Aí [Da] (Sheehan, 2015, 136-139)

The Da of Da-sein should never be translated as “here” or “there,” as is customary in the current scholarship (for example: being there, being here, being t/here). Heidegger insists that “Da ≠ ibi und ubi”¹ (the Da of Da-sein is not a locative adverb at all: “here” or “there”). Rather, the Da should always be interpreted as “openedness” or “the open” in the sense of man’s being thrown-open, “(being) brought into one’s openedness but not of one’s own accord.”² “The Da means appropriated openness—the appropriated clearing of (i.e., for) being.”³

“Da-sein” is a key word of my thinking and thus the occasion for major misunderstandings. For me, “Da-sein” does not mean the same as “Here I am!” but rather—if I might express it in a perhaps impossible French—être le-là. And the le-là is precisely ̓Αλήϑεια: disclosedness—openness.⁴

Heidegger speaks of “our question about openness as such (Da-sein),”⁵ and he writes that the Da of Dasein

[(should designate the openedness where things can be present for human beings, and human beings for themselves.)] [Zollikoner Seminare, 156.35–157.3 = 118.22–24: “(Das Da des Daseins) soll die Offenheit nennen, in der für den Menschen Seiendes anwesend sein kann, auch er selbst für sich selbst.” GA27: 136.13–15: “Das Dasein is dasjenige Seiende, das so etwas wie ein ‘Da’ ist. Das ‘Da’: ein Umkreis von Offenbarkeit.” Ibid., 137.7–8: “eine Sphäre von Offenbarkeit.”] [(. . . being human, as such, is distinguished by the fact that to be, in its own unique way, is to be this openedness.)] [Zollikoner Seminare, 157.31–32 = 121.14–15: “das Menschheit (ist) als solches ausgezeichnet, auf seine Weise diese Offenheit selbst zu sein.” GA2: 216, note a = 157 note: Draußensein: “das Da; Ausgesetztheit als offene Stelle.”] [(The human being occurs in such a way that he or she is the “Da,” that is, the clearing of being.)] [GA9: 325.20–21 = 248.11–12: “Der Mensch west so, daß er das ‘Da,’ das heißt die Lichtung des Seins, ist.” Zollikoner Seminare 351.14–17 = 281.31–282.1: “Die Offenständigkeit des Da-seins ‘ist’ das Ausstehen [= sustaining] der Lichtung. Lichtung und Da-sein gehören im vorhinein zusammen und die bestimmende Einheit des Zusammen ist das Ereignis.” GA14: 35.23 = 27.33: “(die) Lichtung des Da-seins.”] [(The Da refers to that clearing in which things stand as a whole, in such a way that, in this Da, the being of open things shows itself and at the same time withdraws. To be this Da is a determination of man.)] [GA45: 213.1–4 = 180.6–9. GA66: 321.12 = 285.28: “Das Da lichtet sich im Da-sein.”] [( (Ex-sistence) is itself the clearing. )] [SZ 133.5 = 171.22: “daß es [= Dasein] selbst die Lichtung ist.” GA66: 328.1–2 = 291.13–14: “Das Da-sein ist der aus dem Er-eignis ereignete geschichtliche Grund der Lichtung des Seyns.” Italicized in the original. GA 69: 101.12–13: “Die Lichtung—sein—in sie als Offenes sich loswerfen = das Da-sein.” GA 66: 129.5 = 109.7–8: “das ‘Da’, die Lichtung.” Heidegger will go so far as to say that the Da “gehört zum Sein selbst, ‘ist’ Sein selbst und heißt darum das Da-sein”: GA 6:2: 323.14–15 = 218.4–5.] [(The clearing: the Da—is itself ex-sistence.)] [“Die ‘Seinsfrage’ in Sein und Zeit,” 9.23: “die Lichtung: das Da—ist selbst das Dasein.” See GA14: 35.23–24 = 27.31–33. GA 3: 229.10–11 = 160.32–33: “ist der Mensch das Da, mit dessen Sein der eröffnende Einbruch in das Seiende geschieht.” GA70: 125.12: “(die) Lichtung des Da-, die als Da-sein west.”] [(The point is to experience Da-sein in the sense that human being itself is the Da, that is, the openedness of being, in that a person undertakes to preserve it, and in preserving it, to unfold it (See Sein und Zeit, p. 132f. [= 170f.]).)] [GA15: 415.10–13 = 88.18–21: “Es gilt, das Da-sein in dem Sinne zu erfahren, daß der Mensch das ‘Da’, d.h. die Offenheit des Seins für ihn, selbst ist, indem er es übernimmt, sie zu bewahren und bewahrend zu entfalten.” (Vgl. “Sein und Zeit,” S. 132f.)] [(Ex-sistence must be understood as being-the-clearing. Da is specifically the word for the open expanse.)] [GA15: 380.11–12 = 69.4–5: “Dasein muß als die-Lichtung-sein verstanden werden. Das Da is nämlich das Wort für die offene Weite.” At SZ 147.2–3 = 187.13–14 Heidegger speaks of “(die) Gelichtetheit, als welche wir die Erschlossenheit des Da charakterisierten.” GA66: 100.30 = 84.11: “Das Offene der Lichtung.”] [(Ex-sistence (das Da-sein) is the way in which the open, the clearing, occurs, within which being as cleared is opened up to human understanding.)] [GA49: 60.25–27: “Das Da-sein ist vielmehr die Weise, wie das Offene, die Lichtung west, in der ‘das Sein’ als gelichtetes dem menschlichen Verstehen sich öffnet.”] [(To be—the clearing—to be cast into the clearing as the open = to-be-the-Da.)] [GA69: 101.12: “Die Lichtung—sein—in sie als Offenes sich loswerfen = das Da-sein.”]

The distinction between ex-sistence as personal/existentiel and ex-sistence as structural/existential (which, unfortunately, Heidegger tends to blur) comes into its own in Heidegger’s discussion of “decision” or “resolve” (Entschluss) in Being and Time § 62. My ex-sistence is always mine alone, and this fact entails that the responsibility for choosing how I am to live rests exclusively with me and with no one else. I have a choice: I can either embrace my dynamic and mortal structure as ex-sistence, along with all that it entails, or I can flee it. When (personal) ex-sistence embraces its (structural) ex-sistence, Heidegger says, one is “authentic,” the self-responsible author of his or her own finite life. When ex-sistence flees its ex-sistence, it is “inauthentic,” insofar as it refuses to fully understand and embrace itself and “become what it already is.”⁶