dealings

Dealings (Umgang  , association): in having to do with surrounding beings everyday, 66-73, 79-81, 83, 85, 102-104, 107, 121, 149, 352-355, 357-358, 361, 364, 412, 420. See also Familiarity; Taking care (BT)

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We have shown at the outset (Section I) not   only that the question of the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one that has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite forgotten in spite of all our interest in ‘metaphysics’. Greek ontology and its history – which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the conceptual character of philosophy even today – prove that when Dasein   understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the ‘world’, and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated [verfällt] to a tradition   in which it gets reduced to something self-evident – merely material for reworking, as it was for Hegel  . In the Middle Ages this uprooted Greek ontology became a fixed body of doctrine. Its systematics, however, is by no means a mere joining together of traditional pieces into a single edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have been taken over dogmatically from the Greeks, a great DEAL of unpretentious work has been carried on further within these limits. With the peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology, has, in its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes metaphysicae of Suarez to the ‘metaphysics’ and transcendental   philosophy of modern times, determining even the foundations and the aims of Hegel’s [SZ  :22] BTMR §6

Equipment can genuinely show itself only in DEALINGS cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but in such DEALINGS an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about [um] the hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could not possibly be more suitable. In DEALINGS such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the “in-orderto” which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is – as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ [“Handlichkeit  ”] of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses – in which it manifests itself in its own right – we call “readiness-to-hand” [Zuhandenheit]. Only because equipment has this ‘Being-in-itself’ and does not merely occur, is it manipulable in the broadest sense and at our disposal. No matter how sharply we just look [Nur-nochhinsehen] at the ‘outward appearance’ [“Aussehen  ]” of Things in whatever form this takes, we cannot discover anything ready-to-hand. If we look at Things just ‘theoretically’, we can get along without understanding readiness-to-hand. But when we DEAL with them by using them and manipulating them, this activity is not a blind one; it has its own kind of sight, by which our manipulation is guided and from which it acquires its specific Thingly character. DEALINGS with equipment subordinate themselves to the manifold assignments of the ‘in-order-to’. And the sight with which they thus accommodate themselves is circumspection. BTMR §15

In spite of this, the ontological meaning of the notness [Nichtheit  ] of this existential nullity is still obscure. But this holds also for the ontological essence of the “not” in general. Ontology and logic, to be sure, have exacted a great DEAL from the “not”, and have thus made its possibilities visible in a piecemeal fashion; but it itself has not been unveiled ontologically. Ontology came across the “not” and made use of it. But is it so obvious [SZ:286] that every “not” signifies something negative in the sense of a lack? Is its positivity exhausted by the fact that it constitutes ‘passing over’ something? Why does all dialectic take.refuge in negation  , though it cannot provide dialectical grounds for this sort of thing itself, or even just establish it as a problem? Has anyone ever made a problem of the ontological source of notness, or, prior to that, even sought the mere conditions on the basis of which the problem of the “not” and its notness and the possibility of that notness can be raised? And how else are these conditions to be found except by taking the meaning of Being in general as a theme and clarifying it? BTMR §58

The Being of Dasein is care. This entity exists fallingly as something that has been thrown. Abandoned to the ‘world’ which is discovered with its factical “there”, and concernfully submitted to it, Dasein awaits its potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world; it awaits it in such a manner that it ‘reckons’ on and ‘reckons’ with whatever has an involvement for the sake of this potentiality-for-Being – an involvement which, in the end, is a distinctive one. Everyday circumspective Being-in-the-world needs the possibility of sight (and this means that it needs brightness) if it is to DEAL concerrifully with what is ready-to-hand within the present-at-hand. With the factical disclosedness of Dasein’s world, Nature has been uncovered for Dasein. In its thrownness Dasein has been surrendered to the changes of day and night. Day with its brightness gives it the possibility of sight; night takes this away. BTMR §80

The Being of those entities which we encounter as closest to us can be exhibited phenomenologically if we take as our clue our everyday Being-in-the-world, which we also call our “DEALINGS” in the world and with entities within-the-world. Such DEALINGS have already dispersed themselves into manifold ways of concern. The kind of DEALING which is closest to us is as we have shown, not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of ‘knowledge’. The phenomenological question applies in the first instance to the Being of those entities which we encounter in such concern. To assure the kind of seeing which is here required, we must first make a remark about method. [SZ:67] BTMR §15

What do we mean when we say that a sign “indicates”? We can answer this only by determining what kind of DEALING is appropriate with equipment for indicating. And we must do this in such a way that the readiness-to-hand of that equipment can be genuinely grasped. What is the appropriate way of having-to-do with signs? Going back to our example of the arrow, we must say that the kind of behaving (Being) which corresponds to the sign we encounter, is either to ‘give way’ or to ‘stand   still’ vis-à-vis the car with the arrow. Giving way, as taking a direction, belongs essentially to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always somehow directed [ausgerichtet] and on its way; standing and waiting are only limiting cases of this directional ‘on-its-way’. The sign addresses itself to a Being-in-the-world which is specifically ‘spatial’. The sign is not authentically ‘grasped’ [“erfasst”] if we just stare at it and identify it as an indicator-Thing which occurs. Even if we turn our glance in the direction which the arrow indicates, and look at something present-at-hand in the region indicated, even then the sign is not authentically encountered. Such a sign addresses itself to the circumspection of our concernful DEALINGS, and it does so in such a way that the circumspection which goes along with it, following where it points, brings into an explicit ‘survey’ whatever aroundness the environment may have at the time. This circumspective survey does not grasp the ready-to-hand; what it achieves is rather an orientation within our environment. There is also another way in which we can experience equipment: we may encounter the arrow simply as equipment which belongs to the car. We can do this without discovering what character it specifically has as equipment: what the arrow is to indicate and how it is to do so, may remain completely undetermined; yet what we are encountering is not a mere Thing. The experiencing of a Thing requires a definiteness of its own [ihre eigene Bestimmtheit  ], and must be contrasted with coming across a manifold of equipment, which may often be quite indefinite, even when one comes across it as especially close. BTMR §17

