For Heidegger, existence does not refer to the traditional, metaphysically understood existentia (present-at-handness of something). It refers exclusively to the human being’s existence as Ek-sistence (the human being’s “standing out” into the truth of being, i.e., as the “lighting” or “clearing” of being (Lichtung des Seins)). In contrast to any misunderstanding of the human being as a self-contained “subject” vis-a-vis “objects,” Ek-sistence literally means standing outside oneself into the open region of being in which beings can come to presence (the human being as “being-in-the-world,” “Da-sein”).