Dasein-with

Mitdasein, 114,116, 117-125 (§ 26), 137, 140, 142, 162-163, 168, 170, 176, 187, 193, 239, 272, 297. See also being-with (BTJS)

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Our analysis of the worldhood of the world has constantly been bringing the whole phenomenon of Being-in-the-world into view, although its constitutive items have not all stood out with the same phenomenal distinctness as the phenomenon of the world itself. We have Interpreted the world ontologically by going through what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; and this Interpretation has been put first, because Dasein, in its everydayness (with regard to which Dasein remains a constant theme for study), not only is in a world but comports itself towards that world with one predominant kind of Being. Proximally and for the most part Dasein is fascinated with its world. Dasein is thus absorbed in the world; the kind of Being which it thus possesses, and in general the Being-in which underlies it, are essential in determining the character of a phenomenon which we are now about to study. We shall approach this phenomenon by asking who it is that Dasein is in its everydayness. All the structures of Being which belong to Dasein, together with the phenomenon which provides the answer to this question of the “who”, are ways of its Being. To characterize these ontologically is to do so existentially. We must therefore pose the question correctly and outline the procedure for bringing into view a broader phenomenal domain of Dasein’s everydayness. By directing our researches, towards the phenomenon which is to provide us with an answer to the question of the “who”, we shall be led to certain structures of Dasein which are equiprimordial with Being-in-the-world: Being-with and Daseinwith [Mitsein und Mitdasein]. In this kind of Being is grounded the mode of everyday Being-one’s-Self [Selbstsein]; the explication of this mode will [SZ:114] enable us to see what we may call the ‘subject’ of everydayness – the “they”. Our chapter on the ‘who’ of the average Dasein will thus be divided up as follows: 1. an approach to the existential question of the “who” of Dasein (Section 25); 2. the DASEIN-WITH of Others, and everyday Being-with (Section 26); 3. everyday Being-one’s-Self and the “they” (Section 27). BTMR §24

Yet even the positive Interpretation of Dasein which we have so far given, already forbids us to start with the formal givenness of the “I”, if our purpose is to answer the question of the “who” in a way which is phenomenally adequate. In clarifying Being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without a world never ‘is’ proximally, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an isolated “I” without Others is just as far from being proximally given. If, however, ‘the Others’ already are there with us [mit da sind] in Being-in-the-world, and if this is ascertained phenomenally, even this should not mislead us into supposing that the ontological structure of what is thus ‘given’ is obvious, requiring no investigation. Our task is to make visible phenomenally the species to which this DASEIN-WITH in closest everydayness belongs, and to Interpret it in a way which is ontologically appropriate. BTMR §25

§26. The DASEIN-WITH of Others and Everyday Being-with BTMR §26

Thus in characterizing the encountering of Others, one is again still oriented by that Dasein which is in each case one’s own. But even in this characterization does one not start by marking out and isolating the ‘I’ so that one must then seek some way of getting over to the Others from this isolated subject? To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense we are talking about ‘the Others’. By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me – those over against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself – those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too [Auch-dasein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-presentat-hand-along-‘with’ them within a world. This ‘with’ is something of the character of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of Being as circumspectively concernful Being-in-the-world. ‘With’ and ‘too’ are to be understood existentially, not categorially. By reason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with Others. Their Being-in-themselves within-the-world is DASEIN-WITH [Mitdasein]. BTMR §26

Dasein understands itself proximally and for the most part in terms of its world; and the DASEIN-WITH of Others’is often encountered in terms of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. But even if Others become themes for study, as it were, in their own Dasien, they are not encountered as person-Things present-at-hand: we meet them ‘at work’, that is, primarily in their Being-in-the-world. Even if we see the Other ‘just standing around’, he is never apprehended as a human-Thing present-at-hand, but his ‘standing-around’ is an existential mode of Being – an unconcerned, uncircumspective tarrying alongside everything and nothing [Verweilen bei Allem und Keinem]. The Other is encountered in his DASEIN-WITH in the world. BTMR §26

