define, definition: bestimmen; umgrenzen (delimit, etc.); *Definition, *definieren; etc. [BTMR]
If we have thus determined that the Being of the ready-to-hand (involvement) is DEFINABLE as a context of assignments or references, and that even worldhood may so be DEFINED, then has not the ‘substantial Being’ of entities within-the-world been volatilized into a system of Relations? And inasmuch as Relations are always ‘something thought’, has not the Being of entities within-the-world been dissolved into ‘pure thinking’? [SZ:88] BTMR §18
The Being of that substance whose distinctive proprietas is presented by extensio thus becomes DEFINABLE in principle ontologically if we clarify the meaningof. Being which is ‘common’ to the three kinds of substances, one of them infinite, the others both finite. But “… nomen substantiae non convenit Deo et illis univoce ut dici solet in Scholis, hoc est … quae Deo et creaturis sit communis.” Here Descartes touches upon a problem with which medieval ontology was often busied – the question of how the signification of “Being” signifies any entity which one may on occasion be considering. In the assertions ‘God is’ and ‘the world is’, we assert Being. This word ‘is’, however, cannot be meant to apply to these entities in the same sense (synonymos, univoce), when between them there is an infinite [SZ:93] difference of Being; if the signification of ‘is’ were univocal, then what is created would be viewed as if it were uncreated, or the uncreated would be reduced to the status of something crdated. But neither does ‘Being’ function as a mere name which is the same in both cases: in both cases ‘Being’ is understood. This positive sense in which ‘Being’ signifies is one which the Schoolmen took as a signification ‘by analogy’, as distinguished from one which is univocal or merely homonymous. Taking their departure from Aristotle, in whom this problem is foreshadowed in prototypical form just as at the very outset of Greek ontology, they established various kinds of analogy, so that even the ‘Schools’ have different ways of taking the signification-function of ‘.’Being”. In working out this problem ontologically, Descartes is always far behind the Schoolmen; indeed he evades the question. “… nulla eius nominis significatio potest distincte intelligi, quae Deo et creaturis sit communis.” This evasion is tantamount to his failing to discuss the meaning of Being which the idea of substantiality embraces, or the character of the ‘’universality’ which belongs to this signification. Of course even the ontology of the medievals has gone no further than that of the ancients in inquiring into what “Being” itself may mean. So it is not surprising if no headway is made with a question like that of the way in which “Being” signifies, as long as this has to be discussed on the basis of an unclarified meaning of Being which this signification ‘expresses’. The meaning remains unclarified because it is held to be ‘self-evident’. BTMR §20
In its “who”, the caller is DEFINABLE in a ‘worldly’ way by nothing at all. The caller is Dasein in its uncanniness: primordial, thrown Being-in-the-world as the “not-at-home” – the bare ‘that-it-is’ in the “nothing” of the world. The caller is unfamiliar to the everyday they-self; it is something like an alien voice. What could be more alien to the “they”, lost in the [SZ:277] manifold ‘world’ of its concern, than the Self which has been individualized down to itself in uncanniness and been thrown into the “nothing”? ‘It’ calls, even though it gives the concernfully curious ear nothing to hear which might be passed along in further retelling and talked about in public. But what is Dasein even to report from the uncannincss of its thrown Being? What else remains for it than its own potentiality-for-Being as revealed in anxiety? How else is “it” to call than by summoning Dasein towards this potentiality-for-Being, which alone is the issue? BTMR §57
In temporality, however, the constitutive totality of care has a possible basis for its unity. Accordingly it is within the horizon of Dasein’s temporal constitution that we must approach the ontological clarification of the ‘connectedness of life’ – that is to say, the stretching-along, the movement, and the persistence which are specific for Dasein. The movement [Bewegtheit] of existence is not the motion [Bewegung] of something present-at-hand. It is DEFINABLE in terms of the way Dasein stretches along. The specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along, we call its “historizing”. The question of Dasein’s ‘connectedness’ is the ontological problem of Dasein’s historizing. To lay bare the structure of historizing, and the existential-temporal conditions of its possibility, signifies that one has achieved an ontological understanding of historicality. BTMR §72
1. First, it has been maintained that ‘Being’ is the ‘most universal’ concept: tò ón esti katholou malista panton. Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. ‘An understanding of Being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends in entities.’, But the ‘universality’ of ‘Being’ is not that of a class or genus. The term ‘Being’ does not DEFINE that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are Articulated conceptually according to genus and species: oute tò ón genos. The ‘universality’ of Being ‘transcends’ any universality of genus. In medieval ontology ‘Being’ is designated as a ‘transcendens’. Aristotle himself knew the unity of this transcendental ‘universal’ as a unity of analogy in contrast to the multiplicity of the highest generic concepts applicable to things. With this discovery, in spite of his dependence on the way in which the ontological question had been formulated by Plato, he put the problem of Being on what was, in principle, a new basis. To be sure, even Aristotle failed to clear away the darkness of these categorial interconnections. In medieval ontology this problem was widely discussed, especially in the Thomist and Scotist schools, without reaching clarity as to principles. And when Hegel at last defines ‘Being’ as the ‘indeterminate immediate’ and makes this DEFINITION basic for all the further categorial explications of his ‘logic’, he keeps looking in the same direction as ancient ontology, except that he no longer pays heed to Aristotle’s problem of the unity of Being as over against the multiplicity of ‘categories’ applicable to things. So if it is said that ‘Being’ is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all. BTMR §1
Is there not, however, a manifest circularity in such an undertaking? If we must first DEFINE an entity in its Being, and if we want to formulate the question of Being only on this basis, what is this but going in a circle? In working out our question, have we not ‘presupposed’ something which only the answer can bring? Formal objections such as the argument about ‘circular reasoning’, which can easily be cited at any time in the study of first principles, are always sterile when one is considering concrete ways of investigating. When it comes to understanding the matter at hand, they carry no weight and keep us from penetrating into the field of study. BTMR §2
