A PRIORI (SZ-EN)

In the question about the meaning of Being, what is primarily interrogated is those entities which have the character of Dasein  . The preparatory existential analytic of Dasein must, in accordance with its peculiar character, be expounded in outline, and distinguished from other kinds of investigation which seem to run parallel (Chapter 1). Adhering to the procedure which we have fixed upon for starting our investigation, we must lay bare a fundamental structure in Dasein: Being-in-the-world (Chapter 2). In the interpretation   of Dasein, this structure is something ‘a priori  ’; it is not   pieced together, but is primordially and constantly a whole. It affords us, however, various ways of looking at the items which are constitutive for it. The whole of this structure always comes first; but if we keep this constantly in view, these items, as phenomena, will be made to stand   out. And thus we shall have as objects for analysis: the world in its worldhood (Chapter 3), Being-in-the-world as Being-with and Being-one’s-Self (Chapter 4), and Being-in as such (Chapter 5). By analysis of this fundamental structure, the Being of Dasein can be indicated provisionally. Its existential meaning is care (Chapter 6). BTMR  : §8

Dasein’s average everydayness, however, is not to be taken as a mere ‘aspect’. Here too, and even in the mode of inauthenticity, the structure of existentiality lies a priori. And here too Dasein’s Being is an issue for it in a definite way; and Dasein comports itself towards it in the mode of average everydayness, even if this is only the mode of fleeing in the face of it and forgetfulness thereof. BTMR: §9

All explicata to which the analytic of Dasein gives rise are obtained by considering Dasein’s existence-structure. Because Dasein’s characters of Being are defined in terms of existentiality, we call them "existentialia". These are to be sharply distinguished from what we call "categories" – characteristics of Being for entities whose character is not that of Dasein. Here we are taking the expression "category" in its primary ontological signification, and abiding by it. In the ontology of the ancients, the entities we encounter within the world are taken as the basic examples for the interpretation of Being. noein   (or the logos  , as the case may be) is accepted as a way of access to them. Entities are encountered therein. But the Being of these entities must be something which can be grasped in a distinctive kind of legein (letting something be seen), so that this Being becomes intelligible in advance as that which it is – and as that which it is already in every entity. In any discussion (logos) of entities, we have previously addressed ourselves to Being; this addressing is kategoreisthai. This signifies, in the first instance, making a public accusation, taking someone to task for something in the presence of everyone. When used ontologically, this term means taking an entity to task, as it were, for whatever it is as an entity – that is to say, letting everyone see it in its Being. The kathegoriai are what is sighted and what is visible in such a seeing. They include the various ways in which the nature of those entities which can be addressed and discussed in a logos may be determined a priori. Existentialia and categories are the two basic possibilities for characters of Being. The entities which correspond to them require different kinds of primary interrogation respectively: any entity is either a "who" (existence) or a "what" (presence-at-hand   in the broadest sense). The connection between these two modes of the characters of Being cannot be handled until the horizon   for the question of Being has been clarified. BTMR: §9

In our introduction we have already intimated that in the existential analytic of Dasein we also make headway with a task which is hardly less pressing than that of the question of Being itself – the task of laying bare that a priori basis which must be visible before the question of ‘what man is’ can be discussed philosophically. The existential analytic of Dasein comes before any psychology or anthropology, and certainly before any biology. While these too are ways in which Dasein can be investigated, we can define the theme of our analytic with greater precision if we distinguish it from these. And at the same time the necessity of that analytic can thus be proved more incisively. BTMR: §9

But these are both ways in which Dasein’s Being takes on a definite character, and they must be seen and understood a priori as grounded upon that state of Being which we have called "Being-in-the-world’. An interpretation of this constitutive state is needed if we are to set up our analytic of Dasein correctly. BTMR: §12