The expression ‘Dasein’, however, shows plainly that ‘in the first instance’ this entity is unrelated to Others, and that of course it can still be ‘with’ Others afterwards. Yet one must not fail to notice that we use the term “DASEIN-WITH” to designate that Being for which the Others who are [die scienden Anderen] are freed within-the-world. This DASEIN-WITH of the Others is disclosed within-the-world for a Dasein, and so too for those who are Daseins with us [die Mitdaseienden], only because Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with. The phenomenological assertion that “Dasein is essentially Being-with” has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not present-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur. If this were what is meant by the proposition that Dasein’s Being-in-the-world is essentially constituted by Being-with, then Being-with would not be an existential attribute which Dasein, of its own accord, has coming to it from its own kind of Being. It would rather be something which turns up in every case by reason of the occurrence of Others. Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein’s Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occurrence of a second example of a human being ‘beside’ me, or by ten such examples. Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Dasein can still be alone. So Being-with and the facticity of Being with one another are not based on the occurrence together of several ‘subjects’. Yet Being-alone ‘among’ many does not mean that with regard to their Being they are merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being ‘among them’ they are there with us; their DASEIN-WITH is encountered in a mode in which they are indifferent and alien. Being missing and ‘Being away’ [Das Fehlen und “Fortsein”] are modes of DASEIN-WITH, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world. Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one’s own Dasein; DASEIN-WITH characterizes the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with. Only so far as one’s own Dasein has the essential structure of Being-with, is it DASEIN-WITH as encounterable for Others. BTMR §26

[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

Even ‘concern’ with food and clothing, and the nursing of the sick body, are forms of solicitude. But we understand the expression “solicitude” in a way which corresponds to our use of “concern” as a term for an existentiale. For example, ‘welfare work’ [“Fürsorge”], as a factical social arrangement, is grounded in Dasein’s state of Being as Being-with. Its factical urgency gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude. Being for, against, or without one another, passing one another by, not “mattering” to one another – these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely these last-named deficient and Indifferent modes that characterize everyday, average Being-with-one-another. These modes of Being show again the characteristics of inconspicuousness and obviousness which belong just as much to the everyday DASEIN-WITH of Others within-the-world as to the readiness-to-hand of the equipment with which one is daily concerned. These Indifferent modes of Being-with-one-another may easily mislead ontological Interpretation into interpreting this kind of Being, in the first instance, as the mere Being-present-at-hand of several subjects. It seems as if only negligible variations of the same kind of Being lie before us; yet ontologically there is an essential distinction between the ‘indifferent’ way in which Things at random occur together and the way in which entities who are with one another do not “matter” to one another. [SZ:122] BTMR §26

According to the analysis which we have now completed, Being with Others belongs to the Being of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being. Thus as Being-with, Dasein ‘is’ essentially for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential statement as to its essence. Even if the particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, and supposes that it has no need of them or manages to get along without them, it is in the way of Being-with. In Being-with, as the existential “forthe-sake-of” of Others, these have already been disclosed in their Dasein. With their Being-with, their disclosedness has been constituted beforehand; accordingly, this disclosedness also goes to make up significancethat is to say, worldhood. And, significance, as worldhood, is tied up with the existential “for-the-sake-of-which”. Since the worldhood of that world in which every Dasein essentially is already, is thus constituted, it accordingly lets us encounter what is environmentally ready-to-hand as something with which we are circumspectively concerned, and it does so in such a way that together with it we encounter the DASEIN-WITH of Others. The structure of the world’s worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world. BTMR §26

Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the DASEIN-WITH of Others belongs to it; this means that because Dasein’s Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of Being, which, more than anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible. Knowing oneself [Sichkennen] is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It operates proximally in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us – Being-in-the-world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with the Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with – an acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed. [SZ:124] BTMR §26

But the fact that ‘empathy’ is not a primordial existential phenomenon, any more than is knowing in general, does not mean that there is nothing problematical about it. The special hermeneutic of empathy will have to show how Being-with-one-another and Dasein’s knowing of itself are led astray and obstructed by the various possibilities of Being which Dasein itself possesses, so that a genuine ‘understanding’ gets suppressed, and Dasein takes refuge in substitutes; the possibility of understanding the stranger correctly presupposes such a hermeneutic as its positive existential condition. Our analysis has shown that Being-with is an existential constituent of Being-in-the-world. DASEIN-WITH has proved to be a kind of Being which entities encountered within-the-world have as their own. So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being. This cannot be conceived as a summative result of the occurrence of several ‘subjects’. Even to come across a number of ‘subjects’ [einer Anzahl von “Subjekten”] becomes possible only if the Others who are concerned proximally in their DASEIN-WITH are treated merely as ‘numerals’ [“Nummer”]. Such a number of ‘subjects’ gets discovered only by a definite Being-with-and-towards-one-another. This ‘inconsiderate’ Being-with ‘reckons’ [“rechnet”] with the Others without seriously ‘counting on them’ [“auf sie zählt”], or without even wanting to ‘have anything to do’ with them. BTMR §26

One’s own Dasein, like the DASEIN-WITH of Others, is encountered proximally and for the most part in terms of the with-world with which we are environmentally concerned. When Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern – that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards Others – it is not itself. Who is it, then, who has taken over Being as everyday Being-with-one-another? BTMR §26