Mathematics, which is seemingly the most rigorous and most firmly constructed of the sciences, has reached a crisis in its ‘foundations’. In the controversy between the formalists and the intuitionists, the issue is one of obtaining and securing the primary way of access to what are supposedly the objects of this science. The relativity theory of physics arises from the tendency to exhibit the interconnectedncss of Nature as it is ‘in itself’. As a theory of the conditions under which we have access to Nature itself, it seeks to preserve the changelessness of the laws of motion by ascertaining all relativities, and thus comes up against the question of the structure of its own given area of study – the problem of matter. In biology there is an awakening tendency to inquire beyond the DEFINITIONS which mechanism and vitalism have given for “life” and “organism”, and to DEFINE anew the kind of Being which belongs to the living as such. In those humane sciences which are historiological in character, the urge towards historical actuality itself has been strengthened in the course of time by tradition and by the way tradition has been presented and handed down: the history of literature is to become the history of problems. Theology is seeking a more primordial interpretation of man’s Being towards God, prescribed by the meaning of faith itself and remaining within it. It is slowly beginning to understand once more Luther’s insight that the ‘foundation’ on which its system of dogma rests has not arisen from an inquiry in which faith is primary, and that conceptually this ‘foundation’ not only is inadequate for the problematic of theology, but conceals and distorts it. [SZ:10] BTMR §3
That kind of Being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow, we call “existence” [Existenz]. And because we cannot DEFINE Dasein’s essence by citing a “what” of the kind that pertains to a subject-matter [eines sachhaltigen Was], and because its essence lies rather in the fact that in each case it has its Being to be, and has it as its own, we have chosen to designate this entity as “Dasein”, a term which is purely an expression of its Being [als reiner Seinsausdruck]. BTMR §4
If, however, the phenomenological conception of phenomenon is to be understood at all, regardless of how much closer we may come to determining the nature of that which shows itself, this presupposes inevitably that we must have an insight into the meaning of the formal conception of phenomenon and its legitimate employment in an ordinary signification. – But before setting up our preliminary conception of phenomenology, we must also DEFINE the signification of logos so as to make clear in what sense phenomenology can be a ‘science of’ phenomena at all. BTMR §7
In our introduction we have already intimated that in the existential analytic of Dasein we also make headway with a task which is hardly less pressing than that of the question of Being itself – the task of laying bare that a priori basis which must be visible before the question of ‘what man is’ can be discussed philosophically. The existential analytic of Dasein comes before any psychology or anthropology, and certainly before any biology. While these too are ways in which Dasein can be investigated, we. can DEFINE the theme of our analytic with greater precision if we distinguish it from these. And at the same time the necessity of that analytic can thus be proved more incisively. BTMR §9
Nowadays there is much talk about ‘man’s having an environment [Umwelt]’; but this says nothing ontologically as long as this ‘having’ is left indefinite. In its very possibility this ‘having’ is founded upon the existential state of Being-in. Because Dasein is essentially an entity with Being-in, it can explicitly discover those entities which it encounters environmentally, it can know them, it can avail itself of them, it can have the ‘world’. To talk about ‘having an environment’ is ontically trivial, but ontologically it presents a problem. To solve it requires nothing else than DEFINING the Being of Dasein, and doing so in a way which is ontologically adequate. Although this state of Being is one of which use has made in biology, especially since K. von Baer, one must not conclude that its philosophical use implies ‘biologism’. For the environment is a structure which even biology as a positive science can never find and can never DEFINE, but must presuppose and constantly employ. Yet, even as an a priori condition for the objects which biology takes for its theme, this structure itself can be explained philosophically only if it has been conceived beforehand as a structure of Dasein. Only in terms of an orientation [SZ:58] towards the ontological structure thus conceived can ‘life’ as a state of Being be DEFINED a priori, and this must be done in a privative manner. Ontically as well as ontologically, the priority belongs to Being-in-the-world as concern. In the analytic of Dasein this structure undergoes a basic Interpretation. BTMR §12
The critical question now arises: does this ontology of the ‘world’ seek the phenomenon of the world at all, and if not, does it at least DEFINE some entity within-the-world fully enough so that the worldly character of this entity can be made visible in it? To both questions we must answer “No”. The entity which Descartes is trying to grasp ontologically and in principle with his “extensio”, is rather such as to become discoverable first of all by going through an entity within-the-world which is proximally ready-to-hand – Nature. Though this is the case, and though any ontological characterization of this latter entity within-the-world may lead us into obscurity, even if we consider both the idea of substantiality and the meaning of the “existit” and “ad existendum” which have been brought into the DEFINITION of that idea, it still remains possible that through an ontology based upon a radical separation of God, the “I”, and the ‘world’, the ontological problem of the world will in some sense get formulated and further advanced. If, however, this is not possible, we must then demonstrate explicitly not only that Descartes’ conception of the world is ontologically defective, but that his Interpretation and the foundations on which it is based have led him to pass over both the phenomenon of the world and the Being of those entities within-the-world which are proximally ready-to-hand. BTMR §21
That in the face of which we fear, the ‘fearsome’, is in every case something which we encounter within-the-world and which may have either readiness-to-hand, presence-at-hand, or Dasein-with as its kind of Being. We are not going to make an ontical report on those entities which can often and for the most part be ‘fearsome’: we are to DEFINE the fearsome phenomenally in its fearsomeness. What do we encounter in fearing that belongs to the fearsome as such? That in the face of which we fear can be characterized as threatening. Here several points must be considered. 1. What we encounter has detrimentality as its kind of involvement. It shows itself within a context of involvements. 2. The target of this detrimentality is a definite range of what can be affected by it; thus the detrimentality is itself made definite, and comes from a definite region. 3. The region itself is well known as such, and so is that which is coming from it; but that which is coming from it has something ‘queer’ about it. 4. That which is detrimental, as something that threatens us, is not yet within striking distance [in beherrschbarer Nähe], but it is coming close. In such a drawing-close, the detrimentality radiates out, and therein lies its threatening character. 5. This drawing-close is within what is close by. Indeed, something may be detrimental in the highest degree and may even be coming constantly closer; but if it is still far off, its fearsomeness remains veiled. If, however, that which is detrimental draws close and is close by, then it is threatening: it can reach us, and yet it may not. As it draws close, this ‘it can, and yet in the end it may not’ becomes aggravated. We say, “It is fearsome”. 6. This implies that what is detrimental as coming-close close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away and pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it. [SZ:141] BTMR §30
