being-with-one-another

Being-with signifies a character of being of Dasein   as such which is co-original with being-in-the-world. And it is the formal   condition of possibility of the co-disclosure of the Dasein of others for the Dasein which is in each instance one’s own. This character of being-with defines the Dasein even when another Dasein is in fact not   being addressed and cannot be perceived as on hand  . Even Dasein’s being-alone is a being-with in the world. Being-alone is only a deficiency of being-with—the other is absent—which points directly to the positive   character of being-with. The other is absent: this means that the constitution of the being of Dasein as being-with does not come to its factual fulfillment. The other can be absent only insofar as my Dasein is itself being-with. The absence of the other is a modification of the being of my very Dasein and as such is a positive mode of my being; only as being-with can Dasein be alone. On the other hand, Dasein’s being-alone is not eliminated by having a second specimen of the species man stand   next to him, or perhaps ten others. Even when ten or more are on hand, Dasein can be alone, inasmuch as BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is not based upon having similar specimens of subject-things on hand together. Just as Dasein is far from being first only a worldless subject and an ‘interior’ to which the world is added, so is it far from becoming being-with because an other turns up in fact. GA20EN   §26

Furthermore, what is procured in everyday concern can be present in care such that it appears as something which is intended to be of use to others, excite them, get the better of them, which stands in some sort of relation to the others, mostly without explicit awareness of it. The others are there with us everywhere in what we are preoccupied with and directly in the world-things themselves, specifically those others whom one is with everyday. Even in absorption in the world, Dasein does not disavow itself as being-with, as which my being-with with others and the co-Dasein of others with me can be grasped. This BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is not an additive result of the occurrence of several such others, not an epiphenomenon of a multiplicity of Daseins, something supplementary which might come about only on the strength of a certain number. On the contrary, it is because Dasein as being-in-the-world is of itself being-with that there is something like a BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. This being of others, who are encountered along with environmental things, is for all that not a being handy and on hand, which belongs to the environmental things, but a co-Dasein. This demonstrates that even in a worldly encounter, the Dasein encountered does not become a thing but retains its Dasein-character and is still encountered by way of the world. In comparison to what was said earlier, a discordant note is heard here. We have here a worldly encounter of something whose mode of being can be taken neither as being handy nor as being on hand. This indicates that the structure of worldhood is more than what the previous analysis yielded. This structure involves not only the appresentation of environmental things. A world can also appresent Dasein, that of others as well as my own. GA20EN §26

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

The strangest man whom we encounter is with me in my world and is experienced as such in avoiding and passing each other by. A stone or a brick which falls from the roof strictly speaking does not move past a window. The latter way of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, an everyday way which is far-reaching, that of having nothing to do with one another, is not nothing, but rather a specific modification, a privation of being-with as being-dependent-upon-one-another. It is only insofar as Dasein as being-in-the-world has the basic constitution of being-with that there is a being-for and —against and —without-one-another right to the indifferent walking-alongside-one-another. GA20EN §26

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

BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, which combines the structure of being of my own temporally particular Dasein as being-with and the mode of being of others as co-Dasein, must be understood in terms of this basic constitution of being-in-the-world. Here it should be noted that the closest kind of encounter with another lies in the direction of the very world in which concern is absorbed. Our procedure is therefore not to lay down some concept of man and then maintain, since man presumably has to be a ‘social being,’ that the structure of being-with belongs to Dasein. Instead, from the phenomenal state of the everydayness of Dasein itself it becomes evident that not only the others but remarkably ‘one oneself’ is there in what one attends to everyday. GA20EN §26

This BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is now determined by all the characters which we pointed to earlier in relation to in-being. That is, even the most indifferent BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER along the lines of directedness toward one another (for example, in spatial orientation), even this is understandable only if BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER means BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in a world. This is the basis upon which this BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, which can be indifferent and unconscious to the individual, can develop the various possibilities of community as well as of society. Naturally these higher structures and the ways they are founded cannot be pursued in greater detail here. GA20EN §26

