devoted

Hingabe  , Sorgfalt  

Solicitude proves to be a state of Dasein  ’s Being – one which, in accordance with its different possibilities, is bound up with its Being towards the world of its concern, and likewise with its authentic Being towards itself. Being with one another is based proximally and often exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such Being. A Being-with-one-another which arises [entspringt] from one’s doing the same thing as someone else, not   only keeps for the most part within the outer limits, but enters the mode of distance and reserve. The Being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives only on mistrust. On the other hand  , when they DEVOTE themselves to the same affair in common, their doing so is determined by the manner in which their Dasein, each in its own way, has been taken hold of. They thus become authentically bound together, and this makes possible the right kind of objectivity [die rechte Sachlichkeit  ], which frees the Other in his freedom for himself. BTMR   §26

Projection always pertains to the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world; as potentiality-for-Being, understanding has itself possibilities, which are sketched out beforehand within the range of what is essentially disclosable in it. Understanding can DEVOTE itself primarily to the disclosedness of the world; that is, Dasein can, proximally and for the most part, understand itself in terms of its world. Or else understanding throws itself primarily into the “for-the-sake-of-which”; that is, Dasein exists as itself. Understanding is either authentic, arising out of one’s own Self as such, or inauthentic. The ‘in-‘ of “inauthentic” does not mean that Dasein cuts itself off from its Self and understands ‘only’ the world. The world belongs to Being-one’s-Self as Being-in-the-world. On the other hand, authentic understanding, no less than that which is inauthentic, can be either genuine or not genuine. As potentiality-for-Being, understanding is altogether permeated with possibility. When one is diverted into [Sichverlegen   in] one of these basic possibilities of understanding, the other is not laid aside [legt … nicht   ab]. Because understanding, in every case, pertains rather to Dasein’s full disclosedness as Being-in-the-world, this diversion of the understanding is an existential modification of projection as a whole. In understanding the world, Being-in is always understood along with it, while understanding of existence as such is always an understanding of the world. [SZ:146] BTMR §31

The remarkable priority of ‘seeing’ was noticed particularly by Augustine  , in connection with his Interpretation   of concupiscentia  . “Ad oculos enim videre profrie pertinet.” (“Seeing belongs properly to the eyes.”) “Utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus.” (“But we even use this word ‘seeing’ for the other senses when we DEVOTE them to cognizing.”) “Neque enim dicimus: audi quid   rutilet; aut, olfac quam niteat; aut, gusta quam splendeat; aut, palpa quam fulgeat: videri enim dicuntur haec omnia.” (“For we do not say ‘Hear how it glows’, or ‘Smell how it glistens’, or ‘Taste how it shines’, or ‘Feel how it flashes’; but we say of each, ‘See’; we say that all this is seen.”) “Dicimus autem non solum, vide quid   luceat, quod soli oculi sentire possunt.” (“We not only say, ‘See how that shines’, when the eyes alone can perceive it;”) “sed etiam, vide quid sonet; vide quid oleat; vide quid sapial; vide quam durum sit;” (“but we even say, ‘See how that sounds’, ‘See how that is scented’, ‘See how that tastes’, ‘See how hard that is’.”) “Ideoque generalis experientia sensuum concupiscentia   sicut dictum est oculorum vocatur, quia videndi officium in quo primatum oculi tenent, etiam ceteri sensus sibi de similitudine usurpant, cum aliquid cognitionis explorant.” (“Therefore the experience of the senses in general is designated as the ‘lust of the eyes’; for when the issue is one of knowing something, the other senses, by a certain resemblance, take to themselves the function of seeing – a function in which the eyes have priority.”) BTMR §36

Here “Being-ontological” is not yet tantamount to “developing an ontology”. So if we should reserve the term “ontology” for that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly DEVOTED to the meaning of entities, then what we have had in mind in speaking of Dasein’s “Being-ontological” is to be designated as something “pre-ontological”. It does not signify simply “being-ontical”, however, but rather “being in such a way that one has an understanding of Being”. BTMR §4

Dasein’s Being is care. It comprises in itself facticity (thrownness), existence (projection), and falling. As being, Dasein is something that has been thrown; it has been brought into its “there”, but not of its own accord. As being, it has taken the definite form of a potentiality-for-Being which has heard itself and has DEVOTED itself to itself, but not as itself. As existent, it never comes back behind its thrownness in such a way that it might first release this ‘that-it-is-and-has-to-be’ from its Being-its-Self and lead it into the “there”. Thrownness, however, does not lie behind it as some event which has happened to Dasein, which has factually befallen and fallen   loose from Dasein again; on the contrary, as long as Dasein is, Dasein, as care, is constantly its ‘that-it-is’. To this entity it has been delivered over, and as such it can exist solely as the entity which it is; and as this entity to which it has been thus delivered over, it is, in its existing, the basis of its potentiality-for-Being. Although it has not laid that basis itself, it reposes in the weight of it, which is made manifest to it as a burden by Dasein’s mood. BTMR §58

