Abandonment (Überlassenheit, being left): to oneself, 141, 192, 277, 308, 347, 365; to one’s own null basis, 348; to one’s having-been, 365; to having made a choice, 384; to definite possibilities, 270; to one’s thrownness, 345; to the disposal of the they, 193; to the world, 172, 412, to a ‘world’, 356, 406, 412-413; to the past, 386. See also Anxiety; Lostness; Thrownness [BTJS]
to oneself
Only an entity for which in its Being this very Being is an issue, can be afraid. Fearing discloses this entity as endangered and abandoned to itself. Fear always reveals Dasein in the Being of its “there”, even if it does so in varying degrees of explicitness. [M&R; SZ:141]
The abandonment of Dasein to itself is shown with primordial concreteness in anxiety. [M&R; SZ:192]
What is it that so radically deprives Dasein of the possibility of misunderstanding itself by any sort of alibi and failing to recognize itself, if not the forsakenness [Verlassenheit] with which it has been abandoned [Überlassenheit] to itself? [M&R; SZ:277]
The indefiniteness of death is primordially disclosed in anxiety. But this primordial anxiety strives to exact resoluteness of itself. It moves out of the way everything which conceals the fact that Dasein has been abandoned to itself. [M&R; SZ:308]
The making-present [gegenwärtigen] does not ‘leap away’ [entspringen; abspringen] 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). [M&R; SZ:347]
The schema in which Dasein is disclosed to itself in a state-of-mind as thrown, is to be taken as that in the face of which it has been thrown and that to which it has been abandoned. This characterizes the horizonal schema of what has been. In existing for the sake of itself in abandonment to itself as something that has been thrown, Dasein, as Being-alongside, is at the same time making present. [M&R; SZ:365]
to one’s own null basis
While Dasein can indeed be brought authentically face to face with its thrownness, so as to understand itself in that thrownness authentically, nevertheless, this thrownness remains closed off from Dasein as regards the ontical “whence” and “how” of it. But the fact that it is thus closed off is by no means just a kind of ignorance factually subsisting; it is constitutive for Dasein’s facticity. It is also determinative for the ecstatical character of the way existence has been abandoned to its own null basis. [M&R; SZ:348]
to having made a choice
If Dasein, by anticipation, lets death become powerful in itself, then, as free for death, Dasein understands itself in its own superior power, the power of its finite freedom, so that in this freedom, which ‘is’ only in its having chosen to make such a choice, it can take over the powerlessness of abandonment to its having done so, and can thus come to have a clear vision for the accidents of the Situation that has been disclosed. [M&R; SZ:384]
to definite possibilities
Dasein exists as a potentiality-for-Being which has, in each case, already abandoned itself to definite possibilities. And it has abandoned itself to these possibilities because it is an entity which has been thrown, and an entity whose thrownness gets disclosed more or less plainly and impressively by its having a mood. [M&R; SZ:270]
to one’s thrownness
Furthermore, the pallid lack of mood — indifference — which is addicted to nothing and has no urge for anything, and which abandons itself to whatever the day may bring, yet in so doing takes everything along with it in a certain manner, demonstrates most penetratingly the power of forgetting in the everyday mode of that concern which is closest to us. Just living along [Das Dahinleben] in a way which ‘lets’ everything ‘be’ as it is, is based on forgetting and abandoning oneself to one’s thrownness. [M&R; SZ:345]
to the disposal of the they
In Being-ahead-of-oneself as Being towards one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being, lies the existential-ontological condition for the possibility of Being-free for authentic existentiell possibilities. For the sake of its potentiality-for-Being, any Dasein is as it factically is. But to the extent that this Being towards its potentiality-for-Being is itself characterized by freedom, Dasein can comport itself towards its possibilities, even unwillingly, it can be inauthentically; and factically it is inauthentically, proximally and for the most part. The authentic “for-the-sake-of-which” has not been taken [238] hold of; the projection of one’s own potentiality-for-Being has been abandoned to the disposal of the “they”. Thus when we speak of “Being-ahead-of-itself”, the ‘itself’ which we have in mind is in each case the Self in the sense of the they-self. Even in inauthenticity Dasein remains essentially ahead of itself, just as Dasein’s fleeing in the face of itself as it falls, still shows that it has the state-of-Being of an entity for which its Being is an issue. [M&R; SZ:193]
to the world