Being-with as a basic constitution of Dasein first has to be understood wholly within its mode of being of everydayness. We have thus characterized the world as defined by the structure of meaningfulness. This means that the world can always be understood by the Dasein which is in it in very different degrees of expressness and definiteness. For since being-in-the-world is itself understanding, and understanding is not a kind of knowledge but a primary kind of being of being-in-the-world itself, and BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is conceived as an original constitution of Dasein, it follows that the latter is eo ipso an understanding of one another. Such an understanding operates in a milieu   of changing familiarity and understandability. Even a savage transplanted among us exercises his understanding in this world, even though it can be utterly strange to him in its detail. GA20EN §26

It also becomes clear, already from the way in which everyone encounters himself by way of the world, that the experience of alien ‘psychic life’ as well as my own does not first need a reflection on lived experience, taken in the traditional sense, in order to apprehend my own Dasein. Likewise, I do not understand the other in this artificial way, such that I would have to feel my way into another subject. I understand him from the world in which he is with me, a world which is discovered and understandable through the regard in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. It is because understanding is drawn from the world that there is the possibility of understanding an alien world or a world mediated by sources, monuments, and ruins. For then I no longer have the persons with whom I am supposed to empathize, but only the remnants of their world. It is in this comprehensibility of a world that incomprehensibility and distance is first of all possible. GA20EN §26

The rejection of this pseudo  -problem of empathy—how does an initially isolated subject reach another?—by no means implies that BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER and its comprehensibility does not stand in need of phenomenal clarification. It only claims that the question of co-Dasein must be understood as a question of Dasein itself. This “ontically existentiell” originality is not ontologically obvious. It does not eliminate the ontological problem of empathy. GA20EN §26

The structure of Dasein must now be displayed in terms of how such a BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER determined by the world and the common understanding given with it are constituted in Dasein. The question is, who is it really who first of all understands himself in such a BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER? How is such an understanding itself to be interpreted as a kind of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in terms of the constitution of the being of Dasein? Upon this basis we can then ask a further question. But this question is not how understanding in general comes about but how the mutual understanding, which is always already included with Dasein by virtue of its possibilities of being, can be obstructed and misled; how is it that Dasein does not come to a genuine understanding precisely because there is always already an understanding of one another? Instead, this latter understanding is always held   down to a distinctive average mode of being of Dasein itself. GA20EN §26

Thus the exposition of this new character of in-being—being-with—specifically in its mode of being drawn from the world, also presses toward the question from which we started: Who is this Dasein in its everydayness? We must not succumb to the deception that when we say, “Dasein is in each instance mine”—the being which I myself am—, the answer to the question of the who of Dasein in its everydayness is also already given. Precisely because the Who asks about the who of its being, it codetermines itself with regard to the being of the Dasein which in its manner of being is in each instance what it is. This phenomenological explication takes the Dasein in its mode of being of everydayness, in concerned absorption with one another in the world. Dasein as being-with is this BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. The who of the being of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER therefore receives its answer from this BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. The who of everydayness is the ‘Anyone’ [das ‘Man’]. GA20EN §26

One’s own concern—Dasein as being-with—has placed the others in its care in this way [in its concern over being apart]. To put it more adequately, Dasein as being-with is lived by the co-Dasein of others and the world which concerns it in this or that way. Right in its own-most everyday pursuits, Dasein as being with the others is not itself. Instead, it is the others who live one’s own Dasein. These others moreover do not have to be definite others. Any other can represent them. It really does not matter who it is at the time. What matters is only the others to whom one’s own Dasein itself belongs. These others, to whom one oneself belongs and who one is in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, constitute the ‘subject,’ so to speak, which in its constant presence pursues and manages every everyday concern. GA20EN §26

Now insofar as Dasein in its concern for its world is being-with and as such is absorbed with the others in the world, this common world is at the same time the world which each one of us has placed in his care as a public environment which one puts to use and takes into account and moves about in. Here we move with others in modes of being which every other is just as I am, where every distinction in occupation and profession collapses. The BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER dissolves one’s own Dasein totally into the mode of being of the others. The Dasein allows itself to be carried along by others in such a way that the others in their distinctiveness vanish even more. In the sphere of its possibilities of being, each is totally the other. It is here that the peculiar ‘subject’ of everydayness—the Anyone—first has its total domination. The public BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is lived totally from this Anyone. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as one takes pleasure and we read and judge about literature as one judges, we hear music as one hears music, we speak about something as one speaks. GA20EN §26