If we bring together the three significations of ‘assertion’ which we have analysed, and get a unitary view of the full phenomenon, then we may DEFINE “assertion” as “a pointing-out which gives something a definite character and which communicates”. It remains to ask with what justification we have taken assertion as a mode of interpretation at all. If it is something of this sort, then the essential structures of interpretation must recur in it. The pointing-out which assertion does is performed on the basis of what has already been disclosed in understanding or discovered circumspectively. Assertion is not a free-floating kind of behaviour which, in its own right, might be capable of disclosing entities in general in a primary way: on the contrary it always maintains itself on the basis of Being-in-the-world. What we have shown earlier in relation to knowing the world, holds just as well as assertion. Any assertion requires a fore-having of whatever has been disclosed; and this is what it points out by way of giving something a definite character. Furthermore, in any approach when one gives something a definite character, one is already taking a look directionally at what is to be put forward in the assertion. When an entity which has been presented is given a definite character, the function of giving it such a character is taken over by that with regard to which we set our sights towards the entity. Thus any assertion requires a fore-sight; in this the predicate which we are to assign [zuzuweisende] and make stand out, gets loosened, so to speak, from its unexpressed inclusion in the entity itself. To any assertion as a communication which gives something a definite character there belongs, moreover, an Articulation of what is pointed out, and this Articulation is in accordance with significations. Such an assertion will operate with a definite way of conceiving: “The hammer is heavy”, “Heaviness belongs to the hammer”, “The hammer has the property of heaviness”. When an assertion is made, some foreconception is always implied; but it remains for the most part inconspicuous, because the language already hides in itself a developed way of conceiving. Like any interpretation whatever, assertion necessarily has a fore-having, a fore-sight, and a fore-conception as its existential foundations. [SZ:157] BTMR §33
One of Dasein’s possibilities of Being is to give us ontical ‘information’ about Dasein itself as an entity. Such information is possible only in that disclosedness which belongs to Dasein and which is grounded in state-of-mind and understanding. How far is anxiety a state-of-mind which is distinctive? How is it that in anxiety Dasein gets brought before itself through its own Being, so that we can DEFINE phenomenologically the character of the entity disclosed in anxiety, and DEFINE it as such in its Being, or make adequate preparations for doing so? BTMR §40
”Being-true” (“truth”) means Being-uncovering. But is not this a highly arbitrary way to DEFINE “truth”? By such drastic ways of DEFINING this concept we may succeed in eliminating the idea of agreement from the conception of truth. Must we not pay for this dubious gain by plunging the ‘good’ old tradition into nullity? But while our DEFINITION is seemingly arbitrary, it contains only the necessary Interpretation of what was primordially surmised in the oldest tradition of ancient philosophy and even understood in a pre-phenomenological manner. If a logos as apophansis is to be true, its Being-true is aletheuein in the manner of apophainesthai – of taking entities out of their hiddenness and letting them be seen in their unhiddenness (their uncoveredness). The aletheia which Aristotle equates with pragma and phainomena in the passages cited above, signifies the ‘things themselves’; it signifies what shows itself – entities in the “how” of their uncoveredness. And is it accidental that in one of the fragments of Heracleitus – the oldest fragments of philosophical doctrine in which the logos is explicitly handled – the phenomenon of truth in the sense of uncoveredness (unhiddenness), as we have set it forth, shows through? Those who are lacking in understanding are contrasted with the logos, and also with him who speaks that logos, and understands it. The logos is phrazon hopos echei: it tells how entities comport themselves. But to those who are lacking in understanding, what they do remains hidden – lanthanei. They forget it (epilanthanontai); that is, for them it sinks back into hiddenness. Thus to the logos belongs unhiddenness – a-letheia. To translate this word as ‘truth’, and, above all, to DEFINE this expression conceptually in theoretical ways, is to cover up the meaning of what the Greeks made ‘self-evidently’ basic for the terminological use of aletheia as a pre-philosophical way of understanding it. BTMR §44
If in care we have arrived at Dasein’s primordial state of Being, then this must also be the basis for conceptualizing that understanding of Being which lies in care; that is to say, it must be possible to DEFINE the meaning of Being. But is the phenomenon of care one in which the most primordial existential-ontological state of Dasein is disclosed? And has the structural manifoldness which lies in this phenomenon, presented us with the most primordial totality of factical Dasein’s Being? Has our investigation up to this point ever brought Dasein into view as a whole? BTMR §44
But this lack-of-togetherness which belongs to such a mode of togetherness – this being-missing as still-outstanding – cannot by any means DEFINE ontologically that “not-yet” which belongs to Dasein as its possible death. Dasein does not have at all the kind of Being of something ready-to-handwithin-the-world. The togetherness of an entity of the kind which Dasein is ‘in running its course’ until that ‘course’ has been completed, is not constituted by a ‘continuing’ piecing-on of entities which, somehow and somewhere, are ready-to-hand already in their own right. BTMR §48
For instance, we can say, “The last quarter is still outstanding until the moon gets full”. The “not-yet” diminishes as the concealing shadow disappears. But here the moon is always present-at-hand as a whole already. Leaving aside the fact that we can never get the moon wholly in our grasp even when it is full, this “not-yet” does not in any way signify a not-yet-Being-together of the parts which belongs to the moon, but pertains only to the way we get it in our grasp perceptually. The “not-yet” which belongs to Dasein, however, is not just something which is provisionally and occasionally inaccessible to one’s own experience or even to that of a stranger; it ‘is’ not yet ‘actual’ at all. Our problem does not pertain to getting into our grasp the “not-yet’ which is of the character of Dasein; it pertains to the possible Being or not-Being of this “not-yet”. Dasein must, as itself, become – that is to say, be – what it is not yet. Thus if we are to be able, by comparison, to DEFINE that Being of the “not-yet” which is of the character of Dasein, we must take into conslderation entities. to whose kind of Being becoming belongs. BTMR §48
These ordinary significations of “Being-guilty” as ‘having debts to someone’ and ‘having responsibility for something’ can go together and DEFINE a kind of behaviour which we call ‘making oneself responsible’; that is, by having the responsibility for having a debt, one may break a law and make oneself punishable. Yet the requirement which one fails to satisfy need not ‘necessarily be related to anyone’s possessions; it can regulate the very manner in which we are with one other publicly. ‘Making oneself responsible’ by breaking a law, as we have thus DEFINED it, can indeed also have the character of ‘coming to owe something to Others’. This does not happen merely through law-breaking as such, but rather through my having the responsibility for the Other’s becoming endangered in his existence, led astray, or even ruined. This way of coming to owe something to Others is possible without breaking the ‘public’ law. Thus the formal conception of “Being-guilty” in the sense of having come to owe something to an Other, may be DEFINED as follows: “Being-the-basis for a lack of something in the Dasein of an Other, and in such a manner that this very Being-the-basis determines itself as ‘lacking in some way’ in terms of that for which it is the basis.” This kind of lacking is a failure to satisfy some requirement which applies to one’s existent Being with Others. BTMR §58
