detrimental

abträglich  

That in the face of which we fear, the ‘fearsome’, is in every case something which we encounter within-the-world and which may have either readiness-to-hand  , presence-at-hand, or Dasein  -with as its kind of Being. We are not   going to make an ontical report on those entities which can often and for the most part be ‘fearsome’: we are to define the fearsome phenomenally in its fearsomeness. What do we encounter in fearing that belongs to the fearsome as such? That in the face of which we fear can be characterized as threatening. Here several points must be considered. 1. What we encounter has DETRIMENTALity as its kind of involvement. It shows itself within a context of involvements. 2. The target of this DETRIMENTALity is a definite range of what can be affected by it; thus the DETRIMENTALity is itself made definite, and comes from a definite region. 3. The region itself is well known as such, and so is that which is coming from it; but that which is coming from it has something ‘queer’ about it. 4. That which is DETRIMENTAL, as something that threatens us, is not yet within striking distance [in beherrschbarer Nähe  ], but it is coming close. In such a drawing-close, the DETRIMENTALity radiates out, and therein lies its threatening character. 5. This drawing-close is within what is close by. Indeed, something may be DETRIMENTAL in the highest degree and may even be coming constantly closer; but if it is still far off, its fearsomeness remains veiled. If, however, that which is DETRIMENTAL draws close and is close by, then it is threatening: it can reach us, and yet it may not. As it draws close, this ‘it can, and yet in the end it may not’ becomes aggravated. We say, “It is fearsome”. 6. This implies that what is DETRIMENTAL as coming-close close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away and pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it. [SZ  :141] BTMR §30

Dasein’s falling into the “they” and the ‘world’ of its concern, is what we have called a ‘fleeing’ in the face of itself. But one is not necessarily fleeing whenever one shrinks back in the face of something or turns away from it. Shrinking back in the face of what fear discloses – in the face of something threatening – is founded upon fear; and this shrinking back has the character of fleeing. Our Interpretation   of fear as a state-of-mind has shown that in each case that in the face of which we fear is a DETRIMENTAL entity within-the-world which comes from some definite region but is close by and is bringing itself close, and yet might stay away. In falling, Dasein turns away from itself. That in the face of which it thus shrinks back must, in any case, be an entity with the character of threatening; yet this entity has the same kind of Being as the one that shrinks back: it is Dasein itself. That in the face of which it thus shrinks back cannot be taken as something ‘fearsome’, for anything ‘fearsome’ is always encountered as an entity within-the-world. The only threatening which can be ‘fearsome’ and which gets discovered in fear, always comes from entities within-the-world. [SZ:186] BTMR §40

We shall begin our analysis by exhibiting the temporality of fear. Fear has been characterized as an inauthentic state-of-mind. To what extent does the existential meaning which makes such a state-of-mind possible lie in what has been? Which mode of this ecstasis designates the specific temporality of fear? Fear is a fearing in the face of something threatening – of something which is DETRIMENTAL to Dasein’s factical potentiality-for-Being, and which brings itself close in the way we have described, within the range of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand with which we concern ourselves. Fearing discloses something threatening, and it does so by way of everyday circumspection. A subject which merely beholds would never be able to discover anything of the sort. But if something is disclosed when one fears in the face of it, is not this disclosure a letting-something-come-towards-oneself [ein Auf  -sich-zukommenlassen]? Has not “fear” been rightly defined as “the expectation of some oncoming evil” [eines ankommenden Übels] (“malum futurum  ”)? Is not the primary meaning of fear the future, and least of all, one’s having been? Not only does fearing ‘relate’ itself to ‘something future’ in the signification of something which first comes on ‘in time’; but this self-relating is itself futural in the primordially temporal   sense. All this is incontestable. Manifestly an awaiting is one of the things that belong to the existential-temporal Constitution of fear. But proximally this just means that the temporality of fear is one that is inauthentic. Is fearing in the face of something merely an expecting of something threatening which is coming on? Such an expectation need not be fear already, and it is so far from being fear that the specific character which fear as a ‘mood possesses is missing. This character lies in the fact that in fear the awaiting lets what is threatening come back [zurückkommen] to one’s factically concernful potentiality-for-Being. Only if that to which this comes back is already ecstatically open, can that which threatens be awaited right back to the entity which I myself am; only so can my Dasein be threatened. The awaiting which fears is one which is afraid ‘for itself’; that is to say, fearing in the face of something, is in each case, a fearing about; therein lies the character of fear as mood and as affect. When one’s Being-in-the-world has been threatened and it concerns itself with the ready-to-hand, it does so as a factical potentiality-for-Being of its own. In the face of this potentiality one backs away in bewilderment, and this kind of forgetting oneself is what constitutes the existential-temporal meaning of fear. Aristotle   rightly defines “fear” as lype tis he tarache – as “a kind of depression or bewilderment”. This depression forces Dasein back to its thrownness, but in such a way that this thrownness gets quite closed off. The bewilderment is based upon a forgetting. When one forgets and backs away in the face of a factical potentiality-for-Being which is resolute, one clings to those possibilities of self-preservation and evasion which one has already discovered circumspectively beforehand. When concern is afraid, it leaps from next to next, because it forgets itself and therefore does not take hold of any definite possibility. Every ‘possible’ possibility offers itself, and this means that the impossible ones do so too. The man who fears, does not stop with any of these; his ‘environment’ does not disappear, but it is encountered without his knowing his way about in it any longer. This bewildered making-present of the first thing that comes into one’s head, is something that belongs with forgetting oneself in fear. It is well known, for instance, that the inhabitants of a burning house will often ‘save’ the most indifferent things that are most closely ready-to-hand. When one has forgotten oneself and makes present a jumble of hovering possibilities, one thus makes possible that bewilderment which goes to make up the mood-character of fear. The having forgotten which goes with such bewilderment modifies the awaiting too and gives it the character of a depressed or bewildered awaiting which is distinct from any pure expectation. [SZ:342] BTMR §68