The ready-to-hand is encountered within-the-world. The Being of this entity, readiness-to-hand, thus stands in some ontological relationship towards the world and towards worldhood. In anything ready-to-hand the world is always ‘there’. Whenever we encounter anything, the world has already been previously discovered, though not thematically. But it can also be lit up in certain ways of DEALING with our environment. The world is that in terms of which the ready-to-hand is ready-to-hand. How can the world let the ready-to-hand be encountered? Our analysis hitherto has shown that what we encounter within-the-world has, in its very Being, been freed for our concernful circumspection, for taking account. What does this previous freeing amount to, and how is this to be understood as an ontologically distinctive feature of the world? What problems does the question of the worldhood of the world lay before us? BTMR §18

In terms of the significance which is disclosed in understanding the world, concernful Being-alongside the ready-to-hand gives itself to understand whatever involvement that which is encountered can have. To say that “circumspection discovers” means that the ‘world’ which has already been understood comes to be interpreted. The ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight which understands. All preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are accomplished in the following way: we take apart in its “in-order-to” that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and we concern ourselves with it in accordance with what becomes visible through this process. That which has been circumspectively taken apart with regard to its “in-order-to”, and taken apart as such – that which is explicitly understood – has the structure of something as something. The circumspective question as to what this particular thing that is ready-to-hand may be, receives the circumspectively interpretative answer that it is for such and such a purpose [es ist zum …]. If we tell what it is for [des Wozu  ], we are not simply designating something; but that which is designated is understood as that as which we are to take the thing in question. That which is disclosed in understanding – that which is understood – is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as which’ can be made to stand out explicitly. The ‘as’ makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation  . In DEALING with what is environmentally ready-to-hand by interpreting it circumspectively, we ‘see’ it as a table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge; but what we have thus interpreted [Ausgelegte] need not necessarily be also taken apart [auseinander zu legen] by making an assertion which definitely characterizes it. Any mere pre-predicative seeing of the ready-to-hand is, in itself, something which already understands and interprets. But does not the absence of such an ‘as’ make up the mereness of any pure perception of something? Whenever we see with this kind of sight, we already do so understandingly and interpretatively. In the mere encountering of something, it is understood in terms of a totality of involvements; and such seeing hides in itself the explicitness of the assignment-relations (of the “in-order-to”) which belong to that totality. [SZ:149] BTMR §32

How are we to obtain the right point of view for analysing the temporality of concern? We have called concernful Being alongside the ‘world’ our “DEALINGS in and with the environment”. As phenomena which are examples of Being alongside, we have chosen the using, manipulation, and producing of the ready-to-hand, and the deficient and undifferentiated modes of these; that is, we have chosen ways of Being alongside what belongs to one’s everyday needs. In.this kind of concern Dasein’s authentic existence too maintains itself, even when for such existence this concern is ‘a matter of indifference’. The ready-to-hand things with which we concern ourselves are not the causes of our concern, as if this were to arise only by the effects of entities within-the-world. Being alongside the ready-to-hand cannot be explained ontically in terms of the ready-to-hand itself, nor can the ready-to-hand be derived contrariwise from this kind of Being. But neither are concern, as a kind of Being which belongs to Dasein, and that with which we concern ourselves, as something ready-to-hand within-the-world, just present-at-hand together. All the same, a ‘connection’ subsists between them. That which is DEALT with, if rightly understood, sheds light upon concernful DEALINGS themselves. And furthermore, if we miss the phenomenal structure of what is DEALT with, then we fail to recognize the existential constitution of DEALING. Of course we have already made an essential gain for the analysis of those entities which we encounter as closest to us, if their specific character as equipment does not get passed over. But we must understand further that concernful DEALINGS never dwell with any individual item of equipment. Our using and manipulating of any definite item of equipment still remains oriented towards some equipmental context. If, for instance, we are searching for some equipment which we have ‘misplaced’, then what we have in mind is not merely what we are searching for, or even primarily this; nor do we have it in mind in an isolated ‘act’; but the range of the equipmental totality has already been discovered beforehand. Whenever we ‘go to work’ and seize hold of something, we do not push out from the “nothing” and come upon some item of equipment which has been presented to us in isolation; in laying hold of an item of equipment, we come back to it from whatever work-world has already been disclosed. BTMR §69