Third, Being-in [In-sein  ] as such. We must set forth the ontological Constitution of inhood [Inheit  ] itself. (See the fifth chapter of this Division.). Emphasis upon any one of these constitutive items signifies that the others are emphasized along with it; this means that in any such case the whole phenomenon gets seen. Of course Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein which is necessary a priori, but it is far from sufficient for completely determining Dasein’s Being. Before making these three phenomena the themes for special analyses, we shall attempt by way of orientation to characterize the third of these factors. BTMR: §12

Nowadays there is much talk about ‘man’s having an environment [Umwelt  ]’; but this says nothing ontologically as long as this ‘having’ is left indefinite. In its very possibility this ‘having’ is founded upon the existential state of Being-in. Because Dasein is essentially an entity with Being-in, it can explicitly discover those entities which it encounters environmentally, it can know them, it can avail itself of them, it can have the ‘world’. To talk about ‘having an environment’ is ontically trivial, but ontologically it presents a problem. To solve it requires nothing else than defining the Being of Dasein, and doing so in a way which is ontologically adequate. Although this state of Being is one of which use has made in biology, especially since K. von Baer, one must not conclude that its philosophical use implies ‘biologism’. For the environment is a structure which even biology as a positive   science can never find and can never define, but must presuppose and constantly employ. Yet, even as an a priori condition for the objects which biology takes for its theme, this structure itself can be explained philosophically only if it has been conceived beforehand as a structure of Dasein. Only in terms of an orientation towards the ontological structure thus conceived can ‘life’ as a state of Being be defined a priori, and this must be done in a privative manner. Ontically as well as ontologically, the priority belongs to Being-in-the world as concern. In the analytic of Dasein this structure undergoes a basic Interpretation. BTMR: §12

4. Finally, "world" designates the ontologico-existential concept of worldhood. Worldhood itself may have as its modes whatever structural wholes any special ‘worlds’ may have at the time; but it embraces in itself the a priori character of worldhood in general. We shall reserve the expression "world" as a term for our third signification. If we should sometimes use it in the first of these senses, we shall mark this with single quotation marks. BTMR: §14

Ontically, "letting something be involved" signifies that within our factical concern we let something ready-to-hand be so-and-so as it is already and in order that it be such. The way we take this ontical sense of ‘letting be’ is, in principle, ontological. And therewith we Interpret the meaning of previously freeing what is proximally ready-to-hand within-the-world. Previously letting something ‘be’ does not mean that we must first bring it into its Being and produce it; it means rather that something which is already an ‘entity’ must be discovered in its readiness-to-hand, and that we must thus let the entity which has this Being be encountered. This ‘a priori’ letting-something-be-involved is the condition for the possibility of encountering anything ready-to-hand, so that Dasein, in its ontical dealings with the entity thus encountered, can thereby let it be involved in the ontical sense. On the other hand, if letting something be involved is understood ontologically, what is then pertinent is the freeing of everything ready-to-hand as ready-to-hand, no matter whether, taken ontically, it is involved thereby, or whether it is rather an entity of precisely such a sort that ontically it is not involved thereby. Such entities are, proximally and for the most part, those with which we concern ourselves when we do not let them ‘be’ as we have discovered that they are, but work upon them, make improvements in them, or smash them to pieces. BTMR: §18

When we speak of having already let something be involved, so that it has been freed for that involvement, we are using a perfect tense a priori which characterizes the kind of Being belonging to Dasein itself. Letting an entity be involved, if we understand this ontologically, consists in previously freeing it for [auf  ] its readiness-to-hand within the environment. BTMR: §18

But if we recall that spatiality is manifestly one of the constituents of entities within-the-world, then in the end the Cartesian analysis of the ‘world’ can still be ‘rescued’. When Descartes   was so radical as to set up the extensio as the praesuppositum for every definite characteristic of the res corporea, he prepared the way for the understanding of something a priori whose content Kant   was to establish with greater penetration. Within certain limits the analysis of the extensio remains independent of his neglecting to provide an explicit interpretation for the Being of extended entities. There is some phenomenal justification for regarding the extensio as a basic characteristic of the ‘world’, even if by recourse to this neither the spatiality of the world nor that of the entities we encounter in our environment (a spatiality which is proximally discovered) nor even that of Dasein itself, can be conceived ontologically. BTMR: §21