Nevertheless, in the idea of ‘Guilty there lies the character of the “not”. If the ‘Guilty!’ is something that can definitely apply to existence, then this raises the ontological problem of clarifying existentially the character of this “not” as a “not”. Moreover, to the idea of ‘Guilty!’ belongs what is expressed without further differentiation in the conception of guilt as ‘having responsibility for’ – that is, as Being-the-basis for … Hence we DEFINE the formally existential idea of the ‘Guilty!’ as “Being-the-basis for a Being which has been DEFINED by a ‘not” – that is to say, as “Being-the-basis of a nullity”. The idea of the “not” which lies in the concept of guilt as understood existentially, excludes relatedness to anything presentat-hand which is possible or which may have been required; furthermore, Dasein is altogether incommensurable with anything present-at-hand or generally accepted [Geltenden] which is not it itself, or which is not in the way Dasein is – namely, existing; so any possibility that, with regard to Being-the-basis for a lack, the entity which is itself such a basis might be reckoned up as ‘lacking in some manner’, is a possibility which drops out. If a lack, such as failure to fulfil some requirement, has been ‘caused’ in a manner characteristic of Dasein, we cannot simply reckon back to there being something lacking [Mangelhaftigkeit] in the ‘cause’. Being-the-basis-for-something need not have the same “not”-character as the privativum which is based upon it and which arises from it. The basis need not acquire a nullity of its own from that for which it is the basis [seinern Begründeten]. This implies, however, that Being-guilty does not first result from an indebtedness [Verschuldung], but that, on the contrary, indebtedness becomes possible only ‘on the basis’ of a primordial Being-guilty. Can something like this be exhibited in Dasein’s Being, and how is it at all possible existentially? [SZ:284] BTMR §58
Kant’s analysis has two positive aspects. For one thing, he sees the impossibility of ontically reducing the “I” to a substance; for another thing, he holds fast to the “I” as ‘I think’. Nevertheless, he takes this “I” as subject again, and he does so in a sense which is ontologically inappropriate. For the ontological concept of the subject characterizes not the Selfhood of the “I” qua Self, but the selfsameness and steadiness of something that is always present-at-hand. To DEFINE the “I” ontologically as “subject” means to regard it as something always present-at-hand. The Being of the “I” is understood as the Reality of the res cogitans. BTMR §64
That which was projected in the primordial existential projection of existence has revealed itself as anticipatory resoluteness. What makes this authentic Being-a-whole of Dasein possible with regard to the unity of its articulated structural whole? Anticipatory resoluteness, when taken formally and existentially, without our constantly designating its full structural content, is Being towards one’s ownmost, distinctive potentiality for-Being. This sort of thing is possible only in that Dasein can, indeed, come towards itself in its ownmost possibility, and that it can put up with this possibility as a possibility in thus letting itself come towards itself – in other words, that it exists. This letting-itself-come-towards-itself in that distinctive possibility which it puts up with, is the primordial phenomenon of the future as coming towards. If either authentic or inauthentic Being-towards-death belongs to Dasein’s Being, then such Being-towards-death is possible only as something futural [als zukünftiges], in the sense which we have now indicated, and which we have still to DEFINE more closely. By the term ‘futural’, we do not here have in view a “now” which has not yet become ‘actual’ and which sometime will be for the first time. We have in view the coming [Kunft] in which Dasein, in its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, comes towards itself. Anticipation makes Dasein authentically fatural, and in such a way that the anticipation itself is possible only in so far as Dasein, as being, is always coming towards itself – that is to say, in so far as it is futural in its Being in general. BTMR §65
The specific ecstatical unity which makes it existentially possible to be afraid, temporalizes itself primarily out of the kind of forgetting characterized above, which, as a mode of having been, modifies its Present and its future in their own temporalizing. The temporality of fear is a forgetting which awaits and makes present. The common-sense interpretation of fear, taking its orientation from what we encounter within-the-world, seeks in the first instance to designate the ‘oncoming evil’ as that in the face of which we fear, and, correspondingly, to DEFINE our relation to this evil as one of “expecting”. Anything else which belongs to the phenomenon remains a ‘feeling of pleasure or displeasure’. BTMR §68
Only an entity which, in accordance with the meaning of its Being, finds itself in a state-of-mind [sich befindet] – that is to say, an entity, which in existing, is as already having been, and which exists in a constant mode of what has been – can become affected. Ontologically such affection presupposes making-present, and indeed in such a manner that in this making-present Dasein can be brought back to itself as something that has been. It remains a problem in itself to DEFINE ontologically the way in which the senses can be stimulated or’ touched in something that merely has life, and how and where the Being of animals, for instance, is constituted by some kind of ‘time’. [SZ:346] BTMR §68
Tenses, like the other temporal phenomena of language – ‘aspects’ and ‘temporal stages’ [“Zeitstufen”] – do not spring from the fact that discourse expresses itself ‘also’ about ‘temporal’ processes, processes encountered ‘in time’. Nor does their basis lie in the fact that speaking runs its course ‘in a psychical time’. Discourse in itself is temporal, since all talking about …, of …, or to …, is grounded in the ecstatical unity of temporality. Aspects have their roots in the primordial temporality of concern, whether or not this concern relates itself to that which is within time. The problem of their existential-temporal structure cannot even be formulated with the help of the’ ordinary traditional conception of time, to which the science of language needs must have recourse. But because in any discourse one is talking about entities, even if not primarily and predominantly in the sense of theoretical assertion, the analysis of the temporal Constitution of discourse and the explication of the temporal characteristics of language-patterns can be tackled only if the problem of how Being and truth are connected in principle, is broached in the light of the problematic of temporality. We can then DEFINE even the ontological meaning of the ‘is’, which a superficial theory of propositions and judgments has deformed to a mere ‘copula’. Only in terms of the temporality of discourse – that is, of Dasein in general – can we clarify how ‘signification’ ‘arises’ and make the possibility of concept-formation ontologically intelligible. BTMR §68
