
eksistential conception of death by rounding out his interpretation of
our everyday Being-towards-death. (SZ, 255)
195
In our everyday understanding of death we stick to what "they"

say and think about death. We have focused mainly on the "one
obviously dies one day." In the expression "one day, but not yet right
away," everydayness admits that the fact of death is certain, but not
important because not imminent. No one doubts that one will die;
death is certain; yet this certain fact is not immediately relevant in
any way. This evasive concealment in the face of death cannot be
authentically certain of death, although it obviously is and remains
somehow certain of it. What are we then to say about this certainty of
death?
Tobe certain of something means to hold it for true and take it
as something that is true. As we have seen, for a thing truth means
uncoveredness and this is ultimately grounded in Dasein's
disclosedness. (Section 44) As a being which is both disclosed and
disclosing Dasein is essentially in the truth. But certainty belongs to
truth equiprimordially. Both truth and certainty have a double
meaning: Dasein is disclosive and it is certain; on the other hand,
things are true and said to be certain. On the part of Dasein, one
mode of certainty is called conviction; in this case Dasein Iets the
testimony of the thing itself which has been uneavered (the true
being), be the sole determinant factor for the Being-towards that
thing in understanding. The adequacy of Dasein's holding something for true is thus measured according to the truth claim to which
it belongs, i.e., such a claim gets its justification from the kind of
Being of the thing to be disclosed. Thus the kind of truth, and with it
the kind of certainty, varies with the way beings differ and the
manner in which they are disclosed. Here we are interested only in
Dasein's Being-certain with regard to death. Note that Heidegger
bases certainty in objective evidence, i.e., the things insofar as they
are revealed; like truth, certainty may vary with the kind of thing
revealed and the manner ofrevealment. (SZ, 255-257)
Since in its everydayness Dasein for the most part covers up the
ownmost possibility of its Being, i.e., death, Dasein as factical is then
in the untruth. The certainty which corresponds to this is an inappropriate way of holding-for-true. "They" say that it is certain that
death is coming; yet one forgets that Dasein itself must in every case
be certain ofits ownmost, non-relative Being-able-to-be. The certainty
of death is empirical, not apodictic. In its everydayness Dasein is
certain about death; yet it is not authentically certain of its own
death. "They" say that man will die, yet he will not die right away.
Death is so deferred to something later. The "they" covers up what is
196
peculiar in death's own certainty, namely that it is possible at any

moment.
We can now determine the full eksistential, ontological
conception of death: "death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein's
ownmost possibility-non-relative, certain and as such indefinite,
nottobe outstripped. Death is, as Dasein's end, in the very Beingof
this being towards its end." (SZ, 258-259) This will help us to work out
the kind of Being of Dasein in which Dasein, as such, can be a whole.
For we now learn to see that the "not-yet" which was taken over from
the ahead-of-itself and the care-structure itself, do not prevent us
from comprehending Dasein's Being-a-whole; these characteristics
of care rather are what makes first of all such a Being-towards-theend possible. We must now examine to what extent Dasein can
maintain itselfin an authentic Being-towards-the-end. (SZ, 259-260)
4. Eksistential Projection of an Authentie Being-TowardsDeath. We have seen, Heidegger continues, that Dasein is
constituted by disclosedness (Erschlossenheit), by an understanding
which itself is also an ontological disposition. Authentie Beingtowards-death cannot evade its ownmost non-relative possibility. We
must now ask about those items which in Dasein are constitutive for
its understanding of death: 1) Being-towards-death is a Being
towards a distinctive possibility of Dasein itself. Yet this possibility
should not be taken to be one that can be eliminated by some process
of actualization. Death as possible is not something possible which is
readyto-hand. By Being-towards-death we do not mean either some
dwelling upon the end in its possibility; this is the way we comport
ourselves when we just think about death, and ponder when and how
this possibility perhaps may become actualized. (SZ, 261)
2) Dasein comports itself towards something possible in its possibility
by expecting it. When we expect something we not only look away
from the possible to its possible actualization, but particularly we
even wait for this actualization. But Being-towards-death implies
that we comport ourselves towards death as a possibility which we
anticipate. "The closest closeness which one may have to Being
towards death as a possibility, is as far as possible from anything
actual." (SZ, 262) The more clearly this possibility is understood, the
more purely our understanding penetrates into it "as the possibility of
the impossibility of any eksistence at all." (SZ, 262) Death, as
possibility, gives Dasein nothingtobe actualized, nothingthat Dasein
as actual ever could be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of
every way of comporting oneself toward anything. In the anticipation
of this possibility it becomes greater and greater; the possibility
197
reveals itself as one which is without measure. As anticipation of

possibility, Being-towards-death is what makes this possibility first
possible. (SZ, 262)
3) Being-towards-death is the anticipation of a Being-able-to-be ofthat
being whose mode of Being is anticipation. In the anticipatory
revealing of this Being-able-to-be Dasein discloses itself in regard to
its uttermost possibility, i.e., the possibility of authentic eksistence.
Furthermore, death is Dasein's ownmost possibility, its ownmost
Being-able-to-be in which its very own Being is at issue. In this
distinctive possibility its own self has been wrenched away from the
"they-self." (SZ, 263)
4) This ownmost possibility is non-relative. Anticipation (Vorlaufen)
allows Dasein to understand that its Being-able-to-be in which its
own Being is indeed an issue, must be taken over by Dasein alone;
death lays claim to it as an individual Dasein. The non-relative
character of death individualizes Dasein down to itself. Dasein can
authentically be itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its own
accord. Dasein is authentically itself only to the degree that, "as
concernful Being-alongside and solicitous Being-with, it projects
itself upon its ownmost Being-able-to-be rather than upon the
possibility ofthe 'they-self." (SZ, 263)
5) Then, as we have seen, this ownmost, non-relative possibility is not
to be outstripped (unberhohlbar). This anticipation, unlike
inauthentic Being-towards-death, does not evade the fact that death is
not to be outstripped; anticipation precisely frees itself for accepting
this. Also, as the non-relative possibility, death individualizes, but
only in such a way that, as the possibility which is not to be
outstripped, it makes Dasein, as Being-with, have some
understanding of the Being-able-to-be of others. Anticipation also
includes the possibility oftaking the whole ofDasein in advance in an
eksistentiell manner. (SZ, 264)
6) The ownmost non-relative possibility, which is not to be
outstripped, is also certain. And the way to be certain of it is
determined by the kind of truth which corresponds to it, which is
disclosedness. Holding death for true shows a kind of certainty,
which is more primordial than any certainty which relates to the
beings which we encounter within the world, or even to purely
formal objects. (SZ, 264-265) The reason for this is that holding death
for true demands Dasein to be in the full authenticity of its
eksistence. (SZ, 265)
7) The ownmost possibility which is non-relative, not to be
outstripped, and certain, is indefinite with respect to its certainty.
198
Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety. Thus anxiety, as a basic

disposition, belongs to the self-understanding of Dasein; anxiety is
really the disposition which can hold open the utter and constant
threat to itself which arises from Dasein's ownmost individualized
Being. In this basic disposition Dasein finds itself face to face with
the "nothing" which consists in the possible impossibility of its
eksistence. (SZ, 265-266)
We may thus conclude, summarizing the preceding analysis,
that "anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the 'they-self and
brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily
unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an
impassioned freedom-towards-death-a freedom which has been
released from the illusions of the they and which is factical, certain
of itself, and anxious." (SZ, 266)
The eksistential projection described herein which anticipation
has been delimited, has made the ontological possibility of an
eksistentiell Being-towards-death which is authentic, manifest.
Therewith, the possibility of Dasein's having an authentic
potentiality for Being-as-a-whole emerges, but still only as an
ontolo ical possibility. In our description we have not proposed an
ideal ~ eksistence with any special content which Dasein is supposed
to follow; nor did we impose such an ideal from the outside. Yet from
an eksistentiell point of view this eksistentially possible Beingtowards-death still remains a fantastic exaction. The authentic
potentiality for Being-a-whoie signifies nothing, even after it has been
shown to be possible; it means nothing as long as the ontical Beingable-to-be has not been demonstrated in Dasein itself. In other
words, there is still the following question: does Dasein ever
factically throw itself into such a Being-towards-death? Does Dasein
demand an authentic Being-able-to-be which is determined by the
anticipation ofits death? (SZ, 266)
Before we can answer these questions we must first ask
whether Dasein to any extent gives testimony (bezeugt) to a possible
authenticity of its eksistence, so that such authenticity is not only
possible in an eksistentiell manner, but is also demanded by Dasein
of itself. Thus the question of Dasein's authentic Being-a-whoie still
hangs in mid-air as long as the question of conscience has not been
raised. To put this into a formal question: does the anticipation of
death which until now we have projected only as an ontological
199
possibility, have an essential connection with the authentic Beingable-to-be which has indeed been attested by conscience.3 (SZ, 266-267)
III: Dasein's Attestation of an Authentie
Being-Able-To-Be andResolve4
1. Toward the Eksistential-Ontological Foundations of
Conscience. Heidegger thus continues his reflections by stating that
we must now ask the question of how an authentic eksistentiell
possibility can be attested and verified. What we are seeking here is
an authentic Being-able-to-be of Dasein which will indeed be attested
in its eksistentiell possibility by Dasein itself. Where can we find
such an attestation? In this attestation an authentic Being-able-to-beone's-own-self must be given us to understand.
In Section 25 the question of the who of Dasein was answered
with the expression, the self. Dasein's selfhood has been defined
there purely formally as a way of eksisting. Yet for the most part I
myself am not the who of my Dasein; usually the they-self is its who.
Thus authentic Being-one's-self takes the form of an eksistentiell
modification of the they. We must now define this modification in an
eksistential manner and ask what are the ontological conditions of its
possibility. (SZ, 267)
While Dasein is lost in the they, the factical Being-able-to-be,
which is closest to it, has already been decided upon by the they:
tasks, rules, standards, and all the modes of concernful and
solicitous Being-in-the-world that are expected. The "they" continues
to keep Dasein from taking hold of these possibilities. The "they" even
hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the
burden to choose explicitly these possibilities. Thus Dasein makes no
choices, gets carried along by "nobody," and thus ensnares itself in
inauthenticity. This process can be reversed only if Dasein explicitly
brings itself back to itself. And when Dasein brings itself back from
the they, the they-selfbecomes modified in an eksistentiell manner so
that it now becomes an authentic Being-one's-self. It must now
make up for not choosing, by choosing to make a free choice. But
because Dasein is lost in the "they," it must firstfind itself. In terms
of its "abstract" possibility, Dasein obviously already is a potentiality
3Cf. SZ, section 60.
4For the following section cf. William J. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 50-51, 7784, 237, 287, and passim; M. Gelven, "Authenticity and Guilt," in Frederick
Elliston, ed., Heidegger's Existential Analytic, pp. 233-46.
200
for Being-its-own-self; yet it needs to have this potentiality attested.

In the interpretation to follow we shall claim, Heidegger says, that
this potentiality is attested by that which Dasein in its everyday
interpretation ofitself, knows as the "voice of conscience."5
The fact of conscience has been disputed, the function of
conscience as a higher court of Dasein's eksistence has been
assessed in different ways. We might be inclined therefore to dismiss
this phenomenon; yet we encounter in the fact of conscience a
primordial phenomenon of Dasein, of which we plan to give here only
an eksistential interpretation with fundamental ontology as our
main aim. Thus no religious, theological, or ethical interpretations
of conscience are attempted here. Obviously, no ''biological" interpretationwill be attempted here either, because that would just mean its
dissolution. Heidegger decides here first to trace conscience back to
its eksistential foundation and structure, and then to make it visible
as a phenomenon of Dasein. In so doing we must neither exaggerate
the outcome of our analysis, nor make perverse claims about it and
lessen its worth. (SZ, 269) The main point here is to show that the
authentic potentiality for Being-a-whoie is not construed by our
analysis, but that conscience indeed gives witness to, and verifies,
this Being-able-to-be and this having-to-be (Seinknnen, Seinsollen).
(SZ, 269)
Conscience gives us something to understand; it discloses; thus
it is to be taken back in the disclosedness of Dasein. Now
disclosedness of Dasein is constituted by disposition, understanding,
falling, and logos. If we analyze the phenomenon of conscience we
shall see that it is a call and that calling is a mode of logos, speech or
discourse. The call has the character of an appeal to Dasein and
calls it to its ownmost potentiality for Being-its-own-self. Thus
conscience summons Dasein to its ownmost Being-guilty because it
appears nottobe what it has tobe.
Our eksistential interpretation of the phenomenon of conscience
sets forth the ontological foundations of what our ordinary way of
interpreting conscience has always already understood. This is why
our eksistential interpretation is to be confronted by a critique of the
manner in which conscience is ordinarily interpreted. Only then
can we show the degree to which it is proof of an authentic Beingable-to-be of Dasein. To the call of conscience there corresponds a
possible hearing. Thus our understanding of the appeal unveils
5This theme seems to have been presented in a paper delivered in Marburg in
July of 1924; cf. SZ, 268.
201
itself as our wanting to haue a conscience. And in this phenomenon

lies the eksistentiell choosing which we call resolve
(Entschlossenheit), i.e., a choosing to choose a kind or mode of Being
one's self. (SZ, 269-270) We must now try to discover the eksistentialontological foundations of conscience.
Conscience gives us something to understand; thus it belongs in
the realm of disclosedness. Through disclosedness Dasein is in the
possibility ofbeing its own there. With the world, it is there for itself.
Proximally and for the most part Dasein eksists as a Being-able-to-be
which in each case has already abandoned itself to definite
possibilities, because it is a being that has been thrown, and whose
thrownness gets disclosed more or less plainly by its having a certain
disposition. In this way Dasein knows what it is itself capable of,
insofar as it has either projected upon possibilities of its own, or has
been so absorbed in the "they" that it only sees the possibilities
presented by the "they." The presentation of these possibilities is
made possible eksistentially through the fact that Dasein can listen to
others; after all, it is as a Being-with others that Dasein understands.
But losing itself in the idle talk of the "they" it fails to hear its own
self. If Dasein is to be able to get brought back from this lostness of
falling, it must first be able to find itself as something that has failed
to hear itself. The call of conscience must break the listening away
from the speaking and saying of the "they"; to achieve this the call
should be clear and unambiguous. That which by calling in this
manner gives us to understand, is the conscience. (SZ, 271)
Heidegger then observes why he does not characterize
conscience with Kant as a court of justice, but rather as a voice which
gives to understand. Furthermore, he points out, we have here only
traced the phenomenal horizon for analyzing its eksistential
structure. We are not comparing conscience with a call; rather we
are understanding it as a kind of discourse or speech, in terms of the
disclosedness that is constitutive ofDasein. (SZ, 271-272; cf. note)
2. Conscience and Guilt. We must now turn to the character of
conscience as a call. In any discourse there is something that is
talked about; the discourse gives information about something. In
"normal" discourse this becomes accessible to the Dasein-with of
others by way of our utterances of a linguistic nature; normal
discourse is communication. But in the case of the call of conscience,
what is it that is talked about and to what is the appeal being made?
As for the latter, obviously Dasein itself. The call reaches Dasein in
the understanding of itself, taken in its average everyday form. Thus
the call addresses the "they-self' of concernful Being with others.
202
And to what is Dasein called? To its own self. And because only the
self of the "they-self' gets appealed to, the "they" collapses; it is passed
over and pushed into insignificance. But the self, which the appeal
has so robbed of this lodgment and hiding-place, gets now brought to
itself by the call. In other words, there are no two selfs; there is one
hidden self lodged in the "they-self," which now as genuine self has to
come to the fore. (SZ, 273)
Thus when the "they-self' is appealed to, it gets called to the
genuine self; yet the latter does not in so doing become an object on
which one is to pass judgment. The call passes over everything ontic
and psychological and appeals solely to the self; yet the genuine self
too is not, except as Being-in-the-world. (SZ, 273)
But how is one to determine what is said in the call? What does
the conscience call to the self to which it appeals? Strictly speaking
nothing. Least of all does it try to start a soliloquy in the self.
Nothing gets addressed to the self; instead the self is called to itself,
sumrnoned to its ownmost Being-able-to-be. Thus the call of
conscience dispenses with any kind of utterance; conscience
discourses solely and constantly in silence, in the rnode of keeping
silent. Yet this obviously does not give it the indefiniteness of a
"rnysterious" voice. What the call discloses is unequivocal, although
it may undergo a different interpretation in each individual Dasein
in accordance with its own possibilities of understanding. Also, the
direction to take is a sure one. The call does not require us to search
or grope, nor does it need a special sign. It can be "falsified" when it
is not authentically understood, when it gets drawn by the "they-self'
in the wrong direction. Conscience's call is an appeal to the "theyself' in its self; it summons the self to its Being-able-to-be its genuine
self and thus calls Dasein to its possibilities. We must now turn to
the question ofwho does the calling in this case. (SZ, 274)
Wehave just seen that conscience surnmons Dasein's self from
its lostness in the "they." The self to which the appeal is rnade
remains indefinite and ernpty in its "what." The call passes over
what the self, concerning itself with things and hurnans, usually
takes itselfto be. Yet the selfhas been reached and touched. The one
who calls maintains hirnself also in conspicuous indefiniteness. The
caller does not announce hirnself as such, nor does he leave Dasein
any hint. Yet he does not disguise himself; he just does not want to
be known. To let hirnself be drawn into getting talked about goes
against the mode of his Being. The fact that the caller manifests
hirnself as indefinite, and the fact that it is impossible to make him
more definite, are distinctive for the caller in a positive way. These
203
facts teil us that the caller only wants to summon Dasein; he does not
lethirnself be coaxed. He wants only to be heard as the caller. But if
this is so, would it then not be appropriate to leave the questions ofthe
"who" and "what" of the caller unanswered? Eksistentielly: yes. Yet
if it comes to an eksistential analysis of the facticity of the calling and
responding, the answer has tobe no. (SZ, 275)
In the call of conscience Dasein calls itself. Dasein is both the
caller and the called. Yet we ourselves never planned the call, never
prepared for it, never voluntarily performed it. Thus the call comes
from me and yet also from beyond me. One will be inclined to say
that in that case the caller, in the final analysis, must be God. Or one
shall try to explain the entire phenomenon away biologically. Both
interpretationspass over the phenomenon too hastily. The biological
explanation takes the entire phenomenon merely as something
present-at-hand and so misses the real point. In Heidegger's view,
the theological explanation may be correct; but even then it
presupposes the interpretation he is trying to unfold here. (SZ, 275276) Yet the question still remains that if the call is not explicitly
performed by me, but rather by an "it," does this not justify us in
seeking the caller in some other being? The answer must be no. To
understand this one must recall that Dasein is not a free-floating
self-projection; Dasein is thrown. Dasein has been thrown into eksistence. It eksists as a being which has to be as it is and as it can be.
Original disposition "brings Dasein, more or less explicitly and
authentically, face to face with the fact 'that it is, and that, as the
beingwhich it is, it has tobe in the mode of Being-able-to-be'." (SZ,
276)
Usually Dasein flees from this to the relief which comes from
the alleged freedom offered by the "they-self." Anxiety places Dasein
face to face with the nothing of the world; in the face of this nothing,
Dasein is anxious about its ownmost Being-able-to-be. Dasein, which
finds itself in the very depth of its own uncanniness, is the caller of
the call of conscience. This explains why the caller cannot be defined
by means of anything worldly. The caller is Dasein in its
uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit): primrdil, thrown Being-in-theworld as the one who is not at home-the bare "that it is" in the
nothing of the world. The everyday "they-self' is not familiar with his
caller; he sounds like an alien voice. (SZ, 276)
The caller, furthermore, , does not report events; the call
discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent. It does not invite
me into a public idle talk of the "they." Rather it calls me back from
204
this idle talk into the reticence (Verschwiegenheit) of my eksistential

Being-able-to-be. (SZ, 277)
We can thus conclude that conscience manifests itself as the
call of care: the caller is Dasein which, in its thrownness, in its
Being-already-in, is anxious about its Being-able-to-be. The one to
whom the appeal is made is the very same Dasein, summoned to its
ownmost Being-able-to-be, ahead of itself. Dasein is falling into the
"they", in Being-already-in and alongside the world of concern; it is
now summoned out of this falling by the appeal. The call of
conscience-that is, conscience itself-has its ontological possibility
in the fact that Dasein, in the very basis ofits Being, is care. (SZ, 277278) Thus there is here no need to resort to powers with a character
other than that of Dasein. Nothing speaks against this interpretation; on the contrary, all phenomena known speak for it. (SZ, 278)
Yet one could object that the real caller of conscience is some
objective authority which is valid universally for everybody, some
universal conscience, some world-conscience. The interpretation
given would thus be much too subjective. Heidegger's answer to this
objection is that this public conscience again is no more than the
social voice ofthe "they." Another objection will be that it is strange to
speak about a caller of which we have no "natural" experience. Also,
a conscience that merely summons, but does not warn or reprove, is
not a true conscience. The answer to these objections is that we are
not giving a complete interpretation of conscience, including the
eksistentiell and ontic dimensions. Hitherto we have merely tried to
trace back conscience as a phenomenon of Dasein to the ontological
constitution of this being. This is to make us ready for the task of
making the conscience intelligible as an attestation of Dasein's
ownmost Being-able-to-be. Briefly, what has been claimed here thus
far is not all that can be said about conscience; yet ontologically it is
presupposed in all other talk about conscience in ethics, theology, etc.
Furthermore, what conscience ontologically seen attests to, becomes
definite only when we have delineated plainly enough the character
of the hearing which genuinely responds to the calling. Let us thus
proceed with our analysis. (SZ, 278-280)
How are we to understand the appeal of conscience? And what
about guilt? To understand what one hears in understanding the
appeal of conscience, we must once more go back to the appeal itself.
The appeal to the "they-self'' summons one's ownmost self to its own
Being-able-to-be. Here we are not concerned with how things look
from an eksistentiell point of view, but rather with what belongs to
the eksistential condition of the possibility of its eksistentiell Being-
205
able-to-be. (SZ, 280) Wehave already seen, that from an eksistential

point of view the call says nothing which might be talked about; it
gives no information about events. The call merely points forward to
Dasein's Being-able-to-be. But wehavenot yet fully determined the
character of the call as disclosure until we understand it as one
which calls us back in calling us forth. (SZ, 280) But what is it then
that the call gives us to understand?
People usually say that the call of conscience calls one guilty,
possibly guilty, or not guilty. It will be clear that the eksistential
conception of Being-guilty is still very obscure. Yet it is legitimate to
ask what guilt means, and who determines whether one is guilty. To
understand ontologically and eksistentially what guilt means we
must begin with what the everyday interpretation of Dasein says
about it. Let us thus describe what guilt means in our everyday life.
(SZ, 281)
Being-guilty means first having debts; guilt is related to that
with which one can concem himself. (SZ, 281-282) Being-guilty also
means being responsible for; in this sense one can be guilty without
owing anything to anyone. Thirdly, Being-guilty means coming to
owe something to others. Purely formally we can define this aspect
as follows: Being-the-ground for a Iack of something in the Dasein of
another, in such a manner that this very Being-the-ground
determines itself as "lacking in some way" in terms ofthat for which
it is the ground. Being-guilty in this sense, which is found in the
breach of moral requirements, is a kind of Being which also belongs
to Dasein.
Heidegger observes here that the concept of moral guilt has been
so little clarified ontologically that the idea of deserving punishment
or even having debts becomes predominant. But in this way guilt
becomes thrust aside into the domain of concern in the sense of
reckoning up claims and balancing them off. (SZ, 282-283)
The phenomenon of being-guilty which is not necessarily
related to having-debts and law-breaking can be clarified only when
we go about it ontologically and eksistentially and conceive of the idea
of guilt in terms of Dasein's own kind of Being. (SZ, 283) In so doing
we must define the concept purely formally so that our concernful
dealing with others will be left out of consideration as will all
relationships to any law or ought. Guilt is to be defined here as a
Iack. (SZ, 283)
Thus in the idea of guilt we find inherently the not. Being-guilty
means Being-the-ground for a Being which has been defined by a
"not," as Being the ground of a nullity. The idea of the "not" excludes
206
beforehand any reference to anything present-at-hand. So we shall

pay no attention to any "not" which is related to a lacking in some
manner or other. Being-guilty does not first result from an
indebtedness; on the contrary, indebtedness becomes possible only on
the basis of a more primordial Being-guilty. We must now try to
show this "not."
Dasein's Being is care; it implies thrownness (facticity),
projection (eksistence), and falling. It has been thrown into its
"there," but not of its own accord. (SZ, 284) It has selected a definite
form of its Being-able-to-be, to which it has devoted itself, but not as
itself. Although it has not laid the ground itself, it nevertheless
reposes in the weight of it. Dasein projects itself upon possibilities
into which it has been thrown. The self which as such has to lay the
ground for itself, can never get that ground into its power. Dasein
eksists as thrown; it constantly lags behind its possibilities. It is
never eksistent before this ground but only from it. For Dasein Beinga-ground never means to have power over one's ownmost Being. The
"not" belongs to the eksistential constitution of thrownness. Being a
ground Dasein is a nullity of itself. This nullity refers to a "not"
which is constitutive for the Being of Dasein. Dasein has been
released from its ground, not through itself but only to itself. Dasein
is not itselfthe ground ofits Being. (SZ, 284-5)
Dasein constantly stands in one possibility; but this means that
it does not stand in others. Dasein is indeed free eksistentially; yet
every choice excludes others. Dasein tolerates not having chosen the
other possibilities and its notbeingable to choose them. Thus in the
structure of both thrownness and projection there is a nullity. This
nullity is the ground for the possibility of inauthentic Dasein in its
falling. Care itself is thus inherently permeated by negativity and
nullity. Eksistential nullity has nothing in common with a mere
privation, where something is lacking in comparison with an ideal.
The Being of Dasein is already null as projection; it is null in advance
of any of the things it may project. The "not" is not so mething which
emerges occasionally and which Dasein might eliminate with some
extra effort. (SZ, 285)
True, there has been a lot of talk about dialectic and much of it
was relevant and important. Yet even there no one has ever made an
ontological study of the source of "notness" or, even prior to this,
sought the mere conditions on the basis of which the problern of "not"
and "notness" can be raised. Such an effort presupposes that the
question concerning the meaning of Being be raised first.

The concepts of privation and Iack are thus insufficient for an
ontological interpretation of the phenomenon of guilt. Nothing is
gained either by starting from the problern of evil as the privation of
what is good. (SZ, 286) Let us now return again to guilt.
All beings whose Being is care Ioad themselves with factical
guilt. Yet what is much more important is that they are guilty in the
uery ground of their Being. By accepting their Being as Beingthrown, they are inherently guilty. They are guilty because they
accept to be as finite transcendence which implies thrownness and
fallenness. This essential Being-guilty is equiprimordially the
eksistential condition of the possibility of the morally good and evil;
only a being that is as finite transcendence can be good or evil. Thus
the primordial Being-guilty cannot be defined by morality, because
morality presupposes it already. (SZ, 286)
Two questions are in order here now: 1) What kind of
experience speaks for this primordial Being-guilty? 2) Is guilt only
there if there is an explicit consciousness of guilt? To this Heidegger
answers that Being-guilty is more primordial than any explicit
knowledge about it. Conscience is possible only because Dasein is
guilty in the ground of its Being and closes itself off from itself as
something thrown and falling. The call is the call of care; Beingguilty constitutes the mode of Being which we call care.
Uncanniness brings Dasein face to face with its undisguised nullity
which belongs to the possibility of its ownmost Being-able-to-be. For
Dasein as care its Being is an issue; thus it summons itself from its
uncanniness towards its genuine Being-able-to-be. And this appeal
calls back by calling forth; it calls Dasein forth to the possibility of
taking over, as eksisting, the thrown beingwhich it is; it calls Dasein
back to its thrownness which is the null basis which it has to take up
into its eksistence. In this calling forth and back Dasein is called to
bring itself to itself from its lostness in the "they"; this means that it
is guilty. Yet the call is not a taking cognizance of, nor does it ask for
such taking cognizance. Wehave to interpret the call eksistentially.
Dasein also needs not first Ioad a guilt upon itself through failure
and omission; it must be guilty authentically, guilty in the way it is.
When Dasein lets itself be called to its authentic Being-able~to-be and
projects itself upon that possibility, it becomes free for the call and
can choose itself. (SZ, 287-288)
In making the proper choice Dasein makes possible its
ownmost Being-guilty, which remains closed off from the "they-self."
The common, everyday opinion knows only the satisfying rules and
the public norms that can easily be manipulated as weil as the
208
failure to satisfy them. The everyday opinion makes a list of the

infractions of them and then tries to balance them off. It talks loud
about having made mistakes in order to avoid having to admit that it
has fallen away from its ownmost Being-guilty. But in the appeal of
conscience the "they-self' gets called to the ownmost Being-guilty of
the genuine self. Understanding the call means for Dasein that it
has to choose; what is chosen is not conscience, because that cannot
be chosen; what is chosen is rather "having-a-consdence as Beingfree for one's ownmost Being-guilty." "'Understanding the appeal'
means 'wanting to have a conscience'." (SZ, 288) This does not mean
necessarily that one wants to have a "good conscience," but rather
that one is now ready to be appealed to. "Wanting to have a
conscience is ... the most primordial, eksistentiell presupposition for
the possibility of factically becoming guilty." In understanding the
call, Dasein lets its ownmost self take action in regard to itself in
terms ofthat Being-able-to-be which it has so chosen. Only so can it
be answerable. But taken as such it still is conscienceless in the
usual sense of the term. Being good or not-good presupposes this
ontologico-eksistential choice. (SZ, 288)
As we have said, the call gives no information; also, it is not
merely critical; yet it is positive because it discloses Dasein's most
primordial Being-able-to-be as Being-guilty. (SZ, 288) We must now
show that our ontological interpretation is not in contradiction with
the familiar findings of the ordinary interpretation of conscience.
(SZ, 289)
3. The Eksistential Interpretation of Conscience Compared
with the Everyday Conception of Conscience. Conscience is
ontologically the call which summans Dasein to its ownmost beingable-to-be-guilty. Corresponding to this call, wanting-to-have-aconscience emerges as the way in which the call is understood. It is
impossible to bring these two claims into harmony with the everyday
interpretation of conscience without some mediation. For in its
everyday form this interpretation sticks rigorously to what "they"
know. (SZ, 289)
But, Heidegger asks, must the ontological interpretation agree
with the ordinary interpretation? Does Dasein from the everyday
point of view have any understanding of what we have been trying to
explain? Two claims can be made rather easily: 1) the everyday
interpretation of conscience cannot be accepted as the final criterion
for the "objectivity" of our ontological analysis; 2) yet our ontological
interpretation cannot just completely disregard the everyday
understanding and the psychological, anthropological, and
209
theological interpretations of conscience built upon it. If the

ontological interpretation has hit on the essence of conscience, then it
is in terms of it that the ordinary interpretation of conscience must
become intelligible. N ow from the ordinary interpretation of
conscience four objections can be raised against our ontological
interpretation. These objections must be discussed here.
First, it is said that the ontological interpretation of conscience
does not give an account of the basic form of the phenomenon; good,
bad, reproving, warning. It is indeed well known that in all theories
of conscience "evil" and "bad conscience" receive priority. Conscience
is primarily oriented toward the negative, toward evil: you are guilty!
'Furthermore, the experience of conscience turns up only after the
evil act has been performed. Heidegger does not deny any of this as
long as one looks at things from a non-ontological point of view, and
as long as act, conscience, and guilt are understood as things
present-at-hand. Hisclaim isthat the call has really the character of
care, the kind of Being that is characteristic of care. In the call
Dasein "is" ahead of itself in such a way that at the same time it
directs itself back to its thrownness. If one assumes that Dasein is
just an interconnected sequence of experiences, a stream, it is
impossible to take the voice of conscience as something which comes
"after the facts" so to speak, and which thus calls back. The voice
indeed does call back, but it calls far beyond the concrete action, back
to the Being-guilty into which one always already has been thrown;
and this is "earlier" than any concrete indebtedness. The authentic,
eksistentiell Being-guilty always follows upon the call. Thus the
order of the sequence in which our experiences run their course,
does not give us the phenomenal structure of eksistence. (SZ, 290-291)
If the primordial phenomenon cannot be reached by a
characterization of "bad conscience," still less can this be done by a
characterization of "good conscience." The reason for this is that a
good conscience would have to flow from the conviction of being-good;
but who would like to claim to be good without being accused of
extreme Phariseeism. Someone with a good conscience would then
have to say: I am good! (SZ, 291) Scheler has tried to argue that a
good conscience is really a privation of a bad conscience. This will
not do either in that it is generally assumed in the ordinary way of
looking at things that the bad conscience is the derivative form of the
good conscience. In other words, on the level of everyday convictions
it is difficult to come to grips with the true issues with which
conscience confronts us. (SZ, 292)
210
Let us now turn to a second objection. One could say that our
everyday experience of conscience does not know anything about
getting summoned to Being-guilty. This must be granted. Yet the
everyday experience says nothing about the full context of the call of
the voice of conscience. We do not deny that an ontic and everyday
interpretation of conscience does not know anything about these
things. But this is true for many eksistential elements discovered by
our preceding analyses. Just think about the everyday versus the
ontological interpretation of falling. Furthermore, every noneksistential and non-ontological interpretation has its own
ontological presuppositions. This is true of the interpretations of
Kant which presuppose the idea of morallaw, as weil as ofthat of
modern value theories which presuppose the concept of value. One
should therefore rather ask the question of whether these
presuppositions are as weil founded as the eksistential components
uncovered by the preceding analyses. (SZ, 292-293)
A third objection claims that the call of conscience always
relates itself to some definite deed. This too loses its force. We do not
deny that in our everyday experience conscience is often related to
concrete actions which we performed or should have performed. The
question only is one of whether a description of this aspect covers the
entire range of conscience ontologically. (SZ, 293)
Finally, the fourth objection states that conscience essentially
has a critical character. Butthis objection is also fruitless in view of
the fact that it assumes that conscience in its call is related to guilt.
If this is not true, then the objection loses its force. Our ontological
analysis has shown that conscience primarily does not give us any
practical injunctions; it solely summons Dasein to eksistence, to its
ownmost Being-able-to-be. If Dasein is not authentic in its
eksistence, it means little to ask about the value of its actions.
Scheler's critique of a purely formal ethics in favor of a material
ethics of value thus still does not go to the heart of the matter. (SZ,
294)
The most important thing to observe here is the following. In

our everyday life we interpret the call of conscience from the
limitations of the way in which Dasein interprets itself there in
falling. In spite of its obviousness, this is by no means essential and
final, even though it is not arbitrary. Once an adequate ontological
interpretation of falling has been given, the ontological interpretation
of conscience becomes comprehensible. One final remark to prevent
misunderstanding is in order here. Our ontological interpretation of
the meaning of the call of conscience which showed that the everyday
211
interpretation of conscience is eksistentially not primordial, does not

imply any judgment as to the eksistentiell moral quality of any
Dasein which maintains itself in that kind of experience. Someone's
eksistence is not impaired by an ontological interpretation that is
inadequate. In the same way, an eksistentially appropriate
interpretation of conscience does not entail that one has truly
understood the call in an eksistentiell manner. And yet, the
interpretation which is more primordial eksistentially, also discloses
possibilities for a more primordial eksistentiell understanding,
assuming that the ontological interpretation is not cut off from our
ontical experiences. (SZ, 294-295)
4. The Eksistential Structure ofthe Authentie Being-Able-To-Be
Attested in Conscience. We must now turn to the last issue. It was
claimed that the eksistential interpretation of cons-cience gives
witness of Dasein's ownmost Being-able-to-be. (SZ, 295) Conscience
gives witness not by making something definite known, but by calling
and summoning Dasein to Being-guilty. The understanding of the
appeal is itself a mode of Dasein's Being.
The authentic
understanding of the call was called the "wanting-to-have-aconscience." This is a way of letting one's ownmost self, of its own
accord and in its Being-guilty, take action in regard to itself. The
eksistential structure of this "wanting-to-have-a-conscience" must
now be disclosed. This is the only way to uncover the authenticity of
Dasein's eksistence as disclosed in Dasein itself. (SZ, 295)
Wanting-to-have-a-conscience is a way in which Dasein has
been disclosed. Disclosedness implies understanding, disposition,
and Iogos. 1) To understand in an eksistential manner implies
projecting oneself in each case upon one's ownmost factical
possibility of having the potentiality for Being-in-the-world. But this
potentiality is understood only by eksisting in this possibility. 2) The
disposition corresponding to the understanding is anxiety. Thus
wanting-to-have-a-conscience becomes really a readiness for anxiety.
3) As for Iogos, in hearing the call one must deny oneself any
counter-discourse. By the call the self is brought back from all idle
talk; the mode of articulative discourse which belongs to wanting-tohave-a-conscience is one of reticence and keeping silent. Who thus
keeps silent has something to say even though the discourse of
conscience never comes to utterance. From the viewpoint of the
"they" it is said that one does not hear and understand anything of
this call. But with this interpretation the "they" merely covers up its
own failure to hear the call.
212
Concluding these reflections Heidegger says that this reticent

self-projection upon one's ownmost Being-guilty in which one is
ready for anxiety, is tobe called resolve. (SZ, 296-297) Resolve thus is
a distinctive mode of Dasein's disclosedness which in Section 44 was
interpreted as the primordial truth, and truth is here to be taken not
as a quality of a judgment but as an eksistential. In the ontological
clarification of the proposition: "Dasein is in the truth," it was
pointed out that the primordial disclosedness of Dasein is the truth of
eksistence; it was also suggested that for a determination of its
character the analysis of Dasein's authenticity is important. In
resolve we have arrived at that truth of Dasein which is most
primordial because it is truly authentic. Whenever a "there" is
disclosed, its whole Being-in-the-world is disclosed with equal
primordiality, i.e., the world, Being-in, the self which this being is,
etc. And wherever the world is disclosed, beings within the world
have been discovered already, and this is true for both what is readyto-hand and what is present-at-hand. For if the current totality of
involvements is to be disclosed, this requires that meaningfulness be
understood beforehand. Now any discovering of a totality of
involvements goes back to a "for the sake of which"; and on that
uriderstanding of this "for the sake of which" is based in turn the
understanding of meaningfulness as the disclosedness of the current
world. In whatever we do we always seek possibilities for Dasein;
upon these possibilities the being for which its own Being is an issue,
has already projected itself. Thrown into its own "there," every
Dasein has been factically submitted to a definite world, i.e., its
world. At the same time its factical projections have been guided by
its concernfullostness in the "they." One's own Dasein can appeal to
this lostness, and this appeal can be understood in the way of resolve.
But in that case this authentic disclosedness modifies with equal
primordiality both the way in which the world is discovered, and the
way in which the Dasein-with of others is disclosed. Thus the
"world" which is ready-to-hand does not then become another one in
its content, nor does the circle of others get exchanged for a new one;
but both one's Being towards what is ready-to-hand understandingly
and concernfully, and one's solicitous Being with others, are now
given a definite character in terms of their ownmost potentiality for
Being their selves. (SZ, 297-298) In other words, resolve as authentic
Being one's self does not detach Dasein from its world. Dasein is and
remains Being-in-the-world. Yet in the light of the "for the sake of
which" of one's self-chosen Being-able-to-be, resolute Dasein frees
itself for its world. And Dasein's resolve towards itself makes it
213
possible also to let others who are with it, be in their ownmost Beingable-to-be. Thus when Dasein is resolute, it can become the
"conscience" of others. Only by authentically Being-their-selves in
resolve can people authentically be with one another. (SZ, 298)
Resolve, by its very essence, is always the resolve of some
factical Dasein at a particular time. It eksists only as a resolution.
Thus the resolution is precisely the disclosive projection of what is
factically possible at that time. And so resolve is not something
which one "accomplishes" once and for all. To resolve there belongs
the indefiniteness which is characteristic of every Being-able-to-be
into which Dasein has been factically thrown. Thus resolve is sure of
itself only in a particular resolution.
Furthermore, in every concrete resolution Dasein is both in
truth and in untruth with equal primordiality as we have seen in
Section 44. For resolve signifies letting oneself in each case be
summoned out of one's lostness in the "they." (SZ, 298) We cannot
stress strongly enough that in resolve the issue for Dasein is its
ownmost Being-able-to-be which, as something thrown, can project
itself only upon definite, factical possibilities. Butthis means that the
eksistential attributes of any possible resolute Dasein include a
situation.
The term "situation" is often used in a spatial sense. This is
even implied in the "there" of Dasein: Being-in-the-world has a
spatiality of its own. Yet, just as the spatiality of the "there" is
grounded in disclosedness, so the Situation has its foundation in
resolve. What we call situation is not determined by any present-athand mixture of circumstances and accidents one may encounter;
rather it is determined only through resolve and in it. For the "they"
a situation is essentially something that is closed off. Resolve, on the
other hand, brings the Being of the "there" into the eksistence of its
own situation. This means that when the call of conscience
summons us to our Being-able-to-be, it does not hold before us some
empty ideal of eksistence or some abstract schema, but calls us forth
into the situation. This eksistential positivity which the call of
conscience possesses when we understand it correctly, proves that it
is incorrect to restriet the inclination of the call to the indebtedness
which we have already incurred in the past, or which we now have
before us. When our understanding of the appeal is interpreted
eksistentially as resolve, conscience is revealed as that kind of Being
in which Dasein makes possible for itself its factical eksistence. (SZ,
299-300)
214
Thus resolve cannot be confused with an empty habitus, or an

indefinite velleity. Also, resolve does not first take cognizance of a
situation after it puts itself into that situation. As resolute, Dasein is
already taking action; but this term should not be understood so as to
refer to an alleged distinction between theory and practice. Resolve is
only that authenticity which, in care, is that which one cares about
and which is possible as care-the authenticity of care itself. (SZ, 300~
301)
Two concluding remarks are in order here. It is possible to
develop an eksistential anthropology which describes factical
eksistentiell possibilities. 6 Secondly, we are now in a position to
define the ontological meaning ofthat potentiality which we have
been seeking earlier, namely Dasein's authentic potentiality for
Being a whole. To unfold this is the task of our reflections to follow.
6Both Scheler and Jaspers have done so.
CHAPrERX
DASEIN'S AUTHENTIC POTENTIALITY FOR BEING-AWHOLE. CARE AND SELFHOOD.
TEMPORALITY AS THE MEANING OF CARE
I: Anticipatory Resolve as the Way in Which Dasein's Potentiality for