When something cannot be used – when, for instance, a tool definitely refuses to work – it can be conspicuous only in and for DEALINGS in which something is manipulated. Even by the sharpest and most persevering ‘perception’ and ‘representation’ of Things, one can never discover anything like the damaging of a tool. If we are to encounter anything unmanageable, the handling must be of such a sort that it can be disturbed. But what does this signify ontologically? The making-present which awaits and retains, gets held   up with regard to its absorption in relationships of involvement, and it gets held up by what will exhibit itself afterwards as damage. The making-present, which awaits the “towards-which” with equal primordiality, is held fast alongside the equipment which has been used, and it is held fast in such a manner, indeed, that the “towards-which” and the “in-order-to” are now encountered explicitly for the first time. On the other hand, the only way in which the making-present itself can meet up with anything unsuitable, is by already operating in such a way as to retain awaitingly that which has an involvement in something. To say that making-present gets ‘held up’ is to say that in its unity with the awaiting which retains, it diverts itself into itself more and more, and is thus constitutive for the ‘inspecting’ [“Nachsehen”], testing, and eliminating of the disturbance. If concernful DEALINGS were merely a sequence of ‘Experiences’ running their course ‘in time’, however intimately these might be ‘associated’, it would still be ontologically impossible to let any conspicuous unusable equipment be encountered. Letting something be involved must, as such, be grounded in the ecstatical unity of the making-present which awaits and retains, whatever we have made accessible in DEALING with contexts of equipment. BTMR §69

In the disclosure and explication of Being, entities are in every case our preliminary and our accompanying theme [das Vor-und Mitthematische]; but our real theme is Being. In the domain of the present analysis, the entities we shall take as our preliminary theme are those which show themselves in our concern with the environment. Such entities are not thereby objects for knowing the ‘world’ theoretically; they are simply what gets used, what gets produced, and so forth. As entities so encountered, they become the preliminary theme for the purview of a ‘knowing’ which, as phenomenological, looks primarily towards Being, and which, in thus taking Being as its theme, takes these entities as its accompanying theme. This phenomenological interpretation is accordingly not a way of knowing those characteristics of entities which themselves are [seiender Beschaffenheiten des Seienden  ]; it is rather a determination of the structure of the Being which entities possess. But as an investigation of Being, it brings to completion, autonomously and explicitly, that understanding of Being which belongs already to Dasein and which ‘comes alive’ in any of its DEALINGS with entities. Those entities which serve phenomenologically as our preliminary theme – in this case, those which are used or which are to be found in the course of production – become accessible when we put ourselves into the position of concerning ourselves with them in some such way. Taken strictly, this talk about “putting ourselves into such a position” [Sichversetzen] is misleading; for the kind of Being which belongs to such concernful DEALINGS is not one into which we need to put ourselves first. This is the way in which everyday Dasein always is: when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch. The achieving of phenomenological access to the entities which we encounter, consists rather in thrusting aside our interpretative tendencies, which keep thrusting themselves upon us and running along with us, and which conceal not only the phenomenon of such ‘concern’, but even more those entities themselves as encountered of their own accord in our concern with them. These entangling errors become plain if in the course of our investigation we now ask which entities shall be taken as our preliminary theme and established as the pre-phenomenal basis for our study. BTMR §15

One may answer: “Things.” But with this obvious answer we have perhaps already missed the pre-phenomenal basis we are seeking. For in addressing these entities as ‘Things’ (res), we have tacitly anticipated their ontological character. When analysis starts with such entities and goes on to inquire about Being, what it meets is Thinghood and Reality. Ontological explication discovers, as it proceeds, such characteristics of Being as substantiality, materiality, extendedness, side-by-side-ness, and so forth. But even pre-ontologically, in such Being as this, the entities which we encounter in concern are proximally hidden. When one designates Things as the entities that are ‘proximally given’, one goes ontologically astray, even though ontically one has something else in mind. What one really has in mind remains undetermined. But suppose one characterizes these ‘Things’ as Things ‘invested with value’? What does “value” mean ontologically? How are we to categorize this ‘investing’ and Being-invested? Disregarding the obscurity of this structure of investiture with value, have we thus met that phenomenal characteristic of Being which belongs to what we encounter in our concernful DEALINGS? [SZ:68] BTMR §15

The Greeks had an appropriate term for ‘Things’: pragmata   – that is to say, that which one has to do with in one’s concernful DEALINGS (praxis  ). But ontologically, the specifically ‘pragmatic’ character of the pragmata is just what the Greeks left in obscurity; they thought of these ‘proximally’ as ‘mere Things’. We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern “equipment”. In our DEALINGS we come across equipment for writing, sewing, working, transportation, measurement. The kind of Being which equipment possesses must be exhibited. The clue for doing this lies in our first defining what makes an item of equipment – namely, its equipmentality. BTMR §15

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme. The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw [zurückzuziehen] in order to be ready-to-hand quite authentically. That with which our everyday DEALINGS proximally dwell is not the tools themselves [die Werkzeuge selbst  ]. On the contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work – that which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand too. The work bears with it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered. BTMR §15