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

There is an existential interrelation among the phenomena of apartness, averageness, and levelling. The Anyone as that which forms everyday BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in these ways of its being constitutes what we call the public in the strict sense of the word. It implies that the world is always already primarily given as the common world. It is not the case that on the one hand there are first individual subjects which at any given time have their own world; and that the task would then arise of putting together, by virtue of some sort of an arrangement, the various particular worlds of the individuals and of agreeing how one would have a common world. This is how philosophers imagine these things when they ask about the constitution of the intersubjective world. We say instead that the first thing that is given is the common world—the Anyone—, the world in which Dasein is absorbed such that it has not yet come to itself, just as it can constantly be this way without having to come to itself. GA20EN §26

Thus, this further constitutive state of the being of the Anyone shows itself in the public, namely, that it always unburdens a person’s own Dasein. Insofar as there is in Dasein the tendency to take and do things lightly, this unburdening of being which Dasein cultivates as being-with obligingly accommodates it. In thus accommodating Dasein with this unburdening of its being, the public maintains a stubborn dominion. Everyone is the other and no one is himself. The Anyone, which answers the question of the who of everyday Dasein, is the Nobody, to whom every Dasein has of itself already surrendered itself in the public BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. GA20EN §26

Even when we ask about the who, the drift of ordinary language already brings with it the ready implication that we are asking about an entity on hand as a setting, so to speak, in which Dasein takes place. This makes it all the more urgent to revert to phenomenological research: Before words, before expressions, always the phenomena first, and then the concepts! On the basis of the phenomenological finding of the Anyone, we must now maintain our orientation toward the authenticity of Dasein, toward the self which Dasein can be, such that it does not really extricate itself from this BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER but, while this remains constitutive in it as being-with, it is still itself. GA20EN §26

This peculiar mode of being, which characterizes everydayness in the Anyone as concerned absorption with one another in the world, now also brings with it an everyday kind of self-interpretation of Dasein. Since Dasein encounters itself primarily in the world, and the public itself defines the goals and views of Dasein in terms of the world of common concern, all the fundamental concepts and expressions which Dasein first forms for itself will also probably be obtained with an eye to the world in which it is absorbed. This state of affairs, which can be very clearly shown in the history of language, nonetheless does not mean, as has been thought, that languages are first oriented only toward material things and that the so-called ‘primitive’ languages hardly get beyond the view of material thinghood. This is a total confusion of the interpretation of speaking and self-interpretation. As we have yet to see, language and speech themselves belong to Dasein as being-in-the-world and BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. And we shall see how on this basis certain self-interpretations of Dasein, certain concepts which Dasein forms of itself, are necessarily prefigured, without being able to say that these concepts are primitive. When these phenomenal structures of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in the Anyone and of absorption in the world are kept in mind, then there is no longer anything puzzling in the fact that Dasein, insofar as it explicitly refers to itself and articulates itself, employs characteristic meanings and interpretive senses. GA20EN §26

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

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

The understandability of Dasein and of co-Dasein as well as non-understanding themselves always vary in direct relation to the understanding of the world, and conversely. The discoveredness of Dasein and of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER at a particular time modifies the understanding of the world. In other words, understanding as a whole always is what it is in terms of the being of the discoveredness of Dasein. This is the basis of what, viewed from the outside, is called the circle in understanding. We find a circle in understanding only if we do not see that an understanding of world, Dasein, and co-Dasein belongs to every understanding as such. It is therefore neither an accident nor a mere inconvenience when it is said, in reference to certain tasks of understanding in the historical disciplines, “It unfortunately depends upon the personal standpoint of the historian. We have to put up with it, but the ideal   would be to be free of this subjectivity.” Such a view is absurd. The ideal is precisely that the understanding Dasein does belong to the understanding of itself. And the consequence is not to feel sorry about it but to see a task there. The task is to bring Dasein itself into the kind of understanding which pertains to its being at the time so that it can have access as understanding to the matter to be understood. GA20EN §28