We must now make an existential-analytical inquiry as to the temporal conditions, for the possibility of the spatiality that is characteristic of Dasein – the spatiality upon which in turn is founded the uncovering of space within-the-world. We must first remember in what way Dasein is spatial. Dasein can be spatial only as care, in the sense of existing as factically falling. Negatively this means that Dasein is never present-at-hand in space, not even proximally. Dasein does not fill up a bit of space as a Real Thing or item of equipment would, so that the boundaries dividing it from the surrounding space would themselves just DEFINE that space spatially. Dasein takes space in; this is to be understood literally. It is by no means just present-at-hand in a bit of space which its body fills up. In existing, it has already made room for its own leeway. It determines its own location in such a manner that it comes back from the space it has made room for to the ‘place’ which it has reserved. To be able to say that Dasein is present-at-hand at a position in space, we must first take [auffassen] this entity in a way which is ontologically inappropriate. Nor does the distinction between the ‘spatiality’ of an extended Thing and that of Dasein lie in the fact that Dasein knows about space; for taking space in [das Raum-einnehmen] is so far from identical with a ‘representing’ of the spatial, that it is presupposed by it instead. Neither may Dasein’s spatiality be interpreted as an imperfection which adheres to existence by reason of the fatal ‘linkage of the spirit to a body’. On the contrary, because Dasein is ‘spiritual’, and only because of this, it can be spatial in a way which remains essentially impossible for any extended corporeal Thing. [SZ:368] BTMR §70
Thus the historical character of the antiquities that are still preserved is grounded in the ‘past’ of that Dasein to whose world they belonged. But according to this, only ‘past’ Dasein would be historical, not Dasein ‘in the present’. However, can Dasein be past at all, if we DEFINE ‘past’ as ‘now no longer either present-at-hand or ready-to-hand’? Manifestly, Dasein can never be past, not because Dasein is non-transient, but because it essentially can never be present-at-hand. Rather, if it is, it exists. A Dasein which no longer exists, however, is not past, in the ontologically strict sense; it is rather “having-been-there” [da-gewesen]. The antiquities which are still present-at-hand have a character of ‘the past,’ and of history by reason of the fact that they have belonged as equipment to a world that has been – the world of a Dasein that has been there – and that they have been derived from that world. This Dasein is what is primarily historical. But does Dasein first become historical in that it is no longer there? Or is it not historical precisely in so far as it factically exists? Is Dasein just something that “has been” in the sense of “having been there”, or has it been as something futural which is making present – that is to say, in the temporalizing of its temporality? [SZ:381] BTMR §73
In the development of this ordinary conception, there is a remarkable vacillation as to whether the character to be attributed to time is ‘subjective’ or ‘Objective’. Where time is taken as being in itself, it gets allotted pre-eminently to the ‘soul’ notwithstanding. And where it has the kind of character which belongs to ‘consciousness’, it still functions ‘Objectively’. In Hegel’s Interpretation of time both possibilities are brought to the point where, in a certain manner, they cancel each other out. Hegel tries to DEFINE the connection between ‘time’ and ‘spirit’ in such a manner as to make intelligible why the spirit, as history, ‘falls into time’. We seem to be in accord with Hegel in the results of the Interpretation we have given for Dasein’s temporality and for the way world-time belongs to it. But because our analysis differs in principle from his in its approach, and because its orientation is precisely the opposite of his in that it aims at fundamental ontology, a short presentation of Hegel’s way of taking the relationship between time and spirit may serve to make plain our existential-ontological Interpretation of Dasein’s temporality, of world-time and of the source of the ordinary conception of time, and may settle this in a provisional manner. BTMR §78
‘Public time’ turns out to be the kind of time ‘in which’ the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand within-the-world are encountered. This requires that these entities which are not of the character of Dasein, shall be called entities “within-time”. The Interpretation of within-time-ness gives us a more primordial insight into the essence of ‘public time’ and likewise makes it possible to DEFINE its ‘Being’. BTMR §80
And because the temporality of that Dasein which must take its time is finite, its days are already numbered. Concernful awaiting takes precaution to DEFINE the ‘thens’ with which it is to concern itself – that is, to divide up the day. And the ‘during-the-daytime’ makes this possible. This dividing-up, in turn, is done with regard to that by which time is dated – the journeying sun. Sunset and midday, like the sunrise itself, are distinctive ‘places’ which this heavenly body occupies. Its regularly recurring passage is something which Dasein, as thrown into the world and giving itself time temporalizingly, takes into its reckoning. Dasein historizes from day to day by reason of its way of interpreting time by dating it – a way which is adumbrated in its thrownness into the “there”. BTMR §80
How does something like ‘time’ first show itself for everyday circumspective concern? In what kind of concernful equipment-using dealings does it become explicitly accessible? If it has been made public with the disclosedness of the world, if it has always been already a matter of concern with the discoveredness of entities within-the-world – a discoveredness which belongs to the world’s disclosedness – and if it has been a matter of such concern in so far as Dasein calculates time in reckoning with itself, then the kind of behaviour in which ‘one’ explicitly regulates oneself according to time, lies in the use of clocks. The existential-temporal meaning of this turns out to be a making-present of the travelling pointer. By following the positions of the pointer in a way which makes present, one counts them. This making-present temporalizes itself in the ecstatical unity of a retention which awaits. To retain the ‘on that former occasion’ and to retain it by making it present, signifies that in saying “now” one is open for the horizon of the earlier – that is, of the “now-no-longer”. To await the ‘then’ by making it present, means that in saying “now” one is open for the horizon of the later – that is, of the “now-not-yet”. Time is what shows itself in such a making-present. How then, are we to DEFINE the time which is manifest within the horizon of the circumspective concernful clock-using in which one takes one’s time? This time is that which is counted and which shows itself when one follows the travelling pointer, counting and making present in such a way that this making-present temporalizes itself in an ecstatical unity with the retaining and awaiting which are horizonally open according to the “earlier” and “later”. This, however, is nothing else than an existential-ontological interpretation of Aristotle’s DEFINITION of “time”: touto gar estin ho chronos, arithmos kineseos kata to proteron kai hysteron. “For this is time: that which is counted in the movement which we encounter within the horizon of the earlier and later.” This DEFINITION may seem strange at first glance; but if one defines the existential-ontological horizon from which Aristotle has taken it, one sees that it is as ‘obvious’ as it at first seems strange, and has been genuinely derived. The source of the time which is thus manifest does not become a problem for Aristotle. His Interpretation of time moves rather in the direction of the ‘natural’ way of understanding Being. Yet because this very understanding and the Being which is thus understood have in principle been made a problem for the investigation which lies before us, it is only after we have found a solution for the question of Being that the Aristotelian analysis of time can be Interpreted thematically in such a way that it may indeed gain some signification in principle, if the formulation of this question in ancient ontology, with all its critical limitations, is to be appropriated in a positive manner. BTMR §81
