Kockelmans (1989:59-61) – Compreensão do Ser

Summarizing the preceding reflections one could perhaps say that man has always some comprehension of Being, even before he asks the question concerning the meaning of Being. No matter how dark Being itself may be to us, still in our most casual interaction with other beings, they are sufficiently open to us so that we may experience that they are, concern ourselves about what they are and how they are, concern ourselves about the truth of them. We comprehend somehow what makes them be what they are, and this is their Being. Every sentence that we utter contains an “is.” Our very moods reveal to us that each of us “is” in such and such a way. We must comprehend then, no matter how obscurely, what this “is” means, else all this would have no meaning.

This radical comprehension of Being, however, even if undeniable, is not for that reason articulated by means of any clear concept. It is still pre-conceptual and for the most part undetermined; therefore it is inevitably vague. If one maintains that all knowledge is conceptual, then even though beings may be known, the mode of Being through which they are what they are, and which man comprehends, still remains unknown. Finally, this pre-conceptual comprehending of Being is unquestioning; for the Being that thus yields itself, is so obvious that it calls no attention to itself and, thus, raises no questions. Vague, undefined, unquestioning, the comprehension of Being is nevertheless an irreducible fact which the ontological research accepts in order to be able to begin. [1]

As a matter of fact, it is our pre-conceptual comprehension of Being, even though it itself is unquestioning, that makes the being-question possible. For to question is to search, and every search is [60] polarized by its end-term. One could not ask, then, what Being means, unless one somehow comprehended the answer already. The task of pursuing the Being-question, then, is reduced to this: what is the essence of the comprehension of Being that is rooted so deeply in man. [2]

It is this comprehension of Being that for Heidegger most profoundly characterizes the human reality. “Man is a being who is immersed among beings in such a way that the beings which he is not, as well as the being that he himself is, have already become constantly manifest to him….” [3] This fact explains why Heidegger prefers to designate the questioner who questions Being by a term that suggests this unique prerogative which distinguishes it from all other beings, namely its comprehension of Being as such: Dasein, There-being, the presence and openness among beings.

Dasein must here be understood completely ontologically and not just anthropologically. The analytic of Dasein is not meant primarily to say something about the human reality, but rather about its comprehension of Being and about Being itself. Dasein is to be understood as an irruption (Einbruch) into the totality of beings by reason of which these beings as beings may become manifest. “On the basis of this comprehension of Being, man is There through whose Being the revealing irruption among beings takes place….” [4] In other words, Dasein is the “There” of Being among beings— Dasein lets beings be, it manifests them, thereby making all encounter with them possible. It follows then that, correlative to the referential dependence of Dasein on beings, there is a dependence of beings on Dasein in order that they may be manifest. In letting things be manifest, however, Dasein obviously does not create them; Dasein merely discovers them as what they are. Although in the first sections of Being and Time   Heidegger does not explicitly state the relationship between Dasein and Being, it is nonetheless clear from other publications of the same period that Dasein is merely the “place” where Being itself manifests itself in the concrete form of world and that it is Being as world that in the final analysis lets the beings be manifest as what they in fact are. Yet Being cannot let the beings be what they are, if it were not for the Dasein of man.

[61] Now if it is by the irruption of Dasein among the beings that these beings become manifest, then it is not difficult to understand how Dasein lets these beings be (seinlassen). In letting them be manifest, Dasein liberates them from concealment and, hence, makes them free. It is perhaps important to note here that Dasein is not identical with man, although the relationship between them is very intimate. Dasein is the ontological structure of man taken in its intrinsic finitude. This structure will be explained in one of the chapters to follow. [5] (1990, p. 59-61)