Being-A-Whole has Eksistentiell Authenticityl
In the preceding reflections, Heidegger says, we have projected
in an eksistential way an authentic potentiality for Being-a-whoie on
the part of Dasein. Our analysis has shown that authentic Beingtowards-death is anticipation. Furthermore, we have exhibited
Dasein's authentic Being-able-to-be in its eksistentiell attestation,
and then interpreted it eksistentially as resolve. The question which
now must be raised is one of how these two phenomena of
anticipation and resolve are to be brought together. Ras not the
ontological projection of the authentic potentiality for Being-a-whoie
led us into a dimension of Dasein which lies far from the phenomenon of resolve? What does death and the "concrete situation" of
taking action have in common? If we bring these two phenomena
forcibly together we shall end up with an unphenomenological
construction. Heidegger sees one possible solution for this problem:
let us take our point of departure from resolve as attested in its
eksistentiell possibility; then we can ask the question of whether
resolve in its ownmost eksistentiell tendency toward Being points
forward to anticipatory resolve as its ownmost authentic possibility.
Heidegger then indicates the direction in which he is seeking a
solution with the help of suggestive questions: What if resolve, in
harmony with its own meaning, should bring itself into its
authenticity only when it projects itself upon the uttermost possibility
which lies ahead of every factical Being-able-to-be of Dasein? What if
it is only in the anticipation of death that resolve, as Dasein's
lFor what follows cf. William J. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 50-51, 77-84, 90, 97103, 188-191, and passim.
216
authentic truth, has reached the authentic certainty which belongs to

it? csz, 301-302)
The subject matter of our eksistential interpretation is a being
which has the mode of Being of Dasein. Every step of our
interpretation was therefore guided by the idea of eksistence. As for
the connection between anticipation and resolve this means nothing
less than the demand that we project these eksistential phenomena
upon the eksistentiell possibilities which have been delineated in
them, and think these possibilities through to the end in an
eksistential way. (SZ, 302-303) "We have characterized resolve as a
way of reticently projecting oneself upon one's ownmost Being-guilty,
and exacting anxiety of oneself." (SZ, 305) Being-guilty belongs to
Dasein's Being. Dasein is essentially guilty and not just guilty on
some occasions. Wanting to have a conscience decides in favor ofthis
Being-guilty. Now to project oneselfupon this Being-guilty belongs to
the meaning of resolve. The eksistentiell way of taking over this guilt
in resolve, is therefore authentically accomplished only when this
resolve is understood as something constant. But this understanding
is made possible only insofar as Dasein discloses to itself its Beingable-to-be and discloses it right to its end. Eksistentially, however,
Dasein's Being-at-an-end implies Being-towards-the-end. As Beingtowards~the-end which understands, i.e., as anticipation of death,
resolve becomes authentically what it can be. Thus resolve does not
just have a connection with anticipation, as with something other
than itself. It harbours within itself authentic Being-towards-death
as the possible eksistentiell modality of its own authenticity. This
connection must now be elucidated phenomenally. (SZ, 305)
We have defined resolve as "letting oneself be called forth to
one's ownmost Being-guilty." Being-guilty belongs to the Being of
Dasein itself; this is for Dasein a form of Being-able-to-be. To say that
Dasein is constantly guilty is tantamount to claiming that Dasein in
each case maintains itself in this Being, regardless of whether it
eksists in an authentic or an inauthentic manner. Being-guilty is
not just an abiding property of something that is constantly presentat-hand, but rather the eksistentiell possibility ofbeing authentically
or inauthentically guilty. In each case Being-guilty is only in the
factical mode of Being-able-to-be that at that moment prevails.
Because Being-guilty belongs to the Being ofDasein, Dasein's mode of
Being must be conceived of as Being-able-to-be-guilty. Resolve
projects itself upon Being-able-to-be-guilty and thus understands
itself in it. It maintains itself authentically in it if the resolution is
primordially what it tends to be. Now the primordial Being of Dasein
RESOLVE, CARE, SELF, AND TEMPORALITY
217
towards its own Being-able-to-be was revealed tobe its Being-towardsdeath. Anticipation discloses this possibility as possibility. This
means that only as anticipating does resolve become a primordial
mode of Being in regard to Dasein's ownmost Being-able-to-be. Only
when it qualifies itself as Being-towards-death does resolve
understand the "ability" ofits Being-able-to-be-guilty. (SZ, 306)
When Dasein is resolute, in its eksistence it takes over
authentically the fact that it is the negative ground of its own
negativity. We have seen that, if taken eksistentially, death is the
possibility of the impossibility of eksistence, i.e., the utter negativity of
Dasein. Death is not added on to Dasein as if it were its end; as care
Dasein is the thrown and thus negative ground for its own death.
The negativity which dominates Dasein's Being primordially and
through and through, is revealed to Dasein in its authentic Beingtowards-death. But this implies that only on the basis of Dasein's
Being as a whole does anticipation make Being-guilty manifest.
Thus care includes both death and guilt equiprimordially. Only
anticipatory resolve understands Dasein's Being-able-to-be-guilty
authentically and wholly, i.e., primordially. (SZ, 306)
When the call of conscience is understood properly the fact that
Dasein is lost in the "they" becomes revealed. Resolve brings Dasein
back to its ownmost Being-able-to-be-its-own-self. Thus when Dasein
has an understanding of Being-towards-death as its ownmost possibility, Dasein's Being-able-to-be becomes authentic and wholly
transparent. The call of conscience furthermore individualizes
Dasein essentially down to its ownmost Being-able-to-be, and
discloses its anticipation of death as the possibility that is not relative.
"Anticipatory resolve Iets the Being-able-to-be-guilty, as one's
ownmost non-relative possibility, be struck wholly in the conscience."
(SZ, 307) In addition, when, in anticipation, resolve has brought the
possibility of death into its Being-able-to-be, Dasein's authentic
eksistence can no longer be outstripped. Finally, the phenomenon of
resolve brings Dasein before the primordial truth of eksistence. As
resolute Dasein is now revealed to itself in its current factical Beingable-to-be in such a way that Dasein is at the same time this
revealing and this Being-revealed. Now to any truth there belongs a
corresponding holding-for-true and a definite form of certainty.
Thus the primordial truth of eksistence demands an equiprimordial
Being-certain, in which Dasein maintains itself in what resolve
discloses. Dasein's resolve gives itself the current factical situation
and brings itself into that situation. The situation cannot be
calculated in advance; it merely becomes disclosed in a free resolve
218
which has not been determined beforehand either, even though it can
be determined later.
This state of affairs makes it necessary to ask the question of
what then the certainty which belongs to such resolve does signify.
This certainty must maintain itself in what is disclosed by the
resolve. This means that it cannot stick to the situation as to
something that is definitive and final; this certainty must
understand that the resolve, in harmony with its meaning as
disclosure, must be held open and free in each case for the relevant
factical possibility. Thus the certainty of the resolve means that
Dasein holds itself free for the possibility of being taken back, a
possibility which is factically necessary. Yet this holding it for true
in resolve, taken as the truth of eksistence, lets Dasein by no means
fall back into irresoluteness. On the contrary, this holding-it-fortrue, taken as a resolute holding-itself-free for its being taken back, is
authentic resolve which resolves to retrieve itself. The holding-it-fortrue which belongs to resolve, according to its meaning, tends to hold
itself free for Dasein's whole Being-able-to-be. This constant
certainty is guaranteed to resolve only so that it will relate itself to
that possibility of which it indeed can be totally certain: in its death
Dasein must simply "take back" everything. Since resolve is
constantly certain of death and anticipates it, resolve attains a
certainty which is authentic and whole. (SZ, 308)
But Dasein is also and equiprimordially in the untruth.
Anticipatory resolve gives Dasein at the same time the primordial
certainty that it has been closed-over. In resolve Dasein holds itself
open for its constant Being-lost in the irresoluteness of the they. As a
constant possibility of Dasein that is essentially connected with the
ground of its Being, irresoluteness is co-certain. Resolve which is
transparent to itself, understandsthat the indefiniteness of Dasein's
Being-able-to-be is madedefinite only in a resolution that pertains to
the current situation. But if this knowledge is to correspond to
authentic resolve, it must itself arise from an authentic disclosure.
This indefiniteness of Dasein's own Being-able-to-be, which becomes
certain in a resolution, is made manifest wholly for the first time in
Dasein's Being-towards-death. "Anticipation brings Dasein face to
face with a possibility which is constantly certain but which at any
moment remains indefinite as to when that possibility will become an
impossibility. Anticipation makes it manifest that this being has
been thrown into the indefiniteness of its Iimit-situation; when
resolved upon the latter, Dasein gains its authentic Being-able-to-bea-whole." (SZ, 308) The indefiniteness of death is disclosed
219
primordially by anxiety. The "nothing" with which anxiety brings

Daseinface to face, unveils the negativity by which Dasein is defined
in its very ground; this ground itself is as thrownness unto death.
(SZ, 309) Resolve can be authentic resolve and wholly what it can be
only as anticipatory resolve.
These reflections throw a new light on anticipation itself. For
we have now shown that anticipation is not just an ontological
projection; it certainly is not just a fictitious possibility which our
analysis somehow forced upon Dasein. Rather, anticipation appears
to be a mode of an eksistentiell Being-able-to-be that is attested in
Dasein, a mode which Dasein demands of itself if it authentically is
to understand itself as resolute. "Anticipation 'is' not some kind of
free-floating behavior, but must be conceived as the possibility of the
authenticity ofthat resolve which has been attested in an eksistentiell
way ... " (SZ, 309) To think about death in an authentic way is
tantamount to wanting to have a conscience which has become
transparent to itself in an eksistentiell manner. Now if authentic
resolve tends toward the mode defined by anticipation, and if
anticipation constitutes Dasein's authentic Being-able-to-be-a-whole,
then in resolve which is attested in an eksistentiell manner, there is
also attested together with it an authentic Being-able-to-be-a-whole
which belongs to Dasein. "The question of the Being-able-to-be-awhole is one which is factical and eksistentiell. It is answered by
Dasein as resolute." (SZ, 309)
Heidegger concludes these reflections with the following
important observation which summarizes the essence of the issue.
Anticipatory resolve is not a way of escape which Dasein has
fabricated in order to be able to "overcome" death. Rather it is that
understanding that follows the call of conscience and which grants
death the possibility of acquiring power over Dasein's eksistence, as
well as the possibility of dispersing all fugitive self-concealments. On
the other hand, wanting-to-have-a-conscience, which has been made
determinate as Being-towards-death, does not signify some kind of
seclusion in which Dasein flees the world; rather it brings Dasein
without any illusion into the resolve of taking action. Anticipatory
resolve springs from the sober understanding of what are factically
the basic possibilities of Dasein. Along with a sober anxiety which
brings Dasein face to face with its individualized Being-able-to-be,
there goes also an unshakable joy ofthis possibility. (SZ, 310)
At the end of this section Heidegger asks the question of
whether the entire ontological interpretation of Dasein's eksistence
was not guided by a definite, ontical way of taking authentic

eksistence. Heidegger does not deny this. Philosophy can never deny
its presuppositions; yet it cannot simply admit them either. It must
try to camprehend them; it must unfold with more and more
penetration both the presuppositions and that for which they are the
presuppositions. This makes it necessary to turn to some methodological considerations. (SZ, 310)
ll: The Interpretation of the Meaning of the Beingof Care Leads to
the Hermeneutical Situation. On the Methodological
Character of the Eksistential Analytic
In Section 45 of Being and Time Heidegger explained that the

term "hermeneutic situation" signifies the totality of all the
presuppositions that are involved in every interpretation. It is the
task of philosophical investigations to clarify these presuppositions
and to make them secure in a basic experience of the subject matter
of research, and in terms of such an experience. This implies that
one first gives a phenomenal characterization of the being that has
been selected as the theme of investigation and thus brings it into the
scope of our fore-having. In the subsequent steps of the investigation
one must be guided by a certain fore-sight. Our fore-having and our
fore-sight will give us a sketch of the relevant way of conceiving of the
theme, fore-conception. (SZ, 310-11)
In Section 63 Heidegger claims that in his explanation of the
anticipatory resolve he has made Dasein visible with respect to its
authenticity and totality. The hermeneutical situation which
previously was inadequate for the interpretation of the meaning of
the Being of care, has now finally received the required
primordiality: Dasein has been put into that which we haue in
advance and this has been done with respect to its authentic Beingable-to-be-a-whole; the idea of eksistence which guided us as that
which we see in advance has been made definite by the elucidation of
Dasein's ownmost Being-able-to-be; and now the structure of
Dasein's Being has been worked out concretely, its specific
ontological character has become so manifest that Dasein's
eksistentiality has been grasped and conceived in advance with the
proper articulation to help us work out the eksistentials conceptually.
csz, 311)
The analytic of Dasein has confirmed the thesis which was
formulated in Section 5 of Being and Time, namely that the being
which in each case we are ourselves, is ontologically that which is
farthest from us. The reason for this lies in care itself: our preoccu-
221
pation with the beings in the world covers up ontically Dasein's

authentic mode of Being so that our ontology which is directed
towards this being was denied its appropriate basis. This explains
why the bringing to light of Dasein's primordial mode of Being had to
be wrested from Dasein by following the opposite course from that
taken by the falling ontico-ontological tendency of interpretation. (SZ,
311) Wehaveseen time and again that it is very difficult to come to a
proper understanding of the structures that are inherent in the
Being of Dasein because of the fact that Dasein's concemful common
sense has taken complete control of Dasein's Being-able-to-be.
"Dasein's kind of Being thus demands that any ontological interpretation which sets itself the goal of exhibiting the phenomena in their
primordiality, should capture the Being of this being, in spite of this
being's tendency to cover things up." (SZ, 311) Eksistential analysis,
therefore, constantly has the character of doing violence to the claims
of everyday interpretation with its complacency and tranquilizing
obviousness. This characteristic is typical for the ontology of the
Being of Dasein; yet it belongs also properly to any other kind of
interpretation; this is due to the fact that the understanding which
develops in interpretation has the structure of a projection which
necessarily has its presuppositions. (SZ, 312)
Heidegger admits that his own interpretation of the Being of
Dasein rested on presuppositions but he also shows at once that these
assumptions can be made legitimately.
Yet ontological
interpretation still has other typical difficulties. In an effort to bring
to light the eksistential structure of the Being of Dasein one must
time and again start from the eksistentiell understanding. Once our
eksistential analysis is completed we end up with the idea of
eksistence which indeed gives us an outline of the formal structure of
the understanding of Dasein, but it does so in a way which is not at
all binding from an eksistentiell point of view. Finally, in all cases
we encountered the fact that what the investigation was trying to
bring to light, was somehow already known to Dasein by means of
some preontological form of understanding. But this means that one
somehow already knows what one tries to find out by the
investigation. Does interpretation then not necessarily move in a
hermeneutic circle? (SZ, 314) Heidegger accepts this but immediately
explains that the hermeneutic circle is an essential element in
Dasein's effort to understand because it reflects the kind of Being that
belongs to Dasein. We have seen that in Heidegger's view the circle
is a structural element of each human act of understanding as such.
The hermeneutic circle is an inherent element of any attempt to
222
interpretively understand phenomena.

For the interpretive
explanation of phenomena is possible only insofar as the one who
understands brings with him from his own point of view a certain
preunderstanding of this phenomenon and of the context in which it
manifests itself. By interpreting the new phenomenon from this
perspective, an understanding of this phenomenon can be achieved
which in turn will change and deepen the original perspective from
which the interpretation was made. Here Heidegger applies insights
which Schleiermacher had suggested in connection with the
question conceming the conditions of text interpretation, to the act of
human understanding as such and to man's philosophic understanding in particular.2
Already on the very first pages of Being and Time Heidegger
brings up the hermeneutic circle as an essential element of
philosophical discourse. There he states that he wishes to work out
the question concerning the meaning of Being, butthat this can be
done only by first giving a proper explanation of a being, namely
Dasein, with regard to its mode of Being. After making this statement he continues: "ls there not, however, a manifest circularity in
such an undertaking? If we must first define a thing in its Being,
and if we want to formulate the question of Being only on this basis,
what is this but going in a circle?" (SZ, 7-8) Heidegger pointsout first
that there is no circle at all in formulating his basic concern as he
has described it. For one can determine the mode of Being
characteristic of a thing without having an explicit concept of the
meaning of Being at one's disposal. For if this were not the case, no
ontological knowledge would ever have been possible. But the fact
that there has been such knowledge cannot be denied. In all ontology
"Being'' has obviously been presupposed, but not as a concept at one's
disposal.
"The presupposing of Being has the character of taking a
look at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the things
presented to us get provisionally articulated in their Being.
This guiding activity of taking a (provisional) look at Being
arises from the average understanding of Being in which
2Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Vom Zirkel des Verstehens," in Gnther Neske,

ed., Martin Heidegger zum siebstigsten Geburtstag. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959;
Erasmus Schfer, "Heidegger's Language: Metalogical Forms of Thought and
Grammatical Specialties," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., On Heidegger and
Language. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 281-287.

we always operate and which in the end belongs to the
essential constitution of Dasein itself." (SZ, 8)
On several occasions throughout Being and Time Heidegger
returns to the problems which the hermeneutic circle seems to
cause. We have already pointed to the fact that in Heidegger's view
any genuine act of understanding implies interpretation, and that
interpretation is impossible except on the basis of certain
"presuppositions." We have seen that these presuppositions which
constitute the hermeneutic situation, are characterized by the
technical terms "fore-having," "fore-sight," and "fore-conception."
Anyone who tries to understand a human phenomenon, necessarily
presupposes a totality of meaning or "world" within which in his
view this phenomenon can appear as meaningful (fore-having).
Secondly, he assumes a certain point of view which fixes that with
regard to which what is to be understood is to be interpreted (foresight). Finally, one tries to articulate one's understanding ofthat
phenomenon with the help of concepts which are either drawn from
the phenomenon itself, or are forced upon it as it were from the
outside. In either case, the interpretive understanding has already
decided on a definite way of conceiving of it (fore-conception). (SZ, 149151) The important point, in Heidegger's view is, that such an
interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of
something presented to us. True, our interpretation does not "constitute" the meaning things and phenomena have for us; but it is true
also that the meaning of things receives its structure and articulation from our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. (SZ,
151-152, 231-232)
One of the basic characteristics of philosophical discourse is
that, although it itself, too, is subject to the hermeneutic situation, it
conceives of its task: to clarify and give a foundation to the totality of
the presuppositions which constitute our hermeneutic situation in
each case. But if this is indeed so, then it is obvious that philosophy
itself will again encounter the circle. One could argue that using a
type of circular interpretation implies that one presupposes the idea
of Being and that Dasein's Being gets interpreted accordingly, so that
then the idea of Being may be obtained from it. Heidegger does not
deny that in his analysis he presupposed some understanding of
Dasein's Being and of Being itself, but he denies that this process
implies positing one or more propositions from which further
propositions about Dasein's Being and Being itself aretobe deduced.
On the contrary "this presupposing has the character of an
understanding projection"; this projection makes possible an
224
interpretation which Iets "that which is to be interpreted put itself

into words for the very first time, so that it may decide of its own
accord whether as the beingwhich it is, it has the state of Beingas
which it has been disclosed in the projection as far as its formal
aspects are concerned." In other words in an eksistential analytic
one cannot but avoid the logical circle and a circular proof, for the
simple reason that such an analysis does not do any proving at all by
the rules oflogic. Furthermore Dasein is primordially constituted by
care; but as such it is already ahead of itself. It has in every case
already projected itself upon definite possibilities; and in such
eksistential projections it has, in a pre-ontological manner, also
projected its own mode of Being and Being itself. And yet, Heidegger
continues, we object to the circle not only on logical grounds, we also
object to it in that it seems contrary to our common sense conception
of what it means to "understand something." But, he continues,
when one speaks about the "circle" in understanding, one
expresses the failure to recognize two things: 1) that
understanding as such makes up a basic kind of Dasein's
Being, and 2) that this Being is constituted as care. To
deny the circle ... means finally to reinforce this failure.
We must rather endeavor to leap into the 'circle,'
primordially and wholly, so that even at the start of the
analysis of Dasein we make sure that we have a full view of
Dasein's circular Being. (SZ, 315)
If, in the ontology of Dasein we take our departure from a worldless
T in order to provide this 'I' with an object and an ontologically
baseless relation to that object, then we have presupposed not too
much, but too little (Husserl). If we make a problern of 'life,' and
then just occasionally we have regard to death, too, our view is too
short-sighted (Dilthey). The object we have taken as our theme is
artificially and dogmatically curtailed if "in the first instance" we
restriet ourselves to a "theoretical subject," in order that we may then
round it out "on the practical side" by tacking on an "ethic" (Kant). In
Heidegger's view this may suffice to clarify the eksistential meaning
of the hermeneutic situation of a primordial analytic of Dasein. (SZ,
315-16)
It seems to me that in these passages Heidegger has shown not
only that the hermeneutic circle is essential to all ontological inquiry,
but also that this circle does not have to Iead to relativism in that
ontology makes it its task to clarify, and give a radical foundation to,
the totality of presuppositions which constitute our hermeneutic
situation in each case.
225
ITI: Care and Selfhood

1. Formulation of the Issue to be Examined. After these
methodological reflections Heidegger returns to his effort to give an
interpretation of the basic structures of Dasein's Being discovered in
Division I of Being and Time, by turning to the typical form of
disclosedness which is implied in the meaning of the Being of care.
Care was defined as the harmonious unity of eksistentiality, facticity,
and fallenness; through this unity it was possible to define the totality
of Dasein's structural whole for the first time. The structure of care
itself was expressed in the eksistential formula: ahead-of-itself
Being-already-in-a-world - Being-alongside-beings-encounteredwithin-the-world. In the preceding reflections wehavealso indicated
the intimate relation which exists between the phenomena of death,
conscience, and guilt on the one hand, and care on the other. In this
manner the totality of the structural whole (Dasein's Being) has
become even more richly articulated. As a consequence of this the
eksistential question of the unity of this totality has become even more
urgent and problematic. (SZ, 317)
How is one to conceive of this unity? How can Dasein eksist as a
unity in the many ways and possibilities of its Being which were
mentioned? It can so eksist obviously alone in such a way that it is
itself this Beingin its essential possibilities, thus that in each case I
am this entity. The "I" seems to hold together the totality of the
structural whole of Dasein's Being. In the ontology of this being the
"I" and the "self'' have always been conceived in terms of substance
and supporting ground. In the preceding pages we have come across
the question of the "who" of Dasein and learned to make a distinction
between the inauthentic self of the "they" and the authentic self. Yet
even there the question of the ontological constitution of selfhood itself
has remained unexamined.
W e must now make an effort to understand the ontological
constitution of selfhood and in so doing selfhood must be understood
eksistentially. This means that selfhood cannot be understood with
the help of those categories we use in our dealing with beings within
the world.
To clarify the eksistentiality of the self, Heidegger takes as his
"natural" point of departure Dasein's everyday interpretation of the
self. In saying "I" Dasein expresses itself about itself. With the "I,"
this being has itself in view and the expression "I" is regarded as
something utterly simple. It is something simple and not an
attribute of any other thing; it is not itself a predicate, but always the
226
subject. What is addressed in saying "I," is always encountered as

something that is always the same persisting something. The
characteristics of simplicity, substantiality, and personality arise
from a genuine pre-phenomenological experience. The question,
however, is one of whether that which we experience ontically in this
manner may be interpreted ontologically with the help of the
categories mentioned. Kant thought that this indeed can be done;
Heidegger is convinced that the self cannot be determined
ontologically in this way. To clarify his point he turns to a brief
reflection on Kant's conception of the ego. (SZ, 318) Since the
observations on Kant's views on the ego in Being and Time are rather
brief, in the two sections to follow I shall make use of ideas on the
same subject taken from The BasicProblems of Phenomenology and
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, both of which stem from the
sametime period as Being and Time.
2. Heidegger's Phenomenological Critique ofKant's Conception
of the Ego. In his critical philosophy Kant made a careful distinction
between three conceptions of the ego, the psychological or empirical
concept, the transcendental, and the moral. Heidegger Iimits
hirnself here to a critical analysis of Kant's conception of the moral
personality first in order then to turn to Kant's conception of the
transeendental personality.
Kant defined the moral personality as a thing (res) which exists
as an end in itself. Although it cannot be denied that one of the basic
characteristics of the Being of man is to be found in the fact that he is
an end in himself, it is nonetheless true also that in this way the
Being of man has not yet been explained adequately. The question left
unanswered here is one of how the Being of man is to be understood,
precisely in view of the fact that he is as an end in himself. The
reason why Kant hirnself did not and could not ask this question lies
in the fact that he assumed with the entire classical tradition that
Being, when applied to man, has the same meaning as when it is
applied to things. Being is Being-present-at-hand. Kant's problem,
like Descartes', merely is this: How can one explain the distinction
between the subject (res cogitans ), taken as one kind of thingspresent-at-hand, from all objects, the res extensa, taken as another
kind of things-present-at-hand?
Obviously one will say that Kant defined the very Being of the res
cogitans by pointing to the fact that it is as an I-think. Thus we must
now ask the question of how Kant tried to understand the Being of
man from the viewpoint of the transeendental personality. Is Kant,
indeed, in a position to determine the mode of Being of the subject in

his interpretation of the transeendental ego? The answer is again
negative. Kant's attempt preeisely was to prove that and why the
mode of Being of the subjeet eannot be explained with the help of the
eategories. Of the transeendental ego, one ean say only that it is and
aets. In the ehapter on the paralogisms of pure reason Kant develops
this idea in detail and proves why a philosophieal anthropology (or
psyehology) in the sense of the tradition is completely impossible. By
applying the categories of the understanding to the ego taken as an Ithink, one cannot possibly make any legitimate claims in regard to
the Being of the ego taken as a spiritual and immortal substance.
Kant gives two basic reasons for his view.
First of all, the ego taken originally as the synthetic unity of
appereeption cannot be further determined by that of whieh it itself is
the neeessary condition as such. Furthermore, the transeendental
ego is the necessary condition of all experience and as such again
cannot itself be a daturn of experience. Categories are forms of unity
for a synthesis; they can be applied only to some multiplicity. The ego
as the condition for the application of the categories and of all
synthesis is as such the un-multiple. Thus the only thing one can
say of the transeendental ego is that it is as acting. In Heidegger's
view, Kant was obviously correct in denying the thesis that the kind of
Being of the self could ever be determined by means of eategories
which must be employed for the determination of natural things. Yet
Kant was wrang in believing that for the same reason the Being of the
ego cannot be determined with the help of "categories" other than
those we use to determine the Beingofnatural things.3
We must now ask the question of why Kant eould not fully
exploit the "I think" ontologically. Why did Kant fall back on the
"subject," something which thinks? The reason the question must be
asked once again is the fact that Kant fully realized that the ego is not
just an "I think," but an "I think something." For on several occasions he stressed the point that the ego remains related to its own
representations and would be nothing without them. These
representations are the "empirical," whieh is "accompanied" by the
ego; they are the appearances to which the ego "clings."
But why did Kant never explain what kind of Beingis to be
attributed to this "clinging" and "accompanying" and why did he
continue to implicitly interpret their mode of Being as the constant
Being-present-at-hand? In addition, why did Kant not realize that
the "I think something" is not yet definite enough to be taken as a
228
starting point for ontological reflections? Why did he leave this

"something" undetermined? If by this something one understands a
being within the world, it is clear at once that the world is implied in
it. But then it is clear also that this very phenomenon of world codetermines the mode of Being of the ego. Thus in saying "I," I have
in view that beingwhich in each case I am as an "I am in the world."
Kant, on the other hand, did not see the phenomenon of world, and
consistent with it, he kept the representations apart from the a priori
content of the "I think." But as a consequence, the ego was forced
again to be an isolated subject which merely accompanies our representations in a way which is ontologically quite indefinite.4 (SZ, 202208)
Why did Kant fail to see these ontological implications of the "I
think something?" In Heidegger's view, part of the answer to the
question is to be attributed to the fact that Kant maintained the view of
the tradition, that is, that knowing the world theoretically is the
original and basic mode of man's concern with the world, and that
knowledge is to be understood in terms of a relationship between two
entities, namely nature and the mind or consciousness, and thus
that in every theory of knowledge the subject-object-opposition is to be
preunderstood. In uncritically maintaining this conception of the
tradition, Kant was stuck with a closed consciousness and the entire
epistemological problematic that was developed in the tradition in
connection with it. (SZ, 59-62)
To overcome this entire problematic, Heidegger argues, one
must first of all show that knowing the world theoretically is no more
than a derivative mode of Dasein's Being-in-the-world. If knowingthe-world theoretically is a special mode of our Being-in-the-world,
then it can be shown easily that the subject-object-opposition is not a
fundamental datum of our immediate experience. This Opposition
comes about merely on the Ievel of explicit reflection. Furthermore, if
the subject-object-opposition is not fundamental, it is easy to show
that the epistemological problern with which Descartes struggled is
really a pseudo-problem. (SZ, 206-207)
But in addition to this first thesis, namely that theoreticallyknowing-the-world is only one particular mode of Dasein's concern
for the world, one must show also that in man's primordial concern
for the world there is found a kind of "knowledge" which is quite
different from what we normally call "knowledge," i.e., theoretical
and scientific knowledge. This is the reason why Heidegger shows
4Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 97-103.
229
the differenee between our eoneemfully knowing the world and our
theoretieal knowledge of the world not only from the viewpoint of
man's approaeh to the world, but also from the perspeetive of the
world itself. He earefully analyses the differenee whieh undeniably
exists between the world of Dasein's eoneem and the derivative world
as found in the seienees. The primordial world has its eenter in
Dasein itself whieh for that reason ean and must be defined as Beingin-the-world. But world should not be understood here as referring to
a thing, or to the sum of all things; rather world is the totality of
meaning toward whieh all beings point by their very strueture in
light of man's eoneern. What is ealled world here is the totality of all
mutual referenee-systems within whieh everything is eapable of
appearing to Dasein as having a determinate meaning. (SZ, 63-88)
Heidegger, finally, summarizes his position in regard to Kant's
attempt to determine the subjeetivity of the subjeet in the following
statements:
a) Kant was able to point to some essential, ontologieal
determinations of the personalitas moralis, but he was ineapable of
formulating the basie question eoneerning the fundamental and
primordial mode of Being of the moral person taken as an end in
itself.
b) Kant eorreetly proved that the eategories of nature eannot
possibly be used for our ontie knowledge of the transeendental
subjeetivity. Yet his arguments do not prove that an ontologieal
knowledge of the transeendental ego is impossible in principle.
e) Kant was unable to explain the ontologieal eonneetion
between the moral personality and the transeendental personality
(theoretieal and praetieal ego) as weil as the eonneetion between the
unity of these two with the psyehologieal personality. Finally, he was
unable to explain ontologieally the totality of these eharaeterizations
of the human personality.
d) Kant was of the opinion that the speeifie eharaeteristie of the
ego is to be found in the free "I aet" ofthat being whieh is an end in
itself, i.e., in the spontaneity of the human intelligenee. Kant
employed the eoneepts of intelligenee and end-in-itself in the same
manner. They are not properties of the ego or person; rather the
subjeet is as intelligenee and as end-in-itself.
e) The intelligenee, i.e., the person, is distinguished from the
things of nature as a spiritual substanee from material substanees.
Implieit in these ontie theses is the view that it is not possible to
230
understand and interpret the ego ontologically as something which is

merely present-at-hand.5
Yet these critical remarks notwithstanding, Heidegger still
maintains that Kant more than anyone eise in the tradition
penetrated the ontological structure of the human personality. But
he failed to pose explicitly the question concerning the mode of Being
of the person. The reason why Kant was unable to formulate such a
question may be found in the fact that he, without any further
reflection or criticism, accepted the basic metaphysical conception
according to which Being primarily means Hergestelltheit, and thus
Being-present-at-hand. 6
3. The Self as Transcendence. Self and Subject. In the preceding
pages we have seen that Kant's attempt to characterize the self by
means of the concept of the subject is unacceptable. Kant was aware
ofthe fact that in our everyday interpretation ofthe selfwe conceive of
the self in terms of simplicity, substantiality, and personality. These
ontic characteristics arise indeed from a genuine pre-phenomenological experience and describe adequately what everyone
experiences ontically. Kant also understood correctly that these
characteristics cannot be employed for an ontological interpretation
of the selfhood of the self.
Yet Kant's own attempt to characterize the self by means of the
concept of the subject of theoretical knowledge is equally
unacceptable. The concept of subject does not refer to any primordial
experience which Dasein has of itself. The concept of subject
originates in reflection, when Dasein reflects upon its theoretical
knowledge. Yet theoretical knowledge is only a derivative mode of
Dasein's Being. Furthermore, what the concept of subject expresses
is not the Being of the self, but merely its self-consciousness. Thus
consciousness of self must be illuminated ontologically by the Being
of the self and not vice versa. If one tries to illuminate the Beingof
the self by the consciousness of self, as is done generally in all idealist
philosophies, the entire ontological problematic becomes distorted. 7
On the other hand, if, as the analytic of Dasein shows, the Being
of Dasein is to be understood as Being-in-the-world, whose essence
consists in ek-sistence, then the selfhood of the self is to be understood
as transcendence, i.e., as ek-sistence taken in its authentic mode as
5The Basic Problems, pp. 146-147.
6Jbid, 147-154.
7Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 156-157.
231
disclosedness in resolve. It is in this sense that Heidegger can then

say that the self is that toward which Dasein comes in its authentic
future on the basis of resolve. This is to be explained in the pages to
come.
First we must substantiate the thesis that in Heidegger's view
the selfhood of the self is to be sought in transcendence.s In
fundamental ontology the term "transcendence" signifies what is
characteristic and unique for Dasein. Consequently the term does
not refer to one form of behavior among others, but to that basic
constitutive moment of Dasein's Being which happens prior to all
actual behavior. If we now choose the term "subject" for the being
which all of us are, then transcendence signifies the Being ofthe
subject, the basic ontological structure of the human subjectivity. To
be a subject means to be in transcendence and to be as transcendence.
If transcendence signifies the basic structure of the human
subjectivity, it obviously is no Ionger possible to define transcendence
in terms of the subject-object-relationship. What is transcended is
the totality of the beings but they are not that toward which Dasein
transcends.
If the beings are not that toward which the surpassing occurs,
then the question must be asked concerning how then the "towardwhich" is to be determined. That toward which Dasein transcends in
each case, is the world. This is why transcendence can be defined as
Being-in-the world. World is a constitutive element of the unitary
structure of transcendence. When Dasein as being toward the world
surpasses every being, including the beingwhich it itself is, it comes
toward that being which it really is, which it is as it-self.
Transcendence thus constitutes Dasein's selfhood.
As a constitutive component of Dasein's Being, "world" refers
here to the totality of meaning by means of which and in terms of
which Dasein gives to itself the capacity of understanding those
beings it can behave toward and how it can behave toward them
(transcendental concept of world). Dasein gives to "itself' the
capacity of understanding Being from "its" world. By moving from
beings toward the world, Dasein temporalizes itself as a self, i.e., a
being whose Being implies a Being-able-to-be as well as a having-tobe. Dasein eksists in such a way that it eksists for its own sake.
However, since the world is that, in surpassing toward which
8 For what follows, cf. The Essence of Reasons, pp. 35-105 (passim); see also
Chapter IV, section li above.
232
selfhood first comes-to-pass, the world, too, belongs to that for the
sake of which Dasein is.
But how then are we to define the precise relationship between
Dasein and world? Obviously we cannot conceive of this relationship
as one between Dasein as one kind of being and the world as another.
As the totality of what is for the sake of Dasein at any given time, the
world is brought by Dasein itself before Dasein itself. This "bringing
the world before Dasein itself' is the primordial projection of Dasein's
possibilities, insofar as through it Dasein can relate itself to beings
from within the midst of beings. The projection of world is always a
throwing-over; it throws the world over beings. This, in turn, allows
the beings to manifest themselves as what they are. The happening
of this projecting throwing of the world over beings, in which the
Being of Dasein temporalizes itself, is called Being-in-the-world.
"Dasein transcends" thus means that the essence of Dasein's Being
is suchthat it constitutes the world; it Iets world come-to-pass and
through the world provides itself with an original view (Bild) which,
although not grasped explicitly, nonetheless serves as a model (Vorbild) for all of manifest being, Dasein included. There is no way that
a being or even entire nature as a whole could ever become manifest,
ifit could not find the opportunity to enter a world. No being can ever
manifest itself except insofar as this aboriginal happening which we
call transcendence, comes-to-pass, i.e., insofar as a being of the
character of "Being-in-the-world" breaks into the realm of beings.
We have seen that the world reveals itself to Dasein as the
actual totality of what is "for the sake of Dasein." This is the reason
that Dasein can be toward itself as itself only if it surpasses "itself' as
being toward the world. Such a surpassing occurs only in a "will"
which projects itself toward its own possibilities (resolve). This will
is not a specific act of willing-something among others; instead it
must be that "will" which, as andin surpassing, constitutes the very
"for the sake of...." That which constitutes the "for the sake of...",
throwing it forth and projecting it, is what we call freedom.
Surpassing beings toward the world is freedom itself.
We must now turn to the question of how, in Heidegger's view,
the self is to be related to the ego as subject of theoretical knowledge.
The answer to this question can be derived from Heidegger's
interpretation of the meaning of the transeendental imagination in
the first edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.9
9Cf. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 131-208 (passim).
233
In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger suggests