Suppose I step into a room which is familiar to me but dark, and which has been rearranged [umgeräumt] during my absence so that everything which used to be at my right is now at my left. If I am to orient   myself the ‘mere feeling of the difference’ between my two sides will be of no help at all as long as I fail to apprehend some definite object ‘whose position’, as Kant remarks casually, ‘I have in mind’. But what does this signify except that whenever this happens I necessarily orient myself both in and from my being already alongside a world which is ‘familiar’? The equipment-context of a world must have been presented to Dasein. That I am already in a world is no less constitutive for the possibility of orientation than is the feeling for right and left. While this state of Dasein’s Being is an obvious one, we are not thereby justified in suppressing the ontologically constitutive role which it plays. Even Kant does not suppress it, any more than any other Interpretation of Dasein. Yet the fact that this is a state of which we constantly make use, does not exempt us from providing a suitable ontological explication, but rather demands one. The psychological Interpretation according to which the "I" has something ‘in the memory’ ["im Gedächtnis  "] is at bottom a way of alluding to the existentially constitutive state of Being-in-the-world. Since Kant fails to see this structure, he also fails to recognize all the interconnections which the Constitution of any possible orientation implies. Directedness with regard to right and left is based upon the essential directionality of Dasein in general, and this directionality in turn is essentially co-determined by Being-in-the-world. Even Kant, of course, has not taken orientation as a theme for Interpretation. He merely wants to show that every orientation requires a ‘subjective principle’. Here ‘subjective’ is meant to signify that this principle is a priori. Nevertheless, the a priori character of directedness with regard to right and left is based upon the ‘subjective’ a priori of Being-in-the-world, which has nothing to do with any determinate character restricted beforehand to a worldless subject. BTMR: §23

Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Space is rather ‘in’ the world in so far as space has been disclosed by that Being-in-the-world which is constitutive for Dasein. Space is not to be found in the subject, nor does the subject observe the world ‘as if’ that world were in a space; but the ‘subject’ (Dasein), if well understood ontologically, is spatial. And because Dasein is spatial in the way we have described, space shows itself as a priori. This term does not mean anything like previously belonging to a subject which is proximally still worldless and which emits a space out of itself. Here "apriority" means the previousness with which space has been encountered (as a region) whenever the ready-to-hand is encountered environmentally. BTMR: §24

In this context of an existential analytic of factical Dasein, the question arises whether giving the "I" in the way we have mentioned discloses Dasein in its everydayness, if it discloses Dasein at all. Is it then obvious a priori that access to Dasein must be gained only by mere reflective awareness of the "I" of actions? What if this kind of ‘giving-itself’ on the part of Dasein should lead our existential analytic astray and do so, indeed, in a manner grounded in the Being of Dasein itself? Perhaps when Dasein addresses itself in the way which is closest to itself; it always says "I am this entity", and in the long run says this loudest when it is ‘not’ this entity. Dasein is in each case mine, and this is its constitution; but what if this should be the very reason why, proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself? What if the aforementioned approach, starting with the givenness of the "I" to Dasein itself; and with a rather patent self-interpretation of Dasein, should lead the existential analytic, as it were, into a pitfall? If that which is accessible by mere "giving" can be determined, there is presumably an ontological horizon for determining it; but what if this horizon should remain in principle undetermined? It may well be that it is always ontically correct to say of this entity that ‘I’ am it. Yet the ontological analytic which makes use of such assertions must make certain reservations about them in principle. The word ‘I’ is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal   indicator, indicating something which may perhaps reveal itself as its ‘opposite’ in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the ‘not-I’ is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks ‘I-hood’ ["Ichheit  "], but is rather a definite kind of Being which the ‘I’ itself possesses, such as having lost itself [Selbstverlorenheit  ]. BTMR: §25