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

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

One can also fear about Others, and we “then speak of “fearing for” them [Fürchten für sic]. This fearing for the Other does not take away his fear. Such a possibility has been ruled out already, because the Other, for whom we fear, need not fear at all on his part. It is precisely when the Other is not afraid and charges recklessly at what is threatening him that we fear most for him. Fearing-for is a way of having a co-state-of-mind with Others, but not necessarily a being-afraid-with or even a fearing-with-one-another. One can “fear about” without “being-afraid”. Yet when viewed more strictly, fearing-about is “being-afraid-for-oneself”. Here what one. “is apprehensive about” is one’s Being-with with the Other, who might be torn away from one. That which is fearsome is not aimed directly at him who fears with someone else. Fearing-about knows that in a certain way it is unaffected, and yet it is co-affected in so far as the DASEIN-WITH for which it fears is affected. Fearing-about is therefore not a weaker form of being-afraid. Here the issue is one of existential modes, not of degrees of ‘feeling-tones’. Fearing-about does not lose its specific genuiness even if it is not ‘really’ afraid. [SZ:142] BTMR §30

As we have already indicated in our analysis of assertion, the phenomenon of communication must be understood in a sense which is ontologically broad. ‘Communication’ in which one makes assertions – giving information, for instance – is a special case of that communication which is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind [Mitbefindlichkeit] gets ‘shared’, and so does the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject, into the interior of another. DASEIN-WITH is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated. BTMR §34

We can make clear the connection of discourse with understanding and intelligibility by considering an existential possibility which belongs to talking itself-hearing. If we have not heard ‘aright’, it is not by accident that we say we have not ‘understood’. Hearing is constitutive for discourse. And just as linguistic utterance is based on discourse, so is acoustic perception on hearing. Listening to … is Dasein’s existential way of Being-open as Being-with for Others. Indeed, hearing constitutes the primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being – as in hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it. Dasein hears, because it understands. As a Being-in-the-world with Others, a Being which understands, Dasein is ‘in thrall’ to DASEIN-WITH and to itself; and in this thraldom it “belongs” to these. Being-with develops in listening to one another [Aufeinander-hören], which can be done in several possible ways: following, going along with, and the privative modes of not-hearing, resisting, defying, and turning away. BTMR §34

The expression ‘idle talk’ [“Gerede”] is not to be used here in a ‘disparaging’ signification. Terminologically, it signifies a positive phenomenon which constitutes the kind of Being of everyday Dasein’s understanding and interpreting. For the most part, discourse is expressed by being spoken out, and has always been so expressed; it is language. But in that case understanding and interpretation already lie in what has thus been expressed. In language, as a way things have been expressed or spoken out [Ausgesprochenheit], there is hidden a way in which the understanding of Dasein has been interpreted. This way of interpreting it is no more just present-at-hand than language is; on the contrary, its Being is itself of the character of Dasein. Proximally, and with certain limits, Dasein is constantly delivered over to this interpretedness, which controls and distributes the possibilities of average understanding and of the state-of-mind belonging to it. The way things have been expressed or spoken out is such that in the totality of contexts of signification into which it has been articulated, it preserves an understanding of the disclosed world and therewith, equiprimordially, an understanding of the DASEIN-WITH of Others and of one’s own Being-in. The understanding which has thus already been “deposited” in the way things have been expressed, pertains just as much to any traditional discoveredness of entities which may have been reached, as it does to one’s current understanding of Being and to whatever possibilities and horizons for fresh interpretation and conceptual Articulation may be available. But now we must go beyond a bare allusion to the Fact of this interpretedness of Dasein, and must inquire about the existential kind of Being of that discourse which is expressed and which expresses itself. If this cannot be conceived as something present-at-hand, what is its Being, and what does this tell us in principle about Dasein’s everyday kind of Being? [SZ:168] BTMR §35

Idle talk, which closes things off in the way we have designated, is the kind of Being which belongs to Dasein’s understanding when that understanding has been uprooted. But idle talk does not occur as a condition which is present-at-hand in something present-at-hand: idle talk has been uprooted existentially, and this uprooting is constant. Ontologically this means that when Dasein maintains itself in idle talk, it is – as Being-in-the-world – cut off from its primary and primordially genuine relationships-of-Being towards the world, towards DASEIN-WITH, and towards its very Being-in. Such a Dasein keeps floating unattached [in einer Schwebe]; yet in so doing, it is always alongside the world, with Others, and towards itself. To be uprooted in this manner is a possibility-of-Being only for an entity whose disclosedness is constituted by discourse as characterized by understanding and states-of-mind – that is to say, for an entity whose discloscdness, in such an ontologically constitutive state, is its “there”, its ‘in-the-world’. Far from amounting to a “not-Being” of Dasein, this uprooting is rather Dasein’s most everyday and most stubborn ‘Reality’. BTMR §35