The work to be produced, as the “towards-which” of such things as the hammer, the plane, and the needle, likewise has the kind of Being that belongs to equipment. The shoe which is to be produced is for wearing (footgear) [Schuhzeug]; the clock is manufactured for telling the time. The work which we chiefly encounter in our concernful DEALINGS – the work that is to be found when one is “at work” on something [das in Arbeit   befindliche] – has a usability which belongs to it essentially; in this usability it lets us encounter already the “towards-which” for which it is usable. A work that someone has ordered [das bestellte Werk] is only by reason of its use and the assignment-context of entities which is discovered in using it. BTMR §15

The kind of Being which belongs to these entities is readiness-to-hand. But this characteristic is not to be understood as merely a way of taking them, as if we were talking such ‘aspects’ into the ‘entities’ which we proximally encounter, or as if some world-stuff which is proximally present-at-hand in itself were ‘given subjective colouring’ in this way. Such an Interpretation would overlook the fact that in this case these entities would have to be understood and discovered beforehand as something purely present-at-hand, and must have priority and take the lead in the sequence of those DEALINGS with the ‘world’ in which something is discovered and made one’s own. But this already runs counter to the ontological meaning of cognition, which we have exhibited as a founded mode of Being-in-the-world. To lay bare what is just present-at-hand and no more, cognition must first penetrate beyond what is ready-to-hand in our concern. Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are ‘in themselves’ are defined ontologico-categorially. Yet only by reason of something present-at-hand, ‘is there’ anything ready-to-hand. Does it follow, however, granting this thesis   for the nonce, that readiness-to-hand is ontologically founded upon presence-at-hand? BTMR §15

If such possibilities of Being for Dasein can be exhibited within its concernful DEALINGS, then the way lies open for studying the phenomenon which is thus lit up, and for attempting to ‘hold it at bay’, as it were, and to interrogate it as to those structures which show themselves therein. BTMR §16

To the everydayness of Being-in-the-world there belong certain modes of concern. These permit the entities with which we concern ourselves to be encountered in such a way that the worldly character of what is within-the-world comes to the fore. When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the DEALINGS in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous. This conspicuousness [SZ:73] presents the ready-to-hand equipment as in a certain un-readiness-to-hand. But this implies that what cannot be used just lies there; it shows itself as an equipmental Thing which looks so and so, and which, in its readiness-to-hand as looking that way, has constantly been present-at-hand too. Pure presence-at-hand announces itself in such equipment, but only to withdraw to the readiness-to-hand of something with which one concerns oneself – that is to say, of the sort of thing we find when we put it back into repair. This presence-at-hand of something that cannot be used is still not devoid of all readiness-to-hand whatsoever; equipment which is present-at-hand in this way which is still not just a Thing which occurs somewhere. The damage to the equipment is still not a mere alteration of a Thing – not a change of properties which just occurs in something present-at-hand. BTMR §16

In our concernful DEALINGS, however, we not only come up against unusable things within what is ready-to-hand already: we also find things which are missing – which not only are not ‘handy’ [“handlich”] but are not ‘to hand’ [“zur Hand”] at all. Again, to miss something in this way amounts to coming across something un-ready-to-hand. When we notice what is un-ready-to-hand, that which is ready-to-hand enters the mode of obtrusiveness The more urgently [Je dringlicher] we need what is missing, and the more authentically it is encountered in its un-readiness-to-hand, all the more obtrusive [um so aufdringlicher] does that which is ready-to-hand become – so much so, indeed, that it seems to lose its character of readiness-to-hand. It reveals itself as something just presentat-hand and no more, which cannot be budged without the thing that is missing. The helpless way in which we stand before it is a deficient mode of concern, and as such it uncovers the Being-just-present-at-hand-andno-more of something ready-to-hand. BTMR §16

In our DEALINGS with the world of our concern, the un-ready-to-hand can be encountered not only in the sense of that which is unusable or simply missing, but as something un-ready-to-hand which is not missing at all and not unusable, but which ‘stands in the way’ of our concern. That to which our concern refuses to turn, that for which it has ‘no time’, is something un-ready-to-hand in the manner of what does not belong here, of what has not as yet been attended to. Anything which is unready-to-hand in this way is disturbing to us, and enables us to see the obstinacy of that with which we must concern ourselves in the first instance before we do anything else. With this obstinacy, the presence-at-hand of the ready-to-hand makes itself known in a new [SZ:74] way as the Being of that which still lies before us and calls for our attending to it. BTMR §16

In conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, that which is ready-to-hand loses its readiness-to-hand in a certain way. But in our DEALINGS with what is ready-to-hand, this readiness-to-hand is itself understood, though not thematically. It does not vanish simply, but takes its farewell, as it were, in the conspicuousness of the unusable. Readiness-to-hand still shows itself, and it is precisely here that the worldly character of the ready-to-hand shows itself too. BTMR §16