that Kant's transeendental imagination is more than a mere subject
of knowledge. The imagination must institute the horizon in which
two beings (the knower and that which is tobe known) can encounter
each other and become opposed to each other as subject and object.
Thus the transeendental imagination renders the subject-objectopposition possible. This horizon, in turn, implies a self-orientation
of the knowing subject toward the being to be known as object. Thus
it makes it possible for the knower to be a subject. It constitutes the
subjectivity of the subject. On the other hand, the same horizon
makes it possible for the being to be known to reveal itself as opposed
to the knower, i.e., to be an object. In this way, the horizon also
constitutes the objectivity of the object. In other words, the horizon of
transcendence instituted by the transeendental imagination
simultaneously enables the subject tobe subject and the object tobe
object. Thus transcendence, enabling subject and object to be what
they are, lies between them, ontologically antecedes both, and makes
it possible for the relation between them to come about. The
transeendental imagination cannot be called a subject, because it is
the center of transcendence, i.e., the center of that particular
projection of world from which the subject-object-opposition precisely
originates. Yet the transeendental imagination most certainly is the
center of the human self. For what most radically characterizes the
self of a finite knower as finite is primarily his transcendence, and
not his subjectivity.IO The relation between the self (= transcendence)
and the subject (= consciousness) is articulated here in terms of the
relation between transeendental imagination (= center of
transcendence) and transeendental apperception (= transeendental
unity of consciousness) expressed by the ego's "I think."
With Kant, Heidegger admits that the ego as unity of
consciousness cannot be separated from the process which it
accompanies (= transcendence), and that the essence of the ego as
subject lies indeed in pure consciousness-of-self. Consciousness (=
subjectivity) and transcendence (= selfhood) are then tobe related as
follows. In the presentative self-orientation toward the beings to be
known, the self is carried along with this orientation, in which the
self is exteriorized and the ego of this self is necessarily manifest to
itself. Insofar as the ego is what it is only in this "I think," the
essence of pure thought and therefore also of the pure ego lies in
pure-self-consciousness. Yet consciousness and subjectivity are
lO[bid., pp. 153-166.
234
ontologically subject to the orientation of the knower toward the

beings to be known, and thus to transcendence, i.e., the self which
consciousness in this way makes manifest to itself. Thus the self is
primarily transcendence; the self is not primarily the ego taken as
the subject of theoretical knowledge. 11 -We must now return to
Section 64 of Being and Time.
IV: Transcendence and Temporality
In Heidegger's view it is obvious that Dasein can eksist only in

such a way that it is itself, this being in its essential possibilities; in
each case I am this entity. Thus it seems that it is the "I" which
holds together the totality of the structural whole whose structural
elements are brought to light by the analytic of Dasein's Being. In
the metaphysics of the tradition, the "I" and the "self' have been
conceived from the earliest times as the supporting ground of this
totality, i.e., as substance or as subject. For Heidegger, on the other
hand, the ground of the unity and totality of Dasein's Beingis not to
be found in the ego or the subject, but rather in care. Furthermore,
in the tradition the question of the ontological constitution of selfhood
as such remained unanswered, in that the ontological characterization of selfhood prohibits us from making use of anything like
categories. (SZ, 317-318) From Heidegger's point of view, however,
one can say that if the self belongs to the essential attributes of
Dasein, whereas Dasein's essence is to be found in its eksistence,
then I-hood and selfhood must be conceived of eksistentially. This
was the reason why an attempt was made to interpret the Beingof
the selfin terms offinite transcendence. Now in view ofthe fact that
Dasein's Being is to be defined in terms of care, and care already
contains in itself the phenomenon of self, in that Dasein's caring
implies the caring for its own self, we must try once more to establish
more carefully the relationship between care and selfhood. This we
shall do by focusing on the interpretation of Dasein's Beinginterms
oftemporality. (SZ, 322; cf. 191-196)
To explain the transcendence characteristic of the authentic
self, we must take our point of departure from Dasein's everyday
interpretation of self. When Dasein says "I," it expresses itself about
itself. In each case, the "I" stands for me and nothing else. This "I"
is not an attribute of other things and it is not itself P. predicate, but
llJbid., pp. 156-158; SZ, 318-322; Gethmann, op. cit., pp. 68-85; Richardson, op.
cit., pp. 154-158.
235
the "absolute" subject. In view of the fact that what is expressed in

saying "I," is always encountered as the same persisting something,
we characterize the "I" correctly with simplicity, substantiality, and
personality. These expressions, indeed, arise from a genuine prephenomenological experience of self; yet what is so experieilced
ontically, may not be interpreted ontologically with the help of these
categories. (SZ, 318)
In saying "I," Dasein expresses itself; and since Dasein is
Being-in-the-world it expresses itself as Being-in-the-world. Yet in
its everyday life, in saying "I," Dasein does not have itself explicitly in
view as Being-in-the-world. Although, in saying "I" Dasein has in
view that being which, in every case, it itself is, in its everyday
interpretation the self nonetheless has the tendency to understand
itself in terms of the world with which it is concerned. The motive for
this fugitive way of saying "I" is to be found in Dasein's falling; it
then flees in the face of itself into the "they." What expresses itself in
the "I" in that case, is that self which, proximally and for the most
part, I am not authentically. Thus in this attitude, the phenomenal
content of the Dasein which one has in view in the "I," is continually
overlooked. How can one characterize ontologically what is
overlooked here. (SZ, 321-322)
Dasein is Being-in-the-world. As such it is continually ahead of
itself. Thus with the "I," what one has in view hereisthat being for
which the Being of the being which it is, is an issue. With the "I,"
care expresses itself, even though proximally and for the most part in
the fugitive way in which the "I" speaks when it concerns itself with
something. If now the ontological constitution is not to be traced back
either to an 1-substance or a subject, but if, on the contrary, the
everyday way in which each of us keeps saying "I" must be
understood ontologically in terms of our authentic Being-able-to-be,
then the proposition that the self is the basis of care as something
that is constantly an hand, is one that still does not follow. Selfhood is
to be derived ek-sistentially only from one's authentic possibility of
Being one's self, i.e., from the authenticity of Dasein's Beingas care.
Thus the constancy of the self and the supposed persistence of the
subjectum (hupokeimenon) must be clarified in terms of care. In the
ontological interpretation of the self the expression "the constancy of
the self' refers to the fact that Dasein has achieved some "definite"
position. Constancy, implying steadiness and steadfastness, is the
authentic counterpart of the non-self-constancy which is
characteristic of irresolute resolve. Thus, ek-sistential self-constancy
means nothing other than anticipatory resolve, and the ontological
236
structure of the resolve itself reveals the ek-sistentiality of the self"s

selfhood.
Dasein is authentic self in the primordial individuation of the
silent resolve which yields to anxiety. As something that keeps
silent, authentic Being one's self is precisely that sort of thing that
does not continue to say "I." The self which the reticence of the
resolute eksistence reveals, is the primordial phenomenal basis for
the question concerning the Being of the "I." Only if Dasein is
oriented phenomenally by the meaning of the Being of its authentic
potentiality for Being its self, is it in a position to discuss what
ontological justification there is for treating substantiality,
simplicity, and personality as characteristics of selfhood. (SZ, 322323)
We have seen that authentic Dasein realizes its radical finitude
by anticipating death and by including it in advance in every project.
In so doing Dasein receives its own Being precisely as its own, as its
ownmost "personal" ek-sistence so to speak, so that it now genuinely
comes to its self. But this coming to its self is what is meant by
"future" (Zu-Kunft), if the term is taken in its primordial sense: the
letting itself come toward its own self in that distinctive possibility
which Dasein is as ek-sistence, is the primordial phenomenon of Zukunft, coming-toward, future. (SZ, 323-25)
But Dasein's temporality extends not only to the future; it has
also the character of "having-been." Dasein can project itself toward
its own death only insofar as it already is. In order to realize its
ownmost Being, Dasein has to accept, together with its own death,
also its thrownness, its facticity, that which it is already. Death
cannot be its own death, if it has no relation to what Dasein is
already. Authentically futural, Dasein is equally authentically
"having been" (gewesen). To anticipate one's ultimate and ownmost
possibility is to come back comprehendingly to one's ownmost
"having-been." (SZ, 325-326)
Heidegger thus states here that the authentic comprehension of
Dasein is made possible by the ek-stasis of the future. Dasein as
anticipatory potentiality for Being is continually coming to its own
self. Insofar as it comes to its self, Dasein in its very potentiality
continually takes over its self, assumes the self that it already is. It
fetches its own self all over again and this retrieve is the achieving of
Dasein's authentic past, i.e., the self which it already is as havingbeen. (SZ, 326-329) If this retrieve of the authentic self does not come-
'2:37
to-pass, the result is an inauthentic past which is tobe characterized

by the forgottenness of the true self.l2
Thus far we have seen that Dasein's coming is a coming to a
self that already is as having-been; on the other hand, Dasein is what
it has-been only as long as the future continues to come. We must
now tum to temporal neamess, the present. The genuine meaning
of the present consists in "making-present" (gegenwrtigen).
Dasein, as temporalizing, makes things be present; this is the
essential meaning of the present as it primordially appears to
. Dasein. Anticipating resolve discloses the actual situation of the Da
in such a way that ek-sistence, in its actions, can be circumspectively
concerned with what is factually ready-to-hand in the environmental
world. Resolute Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand in any given
situation and taking action in such a way as to let one encounter
what has presence environmentally, are possible only by making
such an entity present. (SZ, 326-327) The making-present of what has
presence, however, presupposes the future as anticipation of
Dasein's possibilities and the return to what has-been. By virtue of
Dasein's understanding of its own Being, thus, Dasein is able to
understand the human situation as a whole; at the same time
intramundane beings can manifest themselves to it in their
belanging to a world. Thus, what Heidegger calls "making-present,"
presupposes having-been and future. The present is as the resultant
of the two other ekstases of time. Having-been arises from the future
in such a way that the future which already is in the process of
having-been releases the present from itself. What is meant by
temporality is precisely the unity of this structural whole: the future
which makes present in the process of having-been. Only insofar as
Dasein is characterized by temporality can it realize its authentic
Being. Thus temporality reveals itself as the meaning of authentic
care. (SZ, 326)
It should be noted, however, that although Heidegger's
description of the present is in harmony with what the case is in each
concrete situation in which Dasein finds itself, the present which is
so described, is not the authentic present. For to the anticipation of
authentic future which goes with resolve, belongs another present in
accordance with which the resolve discloses the situation "im
Augenblick," in the "moment of vision." In resolve, the present is not
only brought back from distraction with the things of one's closest
concem, but it now gets held in the future and in having-been. That
12Cf. Richardson, op. cit., pp. 89-90.
238
present which is held in authentic temporality and which thus is

authentic itself, is called Augenblick. (SZ, 337-338 and note)
Be this as it may, in Heidegger's view the preceding reflection
has shown that temporality makes the unity of eksistence, facticity,
and falling possible; thus it is temporality that primordially
constitutes the totality ofthe structure of care. It should be noted that
the three components of care are not just pieced tagether here just as
little as temporality has been put tagether out of the future, the
having-been, and the present. As a matter of fact, temporality is not
a being at all; one cannot say that temporality is; rather temporality
temporalizes itself; it temporalizes possible modes of itself. These
modes in turn make possible the various modes of Dasein's Being,
particularly the basic modes of authentic and inauthentic eksistence.
(SZ, 328)
The characterization of future, having-been, and present
presented above shows that temporality is the primordial "outside-ofitself' taken in and for itself. (SZ, 329) Future, having-been, and
present are the three ekstases of temporality. (SZ, 329) Among these
ekstases the future occupies the privileged place; the future is the
primary phenomenon of primordial and authentic time. (SZ, 329)
Finally, it should be stressed here that primordial time is
inherently finite. For we have seen that care is Being-towards-death.
If Dasein relates authentically to its death then its anticipatory
resolve, as authentic Being towards death, is Being towards that
possibility which is to be defined as Dasein's uttermost impossibility.
In this Being-towards-its-end, Dasein eksists in a manner that is
authentically whole as that being which it can be only when "thrown
into death." Thus Dasein is not a beingwhich has an end at which it
just stops; Dasein continuously eksists finitely. Dasein's authentic
future is temporalized by that temporality which constitutes the
meaning of anticipatory resolve; thus it reveals itself as inherently
finite. The claim that primordial temporality is inherently finite
obviously does not exclude the possibility that "times goes on" in spite
ofthe fact that I no Ionger am there as Dasein. (SZ, 330)
Heidegger concludes these reflections with the following
statements: Time is primordial as the temporalizing of temporality.
As such it makes possible the essential constitution of the structure
of care.
Temporality is essentially ekstatic.
Temporality
temporalizes itself primordially out of the future. Primordial time is
inherently finite. (SZ, 331)
CHAPTERXI
TEMPORALITY AND TIMEI
1: Introduction
According to Heidegger hirnself the philosophy of time,
developed in Being and Time and other works of the same period, is
basicaily different from ail classical theories of time, as weil as from
the theories of time developed by Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Husserl.
Heidegger's conception of time goes also far beyond the conceptions
used in everyday life and in the sciences. Yet Heidegger was
convinced that the new conception of time which he developed,
provides the foundation for the traditional philosophical as weil as for
our everyday and scientific understanding of time.
As Heidegger sees it, ail theories of time that developed between
Aristotle and Bergson have two characteristics in common, all
significant differences notwithstanding: 1) The phenomenon of time
is to be studied in a philosophy of nature. And 2) time is to be
understood from the now-moment; in other words, the three ekstases
of time (past, present, future) are conceived as a now that is no more,
or a now that actuaily is, or a now that is not yet; time itself is
nothing but the succession of these now-moments. In everyday life
and in the sciences we conceive of time also as a succession of now1 For what follows cf. Marion Heinz, Zeitlichkeit und Temporalitt.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982; Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 40, 85-89, 117-118, 133-134,
141-147, 173-174, 243-244n, and passim; F. W. von Herrmann, "Zeitlichkeit des
Daseins und Zeit des Seins. Grundstzliches zu Heideggers Zeit-Analysen," in
Philosophische Perspektiven, 4(1972), 198-210; Marion Heinz, "The Concept of
Time in Heidegger's Early Works," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., A Campanion
to Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time," pp. 183-207; Graeme Nicholson,
"Ekstatic Temporality in Sein und Zeit," Ibid., pp. 208-226. Cf. also Martin
Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, pp. 305-320; The Basic
Problems of Phenomenology, pp. 227-318; Charles M. Sherover, Heidegger, Kant &
Time. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971; Henri Decleve, Heidegger
et Kant. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970, pp. 69-177; K. Dsing, "Objektive und
subjektive Zeit. Untersuchungen zu Kants Zeittheorie und zu ihrer modernen
kritischen Rezeption," in Kantstudien, 71(1980), 1-34.
240
moments; it is a stream of now-moments which arrive from the

future and flow away into the past.2
Heidegger does not claim that these conceptions of time are
wrong; thus his theory of time is not meant to replace them. He
merely claims that his own conception of time provides the other
conceptions with their proper foundation. In so doing his analyses
justify the other conceptions, but they also set their limits.
Within the history of the theories of time Heidegger gives Kant a
very special place and claims that Kant anticipated his own theory to
some extent. In Heidegger's own interpretation of the Critique of
Pure Reason time is for Kant in essence self-affection; time
constitutes the basic structure of the subject; furthermore, through
the production of horizonal schemata time renders at once also
possible the objectivity of all objects. Yet the difference between his
own view and Kant's is still basic, as we shall see.
In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927) Heidegger
presents us with a careful analysis of the time conceptions of
Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, and Bergson.3 These historical analyses
are also found in part in Being and Time 4 where Hegel's conception
of time is examined, also. 5 Of special importance in this context is
Heidegger's Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.6 In other words,
one should realize from the beginning that in developing his own
view on time Heidegger was fully familiar with the options which
past philosophers have shown us already with respect to time. Of the
most important theories of time (Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, and
Regel) Heidegger maintains essential elements. It is worth noting
that all these authors were somewhat perplexed about time,
particularly about the "reality" of time. For instance, in Physics, IV,
10 Aristotle wrote: "But what time really is and under what category
it falls, is no more revealed by anything that has come down to us
from earlier thinkers than it is by the considerations that have just
2cf. Martin Heidegger, SZ, 426; "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft

(1916)," in Frhe Schriften, ed. F. W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1978, pp. 413-433; Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit. Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1976, pp. 234-251.
4sz, Sections 6, 67ff.
ssz, Section 82.
6KM, Section 9, 19-23, 32-35, and passim.
TEMPORALITY AND TIME
241
been completed." 7 In Physics, IV, 14 Aristotle continues: "And if

nothing is qualified to count (namely numbers) but the human soul
and the soul's reason (nous), it would be impossible that there would
be time, assuming that there were no soul, except in case time [in
one way or another] were still some kind of being, such as if
movement can exist without man's soul, and the before and after
[constitutive to our conception of time] are already in movement, and
these themselves constitute time insofar as they then are already
numerable."8 From the context it is clear that Aristotle feit that he
was unable to resolve the dilemma.
We find the same ambiguity and uncertainty in Augustine
whose analysis finally ends up in a question: could it perhaps be that
time is some "distentia in anima," some distention, some stretching
out in the sou1?9
As for Kant it is clear, also, that for him time is not something
that just exists of itself or even something that inheres in things.
Time is for him not an empirical concept which is derived from any
experience. It is rather a necessary representation that underlies all
intuitions. Time is "real," indeed, but only as the real mode of the
representation of myself as object. Time is the form of the inner
sensibility.lO
Regel, too, speaks about time in his Philosophy of Nature; he
thus remains within the tradition originated by Aristotle. Like
space, time is defined first as the "abstract outside of one another."ll
For Regel space and time belong together; for him time is the truth of
space.12 If space is thought dialectically as that which it in truth is,
the Being of space will unveil itself as time. Regel defines space as
the unmediated indifference of Nature's Being outside of itself.13
Space is the abstract multiplicity of the points which can be
differentiated in it. Space does not arise from the points and it is not
7Aristotle, Physics, IV, 10, 218a33-218b2.
BJbid., IV, 14, 223a25-29.
9St. Augustine, Confessions, XI, 26.

lOJrnrnanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 46-59.
11 G. F. W. Hege!, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. Gustav Ernil Mueller,
New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, sect. 254ff. Heidegger discusses Hegel's
view in SZ, sect. 82 and in Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, sect. 20, pp. 251262.
12Hegel, op. cit., Section 257, Addendum.
13Jbid., Section 254.
242
interrupted by them. Though it is differentiated by points that can be

differentiated, space itself as such remains without any difference.
The point insofar as it differentiates anything in space, is the
negation of space; yet as this negation it itself remains in space.
Thus the point does not Iift itself out of space. Space is the outside of
one another of the multiplicity of points and is itself without any
differences. Space itself is thus not a point; rather it is punctuality,
but then a punctuality tha.t as such is null, i.e., it is complete
continuity. Punctuality as such is the negativity of continuous
space.14 This idea forms the basis for the statement in which Regel
thinks space in its truth, i.e., as time: "Negativity, which relates
itself as point to space, and which in space develops its
determinations as line and surface, is, however, just as much for
itself in the sphere of Being outside of itself, and so are its
determinations therein, though while it is positing as in the sphere of
Being outside of itself, it appears indifferent as regards the things
that are tranquilly side by side. As thus posited for itself, it is time."15
This explains why Hegellater can define time as the negation of a
negation, for time is the negation of punctuality and punctuality itself
is the negation of space. In the explanation of these ideas Regel
maintains with Aristotle the privileged position of the now-moment,
that in time runs parallel to the point in space. This implies that the
Beingof time is the "now." But every "now" is either a "now" that is
no Ionger or a "now" that is not yet. But this means that time is that
being which, in that it is, is not, and which, in that it is not, is; time
is intuited becoming.16
As for Bergson, it was his opinion that Aristotle and the
tradition (which includes Regel) reduced time to space; he severely
criticized this opinion and then built his own conception on this
mistaken criticism.17 It is not difficult for Reidegger to show that
Bergsan misunderstood Aristotle, and also that Bergson's own
distinction between temps and duree does not go to the heart of the
matter.
If we compare Reidegger's own view with that of the authors
just mentioned it is clear that his view comes closer to that of Kant
than to any of the other authors. And this is so for several reasons.
14Jbid., Section 254.
15zbid., Section 257, with minor changes made by Heidegger.
16Jbid., Section 257 and 259; SZ, Section 82.
243
First of all, Heidegger, with Kant, does not deal with time in a
philosophy of nature, but rather in a treatise which is to provide the
foundation of metaphysics or ontology. Thus he does not relate time
irnmediately to motion in space. Secondly, he does not approach the
Being of time from the perspective of the "now-moment." Thirdly,
with Kant, and to some degree also Augustine, Heidegger tries to
explain precisely in what sense time and the Being of man are
intimately related to each other. In Heidegger's conception of time
Dasein temporalizes its own Being and as such constitutes time. In
this view Heidegger may have been influenced by Husserl who begins
his own analysis of time with an analysis of inherently temporal
objects, such as a melody, etc.IS For Heidegger man taken as Dasein
is the primordial and original inherently temporal being.
Before turning to a careful analysis of the origin of Heidegger's
view on time let us clarify the point just made by using a lecture
course that Heidegger delivered in 1925 when he already was in the
process of writing the first draft of what later would become Being
and Time. There he wrote the constant running-ahead of itself,
which is essentially inherent in Dasein's Being towards death, is
nothing but the Being of my own coming to be (Seinwerdens). In
other words, for a human being to be means to become; being is
becoming. This means that Dasein constantly comes toward itself
(Zu-kunft) and, in this sense, its mode of Being implies the future.
On the other hand, being-guilty and wanting-to-have-a-conscience is
the proper mode of Being of Dasein's hauing-been (Gewesensein) or
past. The possibilities of the future insofar as they have been operred
up by what has been, constitute for Dasein its true and genuine
present. Thus the Being in which Dasein can truly be its own
wholeness and totality is time.19 Yet, Heidegger continues there, this
does not mean that time really is, because time is not. One can say:
"There is time," but this cannot be interpreted to mean that time is a
thing, a being that is.
One should say rather that Dasein
temporalizes time, makes and lets time be; better still Dasein temporalizes its own Beingas time. Time thus is not outside of man as a
kind of framework in which events take place. Yet time is neither
something that runs-off within my consciousness as a kind of clock
18Cf. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, ed.
Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966; English: The Phenomenology of
Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. J. S. Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1964, Sections 7ff.
19History ofthe Concept ofTime, pp. 319-320.
244
or even an inner movement. Rather time is that which constitutes

the Being of care, the having to be ahead of oneself on the basis of a
having found oneself as thrown and lost. The time which we
encounter in our everyday life is the temporality of the "they"; here
time becomes the measure of change which makes social interaction
on the Ievel of the "they" possible. The scientific conceptions of time of
Newton and modern physics are derived from the everyday
conception of time. It is important to observe already now that
strickly speaking the motions in nature, such as those of the moon
and the planets, which we determine spatio-temporally by specifying
for each body at each moment its place and its point in time, do not
really run-off "in time"; for taken as such they are "free of time," they
are as such timeless. We encounter them "in" time insofar as their
being becomes uncovered as "pure nature" in scientific research. But
if these beings are considered without any relation to man, then they
themselves are without time. Only as long as man is as Dasein is
there time.20 Weshallreturn to these ideas later.
Yet before moving on to the next section a brief remark on
Heidegger's terminology and a possible English translation of it
appears tobe necessary. In the sections to come Heidegger uses the
following expressions: "zeitlich," "Zeitlichkeit," "zeitigen," "Zeitigung," "temporal," and "Temporalitt." Macquarrie and Robinson
have suggested the following translations for these terms: "temporal," "temporality," "to temporalize," "temporalization," "Temporal,"
and "Temporality." I have decided to follow these suggestions, even
though I find the use of capitals awkward and artificial.
The German word "zeitigen" means to mature, ripen, in the
sense of tobring to maturity, effect, produce; but it can also mean to
mature and to grow ripe. "Zeitigung" means ripening, maturing,
maturation. Although in some instances some of these connotations
are meant, Heidegger uses these terms usually in the sense of "to let
time be," "to make time be," as we shall see shortly. The English
word "to temporalize" usually means "to secularize," to make
something that is sacred or divine become temporal and earthly in
character; yet the verb can also mean "to make something temporal."
If the verb "to temporalize" is taken in the latter sense without any
20Cf. Reiner A. Bast and Heinrich P. Delfosse, Handbuch zum Textstudium
von Martin Heideggers "Sein und Zeit." Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1979.
Yet in The BasicProblems of Phenomenology the term "Temporalitt" is used for
temporality insofar as temporality itself is made into a theme as the condition of the
possibility of all understanding of Being.
245
religious connotation it seems to be a good word to choose for zeitigen

in Heidegger's sense. Heidegger uses the expressions "temporal"
and "Temporalitt," which are derived from Latin roots, to express
purely formal structures; they are used then predominantly where
historical issues are discussed (cf. Section 6). Yet these two terms
are also used to refer to time taken as the horizon for the
understanding of Being and as the condition of the possibility of all
understanding of Being. As far as I know in Being and Time this
occurs only once, namely in the section in which Heidegger presents
the design of the book; the term is used there only in the description of
the part of the book which actually was not published. (SZ, 39-40) In
Being and Time, as we actually have it, the expressions "temporal"
and "Temporalitt" are thus used almost exclusively in contexts in
which Heidegger is concerned with the "destruction of the history of
ontology."21 I have decided not to stress the distinction in my
commentary in view of the fact that the context in which the
expressions are used, will help the reader to determine whether a
term is used in the formal or in the ontological sense.
II: The Origin ofHeidegger's Conception of Time
We have seen that in 1907 Heidegger received a copy of
Brentano's book, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. This
book confronted him with the problern ofBeing and the question ofthe
condition of the possibility of Being's being able to have several
meanings. At some time between 1919 and 1924 Heidegger got the
idea that time must be this condition of possibility. In 1924 Heidegger
was asked to address the faculty of theology and he selected for this
lecture as his theme: the concept of time. As far as we now know
this was the first time in which Heidegger unfolded his view on the
relation between Dasein, Being, and time.22
Heidegger begins his lecture by explaining that he will not
make an effort to define time in terms of infinity or eternity; for this
would be the typical approach of the theologian. The philosopher,
who as philosopher does not believe and as such is not a believer, will
have to approach time from the perspective of time itself. Yet this
21Cf. The Basic Problems, pp. 228 (German ed. p. 324), 324-330 (461-469). Also
see Marion Heinz, Zeitlichkeit und Temporalitt im Frhwerk Martin
Heideggers. Wrzburg, Rodopi, 1982.
22Cf. Martin Heidegger, "Le concept de temps (1924)," trans. Michel Haar, in
Michel Haar, Martin Heidegger. Paris: Edition de l'Herne, 1983, pp. 27-37.
246
investigation is not philosophical either, if by philosophy one means

the effort to present a systematic and universally valid definition of
the concept of time. The present investigation is neither scientific
nor philosophical in the usual sense. These reflections have nothing
in common with what usually is called philosophy, except for the fact
that they are not theological.23
First a brief observation on the everyday conception of time,
about natural and universal time, appears to be in order here.
Modern physics has made us raise the question of what time is again
in a new way; the theory of relativity is mainly responsible for this.
Heidegger notes in passing that the meaning of the theory is often
misunderstood; it really meant to establish the invariability of basic
equations with respect to arbitrary transformations. Here a close
relation between motion and time is stressed, one that we already
find in Aristotle: Although time is not movement, yet it must be
something closely connected with motion.24 This conception of time
makes it possible to use motion as a measure of time. It is in this
perspective that clocks and watches should be understood: some
"homogeneous" motion of a periodic nature is used to measure time.
The clock does not really measure duration, but merely fixes the now
moment in a durable manner.
In a series of brief questions Heidegger then turns from an
objective measured time to the time that is relevant to me, to what I
am doing or have to do. This leads to questions about the now and
about time and to the realization that we appear to dispose over time,
over its Being. This in turn leads him to Augustine who in the
Confessions came to a similar realization: In you, my soul, do I
measure time. Do not bother me with the question why? Do not let
the throng of your affections bother you, either. It is in you, my soul,
that I measure time-spans. The things that pass make an
impression on you; and while these things pass, this affection
remains; it is' this present disposition (Befindlichkeit) that I
measure.25
The question of what time is has, thus, led us to consider Dasein
by which is meant here the human reality in its Being. This being is
the being that I in each case am myself, and continually am myself
in each case. One wonders whether it indeed was necessary to go
23Jbid., pp. 27-28.
24Aristotle, Physics, IV, 11, 219a2-10.
247
through a complicated detour in order to arrive at an insight to

which one could have turned immediately. Could we not have said
with Husserl (not mentioned) that all acts of consciousness are
psychic processes in time even if these acts are concerned with nontemporal objects. In Heidegger's view the detour was necessary to
show that there are different modes of being temporal and to make
visible in a clearer way the distinction between what is in time and
temporality itself. Up until now we have made use of insights that
belong to the everyday understanding of natural time. If it now
appears tobe the case that Dasein is "in time" in a very special and
privileged way to the degree that what time is, is to be derived from its
mode of Being, then it is clear that the basic characteristics of the
mode of Beingof Daseinare tobe explained first.26 Heidegger lists
some of these characteristics without "proof' or "justification":
1) Dasein is defined as Being-in-the-world; Dasein concernfully
deals with world. Man thinks, questions, reflects, does, works, in a
word is concerned with the world (Besorgen).
2) Dasein as Being-in-the-world is there with others, takes part
with others in the da, the world; Dasein is there together with others
in the mode ofbeing for each other.
3) Speaking is the privileged mode of Being-in-the-world-withothers. Dasein speaks with others about something.
4) Each Dasein defines itself by its "I am." For Dasein the
Jeweiligkeit is constitutive; it is constitutive for each Dasein to be in
such a manner that in each case it is present as actually whiling.
5) In most cases I am in a state such that I am not actually my
own self, but rather identical with the "they" or the "one." One says,
one does, one fears ...
6) The mode of Being characteristic of man is care, Sorge.
7) Although the banality of Dasein's everyday mode of Being
does not imply any reflection on the "I" and the "self," nonetheless,
Dasein possesses itself; it has a certain disposition in regard to itself.
8) What has been said here about Dasein cannot be proven or
even shown; one must realize that the first relation of Dasein to itself
is not that established through reflection, but is tobe itself.27
These characteristics suggest and imply that this being is such
that its mode of Being can be made accessible by further specification.
But this supposition is shakeable. The problern here is not one of the
Iimits of our finite understanding, but rather one that is typical for
26"Le concept de temps," pp. 29-30.
27Jbid., pp. 30-31.
248
the Being of Dasein itself. Dasein is defined ontologically in a

primordial manner if it is defined from its extreme possibility. It is
from the determination of that possibility that all characteristic
ontological traits mentioned necessarily follow. Now the problern is
one of how one can define Dasein before it has reached its final end.
Before that moment Dasein is continually on the way. Before it has
reached that point it never is properly (eigentlich) what it can be, and
is really what it is not yet.
One could think. that one could avoid this difficulty by learning
from others who were there with us and now have died. Insights
gained from the death of others do not illuminate us in our own mode
of Being. The Being-there of others cannot replace Dasein in the
proper sense. The end of Dasein is its death; its death is its own
extreme possibility. This death is certain, always imminent, and yet
always to be characterized with a complete indeterminacy. The
interpretation of Dasein which surpasses every other affirmation in
both certainty and truth in the proper sense, is that interpretation
which relates it to its death, the indeterminate certainty of the most
proper possibility ofits Being-to-its-end.28
But what does this mean for our question: what is time? and
especially for the question: what is Da-sein in time? It means
continually and without interruption in each case to be mine (jemeinigen). Dasein knows something about its death, even when it
does not want to know anything about it. What does it mean to have
one's death as one's own? It is an anticipation on the part of Dasein
with respect to its own "done with" (vorbei), insofar as this
anticipation for Dasein is an extreme possibility in the immirience of
a certainty, and yet also a complete indeterminacy. Dasein insofar as
it is human life (menschliches Leben) is primordially a being-possible, the being of the possibility of being-done-with that is certain and
indeterminate. As this possibility Dasein knows something about its
death: this has usually the form of: "I know something about it but I
prefer not to think about it." The kind of knowledge Dasein has of its
death is a knowledge that tends to withdraw. This knowledge, which
is an interpretation of Dasein, is one that continually tends to hide
this possibility of its being. Dasein has even the possibility of eluding
its own death. This knowledge conveys the possibility of its no Ionger
being as Dasein. And this realization draws everything in my
everyday concern into nullity and nothing. The being-done-with is
not an incident but an accident in my Dasein. The issue is indeed
2B[bid., p. 31.
249
about its being-done-with, not about something that at a certain place

originates, disturbs it, and transforms it. This being-done-with is not
a what but a how (Was -wie); as a matter of fact, it is the proper how
of my there (das eigentliche Wie meines da). This being-done-with
which I can anticipate insofar as it is mine, is not something of my
Dasein, but simply and purely its how. To the degree that this
anticipation of the being-done-with of Dasein maintains itself under
the modality of being in each case as whiling (Jeweilig), Dasein itself
becomes visible in its modality. This anticipation of this being-donewith (Vorbeisein) is the basic strife of Dasein against its extreme
possibility; and to the degree that this running-and-striving-against
(Auflaufen gegen) is serious, Dasein is thrown back during this
course into the still-being-there of itself. Dasein usually lives in a
state of "fallenness." Yet it also realizes its basic "done-with" so that
even in its everydayness Dasein finds itself in a state of
uncanniness. 29
To the degree that this anticipation preserves for Dasein its
extreme possibility, the anticipation is the fundamental accomplishment of the interpretation of Dasein. This anticipation brings with it
the fundamental point of view under which Dasein has placed itself.
At the same time, it reveals that the fundamental category of this
being is its how (Wie). It is thus understandable why Kant could
define the basic principle of his ethics in such a way that one could
call it purely formal. On the basis of an intimate knowledge of the
human reality, he must have known that its basic mode of Beingis
its how. Dasein is in the proper way by itself, it is truly eksistent
(existent) when it keeps and maintains itself in this anticipation.
This anticipation is nothing but the authentic future, unique to
Dasein taken in the proper sense. In this anticipation Dasein is its
future in such a way that indeed it comes back to its past and present
in the heart of this anticipation. Thus Dasein, understood from the
perspective of its most extreme possibility of Being, is time itself:
Dasein is thus not simply in time.30 Insofar as its Being-ad-ventive
(Zuknftigsein) is the proper mode of its temporal being, the Beingad-ventive so understood is the mode of Being of Dasein in and from
which it gives itself its temporal dimension, its time (seine Zeit). By
keeping myself in this anticipation and close to my Being-done-with,
I haue time. When someone says that he has no time, then this
means that he projects time into the false present of the everyday
29Jbid., pp. 31-32.
30Jbid., p. 32.
250
concem. Being-for-the-future gives time, structures the present, and

lets the past repeat itselfin the mode ofits being-lived-again.31
From the perspective of time itself this means that the future is
the essential phenomenon of time. Furthermore, it is clear also that
our primary relation to time is not that of its being a measure. Time
can never become long, because as such time has no length. Finally,
those ways of speaking in which the when, at what time, etc. are
employed, are also inauthentic ways of speaking about time. The
being-for-the-future which lies in the possibility of Dasein insofar as
it is Jeweilig, insofar as it is in each case as whiling, "gives" time,
because it itself is time.32 Questions that have to do with measure
and dating and all questions about the quantity of time, must remain
secondary questions which pertain to the everyday conception of time.
Obviously in our everyday life we do measure time and use time
to articulate dates and specific times. We also calculate time spent
and measure motions and other durations. This way of dealing with
time, too, belongs to the everyday way of dealing with temporal
phenomena.33
Heidegger then briefly characterizes the inauthentic way of
dealing with time in our everyday life, where we measure duration,
measure motion and use motion to measure time, indicate the
quantity of available time, and use time to fix dates and times for .. .
It is in this domain that people claim that they have no time (for) .. .
Everyday Dasein is mainly in the present. In my everyday concem I
am usually in the state of the "one" or "they"; my time is then the time
of the "one" (Die "Man "-Zeit). In this context Heidegger also
mentions the objective time of the natural sciences which is nonreversible and homogeneous. This scientific conception of time has
become part of our everyday conception of time. This explains that in
our everyday life the past is taken to be that which is definitively past,
gone, done with; the present dominates and the future is understood
from the perspective of, and in terms of, the present. This also
explains the lack of iriterest in history and tradition in our scientific
world.3 4
If Dasein understands itself properly then it knows that it is
inherently temporal and historical. Then Dasein also understands
31Jbid., pp. 32-33.
32Jbid., p. 33.
33Jbid., p. 33.
34Jbid., pp. 33-34.
251
that it itself is Being-for-and-toward-the-future. As Being-for-thefuture Dasein is its past. It comesback to it in the "how." The mode
of this return to the past is that of conscience (Gewissen). Only the
how is capable of being retrieved (wiederhohlen).
In its everyday life Dasein knows nothing of this; instead it lives
in an objective time. It does not understand history and tends to
tumble into nihilism. The fear of relativism and nihilism is really a
fear for Dasein itself. The past taken as true history is retrievable
and repeatable in the how. The possibility of access to history is
founded on the possibility according to which a present knows always
to be-for-the-future. And Dasein knows this to the degree that it itself
is its possibility. That the present knows always to be-for-the-future,
this is the first principle of all hermeneutics. It says something
about the mode of Being of Dasein which is historicality itself
(Geschichtlichkeit).35
In brief, time is Dasein (sie). Dasein is my being taken as in
each case whiling (Jeweiligkeit), and the latter can be such only in
the being-for-the-future, in the anticipation of what is gone and done
with (Vorbei) which is certain but undetermined. Being (Sein) is
always in a mode of its possible being temporal. Dasein is time (sie).
Time itself is temporal and as such possesses the true and genuine
determination of time. This does not imply a tautology insofar as the
Being of time and temporality precisely means a reality that is not
identical. Dasein is its past that has gone; its possibility consists in
the anticipation of this being gone. In this anticipation I am truly
time, have time. To the degree that time is always my time, there are
many times. Time as such makes no sense. Time is the genuine
principle of individuation. It is in the being-for-the-future of the
anticipation that Dasein, that is plunged into its everyday life,
becomes itself; it is in this anticipation that it makes itself visible
under that unique characteristic of the "this present time"
(Diesmaligkeit) of its unique destiny, in the possibility of its unique
being-gone. This principle of individuation does not set the
individual apart in an egotistic and phantastic way; it makes it
precisely impossible for each Dasein to feel unique; it makes every
individual the same (gleich) as everyone eise. Through the link with
death, everyone finds hirnself led to the how that everyone can be in
the same way according to a possibility in which no one can stand out
above the others.
35Jbid., pp. 34-35.
252
In the historicity of man as Dasein and thus in the Being of