All discourse, in saying something about something, which it does first of all wholly in the course of concerned preoccupation and being with one another, is, as a mode of the being of Dasein, essentially being-with. In other words, the very sense of any discourse is discourse to others and with others. It therefore makes no difference for the essential structure of discourse whether a fixed address directed to a specific other is of current interest or not. Discourse as a mode of being of Dasein qua being-with is essentially communication, so that in every discourse that about which it is, is shared with the other through what is said, through the said as such. Communication accordingly means the enabling of the appropriation of that about which the discourse is, that is, making it possible to come into a relationship of preoccupation and being to that of which the discourse is. Discourse as communication brings about an appropriation of the world in which one always already is in being with one another. The understanding of communication is the participation in what is manifest. All subsequent understanding and co-understanding is as being-with a taking part. Communication must be understood in terms of the structure of Dasein as being with the other. It is not a matter of transporting information   and experiences from the interior of one subject to the interior of the other one. It is rather a matter of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER becoming manifest in the world, specifically by way of the discovered world, which itself becomes manifest in speaking with one another. Speaking with one another about something is not an exchange of experiences back and forth between subjects, but a situation   where the BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is intimately involved in the subject matter under discussion. And it is only by way of this subject matter, in the particular context of always already being-with in the world, that mutual understanding develops. GA20EN §28

Discoursing now has an emphatic function in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER as the possibility of talking something through. As such a possibility, it easily takes the form of a dispute, a theoretical disputation. Discourse and logos for the Greeks thus assume the function of theoretical discussion. The logos accordingly gets the sense of exhibiting what is talked over in its whence and what about. The exhibition of the entity in its reasons, what is said, what is exhibited in discourse, the legomenon as logos, is then the ground or reason, what is apprehended in understanding comprehension, the rational. Only in this derivative way does logos get the sense of reason, just as ratio—the medieval term for logos—has the sense of discourse, reason, and ground. Discoursing about . . . is exhibiting reasons, founding, letting something be seen referentially in its whence and how. GA20EN §28

We typically employ ‘understanding’ in a double meaning, first in the sense of the understanding access to something, in the emphatic meaning of ground-breaking disclosure, of discovering—understanding in this productive sense—in the superlative sense of men to whose lot the special function of discovering falls, who understand something for the first time. But then we also use ‘understanding’ in the sense of apprehending, specifically of hearing and having heard. When we have not rightly heard, we also say ‘I have not rightly understood.’ Understanding in the first sense of disclosing is communicated in interpretation, and the appropriation of interpretation is itself co-understanding in the sense of participation in what is uncovered. In this co-understanding, understanding at the same time is taken as a listening to, a heeding. This capacity to listen to the other with whom one is, or to oneself who one is in the mode of discoursing, where it is not at all a matter of utterance in the sense of external speaking, is grounded in the structure of being of the original BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. GA20EN §28

Here is something essential to keep in mind: Phonetic speaking and acoustical hearing are in their being founded in discoursing and hearing as modes of being of being-in-the-world and being-with. There is phonetic speaking only because there is the possibility of discourse, just as there is acoustical hearing only because BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is characterized originally as being-with in the sense of listening-to-one-another. Being-with is not being on hand also among other humans; as being-in-the-world it means at the same time being ‘in bondage’ [hörig  ] to the others, that is, ‘heeding’ and ‘obeying’ them, listening [hören] or not listening to them. Being-with has the structure of belonging [Zu(ge)hörigkeit] to the other. It is only by virtue of this primary belonging that there is something like separation, group formation, development of society, and the like. This listening to one another, in which being-with cultivates itself, is more accurately a compliance in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, a co-enactment in concern. The negative forms of enactment, non-compliance, not listening, opposition, and the like are really only privative modes of belonging itself. It is on the basis of such a capacity to listen constitutive of in-being that there is something like hearkening. GA20EN §28

Even in hearing discourse we first in fact hear what is said. Even when we do not understand the discourse, when it is unclear or perhaps the language is foreign, even then we first hear incomprehensible words and not mere phonetic data. We first hear what is said and not its being said, not the process of discourse as such but the about-which of the discourse. We can of course at the same time listen to the way it is being said—the diction—but even this is heard only in the prior co-understanding of the about-which, for only then do I have the possibility of grasping how something is being said. The reply to a discourse likewise follows first from understanding the about-which of the said, from its sense at the time. Hearing belongs to discoursing as being-with belongs to being-in-the-world. Hearing and discoursing are both phenomenally given co-originally with understanding. Hearing is the basic mode of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER which understands. Only he who can discourse and hear can speak. That something like ear lobes and eardrums are given for this hearing is purely accidental. The possibility of hearkening exists only where there is the possibility of being able to discourse and to hear. Someone who genuinely cannot hear, as when we say of a man, ‘he cannot hear’ (where we do not mean that he is deaf), is still quite capable of hearkening, and precisely for this reason, because “not hearing but only hearkening” is a particular privative modification of hearing and understanding. GA20EN §28