But what more is there to point out in Being-in-the-world, beyond the essential relations of Being alongside the world (concern), Being-with (solicitude), and Being-one’s-Self ("who")? If need be, there still remains the possibility of broadening out the analysis by characterizing comparatively the variations of concern and its circumspection, of solicitude and the considerateness which goes with it; there is also the possibility of contrasting Dasein with entities whose character is not that of Dasein by a more precise explication of the Being of all possible entities within-the-world. Without question, there are unfinished tasks still lying in this field. What we have hitherto set forth needs to be rounded out in many ways by working out fully the existential a priori of philosophical anthropology and taking a look at it. But this is not the aim of our investigation. Its aim is one of fundamental ontology. Consequently, if we inquire about Being-in as our theme, we cannot indeed consent to nullify the primordial character of this phenomenon by deriving it from others – that is to say, by an inappropriate analysis, in the sense of a dissolving or breaking up. But the fact that something primordial is underivable does not rule out the possibility that a multiplicity of characteristics of Being may be constitutive for it. If these show themselves, then existentially they are equiprimordial. The phenomenon of the equiprimordiality of constitutive items has often been disregarded in ontology, because of a methodologically unrestrained tendency to derive everything and anything from some simple ‘primal ground’. BTMR: §28

That which is understood gets Articulated when the entity to be understood is brought close interpretatively by taking as our clue the ‘something as something’; and this Articulation lies before [liegt vor] our making any thematic assertion about it. In such an assertion the ‘as’ does not turn up for the first time; it just gets expressed for the first time, and this is possible only in that it lies before us as something expressible. The fact that when we look at something, the explicitness of assertion can be absent, does not justify our denying that there is any Articulative interpretation in such mere seeing, and hence that there is any as-structure in it. When we have to do with anything, the mere seeing of the Things which are closest to us bears in itself the structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that just to grasp something free, as it were, of the "as", requires a certain readjustment. When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more. This grasping which is free of the "as", is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands. It is not more primordial than that kind of seeing, but is derived from it. If the ‘as’ is ontically unexpressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori. BTMR: §32

How are we to conceive the character of this ‘fore’? Have we done so if we say formally that this is something ‘a priori’? Why does understanding, which we have designated as a fundamental exisientiale of Dasein, have this structure as its own? Anything interpreted, as something interpreted, has the ‘as’-structure as its own; and how is this related to the ‘fore’ structure? The phenomenon of the ‘as’-structure is manifestly not to be dissolved or broken up ‘into pieces’. But is a primordial analytic for it thus ruled out? Are we to concede that such phenomena are ‘ultimates’? Then there would still remain the question, "why?" Or do the fore-structure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation show an existential-ontological connection with the phenomenon of projection? And does this phenomenon point back to a primordial state of Dasein’s Being? BTMR: §32

As the disclosedness of the "there", understanding always pertains to the whole of Being-in-the-world. In every understanding of the world, existence is understood with it, and vice versa. All interpretation, moreover, operates in the fore-structure, which we have already characterized. Any interpretation which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what is to be interpreted. This is a fact that has always been remarked, even if only in the area of derivative ways of understanding and interpretation, such as philological Interpretation. The latter belongs within the range of scientific knowledge. Such knowledge demands the rigour of a demonstration to provide grounds for it. In a scientific proof, we may not presuppose what it is our task to provide grounds for. But if interpretation must in any case already operate in that which is understood, and if it must draw its nurture from this, how is it to bring any scientific results to maturity without moving in a circle, especially if, moreover, the understanding which is presupposed still operates within our common information   about man and the world? Yet according to the most elementary rules of logic, this circle is a circulus vitiosus. If that be so, however, the business of historiological interpretation is excluded a priori from the domain of rigorous knowledge. In so far as the Fact of this circle in understanding is not eliminated, historiology must then be resigned to less rigorous possibilities of knowing. Historiology is permitted to compensate for this defect to some extent through the ‘spiritual signification’ of its ‘objects’. But even in the opinion   of the historian himself, it would admittedly be more ideal   if the circle could be avoided and if there remained the hope of creating some time a historiology which would be as independent of the standpoint of the observer as our knowledge of Nature is supposed to be. BTMR: §32