It is no accident that world-time thus gets levelled off and covered up by the way time is ordinarily understood. But just because the everyday interpretation of time maintains itself by looking solely in the direction of concernful common sense, and understands only what ‘shows’ itself within the common-sense horizon, these structures must escape it. That which gets counted when one measures time concernfully, the “now”, gets co-understood in one’s concern with the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand. Now so far as this concern with time comes back to the time itself which has been co-understood, and in so far as it ‘considers’ that time, it sees the “nows” (which indeed are also somehow ‘there’) within the horizon of that understanding-of-Being by which this concern is itself constantly guided. Thus the “nows” are in a certain manner co-present-at-hand: that is, entities are encountered, and so too is the “now”. Although it is not said explicitly that the “nows” are present-at-hand in the same way as Things, they still get ‘seen’ ontologically within the horizon of the idea of presence-at-hand. The “nows” pass away, and those which have passed away make up the past. The “nows” come along, and those which are coming along DEFINE the ‘future’. The ordinary interpretation of world-time as now-time never avails itself of the horizon by which such things as world, significance, and datability can be made accessible. These structures necessarily remain covered up, all the more so because this covering-up is reinforced by the way in which the ordinary interpretation develops its characterization of time conceptually. [SZ:423] BTMR §81
History, which is essentially the history of spirit, runs its course ‘in time’. Thus ‘the development of history falls into time’. Hegel is not satisfied, however, with averring that the within-time-ness of spirit is a Fact, but seeks to understand how it is possible for spirit to fall into time, which is ‘the non-sensuous sensuous’. Time must be able, as it were, to take in spirit. And spirit in turn must be akin to time and its essence. Accordingly two points come up for discussion: (1) how does Hegel DEFINE the essence of time? (2) what belongs to the essence of spirit which makes it possible for it to ‘fall into time’? Our answer to these questions will serve merely to elucidate our Interpretation of Dasein as temporality, and to do so by way of a comparison. We shall make no claim to give even a relatively full treatment of the allied problems in Hegel, especially since ‘criticizing’ him will not help us. Because Hegel’s conception of time presents the most radical way in which the ordinary understanding of time has been given form conceptually, and one which has received too little attention, a comparison of this conception with the idea of temporality which we have expounded is one that especially suggests itself. BTMR §82
If Hegel can say that when spirit gets actualized, it accords with it to fall into time, with “time” DEFINED as a negation of a negation, how has spirit itself been understood? The essence of spirit is the concept. By this Hegel understands not the universal which is intuited in a genus as the form of something thought, but rather the form of the very thinking which thinks itself: the conceiving of oneself – as the grasping of the not-I. Inasmuch as the grasping of the not-I presents a differentiation, there lies in the pure concept, as the grasping of this differentiation, a differentiation of the difference. Thus Hegel can DEFINE the essence of the spirit formally and apophantically as the negation of a negation. This ‘absolute negativity’ gives a logically formalized Interpretation of Descartes’ “cogito me cogitare rem”, wherein he sees the essence of the conscientia. [SZ:433] BTMR §82
Science in general may be DEFINED as the totality established through an interconnection of true propositions. This DEFINITION is not complete, nor does it reach the meaning of science. As ways in which man behaves, sciences have the manner of Being which this entity – man himself – possesses. This entity we denote by the term “Dasein”. Scientific research is not the only manner of Being which this entity can have, nor is it the one which lies closest. Moreover, Dasein itself has a special distinctiveness as compared with other entities, and it is worth our while to bring this to view in a provisional way. Here our discussion must anticipate later analyses, in which our results will be authentically exhibited for the first time. [SZ:12] BTMR §4
Yet Descartes not only continued to neglect this and thus to accept a completely indefinite ontological status for the res cogitans sive mens sive animus [‘the thing which cognizes, whether it be a mind or spirit’]: he regarded this entity as a fundamentum inconcussum, and applied the medieval ontology to it in carrying through the fundamental considerations of his Meditationes. He DEFINED the res cogitans ontologically as an ens; and in the medieval ontology the meaning of Being for such an ens had been fixed by understanding it as an ens creatum. God, as ens infinitum, was the ens increatum. But createdness [Geschaffenheit] in the widest sense of something’s having been produced [Hergestelltheit], was an essential item in the structure of the ancient conception of Being. The seemingly new beginning which Descartes proposed for philosophizing has revealed itself as the implantation of a baleful prejudice, which has kept later generations from making any thematic ontological analytic of the ‘mind’ [“Gemütes”] such as would take the question of Being as a clue and would at the same time come to grips critically with the traditional ancient ontology. [SZ:25] BTMR §6
The problematic of Greek ontology, like that of any other, must take its clues from Dasein itself. In both ordinary and philosophical usage, Dasein, man’s Being, is ‘DEFINED’ as the zoon logon echon – as that living thing whose Being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse. legein is the clue for arriving at those structures of Being which belong to the entities we encounter in addressing ourselves to anything or speaking about it [im Ansprechen und Besprechen]. (Cf. Section 7 b.) This is why the ancient ontology as developed by Plato turns into ‘dialectic’. As the ontological clue gets progressively worked out – namely, in the ‘hermeneutic’ of the logos – it becomes increasingly possible to grasp the problem of Being in a more radical fashion. The ‘dialectic’, which has been a genuine philosophical embarrassment, becomes superfluous. That is why Aristotle ‘no longer has any understanding’ of it, for he has put it on a more radical footing and raised it to a new level [aufhob]. legein itself – or rather noein, that simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand, which Parmenides had already taken to guide him in his own interpretation of Being – has the Temporal structure of a pure ‘making-present’ of something. Those entities which show themselves in this and for it, and which are understood as entities in the most authentic sense, thus get interpreted with regard to the Present; that is, they are conceived as presence (ousia). BTMR §6