Curiosity is a distinctive tendency of Dasein’s Being, in accordance with which Dasein concerns itself with a potentiality-for-seeing. Like the concept of sight, ‘seeing’ will not be restricted to awareness through ‘the eyes of the body’. Awareness in the broader sense lets what is ready-to-hand and what is present-at-hand be encountered ‘bodily’ in themselves with regard to the way they look. Letting them be thus encountered is grounded in a Present. This Present gives us in general the ecstatical horizon   within which entities can have bodily presence. Curiosity, however, does not make present the present-at-hand in order to tarry alongside it and understand it; it seeks to see only in order to see and to have seen. As this making-present which gets entangled in itself, curiosity has an ecstatical unity with a corresponding future and a corresponding having been. The craving for the new is of course a way of proceeding towards something not yet seen, but in such a manner that the making-present seeks to extricate itself from awaiting. Curiosity is futural in a way which is altogether inauthentic, and in such a manner, moreover, that it does not await a possibility, but, in its craving, just desires such a possibility as something that is actual. Curiosity gets constituted by a making-present which is not held   on to, but which, in merely making present,’ thereby seeks constantly to run away from the awaiting in which it is nevertheless ‘held’, though not held on to. The Present ‘arises or leaps away’ from the awaiting which belongs to it, and it does so in the sense [SZ:347] of running away from it, as we have just emphasized. But the making-present which ‘leaps away’ in curiosity is so little DEVOTED to the ‘thing’ it is curious about, that when it obtains sight of anything it already looks away to what is coming next. The making-present which ‘arises or leaps away’ from the awaiting of a definite possibility which one has taken hold of, makes possible ontologically that not-tarrying which is distinctive of curiosity. The making-present does not ‘leap away’ from the awaiting in such a manner, as it were, that it detaches itself from that awaiting and abandons it to itself (if we understand this ontically). This ‘leaping-away’ is rather an ecstatical modification of awaiting, and of such a kind that the awaiting leaps after the making-present. The awaiting gives itself up, as it were; nor does it any longer let any inauthentic possibilities of concern come towards it from that with which it concerns itself, unless these are possibilities only for a making-present which is not held on to. When the awaiting is ecstatically modified by the making-present which leaps away, so that it becomes an awaiting which leaps after, this modification is the existential-temporal   condition for the possibility of distraction. BTMR §68

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

When a philosophical Interpretation of time is carried out, it gets a ‘locus   in a system  ’; this locus may be considered as criterial for the basic way of treating time by which such an Interpretation is guided. In the ‘physics’ of Aristotle   – that is, in the context of an ontology of Nature – the ordinary way of understanding time has received its first thematically detailed traditional interpretation. ‘Time’, ‘location’, and ‘movement’ stand   together. True to tradition  , Hegel  ’s analysis of time has its locus in the second part of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, which is entitled ‘Philosophy of Nature’. The first portion of this treats of mechanics, and of this the first division is DEVOTED to the discussion of ‘space and time’. He calls these ‘the abstract “outside-of-one-another”’. BTMR §82

The history of the signification of the ontical concept of ‘care’ permits us to see still further basic structures of Dasein. Burdach calls attention to a double meaning of the term ‘cura’ according to which it signifies not only ‘anxious exertion’ but also ‘carefulness’ and ‘DEVOTEDNESS’ [“Sorgfalt”, “Hingabe”]. Thus Seneca writes in his last   epistle (Ep. 124): ‘Among the four existent Natures (trees, beasts, man, and God), the latter two, which alone are endowed with reason, are distinguished in that God is immortal while man is mortal. Now when it comes to these, the good of the one, namely God, is fulfilled by his Nature; but that of the other, man, is fulfilled by care (cura): “unius bonum   natura perficit, dei   scilicet, alterius cura, hominis.” BTMR §42

As compared with this ontical interpretation, the existential-ontological Interpretation is not, let us say, merely an ontical generalization which is theoretical in character. That would just mean that ontically all man’s ways of behaving are ‘full of care’ and are guided by his ‘DEVOTEDNESS’ to something. The ‘generalization’ is rather one that is ontological and a priori  . What it has in view is not a set of ontical properties which constantly keep emerging, but a state of Being which is already underlying in every case, and which first makes it ontologically possible for this entity to be addressed ontically as “cura”. The existential condition for the possibility of ‘the cares of life’ and ‘DEVOTEDNESS’, must be conceived as care, in a sense which is primordial – that is ontological. BTMR §42

This is shown by bad moods. In these, Dasein becomes blind to itself, the environment with which it is concerned veils itself, the circumspection of concern gets led astray. States-of-mind are so far from being reflected upon, that precisely what they do is to assail Dasein in its unreflecting DEVOTION to the ‘world’ with which it is concerned and on which it expends itself. A mood assails us. It comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being. But with the negative distinction between state-of-mind and the reflective apprehending of something ‘within’, we have thus reached a positive   insight into their character as disclosure. The mood has already disclosed, in every case, Being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself towards something. Having a mood is not related to the psychical in the first instance, and is not itself an inner condition which then reaches forth in an enigmatical way and puts its mark on Things and persons. It is in this that the second essential characteristic of states-of-mind shows itself. We have seen that the world, Dasein-with, and existence are equiprimordially disclosed; and state-of-mind is a basic existential species of their disclosedness, because this disclosedness itself is essentially Being-in-the-world. BTMR §29