Raffoul & Nelson (2013:3) – Seinsverständnis

A compreensão do ser não é uma propriedade dos humanos entre outras, mas é isso que define o ser humano. Eis porque tal compreensão não é uma determinação humana, mas uma característica do ser. O privilégio do Dasein   não é ôntico ou antropológico, mas acima de tudo ontológico: "Compreensão do ser é ela mesma uma determinação de ser do Dasein [Seinsverständnis   is selbst   eine Seinsbestimmtheit   des Daseins].

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In the lectures-courses of the mid-1920s and Being and Time  , Heidegger developed an “analytic of Dasein” in which Dasein (“being-there”) was defined as the site of an understanding of being (Seinsverständnis). This attention to the entity that we are led some — notably Husserl   — to accuse Heidegger of developing a philosophical anthropology and falling back into subjectivist metaphysics. Heidegger recognized this possibility when, evoking the interruption of the “path” opened by Sein   und Zeit  , he later admitted: “The reason for the disruption is that the attempt and the path it chose confront the danger of unwillingly becoming merely another entrenchment of subjectivity” (GA6T2  , 194/N3, 141). In the same passage, Heidegger explained that far from [2] subjectivism or anthropology, Being and Time was an ontological questioning of the human being, who was interrogated solely in terms of its being; that is to say, in terms of being itself. This interrogation occurs on the basis of the question concerning the truth of being itself, as “an attempt is made to determine the essence of the human being solely in terms of his relationship to Being (aus seinem Bezug   zum Sein). That essence was described in a firmly delineated sense as Da-sein” (ibid.). The term Dasein is hyphenated as Da-sein in order to stress this sheer relatedness to being.

The understanding of being is not   one property of humans among others, but it is that which defines the human being. This is why such understanding is not a “human” determination, but a characteristic of being. The “privilege” of Dasein is not ontic or anthropological, but ultimately ontological: “Understanding of being is itself a determination of being of Dasein [Seinsverständnis is selbst eine Seinsbestimmtheit des Daseins]. The ontic distinction of Dasein lies in the fact that it is ontological” (SZ, 12/BT, 11). Humans are thus made possible by the understanding of being and not the inverse: “Accordingly, the understanding of being is the ground of the possibility of the essence of the human being” (GA31  , 125/EHF, 87, modified). To this extent, the understanding of being is not posited by us, much less by consciousness or the subject, but is an event in which we find ourselves among and in the midst of other beings.