Instead, ‘referring’ as indicating is grounded in the Being-structure of equipment, in serviceability for… . But an entity may have serviceability without thereby becoming a sign. As equipment, a ‘hammer’ too is constituted by a serviceability, but this does not make it a sign. Indicating, as a ‘reference’, is a way in which the “towards-which” of a serviceability becomes ontically concrete; it determines an item of equipment as for this “towards-which” [und bestimmt ein Zeug   zu diesem]. On the other hand, the kind of reference we get in ‘serviceability-for’, is an ontologico-categorial attribute of equipment as equipment. That the “towards-which” of serviceability should acquire its concreteness in indicating, is an accident of its equipment-constitution as such. In this example of a sign, the difference between the reference of serviceability and the reference of indicating becomes visible in a rough and ready fashion. These are so far from coinciding that only when they are united does the concreteness of a definite kind of equipment become possible. Now it is certain that indicating differs in principle from reference as a constitutive state of equipment; it is just as incontestable that the sign in its turn is related in a peculiar and even distinctive way to the kind of Being which belongs to whatever equipmental totality may be ready-to-hand in the environment, and to its worldly character. In our concernful [SZ:79] DEALINGS, equipment for indicating [Zeig-zeug] gets used in a very special way. But simply to establish this Fact is ontologically insufficient. The basis and the meaning of this special status must be clarified. BTMR §17

Signs of the kind we have described let what is ready-to-hand be encountered; more precisely, they let some context of it become accessible in such a way that our concernful DEALINGS take on an orientation and hold it secure. A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself. In a symptom or a warningsignal, ‘what is coming’ ‘indicates itself’, but not in the sense of something [SZ:80] merely occurring, which comes as an addition to what is already presentat-hand; ‘what is coming’ is the sort of thing which we are ready for, or which we ‘weren’t ready for’ if we have been attending to something else. In signs of something that has happened already, what has come to pass and run its course becomes circumspectively accessible. A sign to mark something indicates what one is ‘at’ at any time. Signs always indicate primarily ‘wherein’ one lives, where one’s concern dwells, what sort of involvement there is with something. BTMR §17

The peculiar character of signs as equipment becomes ‘especially clear in ‘establishing a sign’ [“Zeichenstiftung”]. This activity is performed in a circumspective fore-sight [Vorsicht] out of which it arises, and which requires that it be possible for one’s particular environment to announce itself for circumspection at any time by means of something ready-to-hand, and that this possibility should itself be ready-to-hand. But the Being of what is most closely ready-to-hand within-the-world possesses the character of holding-itself-in and not emerging, which we have described above. Accordingly our circumspective DEALINGS in the environment require some equipment ready-to-hand which in its character as equipment takes over the ‘work’ of letting something ready-to-hand become conspicuous. So when such equipment (signs) gets produced, its conspicuousness must be kept in mind. But even when signs are thus conspicuous, one does not let them be present-at-hand at random; they get ‘set up’ [“angebracht”] in a definite way with a view towards easy accessibility. BTMR §17

The Being-ready-to-hand of signs in our everyday DEALINGS, and the conspicuousness which belongs to signs and which may be produced for various purposes and in various ways, do not merely serve to document the inconspicuousness constitutive for what is most closely ready-to-hand; the sign itself gets its conspicuousness from the inconspicuousness of the equipmental totality, which is ready-to-hand and ‘obvious’ in its everydayness. The knot which one ties in a handkerchief [der bekannte “Knopf im Taschentuch”] as a sign to mark something is an example of this. What such a sign is to indicate is always something with which one has to concern oneself in one’s everyday circumspection. Such a sign can indicate many things, and things of the most various kinds. The wider the extent to which it can indicate, the narrower its intelligibility and its usefulness. Not only is it, for the most part, ready-to-hand as a sign only for the person   who ‘establishes’ it, but it can even become inaccessible to him, so that another sign is needed if the first is to be used circumspectively at all. So when the knot cannot be used as a sign, it does not lose its sign-character, but it acquires the disturbing obtrusiveness of something most closely ready-to-hand. BTMR §17

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. [SZ:85] BTMR §18

To what extent has our characterization of the ready-to-hand already come up against its spatiality? We have been talking about what is proximalty ready-to-hand. This means not only those entities which we encounter first before any others, but also those which are ‘close by’. What is ready-to-hand in our everyday DEALINGS has the character of closeness. To be exact, this closeness of equipment has already been intimated in the term ‘readiness-to-hand’, which expresses the Being of equipment. Every entity that is ‘to hand’ has a different closeness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring distances. This closeness regulates itself in terms of circumspectively ‘calculative’ manipulating and using. At the same time what is close in this way gets established by the circumspection of concern, with regard to the direction in which the equipment is accessible at any time. When this closeness of the equipment has been given directionality, this signifies not merely that the equipment has its position [Stelle  ] in space as present-at-hand somewhere, but also that as equipment it has been essentially fitted up and installed, set up, and put to rights. Equipment has its place [Platz  ], or else it ‘lies around’; this must be distinguished in principle from just occurring at random in some spatial position. When equipment for something or other has its place, this place defines itself as the place of this equipment – as one place out of a whole totality; of places directionally lined up with each other and belonging to the context of equipment that is environmentally ready-to-hand. Such a place and such a muliplicity of places are not to be interpreted as the “where” of some random Being-present-at-hand of Things. In each case the place is the definite ‘there’ or ‘yonder’ [“Dort” und “Da”] of an item of equipment which belongs somewhere. Its belonging-somewhere at the time [Die jeweilige Hingehörigheit] corresponds to the equipmental character of what is ready-to-hand; that is, it corresponds to the belonging-to [Zugehörigkeit] which the ready-to-hand has towards a totality of equipment in accordance with its involvements. But in general the “whither” to which the totality of places for a context of equipment gets allotted, is the underlying condition which makes possible the belonging-somewhere of an equipmental totality as something that can be placed. This “whither”, which makes it possible for equipment to belong somewhere, and which we circumspectively keep in view ahead of us in our concernful DEALINGS, we call the “region”. BTMR §22