The Greek expression phainomenon, to which the term ‘phenomenon’ goes back, is derived from the verb phainesthai, which signifies “to show itself “. Thus phainomenon means that which shows itself, the manifest [das, was sich zeigt, das Sichzeigende, das Offenbare]. phainesthai itself is a middle-voiced form which comes from phaino – to bring to the light of day, to put in the light. phaino comes from the stem pha – , like phos, the light, that which is bright – in other words, that wherein something can become manifest, visible in itself. Thus we must keep in mind that the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest. Accordingly the phainomena or ‘phenomena’ are the totality of what lies in the light of day or can be brought to the light – what the Greeks sometimes identified simply with ta onta (entities). Now an entity can show itself from itself [von ihm selbst her] in many ways, depending in each case on the kind of access we have to it. Indeed it is even possible for an entity to show itself as something which in itself it is not. When it shows itself in this way, it ‘looks like something or other’ [“sieht” … “so aus wie …”]. This kind of showing-itself is what we call “seeming” [Scheinen]. Thus in Greek too the expression phainomenon (“phenomenon”) signifies that which looks like something, that which is ‘semblant’, ‘semblance’ [das “Scheinbare”, der “Schein”]. phainomenon agathon means something good which looks like, but ‘in actuality’ is not, what it gives itself out to be. If we are to have any further understanding of the concept of phenomenon, everything depends on our seeing how what is designated in the first signification of phainomenon (‘phenomenon’ as that which shows itself) and what is designated in the second (‘phenomenon’ as semblance) are structurally interconnected. Only when the meaning of something is such that it makes a pretension of showing itself – that is, of being a phenomenon – can it show itself as something which it is not; only then can it ‘merely look like so-and-so’. When phainomenon signifies ‘semblance’, the primordial signification (the phenomenon as the manifest) is already included as that upon which the second signification is founded. We shall allot the term ‘phenomenon’ to this positive and primordial signification of phainomenon, and distinguish “phenomenon” from “semblance”, which is the privative modification of “phenomenon” as thus DEFINED. But what both these terms express has proximally nothing at all to do with what iscalled an ‘appearance’, or still less a ‘mere appearance’. BTMR §7
In spite of the fact that ‘appearing’ is never a showing-itself in the sense of “phenomenon”, appearing is possible only by reason of a showing-itself of something. But this showing-itself, which helps to make possible the appearing, is not the appearing itself. Appearing is an announcing-itself [das Sich-melden] through something that shows itself. If one then says that with the word ‘appearance’ we allude to something wherein something appears without being itself an appearance, one has not thereby DEFINED the concept of phenomenon: one has rather presupposed it. This presupposition, however, remains concealed; for when one says this sort of thing about ‘appearance’, the expression ‘appear’ gets used in two ways. “That wherein something ‘appears’” means that wherein something announces itself, and therefore does not show itself; and in the words [Rede] ‘without being itself an “appearance”’, “appearance” signifies the showing-itself. But this showing-itself belongs essentially to the ‘wherein’ in which something announces itself. According to this, phenomena are never appearances, though on the other hand every appearance is dependent on phenomena. If one defines “phenomenon” with the aid of a conception of ‘appearance’ which is still unclear, then everything is stood on its head, and a ‘critique’ of phenomenology on this basis is surely a remarkable undertaking. [SZ:30] BTMR §7
All explicata to which the analytic of Dasein gives rise are obtained by considering Dasein’s existence-structure. Because Dasein’s characters of Being are DEFINED in terms of existentiality, we call them “existentialia”. These are to be sharply distinguished from what we call “categories” – characteristics of Being for entities whose character is not that of Dasein. Here we are taking the expression “category” in its primary ontological signification, and abiding by it. In the ontology of the ancients, the entities we encounter within the world are taken as the basic examples for the interpretation of Being. noein (or the logos, as the case may be) is accepted as a way of ‘access to them. Entities are encountered therein. But the Being of these entities must be something which can be grasped in a distinctive kind of legein (letting something be seen), so that this Being becomes intelligible in advance as that which it is – and as that which it is already in every entity. In any discussion (logos) of entities, we have previously addressed ourselves to Being; this addressing is kategoresthai. This signifies, in the first instance, making a public accusation, taking someone to task for something in the presence of everyone. When used ontologically, this term means taking an entity to task, as it were, for whatever it is as an entity – that is to say, letting everyone see it in its Being. The kategoriai are what is sighted and what is visible in such a seeing. They include the various ways in which the nature of those entities which can be addressed and discussed in a logos may be [SZ:45] determined a priori. Existentialia and categories are the two basic possibilities for characters of Being. The entities which correspond to them require different kinds of primary interrogation respectively: any entity is either a “who” (existence) or a “what” (presence-at-hand in the broadest sense). The connection between these two modes of the characters of Being cannot be handled until the horizon for the question of Being has been clarified. BTMR §9
This is no less true of ‘psychology’, whose anthropological tendencies are today unmistakable. Nor can we compensate for the absence of ontological foundations by taking anthropology and psychology and building them into the framework of a general biology. In the order which any possible comprehension and interpretation must follow, biology as a ‘science of life’ founded upon the ontology of Dasein, even if not entirely. Life, in its own right, is a kind of Being; but essentially it is accessible only in Dasein. The ontology of life is accomplished by way of a privative Interpretation; it determines what must be the case if there can be anything like mere-aliveness [Nur-noch-leben]. Life is not a mere Being-present-at-hand, nor is it Dasein. In turn, Dasein is never to be DEFINED ontologically by regarding it as life (in an ontologically indefinite manner) plus something else. [SZ:50] BTMR §10
Being-in-the-world shall first be made visible with regard to that item of its structure which is the ‘world’ itself. To accomplish this task seems easy and so trivial as to make one keep taking for granted that it may be dispensed with. What can be meant by describing ‘the world’ as a phenomenon? It means to let us see what shows itself in ‘entities’ within the world. Here the first step is to enumerate the things that are ‘in’ the world: houses, trees, people, mountains, stars. We can depict the way such entities ‘look’, and we can give an account of occurrences in them and with them. This, however, is obviously a pre-phenomenological ‘business’ which cannot be at all relevant phenomenologically. Such a description is always confined to entities. It is ontical. But what we are seeking is Being. And we have formally DEFINED ‘phenomenon’ in the phenomenological sense as that which shows itself as Being and as a structure of Being. BTMR §14