Anxiety is not only anxiety in the face of something, but, as a state-of-mind, it is also anxiety about something. That which anxiety is profoundly anxious [sich abängstet] about is not a definite kind of Being for Dasein or a definite possibility for it. Indeed the threat itself is indefinite, and therefore cannot penetrate threateningly to this or that factically concrete potentiality-for-Being. That which anxiety is anxious about is Being-in-the-world itself. In anxiety what is environmentally ready-to-hand sinks away, and so, in general, do entities within-the-world. The ‘world’ can offer nothing more, and neither can the DASEIN-WITH of Others. Anxiety thus takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, as it falls, in terms of the ‘world’ and the way things have been publicly interpreted. Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about – its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. Therefore, with that which it is anxious about, anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualized in individualization [vereinzeltes in der Vereinzelung]. [SZ:188] BTMR §40

Because Being-in-the-world is essentially care, Being-alongside the ready-to-hand could be taken in our previous analyses as concern, and Being with the DASEIN-WITH of Others as we encounter it within-the-world could be taken as solicitude. Being-alongside something is concern, because it is defined as a way of Being-in by its basic structure – care. Care does not characterize just existentiality, let us say, as detached from facticity and falling; on the contrary, it embraces the unity of these ways in which Being may be characterized. So neither does “care” stand primarily and exclusively for an isolated attitude of the “I” towards itself. If one were to construct the expression ‘care for oneself’ [“Selbstsorge”], following the analogy of “concern” [Besorgen] and “solicitude” [Fürsorge], this would be a tautology. “Care” cannot stand for some special attitude towards the Self; for the Self has already been characterized ontologically by “Being-ahead-of-itself”, a characteristic in which the other two items in the structure of care – Being-already-in … and Being-alongside … – have been posited as well [mitgesetzt]. [SZ:193] BTMR §41

[SZ:239] And even if, by thus Being there alongside, it were possible and feasible for us to make plain to ourselves ‘psychologically’ the dying of Others, this would by no means let us grasp the way-to-be which we would then have in mind – namely, coming-to-an-end. We are asking about the ontological meaning of the dying of the person who dies, as a possibilityof-Being which belongs to his Being. We are not asking about the way in which the deceased has DASEIN-WITH or is still-a-Dasein [Nochdaseins] with those who are left behind. If death as experienced in Others is what we are enjoined to take as the theme for our analysis of Dasein’s end and totality, this cannot give us, either ontically or ontologically, what it presumes to give. BTMR §47

To any discourse there belongs that which is talked about in it. Discourse gives information about something, and does so in some definite regard. From what is thus talked about, it draws whatever it is saying as this particular discourse – what is said in the talk as such. In discourse as communication, this becomes accessible to the DASEIN-WITH of Others, for the most part by way of uttering it in language. BTMR §56

In resoluteness we have now arrived at that truth of Dasein which is most primordial because it is authentic. Whenever a “there” is disclosed, its whole Being-in-the-world – that is to say, the world, Being-in, and the Self which, as an ‘I am’, this entity is – is disclosed with equal primordiality. Whenever the world is disclosed, entities within-the-world have been discovered already. The discoveredness of the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand is based on the disclosedness of the world for if the current totality of involvements is to be freed, this requires that significance be understood beforehand. In understanding significance, concernful Dasein submits itself circumspectively to what it encounters as ready-to-hand. Any discovering of a totality of involvements goes back to a “for-the-sake-of-which”; and on the understanding of such a “for-the-sake-of-which” is based in turn the understanding of significance as the disclosedness of the current world. In seeking shelter, sustenance, livelihood, we do so “for the sake of” constant possibilities of Dasein which are very close to it; upon these the entity for which its own Being is an issue, has already projected itself. Thrown into its ‘there’, every Dasein has been factically submitted to a definite ‘world’ – its ‘world’. At the same time those factical projections which are closest to it, have been guided by its concernful lostness in the “they”. To this lostness, one’s own Dasein can appeal, and this appeal can be understood in the way of resoluteness. But in that case this authentic disclosedness modifies with equal primordiality both the way in which the ‘world’ is discovered (and this is founded upon that disclosedness) and the way in which the DASEIN-WITH of Others is disclosed. The ‘world’ which is ready-to-hand does not become another one ‘in its content’, nor does the circle of Others get exchanged for a new one; but both one’s Being towards the ready-to-hand understandingly and concernfully, and one’s solicitous Being with Others, are now given a definite character in terms of their ownmost potentiality-for-Being-their-Selves. [SZ:298] BTMR §60