Dasein there is implied the possibility of retrieve and repetition.
Aristotle already stressed the importance of paideia in this regard,
which Ieads man from a state of Iack of Bildung over into the state of
being well-educated (gebildet). As far as our own topic is concemed,
Heidegger continues, we must learn to think and speak again
temporally about time. What then is time? The issue here is not
what time is, but rather how time is. Timeis the how of Dasein's
own Being. Thus in regard to the question of what time is, one
should never say that time is either this or that; for then one focuses
on a what, a quid. If we focus on the how of time one realizes that the
question "What is time?," changes into "Who is time?" Are we really
time? Am I time? Am I my own time? If one thinks about these
questions one understands why Dasein really means "to be in
question."36
TII: Temporality and Time in Being and Time
Mter these introductory reflections we must now turn to the
question of how Heidegger conceived of time in Being and Time. As
the title of the book suggests, the concept of time occupies a privileged
position in this book. Already in the work's brief preface Heidegger
presents his view on how Being and time are to be related. "Our aim
in the following treatise is to work out the question concerning the
meaning of Being. . . Our provisional aim is the interpretation of
time as possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being."
(SZ, 1) In the title of the first Part of the book Heidegger returns to
this relationship; the interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality
(Zeitlichkeit), and the explication of time as transeendental horizon
for the question concerning the meaning of Being. (SZ, 42)
The first Part of the book consists of two major divisions: a
preparatory analysis of Dasein and a second division on the
relationship between Dasein and temporality. As we have seen, in
the first division Heidegger takes as his guiding clue the fact that the
essence of man consists in his eksistence; that toward which man
stands out is "the world"; thus for this reason the Being of man as
Dasein can be described as "Being in the world." The main task of
the first division of Part I was to unveil the precise meaning of this
compound expression; but in so doing the final goal remained the
preparation of an answer for the question concerning the meaning of
36Jbid., pp. 35-36.
253
Being. Heidegger justified this approach to the Being-question by

pointing out that man taken as Being-in-the-world, is the only being
who can make hirnself transparent in his own mode of Being. The
very asking of this question is one of this being's modes of Being, and
as such it receives its essential character from what is inquired
about, namely Being. "This entity which each of us is hirnself and
which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we
shall denote by the term 'Dasein'." (SZ, 7)
A preparatory analysis of Dasein's Being can only serve to
describe the Being of this being; it cannot interpret its meaning. As a
preparatory procedure it merely tries to lay bare the horizon for the
most primordial way of interpreting Being. Once this horizon has
been reached, the preparatory analytic of Dasein is to be repeated on a
higher, genuinely ontologicallevel. Heidegger repeats here that this
horizon is to be found in temporality, taken as the meaning of the
Being of Dasein. That is why on a second level all structures of
Dasein, exhibited provisionally in the first division, must be reinterpreted as modes of temporality. But in thus interpreting Dasein
as temporality the question concerning the meaning of Being is not
yet answered; only the ground is prepared here for later obtaining
such an answer. (SZ, 17)
If it is true that Dasein has a pre-ontologic understanding of
Being and if it is true that temporality is the meaning of the Being of
Dasein, then one can show that whenever Dasein tacitly understands
and interprets Being, it does so with time as its standpoint. Thus
time must be brought to light as the horizon for all understanding of
Being and this horizon itself is tobe shown in terms of temporality,
taken as the Beingof Dasein which understands Being. It is obvious
that in this context our pre-philosophical conception of time is of no
help and the same thing is true for the conception of time which has
persisted in philosophy from Aristotle to Bergson. This traditional
conception of time and the ordinary way of understanding time have
sprung from temporality taken as the meaning of the Being of
Dasein. (SZ, 17-18)
Normally we conceive of time as an endless succession of
"nows," whereby the "not-yet-now" (future) passes by the "present
now" to become immediately a "no-longer-now." The, future thus
consists of the "nows" that have not yet come, whereas the past
consists of the "nows" that once were but no Ionger are; the present is
the "now" which at the moment is. On the basis of this conception we
can make a distinction between temporal and non-temporal entities;
"temporal" then means "being in time." Thus time, in the sense of
254
"being in time," functions as a criterion for distinguishing realms of

Being. No one hasever asked the question of how time can have this
distinctive ontological function; nor has anyone asked whether the
authentic ontological relevance which is possible for time, is
expressed when time is used in such a naively ontological manner.
These questions must be asked here and it will be clear that if Being
is to be understood in terms of time and if its various derivatives are
to become intelligible in their respective derivations by taking time
into consideration, then Being itself must be made visible in its
"temporal" character; but in this case "temporal" no Ionger means
"being in time." From this perspective even the non-temporal and
supra-temporal are "temporal" with regard to their Being, and this
not only privatively but also positively. lt is this temporality of Being
which must be worked out in the ontology whose task it is to interpret
Beingas such. (SZ, 18-19)
Temporality is furthermore the condition which makes
historicity possible as a temporal kind of Being which Dasein itself
possesses. Historicity stands here for the state of Being which is
constitutive for Dasein's coming-to-pass (geschehen) as such.
Dasein is as it already was and it is what it already was. lt is its
past, not only in the sense that its past is, as it were, pushing itself
along "behind" it, and which Dasein thus possesses as a kind of
property which is still present-at-hand; Dasein is its past in the way
of its own Being which, to put it roughly, "comes-to-past" out of its
future on each occasion. Dasein has grown up in a traditional way of
understanding itself interpretively. Its own past, which includes the
past of its generation, is not something which just follows along after
Dasein, but something which already goes ahead ofit. But ifDasein
itself as weil as its own understanding are intrinsically historical,
then the inquiry into Being itself is to be characterized by historicity
as well. Thus by carrying through the question of the meaning of
Being and by explicating Dasein in its temporality and historicity, the
question itself will bring itself to the point where it understands itself
as historical (historisch). (SZ, 19-21)
After making these preliminary remarks which merely
describe what is to be accomplished by the analytic of man's Being,
Heidegger does not return to the question of temporality and time
until the last chapter of the first division which is devoted to care
(Sorge) as the genuine Being of Dasein. In trying to explain just
what is meant by the compound expression "Being-in-the-world"
Heidegger first focuses on the ontological structure of the world, (SZ,
63-113) then he tries to answer the question of who it is that Dasein is
255
in its everydayness, (SZ, 113-130) and finally proceeds to explain what

is meant by "Being-in-as-such." (SZ, 130-180) In the introduction to
this last issue Heidegger explicitly repeats that that being which is
essentially constituted by its Being-in-the-world, is itselfin every case
its own "there" (Da). When one speaks of the lumennaturalein
man, one refers to this eksistential-ontological structure of man, that
he is in such a way that he is his own "there." This means among
other things that Dasein carries in its ownmost Being the character
of not being closed off; Dasein because of this "there" is to be
characterized by its disclosedness. By reason of this fundamental
disclosedness Dasein, together with the Being-there (Da-sein) of the
world, is "there" for itself. In the eksistential constitution of Dasein's
disclosedness three equally constitutive components are to be
distinguished, namely original understanding, ontological disposition, and logos (Rede). (SZ, 133-134)
After explaining the meaning of the compound expression
"Being-in-the-world" along these lines by describing its basic
constitutive elements, Heidegger sets out to account for the unity of
Dasein's Being: How are the unity and totality of that structural
whole which we have pointed out, to be defined in an eksistentialontological manner? (SZ, 181) Heidegger tries to answer this question
by pointing out first that care (Sorge) is the unifying factor which
integrates into a unity the multiple elements of the Being of that
being whose Being is precisely such that it is concerned about its own
Being. By taking his point of departure in a descriptive interpretation
of anxiety (Angst) Heidegger is able to show that Dasein is a being
who has the inexhaustible potentiality of transcending beings toward
Being; but, if Dasein has the ekstatic nature of eksistence, it is always
ahead of itself. Dasein's eksistence, however, is essentially codetermined by thrownness; Dasein is like a process which is not its
own source; it always is already begun and yet it is still to be
achieved. Finally, Dasein in its essential dependence upon world is
fallen to the "world," to the intramundane things of its everyday
concern and thus caught by the way things are publicly interpreted
by the "they." Eksistentiality taken together with thrownness and
fallenness explains why the very Being of Dasein is to be understood
as care. (SZ, 184-196)
In order to be able to show Dasein's Being in its totality
Heidegger turns to Dasein's final term, death. He describes death as
a genuine, but also as the ultimate possibility of man's Being. It is
that possibility in which man's own Being-in-the-world as such is at
stake.
Death reveals to man the possibility of his further
256
impossibility. In other words, death is that possibility which makes

the potentiality which Dasein is, limited through and through. Man
is thoroughly and irretrievably finite because his own death is that
fundamental possibility which from the very beginning leaves its
mark upon man's life and, thus, is a manner of Being which Dasein
must assume as soon as it begins to eksist. (SZ, 235-246)
In his fallen condition Dasein tries to forget the authentic
meaning of death so that the question now becomes one of how one is
to come to an authentic interpretation of the meaning of death, and
thus to genuine authenticity. In Heidegger's view this can be shown
by interpreting the basic constituents of care (ek-sistence, facticity
(= thrownness), and fallenness) in terms of an eksistentialontological conception of death.
Dasein which has come to authentic Being knows that death is
constitutive for all of its possibilities and that the ultimate possibility
of its own eksistence is to give itself up. (SZ, 263-264) If Dasein
genuinely realizes this then it no Ionger flees from the definitiveness
of its end and accepts it as constitutive of its finitude and thus makes
itself free for it. (SZ, 264-265) Now at the moment that Dasein
understands death as its ultimate possibility, as that possibility
which makes its own Being impossible, and at the moment that it
accepts this final possibility as its very own by listening to the voice of
conscience, (SZ, 270-289) Dasein begins to become transparent to itself
as that which it is in itself, in its own Self. For death does not just
appear to Dasein in an impersonal way; it lays claim to it as this
individual Dasein. By listening to the voice of conscience, by really
understanding the genuine meaning of death in "guilt," and by
accepting it as its own death, Dasein breaks away from inauthenticity in resolve. (SZ, 295-301)
Now it will be obvious that if all ofthis is tobe true, then man's
Being must be intrinsically temporal and temporality, in the final
analysis, must constitute the primordial ontological basis of Dasein's
eksistentiality. (SZ, 301-316) For what does the authentic man do? He
realizes his radical finitude by anticipating death, by including it in
advance in every project. By anticipating death in all its projects
Dasein receives its Being precisely as its own, as its ownmost
"personal" eksistence so that it really comes to itself. (SZ, 316-323) But
this coming-to-itself is what is meant by "future," if the term is taken
in its primordial sense. This letting itself come towards itself in that
distinctive possibility which Dasein has to put up with, is the
primordial phenomenon of Zu-kunft, coming-towards, future. (SZ,
325)
2!57
But Dasein's temporality extends not only to the future; it has

also the character of a "having been." Dasein can project itself
towards its own death only insofar as it already is. In order to realize
its ownmost Being, Dasein has to accept, together with its own death,
also its thrownness, its facticity, that which it is already. Death
cannot be its death if it has no relation to what Dasein already is.
Authentically futural, Dasein is equally authentically "having-been"
(Gewesen). To anticipate one's ultimate and ownmost possibility is to
come back u;nderstandingly to one's ownmost "having-been." (SZ, 325326)
Thus far we have seen that Dasein's coming is a coming to a
Self that already is as having-been; on the other hand, Dasein is what
it has been only as long as the future continues to come. We must
now turn to temporal nearness, the present. According to
Heidegger, the genuine meaning of the present consists in a "making
present" (Gegenwrtigen). Dasein, as temporalizing, makes things
present; this is the essential meaning of the present as it
primordially appears to Dasein. Anticipating resolve discloses the
actual situation of the Da in such a way that eksistence, in its action,
can be circumspectively concerned with what is factually ready-tohand in the actual situation; that is, letting that which has presence
environmentally be encountered, is possible only by making such a
being present. (SZ, 326)
The "making present" of what has presence presupposes, on the
one hand, the future as anticipation of Dasein's possibilities and, on
the other, the return to what has-been. By virtue of Dasein's
understanding of its own Being, thus, Dasein is able to understand
the human situation as a whole; at the same time intramundane
beings can manifest themselves to it in their belonging to a world.
Thus, what Heidegger calls "making-present" presupposes the
"having-been" and the "future." The present is as the resultant of the
two other ekstases of time. "Having-been" arises from the "future" in
such a way that the future which has already been, releases the
present from itself. What is meant by temporality is precisely the
unity of this structural whole; the future which makes present in the
process of having-been. Only insofar as Dasein is characterized by
temporality can it realize its authentic Being. Thus temporality
reveals itself here as the meaning of authentic care. (SZ, 326-327)
From all of this it becomes clear that Dasein can realize its total
unity only by temporalizing itself. This "becoming temporal"
includes at the same time future, having-been, and present. These
three "phases" of time imply one another and nonetheless are
258
mutually exclusive. For this reason Heidegger calls them the

"ekstases" of primordial time. We must now examine the nature of
the relations which connect these ekstases of time with the structural
elements of care. According to Heidegger, care must be characterized by eksistence (having to be ahead of itself), facticity or
thrownness (already being in the world), and fallenness (being
absorbed in intramundane things).
As basically Being-able-to-be (Seinknnen) Dasein is always
ahead of itself, ahead of what it actually is. That is why its
understanding has the character of a project. It is precisely because
Dasein possesses the ontological structure of projecting (Verstehen)
that it can always be ahead of its actual being. However, being
ahead-of-itself Dasein always is already in a world and is of necessity
involved in it. Thus, Dasein cannot go beyond itself without first
having been "thrown" into the world. This means that eksistence as
Being-ahead-of-itself always includes facticity. Finally, Dasein
which is in a world into which it has been thrown, always discovers
itself there as absorbed by that which immediately manifests itself
there and with which it deals concernfully (fallenness). But now the
relationship between Dasein's essential temporality and care will be
clear at once. Heidegger expresses it as follows: "The 'ahead-ofitself (eksistentiality) is grounded in the future. The "being-alreadyin" (facticity) makes known the "having-been." "Being-at" (fallenness) becomes possible as "making-present." (SZ, 327)
IV: On the Temporality ofDisclosedness as Such (Erschlossenheit)

Heidegger next turns to a temporal interpretation of the basic
structures of Dasein's disclosedness which constitutes the Being of
Dasein's "there." These structures were brought to light in the
preparatory analysis of the first section of Being and Time where the
mode of Being of Dasein was analyzed as this mode manifests itself
in Dasein's everydayness. The basic structures of Dasein's Being-in
discovered there are: understanding, ontological disposition or
moodness, and logos (Rede), whereas the primordial way of everyday
Being-in as a whole was described as concern.37 Finally, concern
was shown to be inherently related to fallenness.38 It is thus
understandable that Heidegger can state that the temporal
interpretation of everyday Dasein must start with those structures in
37sz, Sections 13,28-34.
38Jbid., Section 38, p. 176.
259
which disclosedness constitutes itself: understanding, ontological

disposition, falling, and logos. 3 9 (SZ, 334-335) To provide these
reflections with their proper ground we shall in each case begin with
a brief description of the temporality of each moment of disclosedness
in its authentic form which we already have discussed in the
preceding section.40
1. The Temporality of Understanding. 41 W e have seen in
Section 31 that understanding is a fundamental eksistential of
Dasein's Being-in; as such it is not a concrete form of understanding
or knowing, but rather the Beingof Dasein's "there" in such a way
that, on the basis of such understanding, each Dasein can, in
eksisting, develop the different possibilities of seeing and knowing. If
the term is taken in the strict eksistential sense it means Being in the
mode of projecting in which Dasein projects itself toward a Beingable-to-be which constitutes the "for the sake of which" for which
Dasein eksists. Thus in understanding, one's own Being-able-to-be is
disclosed such that each Dasein knows understandingly what it is
capable of. When a Dasein understands itself projectively in an
eksistentiell possibility, the future underlies this form of
understanding, and it does so as coming-towards-itself (Zu-kunft) out
ofthat current possibility as which Dasein happens to eksist then.
Thus the projection of understanding is basically futural. (SZ, 336)
Since Dasein can project its own self either authentically or
inauthentically, it is necessary to distinguish between authentic and
inauthentic future.
Heidegger calls authentic future anticipation (Vorlaufen). In
this case Daseinlets itself come towards itself as its ownmost Beingable-to-be; yet Dasein's future must in this case win itself not from a
present but rather from an inauthentic future. If one wishes to
speak about future, without making a distinction between authentic
and inauthentic future, one should use the expression: the "aheadof-itself." Thus Dasein is always ahead-of-itself, but it is rarely
ahead-of-itself in an anticipatory manner.
The inauthentic understanding projects itself upon that with
which Dasein is concerned in its everyday business. Thus
39For the problems connected with the seeming incongruency between the
moments of temporality and the moment of care, see Marion Heinz, "The Concept
ofTime," pp. 191-194.
40sz, Section 65.
41Cf. Graeme Nicholson, "Ekstatic Temporality in Sein und Zeit," quoted in
note 1.
260
potentiality Iets Dasein come towards itself in its concernful Beingalongside that with which it happens to be concerned. In this case
Dasein does not come towards itself primarily in its ownmost nonrelative Being-able-to-be, but rather it awaits its future (seiner) in
terms ofthat which yields or denies the object of its concern. In that
case Dasein thus comes towards itself from that with which it
concerns itself. Thus the inauthentic future has the character of
awaiting. Now only because factical Dasein is thus awaiting its own
Being-able-to-be in termsofthat with which it concerns itself, can it
also expect anything and wait for it. Expecting is thus founded upon
a mode of the future which is founded upon awaiting, even though
the future temporalizes itself authentically as anticipation.
Although understanding is primarily futural, it nonetheless is
in its temporalization inherently temporal; thus it is with equal
primordiality determined by having-been and by the present. Here,
too, we must again distinguish between authentic and inauthentic
modes of having-been and present. In its everyday concern Dasein
understands itself in terms of that Being-able-to-be which comes
toward it from the possible success or failure with respect to
whatever is the object of its concern. Corresponding to the
inauthentic future there is also a special way of Being-alongside the
things of one's concern. The way of Being-alongside is the inauthentic present, the waiting-towards (Gegen-wart). On the other hand,
corresponding to the anticipation which goes with authentic
resoluteness, we have an authentic present in harmony with which
Dasein's resolve discloses the actual situation. In resolve, the
present is not only brought back from the distraction of Dasein's
concern, but this present is also "held in" the authentic future and
having-been. This authentic present is called Augenblick (look of the
eye, moment of vision), the resolute rapture with which Dasein is
carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are
encountered in the situation as possible objects of concern; yet this
rapture must be held in authentic resolve. lt must not be understood
in terms of the "now" which belongs to the time of within-time-ness,
the "now" in which something arises, is present, and passes away.
In the authentic present nothing can occur; rather as an authentic
waiting-towards the Augenblick allows us to encounter for the first
time what can be "in time" as either ready-to-hand or present-athand. (SZ, 338-339)
In contradistinction to the authentic present the inauthentic
present is called a "making present." This inauthentic present
which takes the form of making-present can be explained only in
261
light of the temporal interpretation of falling into the world of one's

concern. We shall return to this shortly. The authentic present, on
the other hand, temporalizes itself in terms of the authentic future.
(SZ, 338)
To the inauthentic understanding which temporalizes itself as
an awaiting which makes present, there corresponds an inauthentic
past which has the form of a "having-been." On the other hand, the
authentic coming-towards-itself of anticipatory resolve is at the same
time a coming back to one's ownmost self. This ekstasis makes it
possible for Dasein to take over in resolve that being which it already
is. Thus in anticipating Dasein brings itself again forth into its
ownmost Being-able-to-be. If Dasein's "having-been" is authentic,
Heidegger calls it retrieve (Wiederholung). But if Dasein projects
itself inauthentically toward those possibilities which can be drawn
from its objects of concern and which it makes present, then this is
made possible by the fact that Dasein has forgotten itself in its
ownmost thrown Being-able-to-be. This forgetting is an ekstatic
mode of one's "having-been;" it has the character of backing away in
the face of one's ownmost "having-been." Thus "having-forgotten" is
an inauthentic way of "having-been." Only on the basis of such a
forgetting can something be retained and remembered.
Just as expecting is possible only on the basis of an awaiting, so
remembering is possible only on the basis of a forgetting and not the
other way around. It is important to note that the awaiting which
forgets and makes present is an ekstatic unity in its own right, in
accordance with which inauthentic understanding temporalizes
itself with respect to its temporality. The unity of these ekstases
closes off Dasein's authentic Being-able-to-be and is thus the
condition ofthe possibility ofirresoluteness. (SZ, 339)
2. The Temporality of Ontological Disposition. In Section 28 of
Being and Time Heidegger has shown that understanding always
goes hand in hand with disposition. Having a certain disposition
brings Dasein face to face with its thrownness in such a way that this
thrownness is not known as such but disclosed indirectly, far more
primordially though, in "how one is." Being-thrown means finding
oneself in some disposition or other. Thus one's disposition is based
on thrownness. We must now try to show the temporal constitution
of having-a-disposition. Bringing Dasein face to face with the fact of
its thrownness is eksistentially possible only if Dasein's Being, by its
very meaning, constantly is as having-been. The having-been is not
what brings Daseinface to face with the thrown being that it is itself;
262
yet the ekstasis of the having-been is what makes it first possible to

find oneself in a disposition.
Whereas understanding was grounded primarily in the future,
ontological disposition temporalizes itself primarily in having-been.
This means that the eksistentially basic character of dispositions and
moods lies in bringing one back to something. It is not the bringingback that first produces a having-been; rather in any disposition
some mode of having-been is made manifest for eksistential analysis.
We must thus demonstrate that except on the basis of temporality
ontological dispositions are not possible in that which they "signify."
Weshalllimit ourselves here to the dispositions offear and anxiety.
Fear is an inauthentic ontological disposition. We must ask the
question as to what extent the eksistential meaning which makes
fear possible, lies in what has-been. At first sight one might think
that the primary meaning of fear is the future; for fear has been
defined in terms of a malum {uturum; fear is the expectation of some
oncoming evil. Furthermore, fear does not only relate itself to
something in the future, but this self-relating is itself futural in the
primordial sense. Heidegger admits that this is correct. It is correct
to state that an inauthentic awaiting belongs to the eksistential
constitution of fear. Yet Heidegger claims, in fear the awaiting lets
what is threatening come back to one's factically concernful Beingable-to-be. Only if that to which this comes back is already
ekstatically open, can that which threatens be awaited, back to the
beingwhich I myself am; only so can Dasein be threatened. When
my Being-in-the-world itself has been threatened, I concern myself
with what is ready-to-hand and I do so as a factical Being-able-to-be of
my own. In the face of this potentiality and possibility one backs
away in bewilderment: this kind of forgetting oneself is what
constitutes the eksistential-temporal meaning of fear.
This
bewilderment forces Dasein back to its thrownness in a way in which
this thrownness precisely becomes closed off. Thus the bewilderment
is based on forgetting. When one forgets and backs away in the face
of a factical Being-able-to-be which is resolute and authentic, one
clings to those possibilities of self-preservation which one has already
discovered circumspectively beforehand. When Dasein in concern is
afraid, it leaps from the next to the next, because it forgets itself and
therefore does not take hold of any definite possibility. Every possible
possibility offers itself here, including those which are not really
possible. The man who fears does not stop and carefully select one;
in his bewilderment he makes present the first thing that comes into
his head. When one has forgotten one's self and makes present just
263
a jumble of hovering possibilities, one makes possible that

bewilderment which constitutes the dispositional character or Being
of fear. The specific ekstatic unity which makes it eksistentially
possible to be afraid, temporalizes itself thus out of the kind of
forgetting of self characterized above; as a mode of having-been it
modifies its present and its futurein their own temporalizing. The
temporality of fear is a forgetting which awaits and makes present.
We must now turn to the temporality of anxiety. In Section 29 of
Being and Time it was shown that in anxiety Dasein is anxious in the
face of, and about, Dasein itself; anxiety is being anxious in the face
of the "nothing" of the world. To be anxious in the face of one's own
self does not have the character of an expecting or of any kind of
awaiting. For that in the face of which one has anxiety is already
there, namely Dasein itself. But is anxiety then not constituted by
some future? This is certainly correct; yet this is not the inauthentic
future of awaiting.
Anxiety discloses the nullity of the world; and this insignificance in turn reveals the nullity ofthat with which one concerns
oneself. The revealing of this impossibility signifies that one is
letting the possibility of an authentic Being-able-to-be come to the fore.
What is the temporal meaning of this revealing? Anxious Dasein is
anxious about its naked self as something that has been thrown into
uncanniness. Anxiety brings one back to the pure that-it-is of one's
individualized thrownness. (SZ, 343) This bringing back is neither
an evasive forgetting nor a remembering. But anxiety as such does
not imply either that one has already taken over one's eksistence into
one's resolve by means of retrieve. Rather anxiety brings one back to
one's thrownness as something possible that can be retrieved. In
this manner it also reveals the possibility of an authentic Being-ableto-be; this is an ability which in retrieve must come back to its own
"there," as something that is futural which "comes towards" it. Thus
the character of having-been is constitutive for the ontological
disposition of anxiety; the specific eksistential mode of this character
consists in "bringing one face to face with retrievability." (SZ, 343)
In fear Dasein is bewildered and it Iets itself drift back and forth
between "worldly" possibilities which it however does not seize. In
contrast to its making present which is not held on to, the present of
anxiety is held on to when Dasein brings itself back to its ownmost
thrownness. But even though the present of anxiety is held on to, it
does not yet have the character of the Augenblick, the authentic
present, which temporalizes itself in resolve. Anxiety brings one in
264
the disposition or mood for a possible resolve; in the present of anxiety

Dasein is ready for that authentic moment.
It is important to note that the temporality of anxiety is peculiar
insofar as it is grounded primordially in having-been; future and
present temporalize themselves only out of this having-been.
Furthermore, in anxiety Dasein is taken all the way back to its naked
uncanniness and it becomes fascinated by it. This fascination takes
Dasein back from its "worldly" possibilities; but above all it gives
Dasein at the same time the possibility of an authentic Being-able-tobe.
Finally it must be noted here also that fear is occasioned by
beings with which we concern ourselves in our everyday world;
anxiety, on the other hand, arises out of Dasein's Being-in-the-world
itself as Being-thrown-towards-death. Understood temporally, this
rising up of anxiety out of Dasein's Being-in-the world means that
the future and the present of anxiety temporalize themselves out of a
primordial having-been and in this way they bring us back to the
possibility of retrieve. Genuine anxiety can arise only in a Dasein
that is resolute.
Although both fear and anxiety, as modes of ontological
disposition, are grounded primarily in having-been, they each have a
different source with respect to their own temporalization; this
source is to be found in the temporalization of care: anxiety springs
from the future of resolve, whereas fear springs from the lost
present.
The thesis concerning the temporality of various modes of
disposition or moods also holds for other moods such as the palid lack
of a specific mood, hope, joy, enthusiasm, gaiety, etc. Heidegger
briefly indicates how this can be shown with respect to hope and the
lack of a specific mood. (SZ, 345-346)
3. The Temporality of Falling. As is to be expected from the
preceding sections, falling has its eksistential meaning not in the
future (understanding), nor in the past (disposition), but in the
present. The phenomenon of falling was analyzed by means of an
interpretation of idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. In the temporal
analysis of falling Heidegger takes the same course but decides to
limit hirnself to the phenomenon of curiosity, because the specific
temporality of falling can be seen there most easily.
In Section 36 of Being and Time it was explained that curiosity
is a distinctive tendency of Dasein's Being to concern itself with a
being-able-to-see. In curiosity it lets beings both ready-to-hand and
present-at-hand be encountered bodily in themselves with regard to
265
the way they Iook. This letting them be thus encountered is grounded
in a present. This present provides us in general with the ekstatic
horizon within which beings can have bodily presence. Yet curiosity
does not make the present-at-hand present in order to dwell with it
and understand it; it seeks to see only in order to see and to have
seen.
Since curiosity is a making-present that gets entangled in itself,
curiosity's present has an ekstatic unity with a corresponding future
and past. Curiosity implies the craving for what is new; thus it is
some way of proceeding towards something that is not yet seen, but
this is done in such a manner that the making-present seeks to
extricate itself from awaiting. Thus curiosity is futural in a way that
is totally inauthentic. It does not only not await a possibility, but in
its craving instead desires such a possibility as something that is
already actual. Curiosity is thus constituted by a making present
which is not held on to, but one which, in making present, thereby
constantly seeks to run away from the awaiting in which it
nevertheless is "held." The present originates in, but also leaps away
from, the awaiting that belongs to it. The making-present which
leaps away in curiosity is so little dedicated to the thing about which
it is curious, that when it obtains sight of anything new, it already
Iooks away to what is coming next. The making-present which both
"arises and leaps away" from the awaiting of a definite possibility
which one has taken hold of, makes possible ontologically that one
does not dwell on the relevant thing; and this not-dwelling is, as we
have seen, distinctive of curiosity. Yet one must note that the
making-present does not leap away from the awaiting and detaches
itself from it. This leaping-away is rather an ekstatic modification of
awaiting itself, one in which the awaiting in each case immediately
'leaps after the making-present that constantly is seeking for
something new. In other words, in this case the awaiting gives itself
up, as it were. The modification of the awaiting by this form of
making-present which immediately leaps away is the condition of the
possibility of distraction.
Curiosity makes present for the sake of the present. It becomes
entangled with itself; it becomes distracted and never dwells
anywhere. This mode of the present is the opposite of the
Augenblick, the authentic present. If Dasein dwells never
anywhere, it is everywhere and nowhere. In the authentic present,
on the other hand, it brings eksistence into the eksistential situation
(SZ, 346) and discloses Dasein's authentic "there." (SZ, 347)
266
The more inauthentic the present is and the more makingpresent turns toward itself, the more it flees in the face of a definite
being-able-to-be and closes this off; but in that case, all the less can
the future come back to that Being which has been thrown. In the
leaping-away of the present, one also forgets increasingly. Now the
fact that curiosity always holds by what is coming next, and always
has forgotten what has gone before, is not the result that flows from
curiosity; rather it is the ontological condition for curiosity itself. (SZ,
348)
4. The Temporality of Logos. Dasein's disclosedness is

constituted by understanding, disposition, and falling. This
disclosedness becomes articulated in logos, Rede. This explains that
logos does not temporaUze itself primarily in one of the three
ekstases. Yet factically, logos expresses itself for the most part in
language, and speaks proximally in the way of addressing itself to
the everyday world that surrounds us by talking about things with
which we concern ourselves; this in turn explains why in logos the
making-present has a privileged constitutive function.
The verb tenses and all the other temporal phenomena of
language, however, do not originate from the fact that logos
expresses itself also in temporal processes and events which are
encountered "in time." Nor does their basis lie in the fact that
speaking runs its course in a psychical time. Logos is in itself temporal, since all talking about, of, or to is grounded in the ekstatic unity
of temporality.
In Heidegger's view ontological problems that can be raised
with respect to logos, language, and other temporal phenomena of
language, cannot be formulated with the help of the ordinary,
traditional conception of time, to which the science of language needs
must have recourse. The genuinely philosophical analysis of the
temporal constitution of logos and the explication of the temporal
characteristics of our language patterns can be tackled only after the
problern has been solved as to how Being and truth are connected in
principle. And that problern can be solved only from the perspective
of the problematic of temporality. There one can also explain the
ontological meaning of the "is" and clarify how "signification" really
arises. Heidegger had hoped to tackle these issues in the second
chapter of the third part of Being and Time. This part however has
never been published. (SZ, 349)
5. Concluding Observations. Wehaveseen that understanding
is grounded primarily in the future, disposition temporalizes itself
primarily in having-been, and falling has its temporal roots mainly

in the present. Yet understanding is in every case also a present
which is in the process of having-been. In the same way, one's
disposition temporalizes itself also as a future which is makingpresent. And the present leaps away from the future that was made
possible by a having-been. Thus we can see, Heidegger concludes,
that "in every ekstasis, temporality temporalizes itself as a whole;
and this means that in the ekstatic unity with which temporality has
fully temporalized itself in each case, is grounded the totality of the
structural whole of eksistence, facticity, and falling-i.e., the unity of
the care structure." (SZ, 350)
It is clear from the above also that temporalizing does not
signify that the ekstases follow each other in succession. Thus the
future is not later than the past as having-been, and having-been is
not earlier than the present. Temporality temporalizes itself as a
future which is as both present and having-been. (SZ, 350)
Finally, it was shown that the disclosedness of the "there" as
weil as Dasein's two basic eksistentiell possibilities, namely
authenticity and inauthenticity, are founded upon temporality. But
disclosedness pertains with equal primordiality to Being-in-the-world
as a whole, i.e., to Being in and to world. The problems which
pertain to this issue will be discussed in the chapter to follow. (SZ,
350)
CHAPTERXII
THE TEMPORALITY OF BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
AND THE PROBLEM OF THE TRANSCENDENCE
OFTHEWORLD
1: lntroduction
The unity of the three ekstases of time, future, having-beenness, and present has been shown to be the condition of the possibility
of the Being of Dasein. The being that has the mode of Being of
Dasein is lighted and cleared so that it can stand in the world as a
lumen naturale. (SZ, 133) That by which this being is lighted and
cleared (gelichted) and which makes it both open for itself and lit-up
for itself, appears to consist in care. In care, Heidegger says, we
have discovered the full disclosedness of the "there" of Dasein and we
have done so first before any temporal interpretation of the Beingof
Dasein. Yet, as we have seen, we did discover the light of this being
lighted and cleared of Dasein's in its full meaning only where we
interrogated care from the perspective of the basis of its eksistential
possibility. Ekstatic temporality, of which we have seen that it
primarily is the possible unity of all Dasein's eksistential structures,
lights and clears also the "there" of Dasein primordially.
In the first section of Being and Time Dasein's Being-in-theworld was interpreted primarily from the perspective of its everyday
mode of Being-in-the-world, namely its concern, Dasein's concernful
Being alongside what is ready-to-hand. Now that care has been
interpreted ontologically and traced back to temporality as its
eksistential ground, concern can be conceived explicitly in terms of
care and temporality. (SZ, 350-351)
Weshall attempt to do so, Heidegger continues, by focusing first
on the temporality of concern in its dealing with what is ready-tohand circumspectively; subsequently we shall examine the
eksistential-temporal possibility of theoretical knowledge. Our
interpretation of the temporality of Being-alongside what is ready-tohand in circumspective concern and what is present-at-hand in
theoretical knowledge within the world, shows at the same time how
270
this temporality is also the advance condition for that possibility of

Being-in-the-world in which Being-alongside beings within-theworld is grounded. Let us thus first turn to the temporality of
circumspective concern. (SZ, 351-352)
II: The Temporality of Circumspecti.ve Concern
The first question which we must ask ourselves, says

Heidegger, is one of how we are to obtain the right perspective from
which the temporality of concern can be analyzed. In our concernful
Being alongside beings within the world we deal with what is present
to us in our environmental world. As examples of Being-alongside
we have employed the following phenomena: the using, manipulating, and producing of what is ready-to-hand as well as the
undifferentiated and deficient modes of these, as we encounter them
in our everyday life. It appeared that the ready-to-hand things with
which we concern ourselves are not the causes of our concern.
Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand cannot be explained ontically
in terms of what is ready-to-hand itself. It is equally impossible to
derive what is ready-to-hand from Dasein's Being-alongside.
Finally, concern, as a mode of Being which belongs to Dasein, and
that with which we concern ourselves, as something that is ready-tohand within-the-world, are not just present-at-hand together, either.
And yet there is some connection between them. We thus must face
the question of how concern is to be related to things which are readyto-hand. How to answer this question has been prepared in part by
our analysis of pieces of equipment. (SZ, 352)
It is to be stressed here once more that Dasein's concernful
dealing never dwells with any individual item of equipment taken in
isolation. In our dealing with a piece of equipment there always is
some equipmental context. This suggests that in answering the
question just formulated we must orient our investigation toward
some equipmental totality. As we have seen any piece of equipment
is related to some thing and also to Dasein. The mode of Being
characteristic of equipment is involvement (Bewandtnis). This
means that something has with a given piece of equipment an
involvement in something else. The relational character of the
involvement of what is ready-to-hand (its "with ... " "in ... ") suggests
that one isolated piece of equipment cannot exist as such. The thing
that is ready-to-hand belongs to something. Our concernful dealing
with things can let that which is ready-to-hand be encountered
circumspectively only if in our dealing we already understand the
TEMPORALITY AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE WORLD 271

meaning of the involvement which something has in something.
The Being-alongside which discovers circumspectively in concern,
lets something be involved, projects an involvement understandingly.
If this is so we can conclude that
[l]etting things be involved makes up the eksistential
structure of concern. But concern, as Being alongside
something, belongs to the essential constitution of care;
and care, in turn, is grounded in temporality. If all this is
so, then the eksistential condition of the possibility of letting
things be involved must be sought in a mode of
temporalizing of temporality. (SZ, 353)
Letting something be involved is implied in every dealing with a
piece of equipment. That which we let the equipment be involved in,
has the character of a "toward-which"; with respect to this the
equipment is in use, or at least can be so in use. The understanding
of this toward-which has the temporal character of awaiting. But in
awaiting the toward-which, concern can at the sametime come back
by itself to the thing in which it is involved. The awaiting
(inauthentic future) of what it is involved in, and together with it the
retaining (inauthentic past) of that which is thus involved, make
possible in its ekstatic unity the specifically concernful way in which
equipment is made present (inauthentic present).
The awaiting of the toward-which is not tantamount to
considering the "goal" of the work, nor does it imply the expectation of
the impending finishing of the work to be produced. It has by no
means the character of getting something thematically into one's
grasp. Nor does the retaining of that with which it has an
involvement mean that that thing is heldfast thematically. Letting
something be involved is constituted rather in the unity of a retention
which awaits; and it is constituted in such a way that the makingpresent which arises from this, makes possible the characteristic
absorption of concern in the world of its equipment. (SZ, 353-354)
A specific kind of forgetting is also essential for the temporality
that is constitutive for letting something be involved. The self must
forget itself if, lost in the world of equipment, it is to be able "actually"
to go to work and deal with something concernfully.
The making-present which awaits and retains, is constitutive
for that familiarity in harmony with which Dasein, as Being with
one another, knows its way about in its public world. Letting things
be involved is something that we understand eksistentially as a
272
letting-them-be. On such a basis circumspection can encounter what

is ready-to-hand as that being which it is. Thus we can now further
elucidate the temporality of concern by focusing on the defective
modes of circumspectively letting something be encountered, namely
conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy. Let us explain
briefly why and how this is so. (SZ, 354)
Wehaveseen that a piece of equipment can become unusable; it
no Ionger is good for what it originally was meant. We become aware
of this in our concernful dealing itself. Within the context of
involvement the thing that has become unusable draws attention and
its pure being present now becomes conspicuous. What does this
mean ontologically? In this case the making-present which both
awaits and retains, is now held up with respect to its absorption in
relationships of involvement. The making-present, which awaits the
"toward-which" with equal primordiality, is held fast alongside the
equipment which has become unusable; it is held fast there in such a
way that the "toward which" and the "in-order-to" are now
encountered for the firsttime explicitly. But the only way in which
the making-present itself can meet up with anything unsuitable, is
by operating in such a way as to retain awaitingly that with which it
has an involvement in regard to something. To say that makingpresent gets held up is to say that in its unity with the awaiting that
retains, it diverts itself into itself more and more; in this manner it is
constitutive for the inspecting of the situation, the testing, and the
elimination ofthe problem. We can thus conclude that
Letting something be (involved) must, as such, be
grounded in the ekstatic unity of the making-present
which awaits and retains, whatever we may make
accessible in our dealing with contexts of equipment. (SZ,
355)
Sometimes when a piece of equipment that should be present
appears to be missing, the pieces that are present begin to become
obtrusive. Missing something is by no means a not-making-present.
Rather it is a deficient mode of the present in the sense of the
"making-unpresent" of something which one has expected or which
one has always had at one's disposal. If in letting something be
circumspectively one were not from the outset awaiting the object of
one's concern, and if such awaiting did not temporalize itself in a
unity with a making-present, then Dasein could never find that
something is missing. (SZ, 355) On the other hand, when one is

making present something that is ready-to-hand by awaiting, the
possibility of one's getting surprised by something is based upon
one's not awaiting something else which stands in a possible context
of involvement with what one awaits.
If a piece of equipment that should have been there is missing
and if it thus appears impossible to go on with the work at hand,
concern resigns itself to it. But resigning oneself to something is a
mode of behaving that is peculiar to letting it be encountered
circumspectively. On the basis of this kind of discovery, concern can
come across something that is inconvenient, disturbing,
endangering, or otherwise resistant in some way. One sees that the
temporal structure of resigning oneself to something, lies in a nonretaining which awaitingly makes present. (SZ, 356)
Finally it can also happen that a piece of equipment that was
lost suddenly shows up again and by its presence invites Dasein to
engage in a piece of work. If the latter were to appear to be
impossible because Dasein is already concerned with something else,
the piece of equipment can become disturbingly obstinate. In that
case Dasein is surprised and, as we have seen, this is based upon
Dasein's not awaiting something which stands in another context of
involvement with what one actually awaits.
Thus only insofar as something resistant has been discovered
on the basis of the ekstatic temporality of concern, can factical Dasein
understand itself in its abandonment to a "world" of which it can
never become master. Even if it is limited to dealing with everyday
needs, concern is never a pure making-present; rather it arises from
a retention that awaits. On the basis of such a retention, or perhaps
as such a basis, Dasein eksists in a world. (SZ, 356)
From the preceding reflections it is clear that the temporality
which is characteristic of our everyday concern with things is no
more than a slight revision of the temporality of fallenness and that,
in all instances considered, the focus is primarily on the present.
This mode of temporalization is found also in Dasein's merely
theoretical concern with things and in the sciences. But before we
can turn our attention to the temporality which is characteristic for
our theoretical approach to things within the world, we must first
focus on the question of how the theoretical attitude in regard to the
"world" arises out of Dasein's circumspective concern with what is
ready-to-hand. (SZ, 356)
274
ID: From "Concernful Dealing With" to the Theoretical Attitude1