Because discourse is constitutive for the Being of the "there" (that is, for states-of-mind and understanding), while "Dasein" means Being-in-the-world, Dasein as discursive Being-in, has already expressed itself. Dasein has language. Among the Greeks, their everyday existing was largely diverted into talking with one another, but at the same time they ‘had eyes’ to see. Is it an accident that in both their pre-philosophical and their philosophical ways of interpreting Dasein, they defined the essence of man as zoon logon echon   The later way of interpreting this definition   of man in the sense of the animal rationale, ‘something living which has reason’, is not indeed ‘false’, but it covers up the phenomenal basis for this definition of "Dasein". Man shows himself as the entity which talks. This does not signify that the possibility of vocal utterance is peculiar to him, but rather that he is the entity which is such as to discover the world and Dasein itself. The Greeks had no word for "language"; they understood this phenomenon ‘in the first instance’ as discourse. But because the logos came into their philosophical ken primarily as assertion, this was the kind of logos which they took as their clue for working out the basic structures of the forms of discourse and its components. Grammar sought its foundations in the ‘logic’ of this logos. But this logic was based upon the ontology of the present-at-hand. The basic stock of ‘categories of signification’, which passed over into the subsequent science of language, and which in principle is still accepted as the standard today, is oriented towards discourse as assertion. But if on the contrary we take this phenomenon to have in principle the primordiality and breadth of an existentiale, then there emerges the necessity of re-establishing the science of language on foundations which are ontologically more primordial. The task of liberating grammar from logic requires beforehand a positive understanding of the basic a priori structure of discourse in general as an existentiale. BTMR: §34

The analytic of Dasein, which is proceeding towards the phenomenon of care, is to prepare the way for the problematic of fundamental ontology – the question of the meaning of Being in general. In order that we may turn our glance explicitly upon this in the light of what we have gained, and go beyond the special task of an existentially a priori anthropology, we must look back and get a more penetrating grasp of the phenomena which are most intimately connected with our leading question – the question of Being. These phenomena are those very ways of Being which we have been hitherto explaining: readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, as attributes of entities within-the-world whose character is not that of Dasein. Because the ontological problematic of Being has heretofore been understood primarily in the sense of presence-at-hand (‘Reality’, ‘world-actuality’), while the nature of Dasein’s Being has remained ontologically undetermined, we need to discuss the ontological interconnections of care, worldhood, readiness-to-hand, and presence-at-hand (Reality). This will lead to a more precise characterization of the concept of Reality in the context of a discussion of the epistemological questions oriented by this idea   which have been raised in realism and idealism. BTMR: §39

Care, as a primordial structural totality, lies ‘before’ ["vor"] every factical ‘attitude’ and ‘situation  ’ of Dasein, and it does so existentially a priori; this means that it always lies in them. So this phenomenon by no means expresses a priority of the ‘practical’ attitude over the theoretical. When we ascertain something present-at-hand by merely beholding it, this activity has the character of care just as much as does a ‘political action’ or taking a rest and enjoying oneself. ‘Theory’ and ‘practice’ are possibilities of Being for an entity whose Being must be defined as "care". BTMR: §41

Even if one should invoke the doctrine that the subject must presuppose and indeed always does unconsciously presuppose the presence-at-hand of the ‘external world’, one would still be starting with the construct of an isolated subject. The phenomenon of Being-in-the-world is something that one would no more meet in this way than one would by demonstrating that the physical and the psychical are present-at-hand together. With such presuppositions, Dasein always comes ‘too late’; for in so far as it does this presupposing as an entity (and otherwise this would be impossible), it is, as an entity, already in a world. ‘Earlier’ than any presupposition which Dasein makes, or any of its ways of behaving, is the ‘a priori’ character of its state of Being as one whose kind of Being is care. BTMR: §43