‘In the region of’ means not only ‘in the direction of’ but also within the range [Umkreis  ] of something that lies in that direction. The kind of place which is constituted by direction and remoteness (and closeness is only a mode of the latter) is already oriented towards a region and oriented within it. Something like a region must first be discovered if there is to be any possibility of allotting or coming across places for a totality of equipment that is circumspectively at one’s disposal. The regional orientation of the multiplicity of places belonging to the ready-to-hand goes to make up the aroundness – the “round-about-us” [das Um-uns-herum] – of those entities which we encounter as closest environmentally. A three-dimensional multiplicity of possible positions which gets filled up with Things present-at-hand is never proximally given. This dimensionality of space is still veiled in the spatiality of the ready-to-hand. The ‘above’ is what is ‘on the ceiling’; the ‘below’ is what is ‘on the floor’; [SZ:103] the ‘behind’ is what is ‘at the door’; all “wheres” are discovered and circumspectively interpreted as we go our ways in everyday DEALINGS; they are not ascertained and catalogued by the observational measurement of space. BTMR §22

De-severing does not necessarily imply any explicit estimation of the fatness of something ready-to-hand in relation to Dasein. Above all, remoteness never gets taken as a distance. If farness is to be estimated, this is done relatively to deseverances in which everyday Dasein maintains itself. Though these estimates may be imprecise and variable if we try to compute them, in the everydayness of Dasein they have their own definiteness which is thoroughly intelligible. We say that to go over yonder is “a good walk”, “a stone’s throw”, or ‘as long as it takes to smoke a pipe’. These measures express not only that they are not intended to ‘measure’ anything but also that the remoteness here estimated belongs to some entity to which one goes with concernful circumspection. But even when we avail ourselves of a fixed measure and say ‘it is half an hour to the house’, this measure must be taken as an estimate. ‘Half an hour’ is not-thirty minutes, but a duration [Dauer] which has no ‘length’ at all in the sense of a quantitative stretch. Such a duration is always interpreted in terms of well-accustomed everyday ways in which we ‘make provision’ [“Besorgungen”]. Remotenesses are estimated proximally by circumspection, even when one is quite familiar with ‘officially’ calculated measures. Since what is de-severed in such estimates is ready-to-hand, it retains its character as specifically within-the-world. This even implies that the pathways we take towards desevered entities in the course of our DEALINGS will vary in their length from day to day. What is ready-to-hand in the environment is certainly not present-at-hand for an eternal observer exempt from Dasein: but it is encountered in Dasein’s circumspectively concernful everydayness. As Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand; it does not ‘devour the kilometres’; bringing-close or de-severance is always a kind of concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed. A pathway which is long ‘Objectively’ can be much shorter than one which is ‘Objectively’ shorter still but which is perhaps ‘hard going’ and comes [SZ:106] before us as interminably long. Yet only in thus ‘coming before us is the current world authentically ready-to-hand. The Objective distances of Things present-at-hand do not coincide with the remoteness and closeness of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. Though we may know these distances exactly, this knowledge still remains blind; it does not have the function of discovering the environment circumspectively and bringing it close; this knowledge is used only in and for a concernful Being which does not measure stretches – a Being towards the world that ‘matters’ to one [… Sein   zu der einen “angehenden” Welt  ]. BTMR §23

When one is primarily and even exclusively oriented towards remotenesses as measured distances, the primordial spatiality of Being-in is concealed. That which is presumably ‘closest’ is by no means that which is at the smallest distance ‘from us’. It lies in that which is desevered to an average extent when we reach for it, grasp it, or look at it. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the way of de-severance, its DEALINGS always keep within an ‘environment’ which is desevered from it with a certain leeway [Spielraum  ]; accordingly our seeing and hearing always go proximally beyond what is distantially ‘closest’. Seeing and hearing are distance-senses [Fernsinne] not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that Dasein as deseverant mainly dwells. When, for instance, a man wears a pair of spectacles which are so close to him distantially that they are ‘sitting on his nose’, they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall. Such equipment has so little closeness that often it is proximally quite impossible to find. Equipment for seeing – and likewise for hearing, such as the telephone receiver – has what we have designated as the inconspicuousness of the proximally ready-to-hand – So too, for instance, does the street, as equipment for walking. One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the closest and Realest of all that is ready-to-hand, and it slides itself, as it [SZ:107] were, along certain portions of one’s body – the soles of one’s feet. And yet it is farther remote than the acquaintance whom one encounters ‘on the street’ at a ‘remoteness’ [“Entfernung  ”] of twenty paces when one is taking such a walk. Circumspective concern. decides as to the closeness and farness of what is proximally ready-to-hand environmentally. Whatever this concern dwells alongside beforehand is what is closest, and this is what regulates our de-severances. BTMR §23