We have seen in Chapter III that according to Heidegger
theoretical knowledge is a special mode of Dasein's Being-in-theworld, but that theoretical knowledge is not the primary and
privileged mode of Being of Dasein. Dasein's primary mode of Being
consists rather in Dasein's concern with the beings that are withinthe-world (Besorgen). These beings are encountered there first as
utensils and pieces of equipment with which man is to concern
himself. The kind of knowledge that is intrinsic in our effective
concern with the beings that are within-the-world, however, is not
theoretical in nature. Thus it is not a scientific kind of knowledge,
either. One could perhaps say that this kind of knowledge is
prescientific. Furthermore, this kind of knowledge is obviously also
still prephilosophical and, thus, preontological, even though our
effective concern with the beings within-the-world implies already
some understanding of their mode of Being. The worldhood of the
world and the mode of Being characteristic of utensils and equipment
remain still hidden in that kind of knowledge. In our concern with
the beings that are within the world our comprehension of Beingis
still unthematic and pre-ontological. This is the reason why also our
understanding of the mode of Being of the utensils as weil as that of
Dasein's own mode of Being remains unthematic and preontological.2
What has been said here is true for Dasein regardless of
whether it actually concerns itself with the sciences or not. We must
now try to come to a better understanding of how our scientific
comportment, taken as a possible mode of Being of Dasein's
eksistence, is to be related to Dasein's prescientific concern with the
beings that are within-the-world, and how the former somehow
originates from the latter.3
We must thus turn to the question of precisely how Dasein's
concernful dealing with things changes into a merely looking at
things in a purely theoretical manner. At first one might be inclined
to think that this happens simply by abstaining from any kind of
concernful dealing with things, i.e., by abstaining from every form of
1 For Heidegger's conception of science, see Martin Heideggger,
Phnomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft.
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977, pp. 11-39.
2Jbid., pp. 23-24.
3Jbid., p. 25; cf. pp. 23-25.
praxis. In that case, the origin of the theoretical attitude would

consist essentially in the disappearance of all praxis. Forthose who
consider the practical concern to be the primary and dominating
mode of Being of Dasein, theory would appear to derive its ontological
possibility from some kind of privation; one could perhaps say that for
those people theory remains when praxis disappears.
It is hardly necessary to show that this view must be wrong.
For first of all, every form of praxis at times implies a mere lookingat and, on the other hand, in many instances there can be no theory
without praxis. It suffices to point to the technical views which are
incorporated in the use of complicated measuring devices in
contemporary science.
Moreover, the practical handling of
innerworldly beings requires a certain circumspection, understanding, and survey which ultimately become deliberation. It is precisely
this "viewing" of things as equipment which must be changed if the
theoretical attitude is to arise.
Accordingly, the theoretical attitude does not consist in
abandoning the praxis, but rather in taking a second Iook at the
things that are within-the-world which our concernful dealing
regards as equipment, and in conceiving and projecting them as
"being merely there." The scientific way oflooking at the world, then,
results from a shift in Dasein's attitude, which fundamentally
modifies the primarily adopted view of the world. The things which
initially were handled by Dasein within the framework of its
primordial world now assume a different character. They lose their
location in their original world and, henceforth, appear only in a
place that is unrelated to Dasein and is without limitations. (SZ, 153160, 356-362) "Looking-at," which is so characteristic of the
theoretical attitude, always implies a new viewpoint and a new
attitude with regard to the things that are present. This attitude,
taken in advance, makes a certain specific aspect of the thus
encountered beings the center of our attention.
Theoretical knowing is thus a "dwelling by" which includes a
perceiving of, and an addressing oneself to, and a discussing of,
something as something-briefly, an interpretation in the widest
sense of the term. On the basis of this interpretation, perception
becomes making-determinate. What is perceived in this way can
then be pronounced and preserved in propositions.
Perception, too, is a mode of Being-in-the-world and need not be
interpreted as a "procedure" by which a subject produces
"representations" of something which then are stored "inside" and
can give rise to the question of whether and how they are "in
276
agreement" with reality. In its turning to something and grasping

it, Dasein does not first come out of an "inner sphere" as from its
shell but, by virtue of its primary mode of Being itself, it is always
"outside with" an already encountered being that belongs to an
already discovered world. Dasein, thus, does not leave an "inner
sphere" when it "whilingly" is with the beings to be known
theoretically and tries to determine them, but its "being outside with
the object" is Dasein itself as Being-in-the-world theoretically and
knowingly.
Likewise, the perceiving of what is known is not a returning to
the "lockers" of consciousness loaded with "booty," after one has gone
out to "gather" knowledge. Even in perceiving, retaining, and
preserving, the knowing Dasein remains "outside" as Dasein. Even
when I merely know, merely imagine, or merely remernher some
way in which the beings are interconnected, I am not less with them
"outside" in the world than I was when I originally perceived them.
By knowing in a theoretical way, Dasein achieves a new "state of
Being" with regard to the world already discovered in Dasein's basic
mode of Being itself. This new power-to-be can develop in an
autonomous way and, as science, it can even take control over our
Being-in-the-world. The subject's dealing with the world, however,
is neither freshly created by theoretical knowledge, nor does it
originate from an action of the world on the subject. Theoretical
knowledge is a mode of Dasein based upon Being-in-the-world itself.
(SZ, 62)
The preceding remarks contain also a reply to the question

about the eksistential conditions which make it possible for Dasein to
eksist by way of theoretical knowing. Nevertheless, we must now
explicitly reflect on this question in order to throw light on the
temporal significance of the transition from the original praxis to
theory and science. For this reason we must revert also to what was
said about the circumspection which characterizes our everyday
dealing with beings that are within-the-world.
As has already been shown, the origin of theory cannot be
explained by simply declaring that theory is that which is left over
when the praxis is abandoned. One of the reasons why the origin of
theory cannot be explained in this way is the fact that the praxis itself
always implies a certain way of viewing the beings that are withinthe-world, which Heidegger calls circumspection. According to him,
theory arises precisely because this "looking-at" the beings that are
within-the-world is itself changed when there is question of theory.
TEMPORALITY AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE WORLD 2:17

Circumspection is concerned with the referential relations that
exist within a given equipmental totality. It is guided by a certain
"survey" of this totality. The main characteristic of this survey is that
it discloses a complex of involvements in which our concernful
dealing with things is situated. In other words, this surveying is
ultimately a function of the power-to-be that Dasein tries to realize.
(SZ, 359) By interpreting what it has seen through "deliberation,"
Dasein's surveying circumspection brings the beings that are withinthe-world within its area ofinterest. (SZ, 359)
The scheme according to which this deliberation takes place
can be indicated by the conditional relation "if... then." For example,
ifthis is tobe made, then that has tobe done first. I{ I want to build a
house, then I must first buy bricks. By such circumspective deliberation Dasein becomes clearly aware of its situation in the world.
Thus, circumspective deliberation does not intend to establish what
the characteristics of things are, but to provide Dasein with the
possibility of orienting itself within the world. Circumspective
deliberation brings things closer to us; it is a way of "making
present." This circumspective "making present" has several
foundations.
In the first place, it presupposes the retention of a certain
equipmental context, that is, a temporalization of the past, a bringing
back of the past. In its circumspective deliberation Dasein is always
already with a complex of equipment and materials which it already
discovered in its concernful dealing with the beings that are withinthe-world.
Secondly, Dasein looks toward the realization of a certain
possibility to which it tends. Thus, whatever Dasein does, realizes, or
undertakes is conditioned by a "tending to" and is oriented toward an
intended possibility. Therefore, the typical "making present" of
circumspective deliberation is confined to bringing closer that which
is discovered in a retentive "tending to."
Thirdly, Heidegger continues, the equipment and the material
needed for doing something must already be known as such. But this
knowing likewise implies necessarily a retention and a "tending to":
a "tending to" because I can grasp bricks as bricks only in the
perspective of the house that will be built of them; a retention because
I can link bricks to the house which I intend to build only by
returning to past events.
The condition which makes it possible that what has been
projected in circumspective understanding can be brought closer in a
'2:78
"making present," lies in the unity of temporalization, i.e., in the way

the present is rooted in the futureandin "having-been." (SZ, 360)
The importance of all this for the transition from the original
praxis to theory and science can perhaps best be shown by way of an
example. When I say of a hammer which I am now using, that it is
too heavy for me, I want to say that the handling of that hammer
requires too much effort on my part. In that case I regard the
hammer as a tool which I use within a certain equipmental totality.
I can also say, however, that the hammer weighs three pounds. In
that case, I no Ionger consider the hammer in function of a definite
role within this particular equipmental totality, but rather as a
material thing that is subject to the law of gravity. Compared to the
first sentence, the second sentence contains a shift in standpoint: the
hammer has been detached from the whole within which it was
handled and conceived; it is considered now merely as a material
thing which is "simply there."
In this latter perspective it is no Ionger meaningful to say that
the hammer is heavy or light; now the only meaningful statement is
the one that expresses precisely how much the hammer weighs.
This shift in standpoint is neither the result of the fact that we have
actually ceased to wieid the hammer, nor of the fact that we make
abstraction from such possible handling of it. These two aspects are
left out of consideration in a purely negative way. The only important
point is that we have adopted an entirely new attitude in regard to the
hammer, in virtue of which we acquire a new view of it. This
viewpoint, in turn, Ieads to an entirely new type of understanding in
which the hammer is regarded solely as a material thing that is
"simply there."
Accordingly, there is a change in our understanding of the
beings as beings, for the beings that are within-the-world are now
divorced from their world; they are no Ionger conceived in their
relation to the whole of the surrounding world (demundanization).
When we say that the hammer weighs three pounds, we disregard
not only its possible use, but also its location relative to a certain
equipmental totality. Its actual and possible locations do not matter
any more, for the hammer is no Ionger within the spatial and
temporal world. We can also reverse this and say that its location
has become a spatio-temporal moment, a "world point," which is in
no way distinguished from any other such point. (SZ, 362)
In this way the world is being stripped of its spatiai
determinations. The temporal aspects of the beings are also
eliminated, since I no Ionger consider the hammer in the perspective

of its use now, on the basis of an actual situation. The advantage of
such procedure is that from now on I am able to describe and
determine with precision the structural moments of the "merely
there." We must now retum to the question concerning the relevance
of all of this for our effort to come to a better understanding of the
essence of modern seience.
An important characteristic of contemporary science can
perhaps be seen in the fact that the seiences make the relevant beings
appear only in that kind of objectivity which is constituted and
maintained by the various scientific objectivations. (SZ, 155-156) This
point needs to be explained somewhat more in detail. As we have
already seen, the primordial root and source of meaning is for
Heidegger not found in a relationship of knowing but in a relationship of Being. Knowing is only a special, derivative mode of our
Being-in-the-world. The characteristic feature of this way of Beingin-the-world is that Dasein confines itself to "looking at" the world
without being totally involved and engaged in it.
This contemplative "looking at" always implies a particular
attitude of Dasein toward the beings in the world; hence the beings
that are encountered in this way are always seen from a particular
viewpoint. Which aspect these beings will reveal to Dasein in its
theoretical attitude depends on the attitude Dasein will adopt in
regard to them. By making that aspect the object of a critical and
methodical inquiry, theoretical Dasein lays the foundation for a
particular empirical science.
Accordingly, by his very attitude toward the things that are
there, the man of science defines an area of the beings that are
within-the-world as the domain of his object of study. This discovery
and the preeise delimitation of a well-defined domain is the first step
of every scientific research. The assertion that the "object" of each of
the seiences represents a well-defined domain is evident from the fact
that the "object" prescribes a priori the way in which possible problems should arise. Every new phenomenon ernerging in such a
domain is examined as long as it fits into the normative object totality
of the science in question. 4 The problern now is how this discovery
and this delimitation of such an object domain is to take place.
4Martin Heidegger, Holzwege. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963, pp. 71-76;

Vortrge und Aufstze. Pfullingen: Neske, 1954, pp. 55-59.
280
IV: Thematization. Thematization is Objectivation

Heidegger thinks that in every theoretical, and a fortiori in
every scientific, orientation toward the world, the scientific
experience itself contains already a special thematization in which
the object of knowledge is taken, constituted, and projected as its
theme. (SZ, 363) In this projection a certain domain of the beings is
staked out, the approach to this domain is given its particular
methodical direction, the structure of the conceptual and discursive
explanation receives its orientation, and a specific language is
constituted.
The thematization comprises the above mentioned primordial
projection, the staking out of a definite object domain, the
determination of the method as the approach to this domain, and the
orientation of the conceptual structure and of the linguistic
expression proper to this domain of research. The purpose of the
thematization is to free the worldly beings or a particular group of
beings in such a way that they can be the object of a purely theoretical
discovery and therefore can be examined "objectively." Thematization thus is objectivation.
Heidegger demands that every science be "objective," that it
adheres to the "facts"; but he refuses to admit that these facts can be
completely "dehumanized" (scientism) or ought to be completely
divorced from the world (idealism). The reason for this refusal is
that the scientific subject also is a Being-in-the-world and as such
continues to be at least partially involved in it. (SZ, 59-62, 364)
To clarify his position, Heidegger distinguishes between "Being
available as equipment" of the beings within-the-world in our
everyday concernful dealing and their "merely Being present at
hand" when we assume the scientific attitude. He argues that just as
our daily concern precedes our scientific "looking at," so also "being
available as equipment" precedes "merely Being present at hand."
Before we are able to conceive of something under a special
aspect in a limiting and abstracting consideration, we must already
have been confronted with this thing in its fullness in an allembracing relation in which we were still totally involved.
Accordingly, the shift in standpoint of the theoretical scientist
has an abstracting and limiting function, by virtue of which that
which is primordially given is broken up in such a way that one
aspect can be sharply illuminated. Thus every science, even in its
scientific experience, is rooted in the a priori character of the formal
aspect under which a group of things is considered in each case.

Everything eise depends on this formal aspect: the foundations
of scientific research, the methods, the language, the type of
argumentation, the mode of intelligibility, and the typical conception
of truth and certitude. Thus, at the root of every science we find a
"making present" of the beings that are within-the-world. This
"making present" differs from our everyday concern in that it aims
solely at disclosing the beings in an "objective" way, i.e., as pure data
of theoretical observation, as "merely being there." (SZ, 153-160, 356364)
The ultimate material object of a science is the perceived real

things. The task of science is to describe that which is so perceived as
"merely-present-at-hand," i.e., from the viewpoint of the ontic
objectivation. Thus it follows that science is not only abstract in itself,
but that its proper object also must always be something abstract.
For reality, taken as "merely there" is only the correlate of a
secondary intentionality which has its foundation in, and results
from, our primordial intention which is our eksistence itself. If,
then, in science we speak of reality as an object by itself, we envisage
it from the start according to a dimension which is only virtually
contained in perception, but with which it does not coincide
completely.
In comparison to perceived reality, objective reality is an
interpretation and an explanation but at the same time also an
impoverishment.
Science makes an objective aspect of the
primordial perception explicit, but in doing so it tums away from the
real beings taken in the full sense of the term, in order to discover
and explain only some of their aspects. Since these aspects are
indeed aspects of the real, science remains theoretical knowledge of
what is real. Accordingly, the explication, interpretation, and
explanation of the purely objective side of the real Ieads to a specific
meaning which truly belongs to these beings, but only from the
viewpoint of its "merely-Being-present-at-hand." This meaning can
be disclosed only by a method and by cognitive processes that
correspond to the proper object. (SZ, 364-366)
The genesis of a science comes-to-pass in the objectivation of a
domain of beings, i.e., in the formation and structural development
of the understanding of the conception of the mode of Being of the
relevant beings. In this process the basic concepts of a given science
become unfolded and articulated. The articulation of the basic
concepts also delineates in each case the ground and the foundation
of the given discipline and its domain. The domain which in this
way is delineated by the process of objectivation can now become the
282
theme of investigation; the objectified whole can then be examined in

different directions and established and defined as the object of
investigation. Thus the thematization develops in each case on the
basis of the relevant form of objectivation.
The entire process which we have tried to describe here usually
takes place in a "naive" manner so that the researchers often are not
explicitly aware of what takes place under their eyes, so to speak. Yet
that the objectivation constitutes the essential process in the genesis
of a given science and that this process is nothing but the formation
and articulation of the understanding of the basic mode of Being of
the relevant beings which are to become the theme of scientific
investigation in a given science, can be shown unequivocally to be the
case by means of a description of the genesis of the modern,
mathematical science of nature.5
What is decisive for the development of mathematical physics
consists neither in its high esteem for the observation of the "facts,"
nor in its application of mathematics in determining the character of
the natural processes and events; rather it consists in the manner in
which nature itself is mathematically projected. In this projection
something which is constantly present-at-hand, namely, the
material beings, is discovered in advance in such a way that a
certain horizon is opened up in which only what is somehow
quantitatively determinable is further relevant (for instance, mass,
motion, force, place, time, and so on). Only in the light of natural
things that have been projected in this way can anything like a fact be
found and set up for an experiment which will be regulated in terms
of this projection. The foundation of the factual science was possible
only because the early scientists understood that in principle there
are no "bare facts." (SZ, 363-364)
In the mathematical projection of nature, moreover, what is
decisive is not primarily the mathematical as such, but the fact that
such a projection discloses a certain a priori. Therefore, the paradigmatic character of mathematical physics does not consist in its
exactness or in the fact that it is intersubjectively valid and binding
for everyone. It consists rather in the fact that the beings which it
takes as its theme are discovered consistently in harmony with the
prior projection of their Being-structure. When the basic concepts of
this way of understanding a mode of Being have been wor~ed out in
detail, the clues for its methods, the structure ofits way of conceiving
5Phnomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
p. 27-29.

things, the possibility of truth and certainty which belongs to it, the
way in which things get founded and proved, the mode in which it is
binding for everyone, and the way in which it is communicated, all of
these are then determined. lt is precisely the totality of all these
items which constitutes the full eksistential meaning of a science.
(SZ, 363) The aim of the thematization is to free the beings which we
encounter within the world in such a way that they can "throw
themselves against" Dasein's pure discovering and, thus, become
objects. Thematization is thus objectifying. It does not first posit
these beings; rather it frees beings which we encounter within the
world in such a way that Dasein can interrogate them and determine
their character objectively.
Dasein's objectifying mode of Being, of being alongside what is
present-at-hand within the world, is characterized by a distinctive
making-present. This making-present is distinguished from the
present of circumspective concern in that, among other things, the
kind of discovering which belongs to the sciences awaits solely the
discoveredness of what is present-at-hand. This awaiting of
discoveredness has its eksistentiell basis in a resoluteness on the part
of Dasein by which it projects itself towards its Being-able-to-be in the
truth "objectively." (SZ, 363)
It is obvious that the condition of the possibility of the scientific
thematization is to be found in Dasein's ability to transcend the
beings which it thematizes and projects. The temporal problern of
the transcendence of these beings and of the world will now be
discussed briefly in the section to follow.
V: The Temporal Problem ofthe Transcendence of tb.e World

The Temporality ofDasein's Spatiality
We have defined Dasein's Being as care and found that the
ontological meaning of care is temporality. Wehave seen, also, that
temporality constitutes the disclosedness of Dasein's there. Now in
the disclosedness of this "there," the world is disclosed along with it.
But this means that world, taken as total meaningfulness, must
likewise be grounded in temporality. The existential-temporal
condition for the possibility of the world lies in the fact that
temporality, taken as ek-static unity, has something like a horizon
within it. For ekstases are not simple "raptures" in which one gets
carried away; rather, there belongs to each ekstasis a kind of
"whither" to which one is carried away. Let us call this whither of
the ekstases the "horizonal schema." The schema then in which
284
Dasein comes toward itself futurally is the "for the sake of which";
the schema in which Dasein is disclosed to itself in its thrownness is
to be taken as that "in the face of which" it has been thrown and that
"to which" it has been abandoned; this characterizes the horizonal
schema of what has been. Finally the horizonal schema for the
present is defined by the "in order to." (SZ, 354-365)
The unity of the horizonal schemata of future, present, and
having-been, is grounded in the ekstatic unity of temporality. The
horizon of temporality as a whole determines that whereupon each
eksisting being factically is disclosed. With its factical Being-there, a
Being-able-to-be is projected in the horizon of the future, its beingalready is disclosed in the horizon of having-been, and that with
which Dasein concerns itself in each case is discovered in the
horizon of the present. The horizonal unity of the schemata of these
ekstases connects in a primordial way the relationships of the "in
order to" with the "for the sake of which" so that on the basis of the
horizonal constitution of the ekstatic unity of temporality, there
belongs to Dasein in each case a world that has been disclosed. Just
as in the unity of the temporalizing of temporality ~he present
(Gegenwart) arises out of the future and the having-been, so in the
same way the horizon of a present temporalizes itself equiprimordially with those of the future and the having-been. Thus, insofar as
Dasein temporalizes itself, a world is. In temporalizing itself in
regard to its own Being, Dasein as temporality is essentially in a
world because of the ekstatico-horizonal constitution of its
temporality. The world, therefore, is not ready-to-hand as a piece of
equipment, nor present-at-hand as a thing, but it becomes
temporalized in temporality. It is there with the outside-of-itselfthat
is typical for the ekstases. If no Dasein ek-sists, then no world is
"there" either. (SZ, 365)
In all forms of concern and in all objectivation, the world is
always already presupposed; for all of those forms are possible only
as ways of Being-in-the-world. Having its ground in the horizonal
unity of ekstatic temporality, the world is transcendent. It is already
ekstatically disclosed before any entities-within-the-world can be
encountered. Temporality maintains itself ekstatically within the
horizons of its own ekstases, and in temporalizing itself it comes back
from these ekstases to those entities which are encountered in the
"there." Thus the total meaningfulness which determines the
structure of the world is not a network of forms which a worldless
subject lays over some kind of material; Dasein, understanding itself
and its world ekstatically in the unity of the "there," rather comes
,j!
1:
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-- --~-,~-------======..............- - - - - - - - - -

back from these horizons to the entities encountered within them.
Coming back to these entities in understanding is the existential
meaning of letting them be encountered by making them present.
(SZ, 366)
There is finally a relationship between Dasein's spatiality and
its temporality. Dasein must be considered as temporal and "also" as
spatial coordinately. In clarifying this relationship, Heidegger says,
it cannot be our intention to explain Dasein's "spatio-temporal"
character by pointing out that Dasein is an entity which is "in space
as weil as in time." Furthermore, since temporality is the very
meaning of the Being of care, it will be impossible to "reduce"
temporality to spatiality. On the other hand, to demonstrate that
spatiality is existentially possible only through temporality is not
tantamount to deducing space from time. What we must aim at is
the uneavering of the temporal conditions for the possibility of the
spatiality which is characteristic of Dasein-a spatiality upon which
the uneavering of space within the world is to be founded. When we
say that Dasein is spatial, we do not mean to say that as a thing
Dasein is present-at-hand in space. Dasein as such does not fill up
space, but it rather takes space in; this is to be understood in the
literal sense. In ek-sisting Dasein has already made free for itself a
leeway (Spielraum). It determines its own position or location by
coming back from the space it has made free to the place which it
occupies. (SZ, 367-368)
When Dasein makes room for itself it does so by means of
directionality and de-severance (by making distances disappear).
How is this possible on the basis of Dasein's temporality? Let us give
an example of our everyday concern with things. When Dasein
makes room for itself and the things with which it is concerned, it
has first to discover a region in which it can assign places to the
things in question. In so doing it must bring these things close, and
situate them in regard to one another andin regard to itself. Dasein
thus has the character of directionality and de-severance. All of this,
however, presupposes the horizon of a world which has already been
disclosed. But if this is so, and if it is essential for Dasein to be in the
mode of fallenness, then it is clear also that only on the basis of its
ekstatico-horizonal temporality is it possible for Dasein to break into
space. For the world is not present-at-hand in space and yet only
within a world does space let itselfbe discovered. (SZ, 368-369)
286

VI: The Temporal Meaning ofDasein's Everydayness
Heidegger concludes this analysis with some brief observations

on the problern of the temporal meaning of Dasein's everydayness.
First of all one should note that the ontological meaning of Dasein's
everydayness still remains obscure from an ontological point of view.
Secondly, it is doubtful that the explication of Dasein's temporality
given thus far is adequate to determine the eksistential meaning of
everydayness.
The expression, "everydayness" indicates the way of eksisting in
which Dasein maintains itself"every day." The term "every day" does
not mean here the sum of all the days of a person's lifetime. Yet even
though the expression "every day" is not meant here in a temporal
sense, there nevertheless is some temporal overtone in the
expression. The expression "everydayness" first and foremost
indicates a definite "how" of eksistence which dominates Dasein
through and through during its entire life. In speaking about
Dasein's everydayness Heidegger has often used the expression
"proximally and for the most part." The term "proximally" signifies
the manner in which Dasein is "manifest" in the "with-one-another"
of Dasein's public life, even if ideally everydayness is something that
Dasein tries to overcome and which, in an eksistentiell manner, it
even may already have overcome. "For the most part" signifies the
manner in which Dasein as a rule shows itself for everyone. (SZ, 370)
Everydayness thus means the "how" according to which Dasein
lives its life, regardless of whether eksistentielly it means in all its
ways or only in some of its ways. To this "how" belongs the
comfortableness that goes with being accustomed to how things are
done, even if this would mean sometimes having to do difficult and
repugnant things. This explains why "that which will come
tomorrow (and this is what everyday concern keeps awaiting) is
'eternally yesterday's'." (SZ, 371)
Yet these characterizations of Dasein's everydayness do not just
determine some aspects of Dasein's Being; everydayness is for
Dasein a way to be that is more or less familiar to any individual;
everyday Dasein can eksistentielly gain mastery over it, but no one
can ever extinguish it altogether. What is ontically very familiar to
all of us, nonetheless hides an eksistential-ontological enigma which
even at this point of our analysis we are still unable to resolve. Up
until now we often have taken Dasein as if it were something that is
static and immobile in certain situations; we have not sufficiently put
the stress on the fact that Dasein stretches itself along "temporally."
TEMPORALITY AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF THE WORLD 2B7

We shall come closer to a resolution of this enigma when we focus on
the manner in which Dasein deals with time, reckons with it, and
regulates this reckoning calendrically, and when we have come to a
better understanding of Dasein's everyday "historizing." Yet because
the term "everydayness" in the final analysis means nothing but
temporality, while temporality makes possible Dasein's Being, an
adequate temporal determination of everydayness cannot be given
until the meaning of Being itself and its possible variations have been
brought to light. (SZ, 371-372)
!I
n
Iid
Ii
I'
I
I
II
"I
CHAPTER XIII
TEMPORALITY AND HISTORICITY
1: Introductionl
Up to this point, Heidegger continues, the eksistential analytic

was completely oriented toward the goal of finding a possible answer
for the question concerning the meaning of Being. We have learned
that to answer this question, one must focus first on Dasein's
understanding of Being, because Dasein's understanding is the
phenomenon in which Being becomes accessible to us while, at the
same time, understanding is constitutive to the mode of Being of
Dasein itself. In the course of our investigation we have discovered
that the Being of Dasein consists in care and that temporality is the
primordial condition for the possibility of care. Temporality appeared
to be the condition of Dasein's authentic Being-able-to-be-a-whole.
Our eksistential analysis of Dasein's authentic Being-able-to-be-awhole has shown that in care is rooted an equiprimordial
connectedness of death, guilt, and conscience.
Yet we still must ask the question now of whether we indeed
have brought the whole of Dasein's Being, precisely with respect to its
authentically being a whole, into the fore-having of our eksistential
lFor what follows here cf. Michael Allen Gillespie, Hegel, Heidegger, and the
Ground of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; Christopher
Fynsk, Heidegger, Thought, and Historicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1986; Wolfgang Mller-Lauter, Mglichkeit und Wirklichkeit bei Martin
Heidegger. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968; Fridolin Wiplinger, Wahrheit und
Geschichtlichkeit. Eine Untersuchung ber die Frage nach dem Wesen der
Wahrheit. Freiburg: Alber, 1961; William Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 90-91, 237238; 279-280, and passim; Arion L. Kelkel, "History as Teleology and Eschatology:
Husserl and Heidegger," in Analeeta Husserliana, 9(1979) 381-411; Bernard E.
Rollin, "Heidegger's Philosophy of History in 'Being and Time'," in The Modern
Schoolman, 49 (1971-1972) 97-112; Thomas E. Wren, "Heidegger's Philosophy of
History," in The Journal ofthe British Society for Phenomenology, 3(1972) 111-125;
David Cousens Hoy, "History, Historicity, and Historiography in 'Being and
Time'," in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy. Critical Essays, ed. Michael
Murray. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978, pp. 329-353.

analysis. It may be that with respect to Being-towards-the-end the
question may have been answered. But death is only one "end" of
Dasein; the other "end" is its beginning, its birth. It seems that only
the entity which is "between" birth and death, presents the whole of
Dasein which we are seeking here. Thus it seems that our entire
analysis thus far has remained one-sided. W e have focused only on
Dasein in the way in which it eksists as facing forward, as it were;
we seem to have left behind all that has been. And what is more we
did not only neglect Dasein's Being towards the beginning, but also
the manner in which Dasein stretches along between birth and
death. Thus it seems that thus far we have completely overlooked in
our analysis of Dasein's Being the whole, the connectedness of its
life. But if this is so, then we must ask the question of whether our
conception of temporality, unfolded in the preceding chapters is to be
taken back; or is it perhaps the case that the connectedness of
Dasein's life can somehow find its ontological foundation in
temporality? (SZ, 372-373)
One could think that it is rather easy to characterize the
connectedness of Dasein's life between birth and death. It consists of
the sequence of Dasein's experiences in time. But if one reflects on
this suggestion and on the ontological assumptions on which it rests,
then it would seem that in this sequence of experiences, what is
genuinely actual in each case is just that experience which is
present-at-hand in the current or actual now, whereas all other
experiences either are no longer, or not yet, "actual." It seems as if
Dasein goes through the span of time granted to it between the two
boundaries of birth and death in such a way that in each case it is
actual only in the "now"; it jumps, as it were, through the sequence of
"nows" of its own "time." Dasein which is thus said to be temporal in
this manner, maintains itself as a self throughout with a certain
selfsameness, notwithstanding the constant changing of these
experiences. Yet it is clear that in this way of looking at Dasein's
connectedness we have posited something present-at-hand in time.
(SZ, 373)
What the preceding reflection showsisthat it is just impossible
to account for the connectedness of Dasein's life in terms of our
everyday and ordinary understanding of Dasein, temporality, and
time. Dasein does not exist as the sum of momentary actualities of
experience which successively come along and disappear. Neither
does Dasein fill up a stretch of life with the phases of its momentary
actualities. "Dasein stretches itself along in such a way that its own
mode of Beingis constituted in advance as a stretching along." (SZ,
291
374) The "between" that is found between birth and death lies already
in the Being of Dasein. Furthermore, it is simply not true that
Dasein is actual only in a point of time and that, apart from this, it is
surrounded by the non-actuality of its birth and death. Understood
eksistentially birth is never something past in the sense of no-longerpresent-at-hand. And death does not have the mode of Being of
something that is still outstanding, not yet present-at-hand but just
coming along. "Factical Dasein eksists as born; and, as born, it is
already dying, in the sense of Being-towards-death. As long as
Dasein factically eksists, both the 'ends' and their 'between' are, and
they are in the only way which is possible on the basis of Dasein's
Being as care." As care, Dasein is the "between" that lies in each
case between birth and death. (SZ, 373-374)
If we approach the ontological clarification of the connectedness
of Dasein's life, its stretching along within the horizon of Dasein's
temporal constitution, we shall see that the constitutive totality of
care has a possible basis for its unity in temporality. It is important
to note here again that the movement of eksistence cannot be
identified or compared with the motion of something that is just
present-at-hand. This movement must rather be defined in terms of
the way in which Dasein stretches along. Now it appears that the
"specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches
itself along" consists in what Heidegger calls Dasein's historizing.
Thus the question of Dasein's connectedness becomes the ontological
problern of Dasein's historizing. To bring to light the structure of
historizing together with the eksistential-temporal conditions of its
possibility is tantamount to achieving an ontological understanding
of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit). In the analysis of the specific
movement which is characteristic of Dasein's historizing we shall
again be led to a problern touched upon earlier, namely the question
ofthe constancy ofthe self. (SZ, 374-375)
But if the question of historicity Ieads us back to these sources,
namely to Dasein's temporality and time, then the place where the
problern of history is to be studied is ontology and certainly not, as
Simmel and Rickert suggested, historiology, taken as the science of
history. The problern of how history can become the object of
historiology will have to be dealt with, also. (SZ, 375)
After these preliminary reflections Heidegger decides to proceed
in the following way. First he will speak about the ordinary way in
which history is conceived. Then he will try to show how historicity
can be construed eksistentially. In the next section Heidegger will
attempt to explain the relationship between Dasein's historicity and

world-history. In his view, the fact that we can make the "process" of
history the theme of the science "historiology" is the presupposition
for the possibility of the way in which one builds up the historical
world studied in the Geisteswissenschaften, in the sciences of man
that use interpretive and critical methods. The eksistential
interpretation of historiology as a science aims only at demonstrating
that historiology is derived from Dasein's historicity. It is in this
context that Heidegger stresses the following point: "In analyzing
the historicity of Dasein we shall try to show that this being is not
'temporal' because it 'stands in history', but that, on the contrary, it
eksists historically and also can so eksist only because it is temporal
in the very basis of its Being." (SZ, 376) Heidegger finally decides to
conclude these reflections with so~e observations on the importance
ofthe work ofDilthey and Count Yorck in this context. (SZ, 377)
IT: The Ordinary Understanding ofHistory and Dasein's Historizing