‘Worldhood’ is an ontological concept, and stands for the structure of one of the constitutive items of Being-in-the-world. But we know Being-in-the-world as a way in which Dasein’s character is DEFINED existentially. Thus worldhood itself is an existentiale. If we inquire ontologically about the ‘world’, we by no means abandon the analytic of Dasein as a field for thematic study. Ontologically, ‘world’ is not a way of characterizing those entities which Dasein essentially is not; it is rather a characteristic of Dasein itself. This does not rule out the possibility that when we investigate the phenomenon of the ‘world’ we must do so by the avenue of entities within-the-world and the Being which they possess. The task of ‘describing’ the world phenomenologically is so far from obvious that even if we do no more than determine adequately what form it shall take, essential ontological clarifications will be needed. BTMR §14
Here, however, “Nature” is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails’. As the ‘environment’ is discovered, the ‘Nature’ thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this ‘Nature’ itself can be discovered and DEFINED simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which ‘stirs and strives’, which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist’s plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the ‘source’ which the geographer establishes for a river is not the ‘springhead in the dale’. BTMR §15
The kind of Being which belongs to these entities is readiness-to-hand. But this characteristic is not to be understood as merely a way of taking them, as if we were talking such ‘aspects’ into the ‘entities’ which we proximally encounter, or as if some world-stuff which is proximally present-at-hand in itself were ‘given subjective colouring’ in this way. Such an Interpretation would overlook the fact that in this case these entities would have to be understood and discovered beforehand as something purely present-at-hand, and must have priority and take the lead in the sequence of those dealings with the ‘world’ in which something is discovered and made one’s own. But this already runs counter to the ontological meaning of cognition, which we have exhibited as a founded mode of Being-in-the-world. To lay bare what is just present-at-hand and no more, cognition must first penetrate beyond what is ready-to-hand in our concern. Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are ‘in themselves’ are DEFINED ontologico-categorially. Yet only by reason of something present-at-hand, ‘is there’ anything ready-to-hand. Does it follow, however, granting this thesis for the nonce, that readiness-to-hand is ontologically founded upon presence-at-hand? BTMR §15
But signs, in the first instance, are themselves items of equipment whose specific character as equipment consists in showing or indicating. We find such signs in signposts, boundary-stones, the ball for the mariner’s stormwarning, signals, banners, signs of mourning, and the like. Indicating can be DEFINED ‘as a ‘kind’ of referring. Referring is, if we take it as formally as possible, a relating. But relation does not function as a genus for ‘kinds’ or ‘species’, of references which may somehow become differentiated as sign, symbol, expression, or signification. A relation is something quite formal which may be read off directly by way of ‘formalization’ from any kind of context, whatever its subject-matter or its way of Being. BTMR §17
We have indicated that the state which is constitutive for the ready-to-hand as equipment is one of reference or assignment. How can entities with this kind of Being be freed by the world with regard to their Being? Why are these the first entities to be encountered? As definite, kinds of references we have mentioned serviceability-for-, detrimentality [Abträglichkeit], usability, and the like. The “towards-which” [das Wozu] of a serviceability and the “for-which” [das Wofür] of a usability prescribed the ways in which such a reference or assignment can become concrete. But the ‘indicating’ of the sign and the ‘hammering’ of the hammer are not properties of entities. Indeed, they are not properties at all, if the ontological structure designated by the term ‘property’ is that of some definite character which it is possible for Things to possess [einer möglichen Bestimmtheit von Dingen]. Anything ready-to-hand is, at the worst, appropriate for some purposes and inappropriate for others; and its ‘properties’ are, as it were, still bound up in these ways in which it is appropriate or inappropriate, just as presence-at-hand, as a possible kind of Being for something ready-to-hand, is bound up in readiness-to-hand. Serviceability too, however, as a constitutive state of equipment (and serviceability is a reference), is not an appropriateness of some entity; it is rather the condition (so far as Being is in question) which makes it possible for the character of such an entity to be DEFINED by its appropriatenesses. But what, then, is “reference” or “assignment” to mean? To say that the Being of the ready-to-hand has the structure of assignment or reference means that it has in itself the character of having been assigned or referred [Verwiesenheit]. An entity is discovered when it has been assigned or referred to something, and referred as that entity which it is. With any such entity there is an involvement which it has in something. The character of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand is just such an involvement. If something has an involvement, this implies letting it be involved in something. The relationship of the “with … in …” shall be indicated by the term “assignment” or “reference” . BTMR §18
[SZ:84] When an entity within-the-world has already been proximally freed for its Being, that Being is its “involvement”. With any such entity as entity, there is some involvement. The fact that it has such an involvement is ontologically definitive for the Being of such an entity, and is not an ontical assertion about it. That in which it is involved is the “towards-which” of serviceability, and the “for-which” of usability. With the “towards-which” of serviceability there can again be an involvement: with this thing, for instance, which is ready-to-hand, and which we accordingly call a “hammer”, there is an involvement in hammering; with hammering, there is an involvement in making something fast; with making something fast, there is an involvement in protection against bad weather; and this protection ‘is’ for the sake of [um-willen] providing shelter for Dasein – that is to say, for the sake of a possibility of Dasein’s Being. Whenever something ready-to-hand has an involvement with it, what involvement this is, has in each case been outlined in advance in terms of the totality of such involvements. In a workshop, for example, the totality of involvements which is constitutive for the ready-to-hand in its readiness-to-hand, is ‘earlier’ than any single item of equipment; so too for the farmstead with all its utensils and outlying lands. But the totality of involvements itself goes back ultimately to a “towards-which” in which there is no further involvement: this “towards-which” is not an entity with the kind of Being that belongs to what is ready-to-hand within a world; it is rather an entity whose Being is DEFINED as Being-in-the-world, and to whose state of Being, worldhood itself belongs. This primary “towards-which” is not just another “towards-this” as some