[SZ:121] If Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world, then, like our circumspective DEALINGS with the ready-to-hand within-the-world (which, by way of anticipation, we have called ‘concern’), it must be Interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care; for as “care” the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined. (Compare Chapter 6 of this Division.) Concern is a character-of-Being which Being-with cannot have as its own, even though Being-with, like concern, is a Being towards entities encountered within-the-world. But those entities towards which Dasein as Being-with comports itself do not have the kind of Being which belongs to equipment ready-to-hand; they are themselves Dasein. These entities are not objects of concern, but rather of solicitude. BTMR §26

The upshot of this is that if in our analysis of DEALINGS we aim at that which is DEALT with, then one’s existent Being alongside the entities with which one concerns oneself must be given an orientation not towards some isolated item of equipment which is ready-to-hand, but towards the equipmental totality. This way of taking what is DEALT with, is forced upon us also if we consider that character of Being which belongs distinctively to equipment that is ready-to-hand – namely, involvement. We understand the term “involvement” ontologically. The kind of talk in which we say that something has with it an involvement in something, is not meant to establish a fact ontically, but rather to indicate the kind of Being that belongs to what is ready-to-hand. The relational character of involvement – of its ‘with … in …’ – suggests that “an” equipment is ontologically impossible. Of course just a solitary item of equipment may be ready-to-hand while another is missing. But this makes known to us that the very thing that is ready-to-hand belongs to something else. Our concernful DEALINGS can let what is ready-to-hand be encountered circumspectively only if in these DEALINGS we already understand something like the involvement which something has in something. The Being-alongside which discovers circumspectively in concern, amounts to letting something be involved – that is, to projecting an involvement understandingly. Letting things be involved makes up the existential 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 existential condition of the possibility of letting things be involved must be sought in a mode of the temporalizing of temporality. [SZ:353] BTMR §69

The awaiting of the “towards-which” is neither a considering of the ‘goal’ nor an expectation of the impendent finishing of the work to be produced. It has by no means the character of getting something thematically into one’s grasp. Neither does the retaining of that which has an involvement signify holding it fast thematically. Manipulative DEALINGS no more relate themselves merely to that in which we let something be involved, than they do to what is involved itself. Letting something be involved is constituted rather in the unity of a retention which awaits, and it is constituted in such a manner, indeed, that the making-present which arises from this, makes possible the characteristic absorption of concern in its equipmental world. When one is wholly devoted to something and ‘really’ busies oneself with it, one does not do so just alongside the work itself, or alongside the tool, or alongside both of them ‘together’. The unity of the relations in which concern circumspectively ‘operates’, has been established already by letting-things-be-involved – which is based upon temporality. [SZ:354] BTMR §69

That with which one’s concernful DEALINGS fail to cope, either by producing or procuring something, or even by turning away, holding aloof, or protecting oneself from something, reveals itself in its insurmountability. Concern resigns itself to it. But resigning oneself to something is a mode peculiar to circumspectively letting it be encountered. On the basis of this kind of discovery concern can come across that which is inconvenient, disturbing, hindering, endangering, or in general resistant in some way. The temporal   structure of resigning oneself to something, lies in a nonretaining which awaitingly makes present. In awaitingly making present, one does not, for instance, reckon   ‘on’ that which is unsuitable but none the less available. “Not reckoning with” something, is a mode of “taking into one’s reckoning” that which one cannot cling to. That which one has “not reckoned with” does not get forgotten; it gets retained, so that in its very unsuitability it remains ready-to-hand. That which is ready-to-hand in this manner belongs to the everyday stock or content of the factically disclosed environment. [SZ:356] BTMR §69

In characterizing the change-over from the manipulating and using and so forth which are circumspective in a ‘practical’ way, to ‘theoretical’ exploration, it would be easy to suggest that merely looking at entities is something which emerges when concern holds back from any kind of manipulation. What is decisive in the ‘emergence’ of the theoretical attitude would then lie in the disappearance of praxis. So if one posits ‘practical’ concern as the primary and predominant kind of Being which factical Dasein possesses, the ontological possibility of ‘theory’ will be due to the absence of praxis – that is, to a privation. But the discontinuance of a specific manipulation in our concernful DEALINGS does not simply leave the guiding circumspection behind as a remainder. Rather, our concern then diverts itself specifically into a just-looking-around [ein Nur-sich-umsehen]. But this is by no means the way in which the ‘theoretical’ attitude of science is reached. On the contrary, the tarrying which is discontinued when one manipulates, can take on the character of a more precise kind of circumspection, such as ‘inspecting’, checking up on what has been attained, or looking over the ‘operations’ [“Betrieb  ”] which are now ‘at a standstill’. Holding back from the use of equipment is so far from sheer ‘theory’ that the kind of circumspection which tarries and ‘considers’, remains wholly in the grip of the ready-to-hand equipment with which one is concerned. ‘Practical’ DEALINGS have their own ways of tarrying. And just as praxis has its own specific kind of sight (‘theory’), theoretical research is not without a praxis of its own. Reading off the measurements which result from an experiment   often requires a complicated ‘technical’ set-up for the experimental design. Observation with a microscope is dependent upon the production of ‘preparations’. Archaeological excavation, which precedes any Interpretation of the ‘findings’, demands manipulations of the grossest kind. But even in the ‘most abstract’ way of working out problems and establishing what has been obtained, one manipulates equipment for writing, for example. However ‘uninteresting’ and ‘obvious’ such components of scientific research may be, they are by no means a matter of indifference ontologically. The explicit suggestion that scientific behaviour as a way of Being-in-the-world, is not just a ‘purely intellectual activity’, may seem petty and superfluous. If only it were not plain from this triviality that it is by no means patent where the ontological boundary between ‘theoretical’ and ‘atheoretical’ behaviour really runs! [SZ:358] BTMR §69