Heidegger begins his analysis that is to lead to an insight into
the essence of history (Geschichte) by describing how the expressions
"history" and "historical" are understood in the everyday interpretation of the Being of Dasein. In that interpretation these two words
are used in several ways.
The term "history" is inherently ambiguous because it may
mean the actual historical process, the "historical actuality," as weil
as the science of it. For the time being we shall focus exclusively on
history in the sense of historical actuality. We shall turn to
historiology, the "science" of history as a process, in one of the
sections to follow.
"History," taken in the sense of historical actuality, still has
several meanings. The first of these is that history is that which is
past. And this can still be taken in either one of two ways: by "past"
we can mean that which is no Ionger present-at-hand; but by "past"
we can also mean that which is past but which nevertheless is still
having effects; that which is past is then understood as to be related
to the present, in the sense of what is actual "now."
Sometimes we mean by "history" not so much the past but
rather that which results from such a past. Thus things which have
a history stand in the context of a process of becoming; that which
has a history sometimes can "make" a history in the sense that it
determines a future in the present. Thus in this case "history"
means a context of events and effects which draws on through the
293
past, present, and future; the ekstases of time are to be understood

here from the everyday point ofview.
Sometimes "history" means the totality of those beings which
change "in time," the transformations and vicissitudes of human
beings, human groups, and their "cultures" as distinguished from
"nature." What one has in mind here is the opposite of nature. It is
in this sense that one speaks of the distinction between nature and
history.
Finally, "history" often means the totality of all that has been
handed down to us and as such is held to be "historical." This totality
comprises both everything that we know historiologically and
everything which is handed down as being self-evident, even though
we do not know its historical origin. (SZ, 378-379)
Heidegger concludes that if we take these four significations
together, we see "that history is that specific coming-to-pass of
eksisting Dasein which occurs in time, such that the coming-to-pass
that is 'past' in our Being with one another, and which at the same
time has been 'handed down to us' and is still continuingly effective,
is regarded as history in the sense indicated." (SZ, 379)
These four significations are connected with each other by the
fact that they all envisage man as the subject of events. But how is
the coming-to-pass of such events to be defined? Is this coming-topass a sequence of processes, an ever-changing emergence and
disappearance of events? In what sense does the coming-to-pass of
history belong to Dasein? Is Dasein first just present-at-hand and
does it only occasionally get "into history"? Does Dasein become
historical by becoming related to events and circumstances? Or is the
Beingof Dasein precisely constituted first by its historical coming-topass so that events, circumstances, vicissitudes, etc., are ontologically possible only because Dasein is historical in its Being? Why is
the function of the past particularly stressed in the "temporal"
characterization of Dasein that comes to pass "in time"? CSZ, 379)
If history belongs to the Being of Dasein, and this Being is itself
based on temporality, then it would seem to be easy to begin an
eksistential analysis of historicity with those characteristics of what
is historical which obviously have a temporal meaning. Thus, by
defining more carefully the remarkably privileged position of the past
in the concept of history, it seems that we shall be able to prepare the
way for expounding the basic constitution of historicity.
Take as an example the antiquities which we bring tagether in a
museum (furniture, utensils, etc.); these belong to the time which is
past; yet they are still present-at-hand in the present. In how far is

such equipment historical, when it is not yet past? Is it historical
only because it has become an object of historiological interest? It
seems that such equipment can be a historiological object only
because it is in itself somehow already historical. But then we must
repeat the question concerning the right we have to call such a thing
historical when it is not yet past? Do these things perhaps have
something past in themselves, even though they still are present-athand today? But are they today still what they once were? They
manifestly have changed; they may have become fragile and even
worm-eaten. Yet the specific character of the past that makes it
something historical, cannot lie in perishableness. What then is past
in these pieces of equipment? What were they once that today they
are no longer? They are pieces of equipment; yet they are out of use.
But if they were still in use, would they then still not be historical?
Whether they are in use or not, they certainly no Ionger are what they
once were. What then is "past"? Nothing eise, it seems, than the
world within which they once belonged to a context of equipment, and
were encountered as ready-to-hand and used by concernful Dasein
which was in that world. That world is no longer. But that which
formerly was within that world is still in our world present-at-hand.
It is in this sense that we can say that something that is now still
present-at-hand can nevertheless belong to the past. When we say
that a world no Ionger is, we mean to say that a worid is only in the
manner of eksisting Dasein which factically is as Being in the world.
(SZ, 380)
Thus the historical character of the antiquities mentioned is

grounded in the inauthentic past ofthat Dasein to whose world they
belonged. But if this is the whole truth, then only past Dasein would
be historical, not Dasein that is now in the present. But can Dasein
be past at all, if we define "past" as "now no Ionger either present at
hand or ready to hand"? Dasein can never be past in that sense
because as such it can never be present-at-hand. If Dasein is, it
eksists. A Dasein which no Ionger eksists, is not past in the strict,
ontological sense; it rather is as having-been-there. But even now we
must ask again whether Dasein is just something that has been in
the sense of"having-been-there", or has it perhaps been as something
futural which makes present, i.e., has it been in the temporalizing of
its temporality?
At any rate, it is clear that pieces of equipment which beiong to
history, although they are still present-at-hand while also somehow
being "past," are historical only by reason of their belonging to the
world. And the world has an historicai kind of Being because it is an
295
ontological attribute of Dasein. There is still one question left: why is

it that the historical is determined predominantly by the past, or
more appropriately by Dasein's character of having-been? Before the
question can be answered some other observations appear to be
necessary.
Heidegger contends that what is primarily historical is Dasein.
What we encou1,1ter in the world, pieces of equipment and natural entities, are historical in a secondary sense. Beings other than Dasein
are historical by reason of their belonging to the world; they are said
tobe world-historical. (SZ, 381)
We shall show later that the ordinary conception of worldhistory arises from our orientation to what is secondarily historical.
Note also that world-historical beings do not first get their historical
character by means of an historical objectivation; they get it rather as
those beings which they are in themselves, when they are
encountered within the world.
Two things have become clear from these reflections: 1) it
appears that Dasein is that which is primarily historical; 2) the
temporal characterization of the historical in general cannot be
founded primarily on the Being-in-time of things within the world.
For beings of the kind of Dasein the temporal distance from "now and
today" is of no primary constitutive significance; this is so not
because they are not in time, but because they eksist temporally in
such a primordial manner that nothingthat is present-at-hand could
ever be temporal in that way.
One will say that no one denies that human Dasein is the
primary subject of history. Yet one should note that with the thesis
that Dasein is historical we do not just mean that man as an ontic
fact is historical. Thus we must still ask the question as to what
extent, and on the basis of what ontological conditions, does
historicity belong as an essential constitutive state to the Being of
Dasein? (SZ, 381-382)
ID: The Basic Constitution ofDasein's llistoricity
Dasein factically has its history; it can have such a history
because its Beingis constituted by historicity. We must now justify
this thesis by treating the ontological problern of history as an
eksistential one. We have seen that the Being of Dasein must be
defined as care; care is grounded in temporality; the kind of comingto-pass that gives Dasein its typical historical character must
therefore be sought within the range of temporality.
The
296
interpretation of Dasein's historicity will prove to be a more concrete

articulation of this temporality. (SZ, 382) Heidegger reminds the
reader that in the preceding sections the relation between temporality
and anticipatory resolve was already revealed. (Sections 60-62) But
the question still is one of in how far the anticipatory resolve of
Dasein implies an authentic coming-to-pass of Dasein.
Resolve was described there as a projecting of oneself upon
one's own Being guilty. Resolve becomes authentic when it develops
into anticipatory resolve in which Dasein understands itself with
respect to its genuine Being-able-to-be. It does so by focusing on death
in order thus to take over in its thrownness that being which it itself
is, and to take it over as a whole. One should realize that the resolute
taking over of one's factical "there," implies that the resolution took
place in a concrete situation. Now our eksistential analysis cannot in
principle reveal what each Dasein factically resolves in any
particular case. Such an analysis cannot even speak about the
eksistential projection of the factical possibilities of eksistence. Yet in
such an analysis one can ask the question of whence Dasein,
speaking generally, can draw those possibilities upon which it
factically projects itself. One might think that they can be derived
from death in view of the fact that anticipatory projection projects
Dasein upon its death; but this cannot possibly be the case. Could it
be, Heidegger then suggests, that these possibilities can be derived
from Dasein's taking over the thrownness of the self into the world?
Before we can answer this question we must once more focus on the
essential structure of thrownness as a basic constitutive element of
care.
As thrown, we have seen, Dasein has been delivered over to
itself and to its Being-able-to-be, but to itself as Being-in-the-world.
As thrown it eksists in a world and eksists there factically with
others. Proximally and for the most part it is lost there in the "they."
It understands itself there in terms of the possibilities of eksistence
that are commonly accepted in the average public way of interpreting
Dasein today. The authentic eksistentiell understanding extricates
itself from the way of interpreting Dasein which has been handed
down to us so little that the possibilities in one's resolve in each case
are taken from that interpretation in a manner which is against that
interpretation and yet also again for it. (SZ, 383)
The resolve in which Dasein comes back to itself, discloses
actual and factical possibilities of authentic eksisting, and it discloses
them in terms of the heritage which its thrown resolve takes over. In
Dasein's coming back resolutely to its thrownness, there is hidden a

handing down to itself of the possibilities that have come down to it;
yet it does not take them over as having thus come down to it, but
rather as those which it makes its own. If everything "good" is a
heritage, and the character of "goodness" lies in this that it makes
authentic eksistence possible, then the handing down of a heritage
constitutes itself precisely in Dasein's resolve. The more authentic
Dasein resolves by anticipating death and by thus understanding
itself unambiguously in terms of its ownmost distinctive possibilities,
the more unequivocally does it find and choose the possibility of its
eksistence, and the less does it do so by accident. For the anticipation
of death eliminates all "provisional" possibilities. Only the
realization that Dasein is free for death gives it its goal outright and
confronts eksistence with its finitude. Once Dasein has grasped the
finitude of its eksistence, it snatches itself back from the endless
multiplicity of possibilities which offer themselves as closest to it, and
brings it into the simplicity of its fate. Note that the word "fate"
should be understood here, not as destiny (Geschick) or as a state that
has been ordained by a power that cannot be conquered or avoided,
but rather as fortune (Schicksal). Dasein's primordial coming-topass (Geschehen) must thus be determined in the manner just
indicated; in authentic resolve Dasein hands itself over to itself, free
for death, by means of a possibility which it has inherited, and yet
also has chosen. (SZ, 384)
Dasein can be hit by the blows of fate only because in the depths
of its Being Dasein is fate in the sense indicated. Dasein which
eksists fatefully in its resolve and as such is Being-in-the-world, is
disclosed here as being open to both fortunate circumstances and
cruel accidents. Yet fate is not the result of the dashing of events
and circumstances. Even the human being that is irresolute is
driven about by these, even though he has no fate in the sense
indicated.
If Dasein by anticipation and free for death resolves, it
understands itself both in its superiority (the power of its finite
freedom) and its powerlessness (in the abandonment of having made
a choice); in this way it can come to have a clear vision of the
eventualities of the situation that has been so disclosed. But if
Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, essentially eksists as Being-withothers its coming-to-pass is a coming-to-pass-with; the latter is
determinative for it as its destiny (Geschick). Destiny thus
designates the coming-to-pass of the community, of a people. Destiny
is not built up out of the fortunes of the individuals. Dasein's fateful
298
destiny in and with its own generation makes up the full authentic
coming-to-pass ofDasein. (SZ, 384-385)
From what has been said it is clear that a being that eksists in
the mode of fate must be such that its mode of Beingis care; care
presupposes temporality and implies death, guilt, conscience,
freedom, and finitude. Only that being whose mode of Being is care,
can be historical in the very depth ofits Being, its eksistence.
Only a being which, in its Being, is essentially futural so
that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back
upon its factical there by shattering itself against deaththat is to say, only a being which, as futural, is
equiprimordially in the process of having-been, can, by
handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take
over its own thrownness and be in the authentic present for
"its time." Only authentic temporality which is at the same
time finite, makes possible something like fate, i.e.,
authentic historicity. (SZ, 385)
Dasein need not know explicitly the origin of the possibilities
upon which it projects itself in resolve. Yet it is the case that only
from the perspective of Dasein's temporality can we understand
explicitly how the eksistentiell Being-able-to-be upon which Dasein
projects itself, has been derived from the way in which Dasein has
been understood traditionally. The resolve which comes back to itself
and hands itself down to itself, then appears as the repetition
(Wiederholung) of a possibility of eksistence that has come down to
us. "Repeating" thus is here handing over in an explicit manner,
i.e., going back into the possibilities of the Dasein that has been there.
Authentie repetition of a possibility of eksistence that has been, is
grounded eksistentially in anticipatory resolve; only in resolve does
one first choose the choice which makes one free for the struggle of
following loyally in the footsteps of that which can be repeated.
Repetition does not try to actualize again what has been there.
Repetition of that which is possible, does not bring back again
something that is "past," nor does it bind the "present" back to that
which has already been surpassed. Rather, repetition replies to the
possibility of eksistence that has been there. Such a reply and
rejoinder is always made in the authentic present; and as such it is
at the same time a disavowal ofthat which in our "today" is working
itself out as the "past." Repetition does not abandon itself to that
which is past, nor does it aim at progress. (SZ, 385-386)
299
Repetition is thus that mode of resolve by which Dasein eksists

explicitly as fate. But if fate constitutes the primordial historicity of
Dasein, then history derives its essential importance neither from
what is past nor from our "today" and its connection with the past,
but from that authentic coming-to-pass of eksistence which arises
from Dasein's future. History, taken as a way of Being for Dasein,
has its roots so essentially in the future that death throws
anticipatory eksistence back upon its factical thrownness, and so for
the first time imparts to having-been its peculiar privileged position
in the domain of the historical. Authentie Being-towards-death, i.e.,
the finitude of temporality, is the hidden basis of Dasein's historicity.
Dasein does not become historical in repetition; but because it is
temporal and historical, it can take over itself in its history by
repeating. Historiology is not yet needed for this.(SZ, 386)
Resolve implies that Dasein hands itself down to itself by
anticipation to the "there" of the authentic present; it is this handing
down which Heidegger calls fate. This handing down is also the
ground of what he calls destiny, Dasein's coming-to-pass in its
Being-with-others. In repetition, fateful destiny can be disclosed as
being explicitly bound up with the heritage which has come down to
us. By repetition, Dasein first has its own history made manifest.
Dasein's coming-to-pass is itself grounded eksistentially in the fact
that Dasein, as temporal, is open ekstatically; so too is the way in
which we make the disclosedness which belongs to Dasein's comingto-pass our own. Heidegger now decides to call what thus far was
called historicity, "authentic historicity ."
In his view we are now confronted with the following problem:
if the coming-to-pass of authentic historylies predominately in having been, how can this coming-to-pass constitute the whole "connectedness" of Dasein from birth to death? Heidegger begins to wonder
whether perhaps the question has been properly formulated. Could it
perhaps be the case that it was Dasein's inauthentic historicity that
has directed our way of questioning to the "connectedness" of life;
could it thus be the case that this inauthentic historicity has blocked
off our access to authentic historicity and its own peculiar form of
"connectedness"? This is to be examined next where we must tum to
Dasein's inauthentic historicity. (SZ, 387)
300
IV: Dasein's Historicity and World-History.

Jnauthentic and Authentie Historicity
For the most part Dasein understands itself in terms of that
which it encounters in its environmental world and with which it is
circumspectively concerned. This understanding is not just a bare
taking cognizance of itself which accompanies all Dasein's forms of
behavior (Kant). Understanding here signifies that Dasein projects
itself upon its current possibility of Being-in-the-world.
Understanding, taken as "common sense," constitutes the
inauthentic eksistence of the "they." When we are with one another
in the public world, we do not just encounter equipment and work in
our everyday concern, but we also encounter there what is given
along with these. This includes the world in which all of this occurs.
Yet in all of this the focus of attention is on what is going on, what is
getting done, and what is going to come of it. This form of
understanding may seem obvious, yet ontologically it is by no means
transparent. But in that case, why should we not define Dasein's
connectedness in terms of what Dasein is concemed with and what it
experiences? Do not equipment, work and everything eise which
Dasein dwells alongside, also belong to history? Is the coming-topass of history perhaps just the isolated running-off of streams of
experiences in individual subjects? (SZ, 387-388)
It must be stated that history is neither the connectedness of
motions in the alterations of objects, nor a free-floating sequence of
experiences which subjects have. Does the coming-to-pass of history
then perhaps pertain to the way subject and object are linked
together? According to the thesis of Dasein's historicity one should
not claim that a worldless subject is historical, but rather that what
is historical is that being that eksists as Being-in-the-world. The
coming-to-pass of history is the coming-to-pass of Being-in-the-world.
Dasein's historicity is essentially the historicity of the world which,
on the basis of our ekstatico-horizonal temporality belongs to the
temporalization of temporality. As factically eksisting, Dasein
encounters whatever has been discovered within the world. Thus
with the eksisting of Dasein's historical Being-in-the-world, both
what is ready-to-hand and what is present-at-hand have in every case
already been incorporated in the history of the world. Equipment and
work have their "fate," and buildings and institutions have their
history. Even nature is historical, namely insofar as it was somehow
involved in human concern. These beings within the world are
historical as such; and their history is not something external which
301
merely accompanies the "inner" history of the human soul.

Heidegger calls such beings "world-historical." This expression
means first the coming-to-pass of the world in its essential eksistent
unity with Dasein's eksistence. At the same time it means the
"coming-to-pass" within the world of what is ready-to-hand and of
what is present-at-hand, insofar as they in each case are discovered
with the factically existing world. Further details are not necessary
here. What is important to note though is that because of the fact that
the transcendence of the world has a temporal foundation, the worldhistorical is in every case already "objectively" there in the coming-topass of eksisting Being-in-the-world, without being grasperl
historiologically. The world-historical is thus not constituted by
historiology.
Now because factical Dasein, in falling, is absorbed in what it is
concerned with, it understands its history at first world-historically.
And because, secondly, the ordinary understanding of Being
understands "Being" as presence-at-hand without further
differentiation, the Being of what is world-historical is interpreted
and experienced in the sense of something that is present-at-hand,
and which comes along, has presence for a while, and then
disappears. And, finally, because the meaning of Being in general is
held to be something simply self-evident, the question about the Being
of what is world-historical and the movement of its coming-to-pass in
general has no foundation here. (SZ, 388-389)
Everyday Dasein has been dispersed in many kinds of things
which come-to-pass daily. It is driven about by its affairs. Ifit wants
to come to itself, it must first try to pull itself together from the
dispersion and disconnectedness of the things that have come-topass. lt is from this perspective that the question of how one is to
establish connectedness arises; how is one to understand the
connectedness of all the experiences in which Dasein encounters
what is within the world? Once the origin of the question concerning
the connectedness has been made manifest, it is also clear at once
that this origin is an inappropriate one if we are aiming at a
primordial eksistential interpretation of the totality of Dasein's
coming-to-pass. If this question of the connectedness is formulated
ontologically in a proper manner, the question does not ask how
Dasein gains such a unity of connectedness that the sequence of
experiences which has ensued, and is still ensuing, can
subsequently be linked together. Rather it asks in which of its own
kinds of Being Dasein loses itself in such a way that it must, as it
were, subsequently pull itself together out of its dispersal, and think
302
up for itself a unity in which that "together" is embraced. We have

already seen that Dasein's lostness in the "they" and in the worldhistorical has its root in Dasein's fleeing in the face of death. Yet
Being-towards-death is a basic constitutive element of Dasein's care.
Wehave also seen that anticipatory resolve brings this Being-towarddeath into authentic eksistence. The coming-to-pass of this resolve is
the repetition of the heritage of possibilities which Dasein hands
down to itself in anticipation. This coming-to-pass was called
authentic historicity. Is perhaps the whole of eksistence stretched
along in this historicity in a way which is primordial and not lost,
and which as such has no need for connectedness? The selfs resolve
against the inconstancy of distraction, is in itself a steadiness which
has been stretched along, the steadiness with which Dasein as fate
"incorporates" into its eksistence birth and death and their "between,"
and holds them as thus "incorporated," so that in such a constancy
Dasein is indeed, in an authentic present, for what is worldhistorical in its actual current situation. In the fateful repetition of
possibilities that have been, Dasein brings itself "immediately," in a
way that is temporally ekstatical, to what already has been before.
But when Dasein's heritage is thus handed down to itself, Dasein's
birth "is caught up into its eksistence in coming back from the
possibility ofdeath." (SZ, 390-391)
Resolve constitutes the loyalty (Treue) of eksistence to its own
self. This loyalty is at the same time a possible way of having
reverence for the repeatable possibilities of eksistence. Resolve would
be misunderstood ontologically if one were to suppose that it would be
actual as "experience" only as long as the act of resolving "lasts." In
resolve lies the eksistentiell constancy which, by its very essence, has
already anticipated every possible authentic present that may arise
from it. As fate, resoluteness is the freedom to give up some definite
resolution in accordance with the demands of the situation. But the
steadiness of eksistence is not interrupted thereby but precisely
confirmed in the authentic present. (SZ, 391)
In inauthentic historicity, on the other hand, the way in which
fate has been primordially stretched along has been hidden. With the
inconstancy of the they-self Dasein makes present its "today." In
awaiting the next new thing it has already forgotten the old one.
Blind for possibilities, the "they" cannot repeat what has been. It only
retains the actual that is left over, the world-historical that has been,
and the information about it that is still present-at-hand. Lost in the
making present of its "today," it understands the inauthentic past in
terms of the inauthentic present.
303
We must now turn to a possible projection of the ontological

genesis of the science, historiology, from the perspective of Dasein's
historicity. (SZ, 392)
V: The Eksistential Source ofHistoriology in Dasein's Historicity

The science of history, like any other science, at each time
depends factically on the prevailing conception of world.
Furthermore, if Dasein's mode of Being is in principle historical,
then historiology, like any other science, remains always and
manifestly in the grip of Dasein's own historizing. Yet, it must be
noted that Dasein's historicity is a necessary presupposition for
historiology in a sense which is markedly different from that found
in the natural sciences, for instance. For historiology is the science
of Dasein's history and, thus, must presuppose as its possible subject
matter a being which is primordially historical. However, history
must not only be just in order that historical entities may become
accessible scientifically. Furthermore, historiological knowledge is
not only historical because it is itself a historizing way in which
Dasein may manifest itself. For these negative remarks do not yet
lead us to the root of the issue at stake here. For taken as such, they
do not yet show us why and how Dasein's historicity is the source of
historiology. In order to accomplish these tasks one must show that
the ontological structure of historiology is such that in itself the
historiological disclosure of history has its roots in the historicity of
Dasein itself, i.e., that the idea of historiology must be projected
ontologically in terms of Dasein's historicity. (SZ, 392-393)
In order to discover the idea of historiology, one cannot turn to
the way things are factically done in the historical disciplines today.
For there is no a priori guarantee that the idea of history which one
can discover in this way, will be properly representative of
historiology in its primordial and authentic possibilities. On the
contrary, one can discover this idea only on the basis of a clarification
of the thematization which is characteristic for historiology as such.
It is obviously true that the idea of historiology as a science implies
that the specific task which historiology has set for itself consists in
the disclosure of historical entities. However, one must realize that
entities are historical only insofar as they have been projected as
historical. To explain this point which is vital for a genuine
understanding of the idea of historiology we must dwell for a moment
on the thematization characteristic of historiology.
304
In the preceding chapter we have seen that every science is

constituted primarily by a fundamental thematization in which what
was already familiar prescientifically in Dasein itself, taken as
disclosed Being-in-the-world, becomes projected upon that mode of
Being which is characteristic of it. With this projection, the realm of
entities to be examined is bounded off. Furthermore, the thematizing
projection predelineates the methodological access to these entities,
as weil as the conceptual structure for interpreting them scientifically. If we now assume (as is done generally), that historiology's task
is to disclose the past, then the historiological thematization of
history is possible only if the past has, in each case, already been
disclosed. For it is impossible to go back to the past historiologically,
ifthe way to it were nottobe open to it. (SZ, 393)
In the analytic of Dasein's Being it was shown that this way is
in general prepared for the thematization of the past through
historiology insofar as Dasein's Being is inherently historical and,
thus, insofar as by reason of its ekstatico-horizonal temporality it is
open in its character of "having-been." Furthermore, since it has
been shown there, also, that Dasein and only Dasein is primordially
historical, that which the thematization of historiology presents as a
possible subject matter of research, must have the kind of Being
which is typical for Dasein as having-been-there, i.e., Dasein insofar
as it has-been-there, the world of Dasein that has-been-there, and all
entities which functioned in that world. (SZ, 393-394)
The latter may still be present in our world today as the things
which belong to a world that has-been-there. Thus remains,
monuments, and records, that are still present-at-hand, are possible
material for the disclosure of that Dasein which has-been-there.
These things can turn into historiological material because, in
harmony with their own mode of Being, they have a world-historical
character. Thus they are capable of becoming such material only
when they have been understood in advance with regard to their
within-the-worldness. From this it becomes understandable why the
world that has already been projected in this way as a world that hasbeen-there, can then be given its definite and articulate character
through an interpretation of the world-historical material we have
received "from the past." (SZ, 394)
Our going back to the past does not originate from the
acquisition, the selection, and critical justification of such material;
for these activities necessarily presuppose the historicity of the
historian's own mode of Being. It is from the historicity of Dasein
itself, thus, that one must try to determine what the subject matter of
305
historiology precisely and really is.

In other words, the
determination of the primordial theme of historiology must be
carried through in conformity with the character of the authentic
historicity of what-has-been-there, i.e., with retrieve (Wiederholung),
taken as this form of disclosure. In such retrieve the Dasein that
has-been-there can be understood in its authentic possibility which
has-been. Thus when the claim is made that the eksistential
foundation of historiology as a science is to be found in Dasein's
historicity, this really means that when the historian takes the
historiological object as his primary theme, he is projecting the
Daseinthat has-been-there upon its ownmost possibility of Being. (SZ,
394)
This point is of the greatest importance for our proper

understanding of the scientificity of historiology as a science. It is
often said that historiology attempts to understand "the facts," i.e.,
the individual historical events in a chronological sequence; other
philosophers have argued that history is concerned primarily with
the laws that somehow govern these facts. It is not difficult to show
that both these views are mistaken. The theme of historiology is not
that which has happened, taken as that which happened just once
and for all. Neither is this theme something universal that somehow
floats above these facts. The genuine theme of historiology is the
possibility that has been factically eksistent. For one must realize
here that Dasein's facticity is constituted precisely by its own resolute
projection of itself upon a chosen Being-able-to-be. That which hasbeen-there factually is Dasein's existentiell possibility in which fate
(for the individual), destiny (for a society), and world-history (for the
given constellation of intramundane things), have been determined
factically. Thus because in each case eksistence is only as factically
thrown in a world which only then can be its world, historiology will
disclose the gentle "force" of the possible with greater penetration, the
more concretely it understands Dasein's having-been-there in terms
ofits possibilities only. (SZ, 394)
It has often been argued that historiology should be concerned
with the universal in what has been once and for all. This is then
often explained in such a way that the task of historiology woUld be to
show what has-been-there in some supratemporal mode. From the
preceding reflections, however, it is clear that this, too, cannot
possibly be the task ofhistoriology. Historiology is not concerned with
passively representing or merely repeating the events of the past, but
rather in retrieving what has-been-there in such a manner that in
this retrieve the "force" of the possible gets struck home into the
306
historian's factical eksistence, i.e., that it comes towards this

eksistence in its futural character. For Dasein's historicity does not
originate from the present, i.e., from what is actually only today, in
order then to grope its way back from there to something that is past.
"Only a being which, as futural, is equiprimordial in the process of
having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibilities it has
inherited, take over its own thrownness and momentarily be for 'its'
time." (SZ, 437) That is, the historiological disclosure must
temporalize itself in terms of the future. The "selection" of what is to
become a possible theme for historiology has already been met with in
the factical, existentiell choice of Dasein's historicity in which, as we
have seen, genuine historiology originates andin which alone it is.
(SZ, 395)
From this it follows that in historiology objectivity cannot be
determined by reference to the universal validity of standards and
rules. Historiology is objective if its research is regulated primarily
in terms of whether it can confront us with that being which belongs
to it as its theme, and can bring it, uneavered in the primordiality of
its Being, to our understanding. Historiology must obviously take its
orientation from the "facts"; but one must realize here that the
central theme of historiology is the possibility of eksistence which
has-been-there in a given world. (SZ, 345)
It is of importance to note here also that each given world
consists of a great number of beings and events which may be worthy
of historiological research. Accordingly, this research as factical
has many branches and can take as its basic theme the history of
equipment and technology, the history of work, of culture, of the
"spirit," and of ideas. From this it follows that history (Geschichte),
as handing itself down to the historian, is in itself at the same time
and in each case mentioned always in an interpretedness and
explicit articulatedness. This articulatedness has in each case a
history of its own. Finally, it follows that historiology penetrates to
what has-been-there for the most part only through the history which
hands itself down in this articulated manner. It is this complexity
that explains why in historiology we can distinguish various,
relatively independent branches, and why each concrete historiological research can achieve in each case a varying degree of closeness
to its authentic theme. (SZ, 395-396)
But regardless of whether historiology focuses on the conception
of world that was typical and characteristic for an era, or on a
relatively independent realm in such a world, or even merely on the
critical edition of "original" sources, the actual research itself must
3fJ7
be such that it contributes to the authentic historicity of the historian

and his contemporaries. Historiology is authentic only to the degree
that in it the three-fold character of Dasein's historicity itself is
materialized. For Dasein eksists authentically as futural in resolutely disclosing a possibility which it has chosen. Coming back
resolutely to itself in historiology, it .is by retrieve open for the
possibilities of human eksistence. Furthermore, since Dasein is in
the process of having-been (als Gewesendes), it has been delivered
over to its own thrownness. When the possible is made its own by
retrieve, there is adumbrated at the same time the possibility of
reverently preserving the eksistence that has-been-there. Finally,
Dasein temporalizes itself in the way that future and having-been are
united in the authentic present. This present discloses what is the
case today in an authentic manner. But if historiology interprets
what is the case today in terms of understanding a possibility of
eksistence which has been seized upon in the sense that it retrieves
what has-been-there in a futural manner, authentic historiology
becomes a way in which the inauthentic present becomes deprived of
the inauthentic character it always has in the publicness of the
"they." Thus authentic historiology is necessarily a critique of the
inauthentic present. (SZ, 396-397)
From this it follows at once that authentic historiology can
never go beyond the hermeneutic situation. Authentie historiology is
inherently hermeneutical in that the historical thematization is no
more than a cultivation of the hermeneutical situation, which, once a
historically ek-sisting Dasein has made its resolve, opens itself to the
retrieving disclosure of what has-been-there. (SZ, 397)
CHAPTERXIV
TEMPORALITY AND WITHIN-TIME-NESS AS THE

SOURCESOFTHEORDmARYCONCEPTIONOFTIME
I: The Preceding Reflections on Time are Still Incomplete

In the preceding reflections the thesis was developed that
temporality is constitutive for Dasein's Being. To demonstrate this
thesis it was shown that historicity, taken as an ontological structure
that belongs to the Being of eksistence, in the final analysis is
temporality. In our eksistential analysis of Dasein's historicity until
now we have paid no attention to the "fact" that all historizing runs
its course "in time." As a matter of fact, in its everyday
understanding Dasein knows all history merely as that which
happens "within-time." Now if the eksistential analytic of Dasein is
to make Dasein manifest ontologically in its very facticity, then the
factical ontico-temporal interpretation of history must also be
developed explicitly. This is all the more necessary in view of the fact
that all natural events and processes are also determined by time.
And even more importantly, even before every scientific concern with
historical and natural events, there is the fact that Dasein "reckons
with time" and regulates itself according to it. Finally, it can be
shown that the philosophical conceptions of time developed in the
past were built upon the primordial conception of time. We thus
must make a systematic investigation of what was just called
"within-time-ness," but also of our ordinary conception of time.
Finally we must show how both, tagether with the philosophical
conceptions of time developed in philosophy's history, have their
origin in authentic temporality. (BZ, 404-405)
The thesis that temporality is the orlgin of the ordinary as weil
as the traditional philosophical conceptions of time, is in Heidegger's
view one of great importance. Heidegger hopes to show in this way
that temporality indeed constitutes the original phenomenon of time.
In Beetion 65 of Being and Time Heidegger described temporality as
the ontological meaning of care and defined temporality as the
primordial outside-of-itself in and for itself; he wrote:
310

What is characteristic of "time" which is accessible to the
ordinary understanding, consists ... precisely in the fact
that it is a pure sequence of "nows" without beginning and
without end, in which the ekstatical character of
primordial temporality has been leveled off. But this very
leveling off, in accordance with its eksistential meaning, is
grounded in the possibility of a definite kind of
temporalizing, in conformity with which temporality
temporalizes as inauthentic the kind of "time" [we have
shown here in its authentic mode]. lf, therefore, we
demonstrate that the "time" which is accessible to Dasein's
common sense is not primordial, but arises rather from
authentic temporality, then ... we are justified in calling
the temporality which we have laid bare here "primordial
time." (SZ, 329)
Furthermore, in the reflections on both the relation between

temporality and the meaning of care, and on that between
temporality and historicity, the focus was primarily on temporality
as we encounter it in Dasein insofar as it has achieved authenticity.
The ordinary conception of time constitutes the manner in which
Dasein understands temporality inauthentically.
Another reason why in Heidegger's view the thesis that
temporality is the origin of the ordinary conception of time is correct,
is the fact that it is possible to explain the mode of eksistence which is
characteristic of everydayness, from which our eksistential analysis
took its point of departure, in its temporal meaning. Finally, the
reflections to follow must also show that the ordinary conception of
time has its own legitimacy and importance. Thus temporality is not
the only legitimate conception of time, even though it is the
primordial one. Yet Heidegger will try to showalso that the ordinary
conception of time owes its origin to a way in which primordial time
has been leveled off. (SZ, 405)
ll: Dasein's Everyday Concern with Timel
Wehaveseen that Daseinisthat Being for which its very Being

is an issue. Essentially ahead of itself it has projected itself upon its
lCf. Marion Heinz, "The Concept of Time in Heidegger's Early Works," in A
Companion to Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time," pp. 198-202.
TEMPORALITY AND WITHIN-TIME-NESS
311
Being-able-to-be before turning to any consideration of itself. In this

projection it reveals itself as something that is thrown, abandoned to
the world, and fallen into it concernfully.2 As eksisting, in the unity
of the projection which has been thrown fallingly, i.e., as care, this
being has been disclosed as a "there." It is in the world as being with
others, and as such it maintains itself there in an average way of
understanding and interpreting.
Being-in-the-world has always expressed itself, and as being
alongside beings encountered in the world it constantly expresses
itself in addressing itself to the objects of its concern. The concern of
this circumspective common sense is grounded in temporality.3 In
this case temporality has the mode of a making-present which
retains and awaits. Such a concern is a concernful planning,
preventing, taking precautions, in a word a reckoning-up; for
concern something always has to happen "then"; something else is to
be attended to "beforehand," and that which has failed us "on that
former occasion" is something that we must "now" make up for. In
concern the "on that former occasion" and the "then" that is still to
come are understood here with reference to a "now"; in concern the
present as a making-present has a peculiar importance, even though
it always temporalizes itself in a unity with awaiting and retaining.
The horizon that surrounds the "on that former occasion" is the earlier; the horizon of the "then" is the later on; the horizon of the "now"
is today. (SZ, 406-407)
What we have called here "now," "then," and "on that former
occasion" are always determined with reference to actions,
processes, events; thus they have a reference structure. Heidegger
calls this structure datability. The precise datability which
presupposes a calendar and a clock is founded on this relational
structure. This structure, called datability, itself is founded on the
everyday conception of time which itself is founded on Dasein's
temporality.4 "Then," "on that former occasion," and the "now" are
essentially connected with time as Dasein understands this in its
everyday concern. The structure ofthe datability ofthe "now," "then,"
and "on that former occasion" is evidence that these three ekstases
themselves are time, and that they ultimately stem from temporality.
(SZ, 407)
2sz, Sections 41, 64, 65.
3Jbid., Sections 68, 71.
4Jbid., Sections 68, 71.
312
The "now," "then," and "on that former occasion" make it

possible to assign and indicate time in a primordial way; they make it
possible to indicate time because interpreted time has already been
given a dating in terms of the beings within the world which are
encountered in the disclosedness of Dasein's there: "Now that the
term has started ... ," "now that the bell rings ... ," etc. Yet the "now,"
"then," and "on that former occasion" not only make it possible to
indicate a moment, but they help us also to indicate a time-span
which may function as the horizon for a so indicated moment. We
can then also speak about from ~now" until "then," and indicate the
time-span "in-between" the two now-moments. (SZ, 408-9)
The everyday conception of time reflects itself in the manner in
which Dasein in its inauthentic mode finds itself "in" time and "has"
time. One can lose one's time by losing oneself in the object of one's
concern. One can then also find oneself as having no time, or no
time left. It should be noted here that just as inauthentic Dasein
constantly loses time and never has any, the temporality of authentic
eksistence is such that in its resolve eksistence never loses time, and
always "has time." For the temporality of resolve has with respect to
its present the character of an Augenblick. When such an authentic
moment makes the situation present authentically, the makingpresent is held in a future which is in the process of having-been.
But Dasein that is factically thrown can take or lose time only because a time is already allotted to it; but this presupposes that
Dasein's temporality is as ekstatically stretched along and that the
disclosedness ofthe "there" is founded upon it. (SZ, 410)
Insofar as Dasein eksists in the way of Being with others, it
maintains itself in an intelligibility which is both public and average.
This makes it possible for several people to share a "now." And this,
in turn, makes public datability possible. At any rate, as everyday
concern understands itself in terms of the world of its concern and
takes its time, it does not know this time as its own, but concernfully
utilizes the time which "there is," i.e., the time with which "they"
reckon. (SZ, 411)
Ill: The Time with Which We Concern Ourselves

and Within-Time-Ness
In the preceding we have seen how Dasein concerns itself with
time in its everyday concern and how, in such interpretive concern,
time makes itself public for Dasein as Being-in-the-world. But we
have not yet indicated and explained how time itself "is." Before we
313
can consider the question of whether time can be considered as a

being at all, and before we can determine whether public time is
merely subjectively or objectively actual, we must first try to
determine its phenomenal character more carefully. (SZ, 411)
Time is made public in Dasein's concern. In everyday concern
one directs oneself according to the public time; public time must
therefore somehow be the kind of thing which everyone can come
across. We come across time in our reckoning with time on the basis
of an objective measure, with an astronomical and calendrical timereckoning. Such time-reckoning is not accidental; it has its
eksistential-ontological necessity in the basic state of Dasein which is
care, in Dasein's thrownness and fallenness. As a matter of fact
Dasein's thrownness is the reason why there is time publicly. Yet
one should note also that in time-reckoning what is decisive from an
eksistential-ontological point of view does not lie in the quantification
of time, but must be conceived more primordially in terms of the very
temporality ofthat Dasein which reckons with time. (SZ, 412)
Public time appears to be the kind of "time" "in which" both the
ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand within-the-world are encountered. This is the reason why Heidegger calls the beings which do
not have the character of Dasein, beings-within-time. The
eksistential-ontological interpretation of within-time-ness will give
us a better insight into the essence ofpublic time. (SZ, 412)
Heidegger next describes, therefore, how man as Dasein
experiences time in his everyday concern with things with the help of
the naturally given day and night. "Then, when the sun rises, it is
time for ... " The sun here dates time primordially. In terms of this
dating arises the most natural measure of time, the day. It is in the
context of Dasein's concern that the clock also has its meaning and
function. Furthermore, public time has essentially a worldcharacter. Public time is therefore in the full sense of the term
"world-time." World-time is the time wherein the beings within-theworld are encountered. (SZ, 419)
The public world-time "in which" what is present-at-hand is in
motion or at rest, is not objective if one means by this that time has
the mode of Being ofthat which is present-at-hand within-the-world.
But this time is equally not subjective if we mean by this that time
would be something that has the mode of Being of what is present-athand and yet occurs in a subject. World-time is more objective than
any possible object because, with the disclosedness of the world,
world-time already becomes "objectified" in an ekstatico-horizonal
manner as the condition of the possibility of the beings within-the-
314
world. One encounters world-time just as immediately in the

physical as in the psychical; Kant was mistaken in his position that
time belongs to the psychical. Yet world-time is also "more
subjective" than any possible subject, because it is what first makes
possible the Being of the factically eksisting self, that mode of Being
which we have called care. (SZ, 419)
Time is present-at-hand neither in the subject nor in the object,
neither inside nor outside, and it is "earlier" than any subjectivity or
objectivity; it is "a priori" because it is the condition of the possibility
forthat "earlier." But does world-time then have any Being? And if
not, is it then not a mere phantom? Does it perhaps have more Being
than any other being? These questions must be answered in what
follows. But in whatever way they will be answered, one must first
understand that temporality, as ekstatico-horizonal, temporalizes
world-time, which constitutes the within-time-ness of what is both
ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. (SZ, 420) But in that case such
beings themselves can never be designated as "temporal" in the strict
sense, for only Dasein is temporal in that sense. (SZ, 420)
IV: Within-Time-Ness and the Genesis ofthe Ordinary

Conception of'I'ime
Dasein regulates itself according to time by using the clock. The
eksistential-temporal meaning of the use of clocks turns out tobe a
making-present of the traveling pointer of the clock. For by following
the positions of the pointer in a way which makes present, one counts
the positions. As we have seen such a making-present temporalizes
itself in the ekstatical unity of a retention that awaits. But to retain
the "on that former occasion" and to retain it by making it present,
means that in saying "now" one is open for the horizon of the earlier,
i.e., of the now-no-longer. To await the "then" on the other hand, by
making it present, means that in saying "now" one is open for the
horizon of the later, i.e., of the "now-not-yet." Time therefore is what
shows itself in this kind of making-present. But then we can define
"ordinary" time as follows:
This time is that which is counted and which shows itself
when one follows the traveling pointer, counting and
making present in such a way that this making present
temporalizes itself in an ekstatical unity with the retaining
and awaiting which is horizonally open according to the
"earlier" and "later." (SZ, 421)
315
But this is really nothing eise but an eksistential-ontological

interpretation of Aristotle's definition of "time." "For this is time:
that which is counted in the movement which we encounter within
the horizon of the earlier and later." (Phys. IV, ll, 219blff.) In
making the latter claim Heidegger tries to show two things: 1) it is
possible to give an account of Aristotle's conception of time from the
perspective of the analytic of Dasein; 2) that which Aristotle calls
time, is time as seen from the perspective of within-time-ness.
Aristotle's definition of time has been maintained in our
tradition until today. One was preoccupied with what Heidegger
calls the "now-time," in which one counts "now here, now here, now
here, and so on." Heidegger calls world-time, as viewed in this
manner from the perspective of using a clock, now-time. In this
conception time shows itself as a sequence of "nows," as a succession
of "nows," and as a "flowing stream" of "nows." (SZ, 422) This
conception was still present in the reflections of Husserl.
In Heidegger's view we must now ask the question of what is
implied by this interpretation of world-time with which we concern
ourselves. In his view we shall find the answer to this question if we
compare the full essential structure of world-time and compare this
with that which the ordinary understanding of time knows.
Datability was shown to be the first essential element of the time with
which we concern ourselves. This is, as we have seen, grounded in
the essential constitution of temporality. We saw that the "now" is
essentially a "now that I have to concern myself with ... " The datable
"now" which is understood in concern is in each case such that it is
either appropriate or inappropriate. Meaningfulness is essential to
the structure of the "now." This was the reason why the time with
which we concern ourselves, was called world-time, because world
was shown to be the total meaningfulness. On the other hand, in the
ordinary conception of time we find neither datability nor
meaningfulness. These two structures cannot come to light when
time is described as a pure succession of now-moments. When these
two structures are covered up, the ekstatico-horizonal constitution of
temporality, in which datability and meaningfulness of the "now" are
grounded, becomes leveled off. (SZ, 422)
When the two structures mentioned are covered up, the nowmoments appear merely as entities that can be counted when one
measures time concernfully. The now-moments then become counderstood in one's concern with what is ready-to-hand or presentat-hand. In other words, the "nows" are now seen within the horizon
316
ofthat understanding of Being which guides our concern. Thus the

