Deely (1971:39-41) – esquecimento do ser [Seinsvergessenheit]

É uma transformação da ideia de natureza humana que marca o primeiro passo do esquecimento do Ser para a determinação do sentido do Ser. O passo é possível quando se percebe claramente que o que é mais básico no homem enquanto homem não é um traço específico na ordem ôntica (entitativa), mas sim algo que precisamente não reside no homem à maneira de um "acidente" ou "propriedade inerente", algo que não corresponde de forma alguma a um fato observável, algo que não pode ser encaixado numa ontologia substância/acidente ou sujeito/objeto de acordo com o que lhe é mais próprio e formal, algo que, de fato, pertence a uma ordem fundamentalmente distinta da ordem ôntica (entitativa) e que se situa como a possibilidade prévia para qualquer "campo" sujeito-objeto enquanto tal, nomeadamente, a compreensão do Ser pelo homem. O homem é antes e durante tudo mais o Compreensor do Ser, o ser dotado desde a sua fonte com uma compreensão do Ser. Esta compreensão não está de todo presente nele sob a forma de um conhecimento completamente alcançado ou conceitualmente explícito, mas está sempre em causa em tudo o que o homem faz. A consciência de si [awareness], a tomada de consciência [prise de conscience], é apenas uma expressão ôntica e, portanto, essencialmente inadequada da verdade ontológica de que o homem é o ente para o qual, em seu Ser, há preocupação [Sorge] com o Ser. A "compreensão" em questão é a "realidade" ontológica que está por detrás da distinção ôntica do homem como radicalmente diferente de quaisquer traços ônticos específicos que são, quando muito, consequências secundárias, derivados mediatos da dimensão ontológica da realidade humana — é esta dimensão ontológica pertencente essencialmente à ordem da intencionalidade (no sentido não-husserliano ainda por determinar) que Heidegger tem em mente quando usa o termo Dasein (Ser-aí) para designar o Ser do homem.

[…] The experience of the forgottenness of Being “involves the crucial conjecture that in view of the unconcealedness of Being the involvement of Being in human nature is an essential feature of Being” [1] – for if Being as Presence and what is present in this Presence (namely, beings) never coincide, yet neither can Presence be such save in the essential nature of a being that has openness for encounter with beings as its Being. Once this has been grasped,

we can no longer accept the claim of metaphysics that it takes care of the fundamental involvement in “Being” and that it decisively determines all relations to beings as such. [For whenever the question about what beings are is raised, beings [40] as such are in view — which view was possible in the first place thanks only to the light of Being. Yet this light itself does not fall within the purview of questioning into what beings are in their transobjective or metalogical subjectivity.] But this “overcoming of metaphysics” does not abolish metaphysics. As long as man remains the animal rationale he is also the animal metaphysicum. As long as man understands himself as the rational animal, metaphysics belongs, as Kant   said, to the nature of man. But if our thinking should succeed in its efforts to go back into the ground of metaphysics, it might help to bring about a change [in the conception of] human nature, accompanied by a transformation of [the task of] metaphysics. [2]

It is a transformation of the idea of human nature that marks the first step away from the forgottenness of Being toward the determination of the sense of Being. The step is possible once it is clearly realized that what is most basic in man as man is not a specific trait in the ontic (entitative) order, but rather something which precisely does not reside in man after the manner of an “accident” or “inherent property”, something that does not correspond in any way with an observable fact, something that cannot be fitted into a sub-stance/accident or subject/object ontology according to what is most proper and formal to it, something which in fact belongs to an order fundamentally distinguished from the ontic (entitative) order and which lies as the prior possibility for any subject-object “field” as such, namely, man’s comprehension of Being. Man is before and during all else the Comprehendor of Being, the being endowed from his source with a comprehension of Being. This comprehension is not at all present in him under the guise of a knowledge that is either completely achieved or conceptually explicit, yet it is always at issue in whatever man does. Self-awareness, prise de conscience, is but an ontic and therefore essentially inadequate expression of the ontological truth that man is the being for whom, in his Being, there is concern for Being. The “comprehension” in question is the ontological “reality” lying behind man’s ontic distinctiveness as radically other than any specific ontic traits which are at most secondary consequences, mediate derivatives of the ontological dimension of the human reality — it is this ontological dimension belonging essentially to the order of intentionale (in the non-Husserlian sense yet to be determined) that Heidegger has in mind when he uses the term Dasein (There-being) to designate the Being of man.

[41] In the transforming of the conception of essential human nature required by the perspectives arising directly from the re-collection of Being in its forgottenness, this pre-conceptual grasp of Being which is always at issue for man in his Dasein “will be called preontological”; and the accompanying transformation of the metaphysical task in this re-trieved perspective on the Being-question will be a turning away from the concern with transobjective subjects of esse in order to engage immediately in the explicitation of this pre-ontological understanding of Being “by raising it to the level of concepts.” [3] “But in that case the question of Being is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-Being which belongs to Dasein itself — the pre-ontological comprehension of Being.” [4]

“More original than man is the finitude of Dasein in him,” [5] as that structure which lets beings be manifest to man (including himself as a being among beings), thereby rendering all encounter and comportment with beings in the first instance possible. “More original than man is the finitude of Dasein in him,” as the There of Being among beings “which is the source of unity between the Being-question and the finitude of man who poses it.” [6]