Just as hearing is constitutive of discourse, so also is silence. Only an entity whose being is defined by the ability to discourse can also be silent. But this carries the phenomenal implication that silence as a mode of being of discourse is a particular way of articulating oneself about something to others. He who is silent in being with one another can more authentically manifest and ‘give to understand,’ that is, discourse in the original sense of its being, than the man of many words. Talking a lot does not in the least guarantee that the about-which of discourse becomes manifest sooner and more fully. On the contrary, talking a lot not only can uncover nothing but can actually cover things up and reduce everything to incomprehensibility, to babble. But silence still does not merely mean being mute. For the mute person has the propensity for discourse and expression. He would speak if he could. A mute person still has not proven without further ado that he can be silent. But the silent person could speak if he wanted to. No more than the mute person does the one who tends to say little need to prove that he is and can be silent. Rather, one can be silent precisely in speaking, and only in speaking can one be silent in a genuine way. If one never says anything, he can never be silent. Because the possibility of manifesting lies in silence, but silence as a mode of enactment of discourse cultivates understanding, brings the discoveredness of Dasein to fruition [zeitigt] with understanding, silence in being with one another can summon and call Dasein back to its ownmost being. And it can do this just when Dasein in the everydayness of its being has allowed itself to be taken in by the world being talked over and by the discourse about it. Because discursive talk in the beginning is always manifest in talking to one another in public—in communication—, the summoning of Dasein to itself and to its original and genuine disposition must in the end have the mode of discourse and interpretation that is silence. To be able to be silent, one must at the same time have something to say. In other words, it is precisely when discoveredness is a genuine and rich disclosedness of the world that it can then evoke a response in a disposition of Dasein which has the mode of discoveredness of reticence. Reticence is a way of being disposed which does not so much conceal and only conceal. Rather it gives precedence to being, prior to all talk about it and counseling over it, and this precisely in concerned preoccupation and being with one another. Genuine ability to hear comes from such reticence, and genuine BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER constitutes itself in this ability. Thus, discourse becomes visible as a mode of being of Dasein in the two phenomena of hearing and silence. GA20EN §28

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

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

Every Dasein moves in such an interpretation, which for the most part coincides with the way the generation of a particular time has been interpreted and which is modified with the time. This way of being interpreted includes what one says about the world and Dasein in public BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. What one says has taken the lead in all interpretation and thus taken over the temporalization of understanding. This means that what one says is really what controls the various possibilities of the being of Dasein. GA20EN §28

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

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

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

Insofar as what is encountered in everyday BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER by way of the world is such that everything is accessible to everyone and everyone can discourse about everything, to that extent it no longer can be decided who does and who does not actually live by a genuine understanding. The linguistic capacity for expression and the routine of a certain average understanding of all that there is can publicly be so extended that the way of interpretation in which the Anyone operates easily plays everything into everyone’s hand. What thus plays itself out in the atmosphere of public interpretation becomes ambiguous. It looks as if the matter is genuinely seen and discussed, and yet basically it is not; it does not look that way, and yet perhaps it is. GA20EN §29

Second, however, curiosity and idle talk in their ambiguity even dominate BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER as such. If we first speak from the nearest environment and what can be there with us in this initially daily world, this says that the other is there with us from what one has heard of him, from the talk about him, from where he comes from. Idle talk first of all insinuates itself into the interstices of original BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER from the matters of common concern and its world. At first and above all, everyone keeps an eye on the other to see how he will act and what he will say in reply. BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in the Anyone is in no way a leveled and indifferent side-by-side state, but far more one in which we intensely watch and furtively listen in on one another. This kind of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER can work its way into the most intimate relations. Thus, for example, a friendship may no longer and not primarily consist in a resolute and thus mutually generous way of siding with one another in the world, but in a constant and prior watching out for how the other sets out to deal with what is meant by friendship, in a constant check on whether he turns out to be one or not. Inasmuch as such a BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER can now come into play from both sides, it can lead to the most profound conversations and discussions, and one thinks one has a friend. From the very beginning, idle talk and curiosity thus deprive the superlative possibilities of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER of the ground from which they could take root and grow. With-one-another is a secret against-one-another under the mask of for-one-another, which gets its richness and presumed genuineness only from the intensity of talking. GA20EN §29