When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but just in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world. Therefore curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying alongside what is closest. Consequently it does not seek the leisure of tarrying observantly, but rather seeks restlessness and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounters. In not tarrying, curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marvelling at them—ϑαυμαζειν. To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest. [M&R;SZ:172]
Dasein awaits with circumspective concern the possibility of sight, and it understands itself in terms of its daily work; in thus awaiting and understanding, it gives its time with the ‘then, when it dawns . . .’2 The ‘then’ with which Dasein concerns itself gets dated in terms of something which is connected with getting bright, and which is connected with it in the closest kind of environmental involvement — namely, the rising of the sun. “Then, when the sun rises, it is time for so and so.” Thus Dasein dates the time which it must take, and dates it in terms of something it encounters within the world and within the horizon of its abandonment to the world — in terms of something encountered as having a distinctive involvement for its circumspective potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Concern makes use of the ‘Being-ready-to-hand’ of the sun, which sheds forth light and warmth. The sun dates the time which is interpreted in concern. (M&R; SZ:412]
to a ‘world’
Only in so far as something resistant has been discovered on the basis of the ecstatical temporality of concern, can factical Dasein understand itself in its abandonment to a ‘world’ of which it never becomes master. [M&R; SZ:356]
Dasein exists as an entity for which, in its Being, that Being is itself an issue. Essentially ahead of itself, it has projected itself upon its potentiality-for-Being before going on to any mere consideration of itself. In its projection it reveals itself as something which has been thrown. It has been thrownly abandoned to the ‘world’, and falls into it concernfully. [M&R; SZ:406]
The Being of Dasein is care. This entity exists fallingly as something that has been thrown. Abandoned to the ‘world’ which is discovered with its factical “there”, and concernfully submitted to it, Dasein awaits its potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world; it awaits it in such a manner that it ‘reckons’ on and ‘reckons’ with whatever has an involvement for the sake of this potentiality-for-Being — an involvement which, in the end, is a distinctive one. [M&R; SZ:412]
This dating reckons with time in the sense of a measuring of time; and such measuring requires something by which time is to be measured — namely, a clock. This implies that along with the temporality of Dasein as thrown, abandoned to the ‘world’, and giving itself time, something like a ‘clock’ is also discovered — that is, something ready-to-hand which in its regular recurrence has become accessible in one’s making present awaitingly. ]M&R; SZ:413]
to the past
It is not necessary that in resoluteness one should explicitly know the origin of the possibilities upon which that resoluteness projects itself. It is rather in Dasein’s temporality, and there only, that there lies any possibility that the existentiell potentiality-for-Being upon which it projects itself can be gleaned explicitly from the way in which Dasein has been traditionally understood. The resoluteness which comes back to itself and hands itself down, then becomes the repetition of a possibility of existence that has come down to us. Repeating is handing down explicitly — that is to say, going back into the possibilities of the Dasein that has-been-there.1 The authentic repetition of a possibility of existence that has been — the possibility that Dasein may choose its hero — is grounded existentially in anticipatory resoluteness; for it is in resoluteness that one first chooses the choice which makes one free for the struggle of loyally following in the footsteps of that which can be repeated. But when one has, by repetition, handed down to oneself a possibility that has been, the Dasein that has-been-there is not disclosed in order to be actualized over again. The repeating of that which is possible does not bring again [Wiederbringen] something that is ‘past’, nor does it bind the ‘Present’ back to that which has already been ‘outstripped’. Arising, as it does, from a resolute projection of oneself, repetition does not let itself be persuaded of something by what is ‘past’, just in order that this, as something which was formerly actual, may recur. Rather, the repetition makes a reciprocative rejoinder to the possibility of that existence which has-been-there. But when such a rejoinder is made to this possibility in a resolution, it is made in a moment of vision; and as such it is at the same time a disavowal of that which in the “today”, is working itself out as the ‘past’. Repetition does not abandon itself to that which is past, nor does it aim at progress. In the moment of vision authentic existence is indifferent to both these alternatives. [M&R; SZ:386]