Thus with the question of the Being of truth and the necessity of presupposing it, just as with the question of the essence of knowledge, an ‘ideal subject’ has generally been posited. The motive for this, whether explicit or tacit, lies in the requirement that philosophy should have the ‘a priori’ as its theme, rather than ‘empirical facts’ as such. There is some justification for this requirement, though it still needs to be grounded ontologically. Yet is this requirement satisfied by positing an ‘ideal subject’? Is not such a subject a fanciful idealization? With such a conception have we not missed precisely the a priori character of that merely ‘factual’ subject, Dasein? Is it not an attribute of the a priori character of the factical subject (that is, an attribute of Dasein’s facticity) that it is in the truth and in untruth equiprimordially? BTMR: §44

The ideas of a ‘pure "I" ’and of a ‘consciousness in general’ are so far from including the a priori character of ‘actual’ subjectivity that the ontological characters of Dasein’s facticity and its state of Being are either passed over or not seen at all. Rejection of a ‘consciousness in general’ does not signify that the a priori is negated, any more than the positing of an idealized subject guarantees that Dasein has an a priori character grounded upon fact. BTMR: §44

For Kant, however, these representations are the ‘empirical’, which is ‘accompanied’ by the "I" – the appearances to which the "I" ‘clings’. Kant nowhere shows the kind of Being of this ‘clinging’ and ‘accompanying’. At bottom, however, their kind of Being is understood as the constant Being-present-at-hand of the "I" along with its representations. Kant has indeed avoided cutting the "I" adrift from thinking; but he has done so without starting with the ‘I think’ itself in its full essential content as an ‘I think something’, and above all, without seeing what is ontologically ‘presupposed’ in taking the ‘I think something’ as a basic characteristic of the Self. For even the ‘I think something’ is not definite enough ontologically as a starting-point, because the ‘something’ remains indefinite. If by this "something" we understand an entity within-the-world, then it tacitly implies that the world has been presupposed; and this very phenomenon of the world co-determines the state of Being of the "I", if indeed it is to be possible for the "I" to be something like an ‘I think something’. In saying "I", I have in view the entity which in each case I am as an ‘I-am-in-a-world’. Kant did not see the phenomenon of the world, and was consistent enough to keep the ‘representations’ apart from the a priori content of the ‘I think’. But as a consequence the "I" was again forced back to an isolated subject, accompanying representations in a way which is ontologically quite indefinite. BTMR: §64

The temptation to overlook the finitude of the primordial and authentic future and therefore the finitude of temporality, or alternatively, to hold ‘a priori’ that such finitude is impossible, arises from the way in which the ordinary understanding of time is constantly thrusting itself to the fore. If the ordinary understanding is right in knowing a time which is endless, and in knowing only this, it has not yet been demonstrated that it also understands this time and its ‘infinity’. What does it mean to say, ‘Time goes on’ or ‘Time keep passing away?’ What is the signification of ‘in time’ in general, and of the expressions ‘in the future’ and ‘out of the future’ in particular? In what sense is ‘time’ endless? Such points need to be cleared up, if the ordinary objections to the finitude of primordial time are not to remain groundless. But we can clear them up effectively only if we have obtained an appropriate way of formulating the question as regards finitude and in-finitude. Such a formulation, however, arises only if we view the primordial phenomenon of time understandingly. The problem is not one of how the ‘derived’ ["abgeleitete"] infinite time, ‘in which the ready-to-hand arises and passes away, becomes primordial finite temporality; the problem is rather that of how inauthentic temporality arises out of finite authentic temporality, and how inauthentic temporality, as inauthentic, temporalizes an in-finite time out of the finite. Only because primordial time is finite can the ‘derived’ time temporalize itself as infinite. In the order in which we get things into our grasp through the understanding, the finitude of time does not become fully visible until we have exhibited ‘endless time’ so that these may be contrasted. BTMR: §65