"nows" are then in a certain sense co-present-at-hand: in our
concern we encounter things and also the now-moments. The
"nows" are taken tobe present-at-hand in the same way as things are
present-at-hand. One then says that the "nows" pass away: the
totality of the "nows" that passed away make up the past. The "nows"
are also said to come along; and the totality of the "nows" still to come
make up the future. In all of this the ordinary conception of time, or
world-time as now-time, never mentions the horizon by which such
things as world, meaningfulness, and datability can be made
manifest.
Heidegger then states that this conception of time as a sequence
of now-moments is also found in Plato when he wrote: "But he
decided to make a kind of moving image of the eternal; and while
setting the heaven in order, he made an eternal image ofthat eternity
which abides in oneness. To this image we have given the name of
time."5
In view of the fact that in the ordinary conception of time the
sequence of "nows" is uninterrupted and has no gaps, time is taken to
be continuous; one can divide time up in as many parts as one
wishes; what is left is always a now. But if time is taken to be a
continuum, the specific structure of world-time must remain covered
up. World-time manifests itself not only as connected with datability;
it shows itself also as spanned. The spannedness of time must here
not be understood in terms of the horizonal stretching-along of the
ekstatic unity ofthat temporality which has become public in one's
own concern with time. Rather the fact that in every "now," no
matter how momentary, there is in each case already another "now,"
must be understood from the perspective of a "now" that is earlier
still, and from which every "now" stems; thus it must be conceived in
terms of the ekstatical stretching-along ofthat temporality which is
alien to the continuity that is characteristic of something present-athand, but which yet constitutes the condition of the possibility of our
access to anything continuous. (SZ, 423-424)
The thesis of the ordinary way of interpreting time according to
which time is infinite most clearly shows that and how world-time,
and acccrdingly also temporality in general, have been leveled off. If
time is no more than a sequence of "now-moments," then in time as
sequence there is in principle neither beginning nor end. Then time
is endless on both sides, so to speak. In Heidegger's opinion, this
5p}ato, Timaeus, 37 D.
317
thesis is made possible only on the basis of an orientation towards a

free-floating "in itself' of a course of now-moments which is presentat-hand. In this orientation the full phenomenon of the "nows" is
covered up with respect to its datability, its worldhood, its
spannedness, its meaning, and its character of having a location of
the same kind as Dasein's. If one tries to think the sequence of
"nows" through to the end from the perspective of Being-present-athand and not-Being-present-at-hand, then an end of time can never
be found. In this way of thinking time through to the end, one must
always think more time. From this fact one then derives that time is
infinite. (SZ, 424)
It is Heidegger's position that this leveling-off of world-time has
its ground in man's fallenness. In the state of fallenness Dasein has
lost itself in that with which it concerns itself. In this lostness
Dasein flees in the face of authentic eksistence; the latter was shown
to be anticipatory resolve. This fleeing is one which at the same time
covers up. For in this concernful fleeing we find also a fleeing in the
face of death and, thus, a looking-away from the end. In its
fallenness Dasein finds itself in the domain of the "they" which never
dies and always has more time.
Yet even though in the everyday conception of time the
temporality in which world-time temporalizes itself is leveled-off, it
does not mean that it has been completely closed off there. That this
indeed is so becomes clear when one reflects on the expression that
"time passes away," which is often used in our everyday way of
speaking about time and temporality. The statement that time arises
on the other hand, is seldom made. It becomes clear here that when
Daseinspeaks of time's passing-away, it understands more of time
than it wants to admit. This way of speaking about time gives
expression to an experience we all have had: time cannot be halted,
even though we often would like to do so. In the latter case our
experience implies an inauthentic awaiting of "moments," an awaiting in which these moments are already forgotten as they glide by.
The awaiting of inauthentic eksistence which forgets when it makes
present, is the condition ofthe possibility ofthe ordinary experience of
time's passing away. (SZ, 425)
In the conception that time is just a pure sequence of nowmoments which passes away in itself, primordial time still somehow
manifests itself notwithstanding the leveling-off and covering-up
which we have mentioned. This is seen also in the fact that in the
ordinary interpretation of time, the stream of time is defined as
irreversible. Yet taken as a sequence of "nows" time ought to be
318
reversible; there is no reason why it could not be reversible. The

irreversibility has its basis in the way public time originated from
temporality, the temporalizing of which is primarily futural and
"goes" to its end ekstatically in such a way that it "is" already towards
its end. (SZ, 426)
Heidegger concludes these reflections by observing that the
everyday and ordinary interpretation of time as an endless,
irreversible, sequence of "nows" which passes away, arises from the
temporality of Dasein in its fallen state. Thus the ordinary
conception of time has its natural justification. It belongs to Dasein's
average kind of Being and to the understanding of Being that prevails
there. This conception is not "wrong"; yet it does not convey the "true"
conception of time; nor can this conception be called the primordial
one. (SZ, 426)
In these reflections we have thus shown that the ordinary
conception of time can be understood from the perspective of the
temporality of Dasein's eksistence. The reverse of this is not possible:
authentic temporality cannot be understood from the perspective of
the ordinary conception of time. That is the reason why we call
temporality the primordial time. (SZ, 426) Ekstatico-horizonal
temporality temporalizes itself primarily in terms of the future; the
ordinary conception of time is oriented primarily toward the now and
the inauthentic present. There is no possibility of clarifying the
authentic present (Augenblick) from the perspective of the nowmoment that is central in the ordinary conception of time. The same
is true for authentic future and past. (SZ, 426-427)
Finally, although in the ordinary conception of time one is
concerned only with world-time, it is nonetheless also stressed there
that there must be some distinctive relationship to the soul or the
spirit. We find this conviction expressed also in the works of the
leading philosophers. Heidegger quotes a brief statement of both
Aristotle and St. Augustine. The first reads: "But if nothing but the
souland the soul's nous are equipped by nature for numbering, then
time would be impossible if there were no soul."6 St. Augustine says
something similar: "Hence it seemed to me that time is nothing eise
than some extendedness, but of what sort of thing it is an
extendedness, I do not know; and it would be surprising if it were not
an extendedness of the soul." 7 A similar notion, namely that there is
a relation between time and spirit is found also in Regel. (SZ, 427-428)
6Aristotle, Physics, IV, 14, 223a25.
31.9
V: On theIntriosie Limits of Being and Time's Conception ofTime8

In Heidegger's own view Being and Time (1927) was meant tobe
a "fundamental ontology" which was to prepare the way for a
"genuine ontology" whose main task it would be to focus on the
question concerning the meaning of Being. Fundamental ontology,
on the other hand, consists substantially in an analytic of Dasein's
Being as Being-in-the-world, to be developed by means of a
hermeneutic phenomenology. In the first part of the book Heidegger
conceives of Dasein in terms of care, whereas in the second part care
is understood as temporality: the meaning of the Being of Dasein is
temporality. All of this was to prepare the answer for a more basic
question concerning the temporal character (Zeithaftigkeit) of the
meaning of Being itself.
In the last section of Being and Time Heidegger writes:
In our considerations hitherto, our task has been to
interpret the primordial whole of factical Dasein with
regard to its possibilities of authentic and inauthentic
Being, and to do so in an eksistential-ontological manner
in terms of its very basis. Temporali~y has manifested
itself as this basis and accordingly as the meaning of the
Beingof care ... Nevertheless, our way of exhibiting the
constitution of Dasein's Being is only one way which we
may take. Our aim is to work out the question of Being in
general. (SZ, 436)
In other words, once temporality is laid bare as the meaning of
Dasein's Being, the decisive step is still to be taken: the step namely
which leads from this kind of temporality to the temporality
characteristic of the meaning of Being. This last step is not taken in
Being and Time. Heidegger published the book in an incomplete
form andin the last sentences of it pointed to the work that in his
view remains tobe done: "The eksistential-ontological constitution of
Dasein's totality is grounded in temporality. Hence the ekstatic
projection of Being must be made possible by some primordial way in
which ekstatic temporality temporalizes. How is this mode of
temporalizing temporality to be interpreted? Is there a way which
BFor what follows see Otto Pggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers.
Pfullingen: Neske, 1963, pp. 63-66; Marion Heinz, Zeitlichkeit und Temporalitt,
pp. 164-217.
32
Ieads from primordial time to the meaning of Being? Does time itself
manifest itself as the horizon ofBeing"? (SZ, 437)
By publishing the book in an ineomplete form in 1927 Heidegger
admitted that he had not eompletely sueeeeded in the task he had set
for himself. The basie question he eneountered was the following:
Onee the temporality of Dasein is grasped in the unity of its three ekstases, how ean this temporality of Dasein be interpreted as the
temporality of the understanding of Being, and how is the latter, in
turn, related to the meaning of Being and the temporal charaeter of
Being itself? Originally Heidegger thought he had found a way to
answer this question, but it appeared almost immediately that this
way led away from what he really wished to aeeomplish, namely to
show that time is the transeendental horizon of the question of Being.
(SZ, 39) For on the basis of the analyses as they are aetually found in
Being and Time it is still not yet elear preeisely what is to be
understood by "transeendenee" taken as the overeoming of beings in
the direetion of Being. In addition there is the question of the exaet
relationship between Dasein's temporality and time as the transeendental horizon for the question eoneerning the meaning of Being.
Exactly what is meant here by "transeendental"? This much is clear:
The term "transeendental" does not mean the objeetivity of an objeet
of experienee as eonstituted by eonseiousness (Kant, Husserl), but
rather refers to the projeet-domain for the determination of Being as
seen from the viewpoint of Dasein's t here. 9 But even in this
supposition it is still not yet clear what the precise relationship is
between the temporality of Dasein and time as the transeendental
horizon for the question of Being, beeause it is not clear how Dasein's
understanding of Being is to be related to the meaning of Being.
Heidegger says that meaning is that in whieh the intelligibility of
something maintains itself. (SZ, 151) The meaning of Being then is
that in whieh the intelligibility of Being maintains itself. But how
ean temporalness (Temporalitt) be the meaning of Being? Also,
what is the preeise relationship between Being's intelligibility and
Dasein's understanding of Being? In the introduction to the seeond
part of the book Heidegger argued that "to lay bare the horizon within
whieh something like Being in general becomes intelligible, is
tantamount to elarifying the possibility of having any understanding
of Being at all-an understanding which itself belongs to the
constitution ofthe being called Dasein." (SZ, 231) But preeisely what
is meant by "being tantamount to"? lf one takes this statement
9Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, p. 27.
321
literally, it would mean that Dasein has an absolute priority over the
meaning of Being and then relativism seems to be the final outcome
of the investigation. Heidegger saw this danger and it took him a
number of years to find a way to avoid it without being forced into a
position of having to appeal to a "God of the philosophers," regardless
of the concrete form in which this "God" might be proposed.
There are a number of other issues which did not receive final
answers in Being and Time, problems such as the idea of
phenomenology, the relationship between ontology and science, the
relationship between time and space, a further determination of
logos, the relationship between language and Being, the ontological
difference, the relationship between Being and truth, etc.lO But
rather than focusing on any one of these, let us turn attention again
to the problern concerning the relationship between Dasein's
temporality and time as the transeendental horizon for the question
of Being, and this time let us look at it from a slightly different point
ofview.
In Being and Time Heidegger was guided by the idea that in the
ontological tradition Being was understood mainly as presence-athand, (SZ, 19-27, 200-212) as continuous presence, and thus from one
of the dimensions of time, namely the present. Heidegger wished to
bring the onesidedly accentuated "continuous presence" back into the
full, pluridimensional time, in order then to try to understand the
meaning of Being from the originally experienced time, namely
temporality. In his attempt to materialize this goal he was guided by
a second basic idea, namely that each being can become manifest
with regard to its Beingin many ways, so that one has to ask the
question of just what is the pervasive, simple, unified determination
of Being that permeates all of its multiple meanings. But this
question raises others: What, then, does Being mean? To what
extent (why and how) does the Being of beings unfold in various
modes?
How can these various modes be brought into a
comprehensible harmony? Whence does Being as such (not merely
being as being) receive its ultimate determination?ll
Heidegger had studied some of these modes of Being in the
interpretive analyses of Being and Time and, thus, at the very end of
the book, found hirnself led to consider the question of whether or not
there is a basic meaning of Being from which all other meanings can
1osz, PP wo-101, 160-161, 230, 333, 349-350, 357, 359-361, 371-372, 406, 436-437.
llHeidegger in a letter to Richardson, in William J. Richardson, Heidegger,

p.
X.
322
be derived by taking time (understood as temporality) as a guiding

clue. In view of the fact that man's understanding is intrinsically
historical, the further question must be asked of whether man's
understanding of Being's meaning is intrinsically historical, also, or
whether the understanding of Being can perhaps in some sense have
a "supra-temporal" character. In Being and Time Heidegger was
unable to answer the first question adequately because he had 'not
been able to find a satisfactory solution for the second. For upon
closer consideration his conception of historicity as found in Being
and Time seems to be ambiguous. Historicity is described in the book
first as the genuine temporalization of time and the principle of the
distinction between Dasein's modes of Being, and then later it is said
that historicity is the medium in which all ontological understanding
must maintain itself. (SZ, 19-39, 372-377) It does not seem to be
possible to defend both theses simultaneously; and even if there
should be a position from which one could defend both, even then it
would still not be clear in what sense the meaning of Being itself is
affected by historicity.
In the decade following the publication of Being and Time
Heidegger eliminated part of the initial ambiguity by first examining
more carefully how different significations of Being become
differentiated in the fundamental meaning of Being and how
temporality, indeed, is the principle of these distinctions. In so doing
he could maintain his original view that the meaning of Being is the
"Ground" in which all significations of Beingaretobe grounded and
from which all understanding of Being nourishes itself. On the other
hand, however, the meaning of Being cannot be understood in terms
of an eternal standard being ("the God of the philosophers"); rather it
must be conceived of as an abysmal, groundless "ground." For the
fact that Being comes-ta-pass in the way it does, and for the fact that
an understanding of Being emerges in the way we actually find it, no
one can indicate a ground, because each process of grounding
already presupposes the meaning of Being. When the meaning of
Being Iets a determinate signification of Being become the standard
signification, then it "groundlessly" bars other significations and
even itself as the ground of the manifold possible other significations.
It is in this sense that Being shows and hides itself at the same time,
and why the meaning ofBeing is tobe called "truth," unconcealment,
whose coming-to-pass is and remains a mystery and whose
"happening" is historical in a sense which cannot be understood on
the basis of what we usually call history.
323
Furthermore, the world taken as the building-structure of the

truth of Being is that organized structure which is stratified in many
ways and is constructed according to the manner in which time
temporalizes itself. This temporalization of time itself is historical
and thus the stratification of the organized structure of Being's truth
is historical, too; as such it can be distinguished in various epochs.
In each epoch we find in the world as the building-structure of the
truth of Being manifold organized and systematized "layers" of
meaning all of which refer to basic forms of "experience" between
which there is a tension, and concerning which it is difficult to see
how they could all belong together. Heidegger's main concern is to
explain how in a certain epoch (particularly our own) all these
"layers" can belong together in a whole, the world, and how in this
world as the building-structure of Being's truth for this particular
era the "courses of Being are already traced out," and how therefore
Being can encounter us in these particular, different ways, and not
in others; thus how in this world Being itself shows and hides itself
at the same time.12
120tto Pggeler, "Heideggers Topologie des Seins:' in Man and World, 2(1969)
331-357, pp. 337-345.
CONCLUSION
ON THE ONI'OLOGICAL DIFFERENCE
Temporality and time are the last issues discussed in Being and
Time. The work comes to a close with a reflection on temporality as
the source of our ordinary conception of time. The book is
incomplete. In the last section of the work Heidegger explains once
more what the main task was which he had set for hirnself in
writing this book and what has been accomplished thus far. The goal
was to work out the question of Being in general. What was
accomplished is a hermeneutic of Dasein which, as an analytic of
eksistence, has seenred the guiding-clue for all philosophical inquiry
at that point where it arises and to which it retums. (SZ, 38, 436) The
analytic of the Being of Dasein has shown that a clear distinction
must be made between the Being of eksisting Dasein and the Being of
the beings within the world. This realization is important, but it still
is only the point of departure for the true and genuine ontological
problematic, namely the question concerning the meaning of Being
and the distinction that is to be made between Being and being. (SZ,
436-437) I would like to conclude this book with a brief report on the
manner in which in 1927 Heidegger conceived of the distinction
between Being and being and its function in ontology.
We have seen already in Chapter li, Section li that in Being
and Time the term "ontological difference" does not occur; nor does
Heidegger use any other technical term in this work to refer to what
the expression "ontological difference" means in his opinion. It is
true that Heidegger uses the expression "der ontologische Unterschied" but this expression is used there to refer to the distinction
between Being-in and "insideness" ("lnwendigkeit"). (SZ, 56)
Heidegger also often speaks about the difference between the various
modes of Being that are discussed in Being and Time. (SZ, 92, 132,
436, 437) Finally, Heidegger speaks about the difference between the
ontic and ontological meaning of substance (SZ, 94); although this
expression, taken from the metaphysics of Aristotle, refers to what
later will be called the ontological difference, it is nevertheless not
stipulated in this instance that the ontological difference is the
genuine and true matter of thought.
326
Yet even though the ontological difference is not explicitly

discussed in Being and Time, nonetheless a few words must be said
about Being and Time in view of the fact that Heidegger's view on the
ontological difference is to be located within the general perspective of
its basic problematic.
Heidegger's main concern in Being and Time was to lay the
groundwork for metaphysics by trying to bring to light that
ontological structure in man which is the source of his natural
tendency to become involved in metaphysical speculation. Since
metaphysics, historically seen, is concerned with beings as beings
and, thus, also with Being, whereas man in all his aspects is finite,
the main problern is one of how to explain the relationship between
Being and finitude. Heidegger's investigations show that Being and
finitude are related to one another in man's understanding of Being,
which is intrinsically finite. This is the reason why first of all in a
fundamental ontology, the ultimate meaning of the finite
understanding of Being must be phenomenologically revealed. In
this process of revelation it appears that man's finite understanding
of Being materializes itself in his transcendence of beings toward
Being, that is, in man's openness toward Being taken as a process
that comes-to-pass in man.
In Chapter II we have also seen that from a phenomenological
point of view, the process of transcendence is man's Being-in-theworld, where world stands for the horizon projected by Dasein and
within which Dasein dwells and encounters other beings, and Beingin means that in which this world becomes luminous insofar as
Dasein, by virtue of its understanding eksistence, makes manifest
the Being of beings. This correlation between world (or Being) and
Dasein (Being's illumination) is so intimate that only insofar as
Dasein is "is there Being."l (SZ, 212)
The expression "ontological difference" appeared for the first
time in Heidegger's published works in The Essence of Reasons
(1929), and it was alluded to also in Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics (1929). Yet Heidegger had explicitly used the expression
already in 1927 in a lecture course entitled The Basic Problems of
1For what follows here see Chapter II, Section II above. Cf. also Richardson,
Heidegger, pp. 103-104; John D. Caputo, "Fundamental Ontology and the
Ontological Difference," in Proceedings of the Catholic Philosophical Association,
51(1977), 28-35; Wolfgang Marx, "Die ontologische Differenz in der Perspektive
der regionalen Ontologie des Daseins," in Nachdenken ber Heidegger, ed. Ute
Guzzoni. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1980, pp. 176-197.
CONCLUSION
3Z7
Phenomenology. Let us therefore first examine how Heidegger

introduces the ontological difference in these works, beginning with
the lecture course on phenomenology.
In the last section of this course Heidegger describes the two
types of sciences which man has been able to develop; the positive and
the philosophical sciences. In that context Heidegger writes that
obviously for man there can be no comportment to beings that would
not imply some understanding of Being. On the other hand, no
understanding of Being is possible that would not be rooted in a
comportment toward beings. Furthermore, our understanding of
Being and our comportment toward beings do not just join each other
afterwards and as by chance. They are always already latently
present in man's ek-sistence itself; they unfold because they are
summoned from the ek-static and horizonal constitution of
temporality; in their belonging together they are thus made possible
by temporality.
As long as this belonging together of our comportment toward
beings on the one hand, and our understanding of Being on the other,
is not conceived by means of temporality, philosophical inquiry
remains exposed to two dangers to which it has succumbed time and
again in its long history until now. Either philosophy dissolves
everything that is ontical into the ontological (Regel), without a
genuine insight into the ground of ontology's own possibility; or the
ontological is simply reduced to the ontic, without any understanding
of the ontological presuppositions which every ontical explanation
already harbors in itself as such (positivism). This double
uncertainty which in some form or other has pervaded the whole of
our Western philosophical tradition until the present time, also has
repeatedly impeded the development of an adequate method of
ontology, or at least it has prematurely distorted any genuine
approach to the method of ontology that was actually made here and
there.2
In this passage in which he explains the importance of the
distinction between Being and being for philosophy as a whole,
Heidegger makes use of some ideas which he had explained a few
pages earlier. There he had stated, summarizing part of the
preceding argument, that temporality is the condition of the
possibility of Dasein's transcendence. Thus it is also the condition of
the possibility of an intentionality that is founded on transcendence.
Because of its ekstatic character temporality makes possible the
328
Beingof a being, namely Dasein, which, as a self, deals with others

and with beings. Thus temporality makes possible Dasein's
comportment as such toward beings, whether this be toward itself,
toward others, or toward beings present-at-hand. Temporality "first"
makes possible the comprehension of Being, so that it is only in light
of this comprehension of Being that Dasein can comport itself toward
its own self, toward others as beings, and toward all other beings.
Temporality constitutes the basic structure of Dasein; the
comprehension of Being belongs to Dasein as an essential
determination of its eksistence. Now because temporality constitutes
the essence of Dasein, and because time constitutes the original selfprojection pure and simple, Being is always already unveiled so that
in every factical Dasein beings are either disclosed or uncovered.
With the temporalizing of time's ekstases the pertinent horizonal
schemata are always projected in such a way that Dasein's
comportment toward something always comprehends this
something as a being, and thus understands it in its Being.3 But it is
not at all necessary that this comportment toward a being, even
though it comprehends the Being of that being, must make an
explicit distinction between the Being of the being that is so
comprehended and the concrete being toward which Dasein
comports itself. And it is even much less necessary that the
distinction between Being and a being should be comprehended
conceptually at all. On the contrary, Being itself is at first usually
treated as a being and explained by means of determinations of
beings. We can see this clearly at the beginning of ancient
philosophy (Thales). In the entire philosophical tradition in the
West, in the question about being as a being (on hei on), Being was
always treated as a being. Yet it is still made a problern there, even
though it was always unsuitably interpreted.
Dasein appears to know about Being; in comporting itself
towards beings, it understands Being. Thus the distinction between
Being and being is always there, either latent in Dasein and its
eksistence, or present in explicit awareness. The distinction is
"there," and thus it has the mode of Being of Dasein itself; the
distinction belongs to eksistence. To eksist means to execute this
distinction. In other words, the distinction between Being and beings
is temporalized in the temporalizing of temporality. Only because the
distinction between Being and beings is always already
temporalizing itself on the basis of Dasein's temporality, and
3Jbid., p. 318.
CONCLUSION
329
conjointly with its temporality, and only because it is thus as such

unveiled, can it be known expressly, and as known explicitly also
interrogated, as interrogated also investigated, and thus conceptually
comprehended. The distinction between beings and Being is preontological; it is latent in Dasein's eksistence without an explicit
concept of Being. As such it can become an explicitly understood
difference, and this understanding can take place in different ways.
For when the distinction between Being and beings becomes explicit,
the terms distinguished will contrast with each other so that Being
thereby becomes a possible theme for conceptual comprehension or
logos.
For this reason we call the distinction between Being and
beings, when it is carried out explicitly, the ontological
difference. This explicit accomplishment and development
of the ontological difference, since it is founded on Dasein's
eksistence, is a basic comportment of Dasein in which
ontology or philosophy constitutes itself as a science.4
Speaking about the manner in which the different sciences are
constituted Heidegger stresses again that Being is indeed already
unveiled in each understanding of beings. Beingis always given in
some manner.5
With the factical eksistence of Dasein beings are always
already unveiled or given; and in the understanding of
Being that goes with them, Being is also already unveiled
or given. Beings and Being are unveiled, although still
without differentiation, nevertheless with equal originality.
Being is always the Being of a being and a being as a being
always is.6
As we mentioned earlier, the issue appears for the second time,
two years later, in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Heidegger
states there that the analytic of Dasein has as its objective to show
how all comportment to beings presupposes the transcendence of
Dasein taken as Being-in-the-world. With this transcendence is
4Jbid., pp. 318-320.
5Jbid., p. 321.
6Jbid., pp. 320-321.
330
achieved the projection of the Being of being as such (der ...Entwurf

des Seins des Seienden berhaupt). Through this projection the
Being of beings becomes manifest at first only in a still unarticulated
manner so that the distinction between Being and being as such itself
remains hidden (der Unterscheid von Sein und Seiendem).1
In the same year Heidegger published Vom Wesen des
Grundes. In this work Heidegger tried to show that the problern of
ground is fundamentally a problern of truth and that, since truth is
found primarily in Dasein's transcendence, the question is equally
one of transcendence.a To explain this position Heidegger argued
first that the access to Being's meaning is made possible by that being
whose nature it is to transcend beings toward Being. One should
realize further that the conception of propositional truth as
conformity presupposes another conception of truth: truth as
conformity presupposes that the being to be judged is already
manifest on the basis of a preceding unveiling. Thus, propositional
truth presupposes an ontic truth. This ontic truth, in turn,
manifests itself only within the realm of Dasein's ontic concern with
beings. In order for beings to manifest themselves for what they are
in the ontic comportment of Dasein, Dasein itself must have an
antecedent comprehension of their Being and, thus, of the Being of
these beings.
Thus the unveiledness of Being in Dasein's
comprehension first makes possible the manifestation of beings as
such. This unveiledness of Being itself is the truth of Being, the
ontological truth. 9
Now the basicform of man's comprehension of Being, namely,
that which from the beginning guides every form of concern with
things, is neither an explicit grasping of Being as such, nor a
conceptual comprehension ofthat which is grasped. It is to be called
therefore a "preontological" understanding of Being. In order to
comprehend Being conceptually, Dasein's investigation must make
this preontological understanding of Being its theme of inquiry. This
is the task of ontology. Between the preontological understanding of
Being and the explicit ontological comprehension of Being there are
other forms of understanding. These forms and the set of ontological
truths which correspond to them reveal the depth of what, as
primordial truth, is at the root of every ontic truth. Since there lies in
1Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, pp. 243-244.
BThe Essence of Reasons, pp. 11-12.
9Jbid., pp. 12-21.
CONCLUSION
331
the unveiledness of any being a prior unveiledness of its Being, and

since ontical as weil as ontological truths concern beings in their
Being and the Being af beings, ontical and ontological truths belang
tagether essentially because of their relationship to the difference
between Being and being, the ontological difference.
Thus, the essence of truth and the essential distinction between
ontical and ontological truths are possible only given this difference.
Yet, if it is characteristic of man to behave toward things by
understanding their Being, then the capacity to differentiate between
being and Being must have the roots of its own possibility in the
ground of Dasein's own Being. The ground of the ontological
difference is the transcendence of Dasein.lO
If we try to take all of these elements tagether we can perhaps
express Heidegger's first conception of the ontological difference in
the following theses: 1) In the works and lecture courses written
between Being and Time and Vom Wesen des Grundes the Being
question is formulated in terms of the ontological difference, and the
identity of Being and truth as a process of unveilment is maintained.
2) The ontological difference comes about only by reason of Dasein's
power to differentiate between Being and being; this power is to be
found in Dasein's transcendence. 3) The final term toward which
Dasein transcends beings is not the beingness of beings (Seiendheit),
but rather Being itself taken as the emergence of the difference
between Being and beings (das Sein).ll
To understand the implications of the third thesis a few
additional reflections will be necessary. In my opinion, it is
undoubtedly true that in Being and Time and related works and
lecture courses Heidegger was at least in part concerned with
showing that the temporality of Dasein is the principle of the division
of Dasein's own modes of Being, and that time as temporalized by
Dasein is also the principle of the division of the meaning of Being
into the possible significations of Being (eksistence, ready-to-hand,
present-at-hand), so that the interplay of the three dimensions of
temporality in its different modalities can be taken as the guidingclue for the division of the different significations of Being.12 Yet it is
clear also that all of this does not constitute Heidegger's basic
lOJbid., pp. 21-27.
llJbid., pp. 27-29; cf. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. 174-175, 103-104, 163-164;
Kockelmans, On Heidegger and Language, pp. 204-210.
12Sz, 350-366; Otto Pggeler, "Heideggers Topologie des Seins," in Man and
World, 2(1969), pp. 331-357.
332
concern. Toward the end of Being and Time Heidegger explicitly

says that the distinction between the various modes of Being is only
the point of departure for the genuinely ontological problematic: the
question concerning the meaning of Being and the question of
whether primordial time indeed manifests itself as the transeendental horizon ofBeing. (SZ, 436-437)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In this bibliography only those publications are listed which actually
have been quoted in this book. For a more complete bibliography see
Hans-Martin Sass, Martin Heidegger: Bibliography and Glossary.
Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1982.
L Publications by Heidegger Quoted in this Book

"Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers Psychologie der Weltanschauungen," in Wegmarken. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976, pp. 1-44.
"A Recollection," in Thomas Sheehan, ed., Heidegger. The Man and
the Thinker. Chicago: Precedent Publishing, Inc., 1981, pp. 2122.
Aristotles: Metaphysik IX, ed. Heinrich Hni. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981.

Basic Writing, ed. David Farren Krell. New York: Harper and Row,
1977.
"Building Dwelling Thinking," in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans.
Albert Hofstadter. New York: Rarper and Row, 1971, pp. 143-61.
"Das Realittsproblem in der modernen Philosophie," in Jahrbuch
(Fulda), 25(1912), 353-363; also in Frhe Schriften, pp. 1-15.
Der deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling) und die

philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart, ed. Ingtraut
Grland. Frankfurt: Klostermann, (to appear).
Die Frage nach dem Ding. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1962; What Is A
Thing?, trans. W. B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch. Chicago:
Regnery, 1967.
Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie (1927), ed. F.-W. von
Herrmann. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975; The Basic Problems
of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1982.
Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus, in Frhe
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334
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Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus. Ein kritisch-positiver

Beitrag zur Logik. Leipzig: Barth, 1914; also in Frhe Schriften,
pp. 59-188.
Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitt (1934). Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1983.
Einfhrung in die Metaphysik. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1958: An
Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim. Garden
City: Doubleday and Company, 1959.
Frhe Schriften, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann.
mann, 1978.
Hegels Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed.
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Frankfurt:
Kloster-
Ingtraut Grland.
Heraklit, 2 vols., ed. Manfred S. Frings. Frankfurt: Klostermann,

1979.
Identitt und Differenz. Pfullingen: Neske, 1957; Identity and
Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Rarper & Row,
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Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1951; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. James S.
Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.
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Launey, in Martin Heidegger, ed. Michel Haar. Paris: Editions
de l'Herne, 1983, pp. 27-37.
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Metaphysische Anfangsgrnde der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz,

ed. Klaus Held. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978; The Metaphysical
Foundations of Logik, trans. Michael Heim. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984.
Nietzsche, 2 vols. Pfullingen: Neske, 1961; Nietzsche, trans. David
Farrell Krell, 4 vols. New York: Rarper & row, 1979-1987.
Parmenides, ed. Manfred S. Frings. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981.
Phnomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977.
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Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit. Mit einem Brief ber den
"Humanismus." Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947; "Letter on
Humanism," trans. Frank A. Capuzzo and J. Glenn Gray, in
Basic Writings, pp. 193-242.
Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Petra Jaeger.
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1979; History of the Concept of Time.
Prolegomena, trans. Theodore J. Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1985.
Schellings Abhandlung ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit
(1809), ed. Hildegard Feick. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1971;
Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans.
Joan Stambaugh. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985.
Sein und Zeit. Tbingen: Niemyer, 196310 ; Being and Time, trans.
J ohn Macquarrie and Edward Robinson: London: SCM Press,
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Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1960. On the Way to
Language, trans. P. Hertz. New York: Rarper and Row, 1971.
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (1930, 1941). Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1961; "On the Essence of Truth," trans. John Sallis, in Basic
Writings, pp. 117-141.
Vom Wesen des Grundes. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1929; The
Essence of Reasons, trans. Terence Malick.
Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1969.
Was heisst Denken? Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1961; What Is Called
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Rarper & Row, 1968.
Was ist Metaphysik? Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1955; "What is
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Zur Sache des Denkens. Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1969; On Time and
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1972.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ll. Secondary Sources Quoted in this Book
Albert, Hans. Traktat ber kritische Vernunft. Tbingen: Mohr,

1968.
Aler, Jan. "Heidegger's Conception of Language in Being and
Time," in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., On Heidegger and Language. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972, pp. 33-62.
Aristotelis Opera, ed. Academia Regia Borussica. Berlin, 1831-1870;

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INDEX
INDEX OF NAMES
Aler, Jan, 37
Aristotle, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 21,
25,26,27,32,34,41,43,47,51,52,66,
67,75,77,81,82,83,104,118,169,172,
190,239,240,241,242,246,252,253,
315, 318,325
Augustine, Saint, 11, 32, 34, 42, 67, 100,
240, 241, 243, 318
Bergson, Henri, 66, 239, 240, 242, 253
Blonde!, Maurice, 3, 185
Boeckh, August, 27
Braig, Carl, 4
Brentano,Franz,2,3,47,245
Bultmann, Rudolf, 6, 11
75, 76,86,140,174,185,240,241,242,
318,327
Heraclitus, 99, 176
Herder, Johann, 166
Hderlin, Friedrich, 2, 10, 11
Hume, David, 51
Husserl, Edmund, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 15,
20,24,29,42,46,51,67,69,70,71,74,
75,76,77,78, 79,81,82,140,142,172,
173,174,175,224,239,243,246,320
Isaac Israeli, 172
Jaeger, Werner, 3, 67
Jaspers, Karl, 52, 214n
John, Saint, 100
Cassirer, Ernst, 7
Democritus, 136
Descartes, Rene, 32, 45, 51, 70, 71, 74,
75,77,104,109,141,167,172,226
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 3, 4, 11, 12, 27, 32,
42,185,224,292
Dostoevsky, Fedor, 4, 11
Duns Scotus, John, 5, 32, 75
Eckhart, Meister, 12, 34
Fichte, Gottlob, 5, 46, 67, 77
George, Stephan, 11
Geyser, Joseph, 3
Grabmann, Martin, 5
Hartman, Nicolai, 6
Hegel, Georg, 4, 32, 34, 41, 70, 71, 74,
Karrt, Immanuel, 5, 7, 11, 26, 30, 32, 34,

41,43,45,46,48,49,51,67, 70, 74, 75,
77,80,81,82,98,101,102,103,104,
109,136,168,169,172,174,210,224,
226,227,228,229,230,233,240,241,
242,243,249,300,314,320
Kelkel, Arion, 161
Kierkegaard,S~ren,3,4, 11,32,42,
185,239
Kisiel, Theodore, 11, 12, 21
Klpe, Oswald, 3
Lask, Emil, 4, 12
Leibniz, Gottfried, 75
Luther, Martin, 11, 34, 42
Macquarrie,John, 111,244
Messer, August, 3
Misch, Georg, 5
Mller, Joseph, 152
Natorp, Paul, 5, 6
INDEX
346
Newton, Isaac, 244
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 4
Otto, Rudolf, 11, 13, 17
Parmenides, 5, 67, 172
Paul, Saint, 6, 11, 13, 17, 18, 19, 42, 67,
100
Pindar, 11
Plato, 10,19,51,52, 70,75,81,190,316
Pre-Socratics, 99
Ravaisson, Felix, 4
Richardson, William, 76, 111, 152
Rickert, Heinrich, 4, 5, 11, 291
Rilke, Rainer, 4, 11
Robinson, Edward, 111, 244
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 52, 138, 139, 140
Scheler, Max, 52, 142, 209, 210, 214n
Schelling, Friedrich, 4
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 27, 222

Schneider, Arthur, 3, 4,
Seneca, 166
Sheehan,Thomas, 13, 16,18,20,21
Simmel, Georg, 291
Sophocles, 11
Stifter, Adalbert, 2
Suarez, Francis, 75
Thales, 328
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 32, 75
Thomas ofErfurt, 5, 32
Trakl, Georg, 4, 11
Vge, Wilhelm, 4
Windelband, Wilhelm, 11
Wolff, Christian, 100, 101
Yorck von Wartenburg, Paul Graf,
292
INDEX
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Affective disposition
(Befindlichkeit), 42, 147; see
Ontological disposition
Aisthesis, and truth, 27
Aletheia, non-concealment,
unconcealment, unconcealedness,
12,26,27,34,39,77,82;centralissue
ofphilosophy, 3
A-lethes, un-hidden, 82, 83
Aletheuein, tobring from
concealment to non-concealment,
77; tobring something out ofits
original hiddenness, 82
Ambiguity, and fallenness, 160-161
Analogy, classical doctrine of, 47
Analytic of Dasein, as a hermeneutic
of facticity, 90; preparatory nature
of, 65; task of, 63-67
Analytic of Dasein's Being, and other
sciences of man, 95-96
Anticipation (Vorlaufen), 197; and
resolve, 215; as authentic future,
259; meaning of, 218-219
Anticipatory resolve, and conscience
and death, 219; and eksistentiell
authenticity, 215-220
Antiquities, 293-294
Anxiety (Angst), 163-164; 183-185;
and care, 163-164; 184; and
Dasein's naked self that has been
thrown in uncanniness, 263; and
death, 193-196; and self, 184; and
unity of Dasein's Being, 163-164;
arises out of Dasein's Being-in-theworld as Being-thrown-towardsdeath, 264; discloses the nullity of
the world, 263; grounded in havingbeen, 264; makes Dasein be anxious
about itself, 263; shows the
nothingness of Dasein's own
Being, 164; springs from the future

of resolve, 264; the character of
having-been is constitutive for it,
263
Appearance, 80
Apophainesthai, to make manifest, 81
Apophansis, and logos, 153
Apophantie as; 177
Apophantie logie, 80-83
Appresentatio, placing a thing before
oneself, 175
Appropriateness, 126
A priori synthesis, 45-46;
transcendental, 48
Arete, (excellence), 27
Aroundness (das Umhafte), 133; of
our environmental world, 131
"As," (apophantic), 155
"As," (hermeneutie), 82-83, 150-151;
constitutes the explietness of each
thing, 150; it is a constitutive
element of explanation, 150
Attending, as a mode oflogos, 158; its
two types, listening to others and
attending to one's ownself, 158-159
Attention (Rcksicht), 142
Authentie present, as moment of
vision (Augenblick), 237-238;
temporalizes itself in resolve, 263
Authentie resolve, 218
Authenticity, and eksistentiell
situation, 185; of Dasein, 94
Average everydayness, 95, 96
Averageness, 23
Awaiting, and leaping-away, 265;
constitutive for eoneern, 271; ofthe
Parousia, 19
348
being (Seiendes), 43n
Being (Sein), 43n; and Beingness
(ousia), 16; and meaning as
content, relation, and enactment,
16; and nothing, 16-17; and the
beings (onta), 16; as eksistence, 48;
.as ground, 322; as groundless
ground, 322; as present-at-hand, 48;
as ready-to-hand, 48; as selfevident concept, 54; as the most
universal concept, 53, not a genus,
53; average understanding of, 56;
Dasein's pre-ontological
understanding of, 63; Dasein's
radical comprehension of, 59-61;
depends on Dasein's
understanding, 170; for Dasein is
becoming, 243; implicit
understanding of, 55; indefinable,
54; its finite truth functions as the
necessary synthesis a priori in all
finite understanding, 71; its
meaning and truth as
unconcealment, 322; meaning and
truth of, 51; meaning of, 6; never a
ground, 50; pre-conceptual
comprehension of, 59; preontological understanding of, 58;
question of, 41-61; reveals and
conceals itself, 49; shows and hides
itself, 322-323; the question ofits
meaning and the goal of the
eksistential analytic, 289; the
question of its meaning is the basic
problern of ontology, 181;
temporality of, 66, and the meaning
or truth of Being, 66; the temporal
determinateness of, 66; vs.
Beingness and being, 113
Being-able-to-be (Seinknnen), 148,
184; 211-214; and care, 164; and
conscience, 211; and death, 193; and
resolve, 212-214
Being-ahead-of-itself, and care, 189
Being-ahead, as to ek-sist, 165
Being-alone, 142
Being-at-an-end (Zu-Ende-Sein),
191; vs. Being-unto-its-end, 191
Being-guilty, not an abiding property
but an eksistentiell possibility, 216;
INDEX
as the mode of Being of care, 207
Being-in, 145-159
Being-in-the-world, 30; 104-106; as
essence of Dasein, 96; can be
authentic and inauthentic, 159;
contains a plurality of constitutive,
structural elements, 105; is Being
with others, 138; the mode ofBeing
(essence) of man, 29
Being-unto-its-end (Sein zum Ende),
191; vs. Being-at-an-end, 191
Beingness (Seiendheit, Wesenheit,
Wesen, ousia), 34; as ground, 50
Being question, 2, 30; and beings, 2;
and time as the horizon for any
understanding of Being, 30;
forgottenness of, 52; formal
structure of, 55-57; ontological
priority of, 57 -59; the basic problern
ofphilosophy, 51-54; tobe studied in
ontology, 29
Beings, are merely present at band,
94; as the norm that governs man's
knowledge, 177
Beings-within-the-world, their mode
ofBeing, 115-119
Being-towards-death, 196
Being-towards-the-end, 191, 194
Being-true, as Being as uncovering,
176
Being-with (Mitsein), 138, 141; 137142; as sharing one world, 140; not
made possible by spatial proximity,
138
Bewilderment, as the eksistentialtemporal meaning of fear, 262
Birth, of Dasein, 290, 291; never
something past, 291
Bringing-close, as removing
distances (Entfernung), 134
Care (Sorge), 34; 31, 32, 164-166; and
anxiety, 163; 184; and Dasein's
Being-ahead-of-itself, 189; and
factical life experience, 15; and
selfhood, 234-235; 225-238; and time,
32; as the ''between" that lies
between birth and death of Dasein,
INDEX
290; as the fundamental structure of
Dasein's Being, 165; comprises
eksistentiality, facticity, and
fallenness, 163-164; definition of,
165, 166; essence of, 206; inherently
permeated by nullity, 206; includes
death and guilt, 217; meaning of,
184, 193, 225; meaning of, and
death, 193; the ground of Dasein's
historicity, 298
Categories, division of, 47
Category, vs. eksistential, 94, 95, 96
Certainty, and evidence, 195; and
truth, 195
Chronos, Zeit, time, 19
Circumspection (Umsicht), 118, 150;
as a way ofmaking present, 277; of
concern, 22-23
Circumspective concern, temporality
of, 270-273; its temporality a slight
revision of the temporality of
fallenness, 273
"Clearing'' of Being, 171
Closeness, and ready-to-hand, 132; of
equipment, 132
Community, 138
Comprehension of Being, as the
ontological structure of Dasein, 97
Concept of the a priori, as a regulative
idea,89
Goneern (Besorgen), 35; 115; and
care, 165; and factical life
experience, 15; and theoretical
knowledge, 117; an eksistential of
Dasein's Being, 106; as the
primordial mode of Being-in, 106110; its temporality has the mode of
a making-present which retains
and awaits, 311
Concernful preoccupation, 115-119,
and passim
Conformity, an analogaus notion,
174-175
Connectedness, of Dasein's life, 290291
Conscience, and anxiety, 203-208;
and disclosedness, 201; and guilt,
205; 201-208; and "they," 201; as a
349
discourse (in terms of Dasein's
disclosedness), 201; as an
attestation of Dasein's ownmost
Being-able-to-be, 204; as the social
voice of the "they," 204; caller and
called, 202-205; call of, 200; basic
characteristics of, 202; calls Dasein
to its ownmost potentiality for
Being-its-own-self, 200;
eksistential-ontological foundation
of, 199-201; everyday conception of,
208-211; its call addresses the "theyself," 201; its call and silence, 202204; its call individualizes Dasein,
217; its call says nothing, 202, 205;
summans Dasein out of its falling,
204; summans Dasein to its
ownmost Being-guilty, 200; the fact
a primordial phenomenon of
Dasein, 200; voice of, 31-32; voice of,
wo
Consciousness, as subjectivity, 233;
and transcendence as selfhood, 233
Conspicuousness, 120; temporality of,
272
Construction, 68, 72n; 79