Why is it that what we are talking about – the heavy hammer – shows itself differently when our way of talking is thus modified? Not because we are keeping our distance from manipulation, nor because we are just looking away [absehen] from the equipmental character of this entity, but rather because we are looking at [ansehen] the ready-to-hand thing which we encounter, and looking at it “in a new way’ as something presentat-hand. The understanding of Being by which our concernful DEALINGS with entities within-the-world have been guided has changed over. But if, instead of deliberating circumspectively about something ready-to-hand, we ‘take’ it as something present-at-hand, has a scientific attitude thus constituted itself? Moreover, even that which is ready-to-hand can be made a theme for scientific investigation and determination, for instance when one studies someone’s environment – his milieu   – in the context of a historiological biography. The context of equipment that is ready-to-hand in an everyday manner, its historical emergence and utilization, and its factical role in Dasein – all these are objects for the science of economics. The ready-to-hand can become the ‘Object’ of a science without having to lose its character as equipment. A modification of our understanding of Being does not seem to be necessarily constitutive for the genesis   of the theoretical attitude ‘towards Things’. Certainly not, if this “modification” is to imply a change in the kind of Being which, in understanding the entity before us, we understand it to possess. BTMR §69

If, moreover, thematizing modifies and Articulates the understanding of Being, then, in so far as Dasein, the entity which thematizes, exists, it must already understand something like Being. Such understanding of Being can remain neutral. In that case readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand have not yet been distinguished; still less have they been conceived ontologically. But if Dasein is to be able to have any DEALINGS with a context of equipment, it must understand something like an involvement, even if it does not do so thematically: a world must have been disclosed to it. With Dasein’s factical existence, this world has been disclosed, if Dasein indeed exists essentially as Being-in-the-world. And if Dasein’s Being is completely grounded in temporality, then temporality must make possible Being-in-the-world and therewith Dasein’s transcendence; this transcendence in turn provides the support for concernful Being alongside entities within-the-world, whether this Being is theoretical or practical. BTMR §69

How does something like ‘time’ first show itself for everyday circumspective concern? In what kind of concernful equipment-using DEALINGS does it become explicitly accessible? If it has been made public with the disclosedness of the world, if it has always been already a matter of concern with the discoveredness of entities within-the-world – a discoveredness which belongs to the world’s disclosedness – and if it has been a matter of such concern in so far as Dasein calculates time in reckoning with itself, then the kind of behaviour in which ‘one’ explicitly regulates oneself according to time, lies in the use of clocks. The existential-temporal meaning of this turns out to be a making-present of the travelling pointer. By following the positions of the pointer in a way which makes present, one counts them. This making-present temporalizes itself in the ecstatical unity of a retention which awaits. To retain the ‘on that former occasion’ and to retain it by making it present, signifies that in saying “now” one is open for the horizon   of the earlier – that is, of the “now-no-longer”. To await the ‘then’ by making it present, means that in saying “now” one is open for the horizon of the later – that is, of the “now-not-yet”. Time is what shows itself in such a making-present. How then, are we to define the time which is manifest within the horizon of the circumspective concernful clock-using in which one takes one’s time? This time is that which is counted and which shows itself when one follows the travelling pointer, counting and making present in such a way that this making-present temporalizes itself in an ecstatical unity with the retaining and awaiting which are horizonally open according to the “earlier” and “later”. This, however, is nothing else than an existential-ontological interpretation of Aristotle  ’s definition   of “time”: touto gar estin ho chronos  , arithmos kineseos kata to proteron kai hysteron. “For this is time: that which is counted in the movement which we encounter within the horizon of the earlier and later.” This definition may seem strange at first glance; but if one defines the existential-ontological horizon from which Aristotle has taken it, one sees that it is as ‘obvious’ as it at first seems strange, and has been genuinely derived. The source of the time which is thus manifest does not become a problem for Aristotle. His Interpretation of time moves rather in the direction of the ‘natural’ way of understanding Being. Yet because this very understanding and the Being which is thus understood have in principle been made a problem for the investigation which lies before us, it is only after we have found a solution for the question of Being that the Aristotelian analysis of time can be Interpreted thematically in such a way that it may indeed gain some signification in principle, if the formulation of this question in ancient ontology, with all its critical limitations, is to be appropriated in a positive   manner. BTMR §81

If we attribute spatiality to Dasein, then this ‘Being in space’ must manifestly be conceived in terms of the kind of Being which that entity possesses. Dasein is essentially not a Being-present-at-hand; and its “spatiality” cannot signify anything like occurrence at a position in ‘world-space’, nor can it signify Being-ready-to-hand at some place. Both of these are kinds of Being which belong to entities encountered within-the-world. Dasein, however, is ‘in’ the world in the sense that it DEALS with entities encountered within-the-world, and does so concernfully and with familiarity. So if spatiality belongs to it in any way, that is possible only because of this Being-in. But its spatiality shows the characters of de-severance and directionality. BTMR §23