Concern is never present as an indifferent being-in-the-world, possibly in analogy with the pure occurrence of a thing. Rather, in-being as BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER is absorption in the world under concern. Since the Anyone is a way of being which temporalizes Dasein itself, idle talk, that is, the public way of interpreting things in ambiguity, brings with it the cultivation of a possibility of missing itself, of seeking itself only in the Anyone. Dasein itself cultivates this possibility of being, advancing it as its possibility of missing itself. It should be noted that this way of being peculiar to falling is not the result of any sort of circumstances and contingencies of the world. Dasein as falling is in its being itself tempting, inasmuch as it lays the possibility of falling before itself. Tempting itself in this way, it maintains itself in its fallenness by cultivating the supposition that the full realm of its own possibilities is guaranteed to it with its absorption in the Anyone and in idle talk. This means that the falling that tempts is tranquilizing. It thus increasingly sees no need ever to force this being in the Anyone before a question or even to modify it. This tranquilizing of fallenness is however not a matter of its standing still in its movement but rather involves a creeping intensification. In the tranquilized obviousness of such a being, Dasein drifts toward alienation from itself. In other words, seductive tranquilization in its very sense is alienating, so much so that Dasein leaves no possibility of being open for itself other than that of being in the Anyone. GA20EN §29

But there still seems to be a way to make Dasein in its wholeness the theme of a characterization of being, particularly if we do not lose sight of a character of Dasein which we have already demonstrated. Dasein as being-in-the-world, we said earlier, is at the same time BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER. Insofar as death for Dasein constitutes being-at-an-end in the sense of no longer being Dasein, death in fact prevents me from having and experiencing my own Dasein in its wholeness. But this possibility still remains for the others with whom this Dasein as being-with once was. The Dasein which still is for the time being as being-with others has the possibility of regarding the Dasein of others as concluded and, it seems, to read off in it the totality of the being of such an entity. But the reference to this alternative of taking the Dasein of others which has come to an end as a substitute theme is a dubious bit of information. And this is not because the apprehension of the connections of being, which in the Dasein of others constitute what is last   of all still outstanding, runs into special difficulties in experiencing the dying of others in its authentic sense. It is not this chance difficulty which shows that this alternative is in principle inappropriate. The reasons which prohibit a reference to the Dasein of others as an alternative are of a more fundamental kind: GA20EN §33

The everydayness of Dasein is defined by absorption in the Everyone. In the public arena of BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER, death is an established everyday encounter. This encounter is interpreted as ‘one also dies some day.’ This ‘Everyone dies’ harbors an ambiguity in itself, for this Everyone is just what never dies and never can die. Dasein says ‘Everyone dies’ because this means ‘No one dies,’ namely, not I myself. Death is something in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER for which the Everyone already has a suitable interpretation ready. In ‘Everyone dies’ death is from the start leveled to a possibility of being which in a sense is no one’s possibility. Death, in terms of what it truly is, is thus from the start driven away. ‘Everyone dies’ is the interpretation in which Dasein re-labels its ownmost possibility for the public way of having things interpreted for everyday circulation, thereby driving its own-most possibility away from itself. GA20EN §34

There is a further ambiguity in thus driving it away. ‘Everyone dies, but for the time being death won’t come.’ One speaks as if death first had to come from somewhere, while Dasein itself is in each instance already this its possibility. Driving away the authentic being of death at the same time has the character of tranquilization. The public self-interpretation of Dasein goes so far that in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER one even cheers the dying person up by telling him that he will soon be up and around again, that is to say, back in the everydayness of Dasein. The average worldly self-interpretation of Dasein hopes thereby to console the other, to come into a genuine BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER with him, where however such consolations only serve to push Dasein back again into becoming absorbed in the world, so that the specific situation of its being now really remains concealed to it. GA20EN §34

The time which we know everyday and which we take into account is, more accurately viewed, nothing but the Everyone to which Dasein in its everydayness has fallen  . The being in BEING-WITH-ONE-ANOTHER in the world, and that also means in discovering with one another the one world in which we are, is being in the Everyone and a particular kind of temporality. GA20EN §36