Construction, 78
Cura fable, 166
Curiousity, and fallenness, 160-161;
constituted by a making present
which is not held on to, 265; is a
making present that gets entangled
in itself, 264-265; makes present for
the sake ofthe present, 265; seeks to
extricate itself from awaiting, 265
Da, ofDasein, as openness, 145-146;
has nothing to do with a spatial

here, 145
Dasein, accepts to be as finite
transcendence, 207; all its
ontological structures are modes of
temporality, 65; always ahead of
itself, 164; always is certain
possibilities, 149; and life in its
here and now facticity, 13; and
reality, 166-169; as Being-in-theworld is self, transcending, 105; as
lumen naturale, 146; 176; 269; as the
INDEX
350
irruption into the totality ofbeings,
60-61; as the negative ground ofits
own negativity, 217; as the
ontological structure of man taken
in its intrinsic finitude, 61; as the
place where Being manifests itself
and lets beings be, 60; as the place
where "language" speaks, 162; as
the "there" of Being, 60; assigns
places, 133, discovers places, 133;
beginning of, 184, end of, 184; can
be in an authentic and an
inauthentic way, 163; comes to
authenticity only by way of
inuathentic Being, 160, relapses
again in inauthenticity, 160;
constantly comes toward itself (Zukunft), 243; continuously eksists
finitely, 238; eksists historically
because it is temporal in the very
basis of its Being, 292; factically
has its history, 295; formal
meaning of its eksistential
constitution, 94-95; gives time, 28;
guilty in the very ground of its
Being, 207; has an essential
tendency to closeness, 134; inclined
to fall prey to the tradition, 73; is
essentially a Being-able-to-be, 149;
is in the truth, 180, can be untruth,
177; is its past, 73; is its
possibilities, 94; is time, 28, 65; its
Being constituted by historicity,
295; its Beingis already understood
and yet still to be mediated by
explanation and interpretation, 72;
its Being refers to and depends on
world, 128; its categorial structure
still concealed, 72; its mode of
Being is Being-able-to-be-guilty,
216; its understanding of Beingis
intrinsically historical, 73; lets
time be, 243; makes place and space
be, 133-134; ontic and ontological
priority of, 63; primarily historical,
294-295; spatializes, 133-136;
stretches along between birth and
death, 290-291; temporality of, 23;
temporalizes its own Being as time,
243; temporalizes itself as a self,
231; temporalizes time, 243; what no
Ionger eksists is not past but is as
having-been-there, 294
Dasein-with-others (Mitdasein), 137142
Datability, 311-312; 315-317

Death, and anxiety, 193-196; and
Being-able-to-be, 193; and care, 193;
and conscience, 198-199; and
Dasein's possibility of being a
whole, 189-192; and the possibility of
authentic eksistence, 197; and
"they," 194-196; anticipation of, 21,
23, 31; as Dasein's ownmost
possibility, 197; as the possibility we
anticipate, 196; as the possibility we
expect, 196; as the possibility ofthe
impossibility of any eksistence,
196; authentic being towards, 196199; basic characteristics of 193
196-198; certainty of, 195, 197; '
eksistential structure of 192-193
everyday conception of,'
'
193-196; indefinite, 197-198; nonrelative, 197; not something that is
still outstanding, 290; not to be
outstripped, 197; three basic theses
about, 191; various interpretations
of, 192-193
De-construction, of the tradition, 14
Demundanization, 278
Destination, 126-127; and
meainingfulness, 125-129
Destiny (Geschick), 297; 305; and
Dasein's authentic coming-to-pass,
297-298; designates the coming-topass ofthe community, 297
Destruction, 25-28; 68, 72n; ofthe
history of metaphysics, 21; see
Destructive retrieve
Destructive retrieve, 73-75; and
hermeneutic phenomenology, 70,
72-90; and phenomenology closely
related, 71-72; implies a critical
attitude to the tradition but is not its
rejection, 71; meaning of, 74
Diaphora (Austrag), issue, 34
Difference, 83
Directionality, 135
Disclosedness (Erschlossenheit), 176;
INDEX
188; as the Being of Dasein's
"there," 258; of Dasein, 145-146
Distance, 133; lived estimate vs.
measurement, 134-135
Ego, Kant's conception of, 226-230
Eidos (Aussehen, essence), as Iook of
things, as the way they Iook, 108
Eksistence, and eksistentiality, 165;
and life in its here and now
facticity, 13; and the ''how" ofthe
enactment of the factical lifeexperience, 17-18; and the
ontological difference, 328-329; and
transcendence,94,96,97;asthe
essence of Dasein, 94, 96; as the
essence of Man as Dasein, 30; as the
genuine mode of Being of Dasein,
23; as lumen naturale, 179; as
openness and light, 179; as
standing-out-toward, 104-105;
means to be in a comprehending
relation to Being, 97; presupposes
facticity, 165; transcendence, and
world, 96-104
Eksistential, 23n; vs. category, 94, 95,
96
Eksistential analytic, meaning of,
220-221
Eksistentiality, as freedom, 165; of
eksistence, 95, 96
Eksistentiell, 23, and 23n;
ontological examination of, 139-140
Eksisting, meaning of, 328
Ekstasis, its wither is a horizonal
schema, 283; meaning of, 283-284
Emotions, 146
Enunciation (Aussage), 150; a
derivative mode of explanation,
154; is pointing-out, attributing,
and communicating, 153-154;
Ievels the primordial
(hermeneutic) as to the (apophantic)
as in which something is
determined in its presence-athand, 155
Environing world (Umwelt), 12
Environmental world, the worldly
351
character of, 119-122
Episteme, 27
Epistemological problem, 167
Equipment, and place, 132; Being of,
116-119; closeness of, 132; has
meaning only within a totality of
references and the world, 122; its
mode of Being in involvement, 270;
mode of Being of, 116-119;
referential character of, 121-125
Eschatology, 18-19
Essence, meaning of, 178
Etymology, scientific vs.
philosophical, 33-34
Everyday experiences, 12
Everyday life, 6
Everydayness, 65; indicates a
definite ''how" of ekistence, 286; is
for Dasein a way to be, 286;
temporal meaning of, 286-287
Existence, ambiguity of term, 93-94
Expecting, 260
Experience, 15, and self, 15; must be
mediated in philosophy from the
perspective ofthe truth ofBeing, 75
Explanation (Auslegung), 150, 88, 89;
and hermeneutic, 88; concerned
ultimately with the meaning of
Being, 88; constitutes a form of
Dasein's hermeneutictranscendental questioning, 89; is
not necessarily enunciation, 150; is
the development ofthe possibilities
projected in understanding, 150
Facticallife experience, 13-15, 17;
and awaiting of the Parousia, 19;
and care, 15; and concern, 15; and
falling, 15; and meaning, 15; and
self, 15; and subject-object-relation,
14; and temporality, 14-15, 19-20;
and the primordial historical, 15;
and truth, 14; and waiting for, 19;
and world, 14-15; as affiiction, 22,
24; ''how" of, 19; historicity of, 17;
questionability of, 22; temporality
of, 17; uncertainty of, 19
Facticity, 164-165; and temporality,
INDEX
352
20-21; as the relation between world
and life, 26; as thrownness, 165,
and care, 166
Facts, in historiology, 305-306
Fallenness (Verfallen), 31, 32, 106;
159-161; and being in untruth, 176177; and idle talk, curiosity, and
ambiguity, 160; has two aspects, 160;
implies that Dasein falls away
from itself as an authentic Being
able to be its own self and falls to the
world, 159; three dimensions of, 2223
Falling, 21, 22, 23; and facticallife

experience, 15; has its eksistential
meaning in the present, 264;
temporality of, 264-266
Fate, 297, 305
Fear, and inauthentic awaiting, 262;
as an inauthentic ontological
disposition, 262; defined as malum
futurum, 262; eksistential-temporal
meaning of, 262; its temporality is a
forgetting which awaits and makes
present, 263; springs from the lost
present, 264
Freedom, and absence of necessity,
179; and autonomy, 179, 178-179,
232, passim; and transcendence,
232; as the Being of man, 179; as the
essence oftruth, 178-179; negative
aspect of, 179
Fore-conception, 220, 223
Fore-having, 22, 24; 220, 223
Fore-sight, 220, 223
Forgetting, 261; and concern, 271
Forma etymologica, 35
Fundamental ontology, 6, 21; 24; 43;
and existentialism, 52; and
genuine ontology, 6; and
hermeneutic phenomenology, 51;
and philosophical anthropology, 52;
and regional ontologies, 24, 58; and
the Beingof
man, 6; and the history of ontology,
66-67; and transeendental
phenomenology, 51; as an analytic
of Dasein's Being, 72; as an
analytic of Dasein's mode of Being,

38; as eksistential analytic of
Dasein, 87; as eksistential analytic
of Dasein's mode of Being, 58-59; as
phenomenological hermeneutics of
facticity, 24; as unity of ontology
and logic, 24; method of, 21; must
take the form of an analytic of
man's Being, 29
Future, 236ff; 238, 259, passim; as
authentic it is anticipation, 259; as
inauthentic it is awaiting, 260; as
coming-toward (Zu-Kunft), 236; as
the privileged ekstasis of time, 238
Genesthai, already having become,

18
Ground, as identity of difference, 48

Guilt, and conscience, 201-208; as the
ground ofthe negativity in all the
modalities of Dasein's Being, 31;
eksistential definition of, 205, and
the not, 205-206
Having-been (gewesen), 236; and
being guilty, 243; and ontological
disposition, 261-262; 261-262; and
wanting-to-have-a-conscience, 243;
characteristic of anxiety brings one
face to face with retrievability, 263;
makes it possible to find oneself in
a disposition, 261
Here, as the where-at of Dasein's
present occupation, 135
Heritage, 296-297
Hermeneutic, 88; characterizes the
regulative conception of the a
priori, 89; the business of
explanation (Auslegung), 88; the
methodological, fundamental
concept offundamental ontology, 89
Hermeneutic as, 177
Hermeneutic circle, 221-224
Hermeneutic phenomenology, 86-90;
and Husserl's transeendental
phenomenology, 29-30; and the
analytic of man's Being, 29; as the
method of fundamental ontology,
INDEX
38; is "founded" upon ontology, 90
Hermeneutic situation, 21; 151; 188,
220; and hermeneutic circle, 221224; implies an earlier ''having,"
an earlier "sighting," and a "preconception," 151
Hermeneutico-phenomenological
method, 21
Hermeneutics of facticity, 27-8
Historical, everyday meaning of, 294
Historical consciousness, 27
Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), 291;
and temporality, 289-307; and
world-history, 300-303; as the state
of Beingwhich is constitutive for
Dasein's coming-to-pass, 254;
authentic and inauthentic, 299, 300303; authentic and resolve, 302; of
Dasein, basic constitution of, 295299
Historiology, 303-307; eksistential

source of, 303-307; has many
relatively independent branches,
306-307; idea of, 303; is critique of
the inauthentic present, 307; its
disclosure must temporalize itself
in terms ofthe future, 306; its theme
is the possibility that has been
factically eksistent, 305; must
contribute to the authentic
historicity of the historian and bis
contemporaries, 307; projects the
Dasein that has-been-there upon its
ownmost
possibility of Being, 305;
thematization of, 303-306; the
science of Dasein's history, 303; the
source of, 303
Historizing, as the movement in
which Dasein is stretched along
and stretches itself along, 291;
ordinary understanding of, 292-295
History (Geschichte), 292; everyday
meaning of, 292-293; its problern to
be studied in ontology, 291;
meaning of, 300-301; ordinary
understanding of, 292-295; the term
is ambiguous, 292
Holos, whole, 190
353
Horizonal schema, of future, havingbeen, and present, 283-284; their
unity grounded in the ekstatic unity
of temporality, 284
Hou heneka, for the sake of which, 118
"How" 15, 16; and method, 16; and
met-hodos, 16
"How" of man's Being, 17
Human subject, misunderstood in
modern philosophy, 141
Idealism, 169
Identity, categorial vs.
transcendental, 5o
Idle talk, and fallenness, 160-161
Immanence, 98; 107
"In," meaning of, 105, 106
Inauthenticity, of Dasein, 94
In-order-to, 116-119
Insideness (lnwendigkeit), 325
Inspection, of science and research,
22-23
Intentionality, 22; 24-25
Interpretation, 87; eksistential vs.
eksistentiell, 64; implies
presuppositions, 223
Intuition, phenomenological, 13;
hermeneutical, 13
Involvement (Bewandtnis), 270
Issue (Austrag, diaphora), 34
Kairos, Augenblick, critical

moment, 19
Kath-o, according as, 118
Keeping silent, as a mode oflogos, 158
Knowing, as a mode of Being-in-theworld, 168
Knowing subject, unexamined in
traditional epistemology, 107
Language, and speech, 156-159; as the
"enunciatedness" of logos, 156, 157;
as the language of Being, 162; as the
totality of all word-things, 157; as
the totality of meaning in which
INDEX
354
logos has a worldly Being of its
own, after it has been put into words,
162; contradiction in Heidegger's
conception of, 161-162; is ultimately
rooted in the essential openness of
Dasein's Being, 156; its essence is
the langnage ofBeing, 162; the
totality of meaning lies in Being
and Time still outside its domain,
162; various interpretations of, 158
Laws, in historiology, 305
Legein, to make manifest, 81
Legein (=apophainesthai) ta
phenomena, 83
Legein ta phenomena, 31
Letting-be, 127; 180-181
Letting-beings-be (Bewendenlassen),
135-136
Letting something be involved,
constituted in the unity of a
retention that awaits, 271; grounded
in the ekstatic unity of the makingpresent which awaits and retains,
272
Leveling-off, and world-time, 317

Life, in its here and now facticity, 13;
and Being-in-the-world, 13; and
eksistence, 13; and Dasein, 13
Life, zoe, is Da-sein in its world, 26
Limit-situation, 218
Listening to others, as a form of
attending, 158-159
Lived experiences, 13
Logic, and ontology, 21
Logos (Rede), 152-159; and makingpresent, 266; and to make manifest,
77; as apophansis, 153, has the
structural form of a synthesis, 8282; as articulatedness, 152; as
articulating discourse, 81-82; as
assertion, command, and wish,
157; as discourse (apophansis), 81;
as discursive and articulating, 156;
as discursive constitutes the
fundament of explanation and
enunciation, 156; as discursive is
the "signifying'' articulation of the
intelligibility of man's Being-in-
the-world, 157; as judgment, and

truth, 27; as the act ofletting be seen,
82; as the capacity of letting be seen
what understanding projects, 158;
as the process that makes explicitly
manifest, 152; attributes words to
significations, 156; expresses itself
for the most part in langnage, 266;
has many significations, 81; in the
strict sense is that which renders
spoken langnage possible, 152; is
speech, langnage, and discourse,
152; lets the total meaningfulness
come to word, 158; temporality of,
266
Lumen naturale, and Dasein, 146;
and eksistence, 179; as natural
light, 176
Making-present (gegenwrtigen),
237
Manipulability (Handlichkeit), 117
Mathematical physics, 282-283
Meaning, as content, relation, and
enactment (Gehaltssinn,
Bezugssinn, and Volzugssinn), 16,
24; as that in which the
intelligibility of something
maintains itself, 151; as the
intentional correlate of Dasein's
understanding, 152; definition of,
151-152; as what can be articulated
in and through logos, 156; is
articulated in explanation and
expressed in enunciation, 152-153
Meaningfulness (Bedeutsamkeit),
142
Metaphysics, laying the groundwork
of, 326; onto-theological structure of,
4
Method, as met-hodos, 16; and

temporality, 16; of fundamental
ontology, 67-90
Met-hodos, 16; and the enactment of
the event of meaning, 16; and
temporality, 16
Mineness, 93-94
Mnaomai, to remember, 18
INDEX
Modern science, essence of, 279-283
Mood, and ontological disposition,
146
Nature, as theme of a special
consideration (in physics), 115, 119;
different meanings of, 115;
discovered primordially in a piece
of work, 119; is historical, 300
Negativity, 16
Non-concealment, and hiddenness,
177
Nothing, 16-17
Nous, 27
Now, structure of, 315
Now-time, 315
Nullity, eksistential meaning of,
206-207
Objectivity, in historiology, 306
Obstinacy, 120
Obtrusiveness, 120; temporality of,
272-273
Oida, I know, 18
"One," 21. See "They"
On hei on, being as a being, 328
Ontic, vs. ontological, 23n, 96, 139
Ontologie, vs. ontic. 23, 96, 139
Ontological difference, 52, 104, 325332; as the difference between a
being and its Being, 49; and Kant's
distinction between the a priori and
the a posteriori, 49-50
Ontological disposition
(Befindlichkeit), 146-148; and
temporality, 261-264; as an implicit,
continuous "judgment" regarding
man's self-realization, 14 7;
constitutes the disclosedness ofthe
world, 148; depends concretely on
the modalities of the involvement,
147; informs man about his position
in the midst ofthe things in the
world, 147; makes man aware ofthe
fact that he is, that his Beingis
thrown, and that he has tobe, 147;
355
temporalizes itself primarily in
having-been, 262
Ontological interpretation, 30
Ontology, and fundamental ontology,
43; and logic, 21; and the preontological understanding of
Being, 330-332; as phenomenology,
43; as the attempt to think the
happening ofthe truth ofBeing, 8;
concerned with the Being question,
29; its phenomenological method is
both transeendental and
hermeneutic, 71; its subject matter
and its method are intimately
related, 71; method of, 43;
scientificity of, 43, 70, 71; task of,
330; to be prepared by a
fundamental ontology, 29
Open, of non-concealment, 177; and
world, 177-178
Openness, eksistence, and Being-inthe-world, 175; its three constitutive
components are understanding,
ontological disposition, and Iogos,
146; ofDasein, 145-146
Others, equiprimordially present to
Dasein as equipment, 138
Ousia (Seiendheit), Beingness, 34; as
that which is present, 178; essence,
16, 113, as presentness, 16
Pan, sum, 190

Past, authentic and inauthentic, 261;
as authentic, it is retrive, 261; as
inauthentic, it has the form of
having-been, 261
Perception, 108; as making
determinate, 275; is already
interpretation, 108
Phainesthai, to show oneself, 77
Phenomenological hermeneutics of
facticity, 24-28; begins
inauthentically, 25; implies
deconstructive regression, 25;
implies destruction of the tradition,
25-26; includes both logic and
ontology, 24-25
Phenomenological method, 6
356
Phenomenology, 7, 31; and the
analysis of the factical life
experience, 15; as Dasein's way of
access to the theme of ontology, 84;
as radical philosophical research,
24, is not just a propaedeutic
science, 24-25; as the method of
ontology, 70, 75-79, 76; as the method
of scientific philosophy, 44; as the
methodical mediation of the
immediacy ofthe truth ofthe
phenomena, 84; as the science of the
Being ofbeings, 86; as used in
fundamental ontology, is
inherently hermeneutic, 87;
definition of, 83; hermeneutic vs.
transcendental, 78; implies
destructive retrieve, 78; in Husserl,
67, and Heidegger's criticism of,
67-69; in Husserl and Heidegger,
78; may be called ontology, 86; must
thematize the temporal enactment
of the event of meaning that comesto-pass in each concrete experience
of Iife, 16; possible only as ontology,
85; preliminary conception of, 8386; scientificity of, 80-81; three
essential ideas of, 69; used in
fundamental ontology, is
interpretation, 87
Phenomenon, 15, 16, 79; and event,
16; and time, 16; in the ordinary
sense ofthe term, 80, 85; in the
phenomenological sense of the
term, 80, 85, 88; needs the mediation
by phenomenology, 85-86;
proximally something that lies
hidden, 83;
Philosophy, a supra-theoretical
science, 12; and criticism of its own
past, 74-75; and factical Iife
experience, 21-22, 23-24; and the
history ofphilosophy, 21-22, 51; and
theology, 21; as a science, 11; as a
system ofvalues, 11; as doctrine of
world views, 11; cannot deny its
presuppositions, it cannot simply
accept them either, 220; concerned
with the question concerning the
meaning of Being, 29; criticism of
its own past aims at critical
INDEX
adoption, not at a break or a
repudiation, 74; definition of, 23-24;
essence of, 11-13; method of, 44;
essentially different from the
methods of the formal and
empirical sciences, 45; scientificity
of, 327, 329; subject and method
intimately related, 44
Phrason hopos echei, to say how
things in fact are, 176
Phronesis, 27
Place, and equipment, 132; and space,
132-133
Possibilities, logical vs. eksistential,
148-149
Pragmata, 116
Praxis, 116
Preparatory analysis of Dasein's
mode of Being, 30; task of, 93-96
Pre-predicative experience, 172
Pre-questions (Vorfragen), 14
Presence-at-hand, 124; and
enunciation, 155; and scientific
thematization, 280; vs. readinessto-hand, 155
Present, as authentic it is the moment
of vision, 260; as inauthentic it is a
waiting-towards and a making
present, 260-261; as the possibilities
of the future opened up by what has
been, 243
Present-at-hand, 128-129; 169
Presentation, ofthing in judgment as
repraesentatio and as
appraesentatio, 175
Primordial praxis, 153-155
Primordial understanding
(Verstehen), 148-152
Problem of knowledge, in classical
metaphysics, 167-169
Problematic, categorial-ontological
vs. transcendental, 46
Properties, 126
Pros ti, to what end?, 118
Public time, 312-314
INDEX
Question, as a looking for, 55; may
Iead to investigation, 55; three
essential elements of, 55
Readiness-to-hand, 117-119; 124, 125
Ready-to-hand (zuhanden), 117-119,
129, 149, 169; and being destined for,
127; vs. present-at-hand, 155
Realism, 169
Reality, as the Being ofthe
innerworldly beings, 169; depends
on care, 170; objective vs. perceived,
281; refers to care, 170; sense of, 166169
Recepts (Rckgriffe), 13
Reduction, 68, 72n, 79
Reference, 122-125
Referring, vs. relating and
indicating, 122
Region (Gegend), 132-133; made
visible only in the deficient modes
of concern, 133; the .necessary
condition for the assignment of
places, 133
Regional ontologies, 58; and
fundamental ontology, 58-59
Remembering, 261
Remoteness, is not sheer distance, 134
Repetition (Wiederholung), 298; a
mode of resolve by which Dasein
eksists as fate, 299
Resolve (Entschlossenheit), 32, 201,
211-214; and anticipation, 215; and
anxiety and guilt, 216; and
authentic self, 212-213, authentic
mode implies guilt and death, 296;
and situation, 213; and truth and
untruth, 213; as Dasein's authentic
truth, 215-216; as the authenticity of
Dasein's care, 214; as the loyalty of
eksistence to its own self, 302;
brings Dasein before the
primordial truth of eksistence, 217;
discloses actual and factical
possibilities of authentic eksisting
in terms of Dasein's heritage, 296
Restlessness, and inauthenticity, 161
357
Reticence (Verschw'iegenheit), 203204
Retrieve (Wiederholung), 6, 32, 43,

251-252; and the unthought, 6; as the
achieving of Dasein's authentic
past, 236
Science, and basic crisis in the basic
concepts, 57-58; genesis of, 281-283
Self, 31-32; and historicity, 302; and
resolve, 230-231; as the coming-topass of transcendence, 184; as
transcendence, 230-232; authentic
and inauthentic, 183, 199, 202;
eksistential intepretation of, 235236; is authentic in the primordial
individuation of the silent resolve
which yields to anxiety, 236;
meaning of, 142-143; ontic
characteristics of, 225-226, 230;
Self-alienation, and falleness, 22-23
Selfhood, 143; and care, 225-238; to be
derived eksistentially from the
authenticity of Dasein's Being as
care, 235
Semblance, 79-80
Sentiment, 146
Serviceability, of equipment, 123-125
Serving-to, 116-118
Showing itself, may apply to Being
and to beings, 84-85
Sign, 122-125; reference structure of,
122-125; types of, 123
Signification, 156
Situation, and authenticity, 185; and
resolve, 213; and temporality, 17-18;
as openness, 17
Situating (Ausrichtung), as giving
directions, 134-135
Solicitude (Frsorge), 141-142; and
care, 165
Sophia, 27
Spannedness, of time, 316-317
Space, and Dasein's spatiality, 135;
empty, 133; geometric, 132; gets its
meaning from the places of the
beings of Dasein's concern, 133; it
358
is "in" the world, 136; neither
subjective nor objective, 136; of
everyday concern neither
homogeneous, nor isotropic, nor
isometric, 132; scientific conception
of, 137; tobe related to time and
Being, 137n
Spatiality, and scientific space, 135;
132-137; ofbeings within the world,
132-133; ofDasein, 133-137; of
Dasein, and temporality, 285
Spatialization, an eksistential of
Dasein, 136
Speech, and language, 156-159
Subject, concept of, 230; of classical
metaphysics is world-less, 168
Subject-object-opposition, 228; in
traditional metaphysics of
knowledge, 107; not a fundamental
datum, 109
Subject-object-relation, and factical
life experience, 14
Subject-predicate structure, 153-154
Suitability, 126
Synthesis, as letting something be
seen as something, 82-83, 84
Techne, 27
Technical vocabulary, derived from
Latin words, 34; Greek words, 34;
German words, 34-35
Temporal character (Zeithaftigkeit),
ofthe meaning ofBeing, 319
Temporality (Zeitlichkeit), 20, 21,
244; and histority, 289-297; and
time, 239-267; and within-timeness, 309-323; as authentic makes
possible authentic historicity, 298;
as the condition ofhistoricity, 73,
254; as the meaning of Dasein's
Being, 65, 73; as
the ontological meaning of care, 283;
as the primordial outside-of-itself,
238; as the principle of the division
of Dasein's modes of Being, 48;
constitutes the totality of the
structure of care, 238; ekstases of,
17; essentially ekstatic, 238; founds
INDEX
both authenticity and inauthenticity
as eksistentiell possibilities, 267;
has three ekstases, 238; lightsthe
"there" of Dasein, 269; makes the
unity of eksistence, facticity, and
falling possible, 238; of
circumspective concern, 270-273; of
Dasein and time as the horizon of
Being, 320; of disclosedness as
such, 258-267; of ontological
disposition, 261-264; of
understanding, 259-261;
temporalizes itself as a future
which is both present and havingbeen, 267; temporalizes itself in
every ekstasis as a whole, 267;
temporalizes itself primordially out
of the future, 238
Temporalness (Temporalitt), as the
horizon of Being, 320-321
Temporalization (Zeitigung), 244
Temporalize (zeitigen), 244
Temptation, and fallenness, 22-23
That-from-which, 118
That-in-virtue-of-which, 118
Thematization, 279-283; and
objectivation, 280,282; and
projection, 279-280; as a form of
making-present, 280, 283;
definition of, 279-281
Theoretical attitude, origin of, 274-279
Theoretical knowledge, a derivative
mode of Being-in-the-world, 115; a
derivative mode of Dasein's Being,
115; a form ofinterpretation, 275; a
founded mode of Being-in, 106-110,
and projection, 275; its subject is
also a Being-in-the-world, 280; not
a primary mode of Being of Dasein,
274, 276; temporal meaning ofits
origin from the praxis, 276
Theory, and praxis, 274-275
There is (Es gibt) Being, only as lang
as Dasein is, 170
They (das Man), 23, 143; 160; see also
One; and death, 194-196; and
inauthentic eksistence, 199; and
inauthenticity, 144; an eksistential
of Dasein's Being, 144; as nobody,
INDEX
144; is an impersonal subjeet, 143;
is souree of seeurity, tranquillity,
and guarantee, 143-144; it cultivates
averageness as the norm of
everything, 143
They-self, as the primordial mode of
Being ofDasein, 144; tobe
distinguished from Dasein's
authentie self, 144
Thing, and world, 118n;
innerworldly eharaeter of, 120;
revealed in three ways, 120-121;
thinghood of, 116
Thinghood of thing, vs. Being of
equipment, 116, 118
Thinker, vs. scientist, 51
Thrownness, 31, 32; a basie
eonstitutive of eare, 296
Time, as an endless succession of
"nows," 253, as now-time, 315; and
world-time, 315; as stream, 317,
irreversibility of, 317-318; as
temporalized by Dasein, 48; as the
horizon for all understanding of
Being, 65, 253; as the horizon of
Being, 320; as the how of Dasein's
own Being, 252; as the meaning of
the Beingof Dasein, 253; as the
measure of ehange, 244; as the
principle of individuation, 251; as
the transeendental horizon for the
question eoncerning the meaning
ofBeing, 104, 320; as the
transeendental horizon of Dasein's
comprehension of Being, 48; as the
temporalizing of temporality, 238;
as the ultimate meaning of
transeendenee, 31; elassical
theories of, 239-243, their eommon
eharaeteristies, 239-240; eonstitutes
the Beingof eare, 243; Dasein's
everyday concern with, 310-312;
everyday and seientifie eoneeption
of, 244; everyday understanding of,
65-66; historieal origin of
Heidegger's coneeption, 245-252;
infinity of "ordinary" time, 316317; inherently finite, 238; in the
sense of "Being in time," 66;
intrinsie limits of the eksistential-
359
ontologieal interpretation, 319-323;
is Dasein, 251; is not, 243; "is" only
as long as Dasein is, 244; its
ordinary everyday eoneeption has
its justifieation, 378; its plaee in
Being and Time, 252-258;
ontologieal understanding of, 6566; ordinary coneeption of defined,
314-315; origin of ordinary
eoneeption of, 309-323; philosophieal
understanding of, 66; spannedness
of, 316; the central problematie of
ontology, 66; the interpretation of
time as the horizon for the
understanding of Being, 30; three
ekstases of, 32
to ek tinos, that from whieh, 118
"To the things themselves," 76, 77, 83
Tool, see Equipment
Tradition, meaning of, 73; to be
examined critically, not to be
rejected, 71
Tranquillity (Beruhigung), 160
Transcendence, 31, 97-99; and
freedom, 232; and resolve, 232; and
temporality, 234-238; and the
ontologieal differenee, 330-331; and
the projeetion ofthe Beingof a
being, 329-330; as Dasein's Beingin-the-world, 99; as eksistenee in
its authentic mode as disclosedness
in resolve, 230-231; as the basic
eharacteristie of human Dasein, 97;
eannot be defined in terms of a
subjeet-object-relation, 98;
eonstitutes selfhood, 98; inherently
finite, 31; meaning of, 231-232; of
the world and temporality, 283-285
Transeendent, 97
Transeendental, 98-99
Transeendental ego, 226-228
Transeendental idealism, of
Husserl's phenomenology, 77
Transeendental imagination, 232233
Transeendental logie, 45; vs.

transeendental ontology, 48
Transeendental method, 45
INDEX
360
Transeendental ontology, 48
Transeendental philosophy, various
forms of, 46
Transeendental problematie, 46; and
the question of the meaning of
Being, 46-4 7
Transeendental reduetion, 6, 29
Transeendental subjeet, 6
Transeendental subjeetivity, 3, 30, 78
Transcendentalia, 49
True statement, eonfirmation of, 17 5176; Iets the thing be seen
(apophansis) in its uneoveredness,
176
Truth, 170-181; and eertainty, 196;
and evidenee, 195; and freedom,
178-179; and resolve, 213; as
diselosure, 3, as an eksistential of
Dasein's Being, 180; as the
eonformity between intelleet and
thing (adaequatio rei et intellectus),
171; as uneoveredness, 176; as
uneovering, 176; as unhiddenness,
81; eonstitutes Dasein as Dasein,
171; Husserl's eonception of, 172175; its essenee lies in freedom as
openness, 180; its nature to be
determined by ontology, 173;
logieal vs. ontologieal, 173; neither
judgment nor statement is its locus,
178, 181; ofthe judgment and the
uneoneealedness of beings and the
uneovering of Dasein, 180; ontie
and ontologie, 330-331; taken in its
essenee explains Dasein's mode of
Being, 171; the two basic theses of
elassieal metaphysies, 172; to be
defined as truth, 173; traditional
definition of, 171-175; untruth, and
error, 174
Truth of Being, as synthesis a priori,
83; as the transeendental synthesis
a priori, 84-85; as the universal
horizon of explanation, 89; as
transeendental a priori synthesis,
79; as universal eonstituting foree,
78
Turn, (Kehre), 8
Turn-signal, 123-124
Uneanniness (Unheimlichkeit), 203,

207
Uneoneealment (aletheia), 34
Uneoveredness (Entdecktheit), 176
Uneovering, a mode of Being for
Dasein as Being-in-the-world, 176
Understanding (Verstehen), 42;
brings to light man's Being-able-tobe, the world as a referential
totality, and what at first was
ready-to-hand in its servieeability,
usability, ete., 149; has the
eharaeter of an interpretive
eoneeption whieh is not explieitly
articulated, 149-150; has the
eksistential strueture of a "projeet,"
149; hermeneutie eharacter of, 44; is
inseparably eonneeted with
affeetive disposition, 149; it projects
both Dasein itself and world, 149; of
Being in elassieal metaphysies,
166-170; temporality of, 259-261
Universal, in historiology, 305-306
Unthought, 6; and retrieve, 6
Usability, ofequipment, 118-119
Waiting, for the Parousia, 19
Wakefulness, and that faetieal
experienee of life, 19
Wanting-to-have-a-eonscienee, 188,
201; and thinking about death, 219;
meaning of, 211
What-for, 126
What-it-is (Wassein, essential, 93
Wherein, 128
Whirl (Wirbel), alienation of, 161
"With"-like (mithaft), 141
Who, of Dasein in its everyday
coneern, 142-144
World, and things, 109; as a
eharacteristie of Dasein's own
mode of Being, 112; as eksistential
of Dasein's Being, 112; as the
building-strueture of Being, 323; as
the totality of all mutual refereneesystems, 129; as the totality of all
361
INDEX
mutual reference-systems within
which everything is capable of
appearing to man as Dasein, 110; as
total meaningfulness, 128; as
transcendent, 284; as Umwelt,
surrounding world in which we
find ourselves, Mitwelt, as the
world we share, and Selbstwelt,
each individual's own world, 14-15;
Being of, 127-129; co-constitutes the
unified structure of transcendence,
98; does not mean the totality of all
natural things, 103; historical
character of, 294-295; is there as
long as Dasein is there, 284; its
Being, 111-129; its structure is
determined by the total
meaningfulness, 284; meaning of,
229; meaning of in our Western
tradition, 99-103; ontic, ontological,
eksistentiell, and eksistential
meaning of, 114-115; ontological
conception of, 112; ontologicoeksistential meaning of, 113; taken
as total meaningfulness is
grounded in temporality, 283;
temporalized in temporality, 284;
the horizon of a present that
temporalizes itself
equiprimordially with those of the
future and the having-been, 284;
worldhood of, 128
World-conscience, 204
World-historical, 295, 300-301
World-history, 292
Worldhood, 111
World-time, and leveling-off, 317;
and public time, 313-314
Within-time-ness, and temporality,
309-323; and the genesis ofthe
ordinary conception of time, 314318; and time of everyday concern,
312-314; meaning of, 309, 312-314
Zoion logon echon, 26

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CURRENT CONTINENTAL RESEARCH 218

Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

Being and Time: Its Author and Its Origin

The Necessity, Structure, and Priority ofthe Question

The Twofold Task in Warking Out the Question of Being.

Division 1: The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein

On the Nature and Task of the Preparatory Analysis of

On the Being ofthe World

Spatiality and Space. Being-in-the-World as

"Being In" As Such. The Fundamental Structure of

Death, Conscience, and Resolve

Dasein's Authentie Potentiality for Being-A-Whole.

Temporality and Time

The Temporality ofBeing-in-the-World and the

VIII. Care and the Being ofDasein. Reality and Truth

Division II: Dasein and Temporality

XIII. Temporality and Historicity

XIV. Temporality and Within~time-ness as the Sources of

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

philosophy from that perspective. Some of them even include in this

implies a detailed analysis of the notions of world, freedom,

In writing this book I have sometimes made use of ideas which

1: Martin Heidegger. A Biographical Sketch

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

Friedrich Heidegger (1851-1914) and Johanna Kempf(1858-1927)

BEING AND TIME

Problem of Reality in Modern Philosophy."4 In this article Heidegger

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

and the works of Ravaisson.S Yet the influence of Carl Braig, a

BEING AND TIME

historico-critical study was the Grammatica Speculatiua which at

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

respect to this question Husserl informed Natorp that Heidegger had

BEING AND TIME

cooperated in several joint ventures. In the same year he also built

22Cf. Walter Biemel, "Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica Article and

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

BEING AND TIME

devoted foliower of Hitler, whereas others defend the position that he

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. The man lived under

BEING AND TIME

century. Several factors have played an important role in this

28Theodore J. Kisiel, "Heidegger's Early Lectures," pp. 28-29; "The Missing

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

him in this move.29 Genuine philosophy has nothing to da with world

BEING AND TIME

formulating 'recepts' (Rckgriffe) which root back in the

32For what follows here cf. Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger's 'Introduction to

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

BEING AND TIME

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

out and brought to completion (Vollzugssinn).3 8 In Heidegger's view

38Jbid., pp. 50-51; cf. Kisiel, "The MissingLink," pp. 21-22.

BEING AND TIME

temporal projectedness into the 'nothing' whence beings become

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

Heidegger's reflection on the Epistles of St. Paul he is concerned

BEING AND TIME

this experience possible? 2) If it is true that the Christian experience

HEIDEGGER'S BEING AND TIME

BEING AND TIME