But factically there is no circle at all in formulating our question as we have described. One can DETERMINE the nature of entities in their Being without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of Being at one’s disposal. Otherwise there could have been no ontological knowledge heretofore. One would hardly deny that factically there has been such knowledge. Of course ‘Being’ has been presupposed in all ontology up till now, but not as a concept at one’s disposal – not as the sort of thing we are seeking. This ‘presupposing’ of Being has rather the character of taking a look at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the entities presented to us get provisionally Articulated in their Being. This guiding [SZ:8] activity of taking a look at Being arises from the average understanding of Being in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself. Such ‘presupposing’ has nothing to do with laying down an axiom from which a sequence of propositions is deductively derived. It is quite impossible for there to be any ‘circular argument’ in formulating the question about the meaning of Being; for in answering this question, the issue is not one of grounding something by such a derivation; it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it and exhibiting them. BTMR §2
Basic concepts DETERMINE the way in which we get an understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding. Only after the area itself has been explored beforehand in a corresponding manner do these concepts become genuinely demonstrated and ‘grounded’. But since every such area is itself obtained from the domain of entities themselves, this preliminary research, from which the basic concepts are drawn, signifies nothing else than an interpretation of those entities with regard to their basic state of Being. Such research must run ahead of the positive sciences, and it can. Here the work of Plato and Aristotle is evidence enough. Laying the foundations for the sciences in this way is different in principle from the kind of ‘logic’ which limps along after, investigating the status of some science as it chances to find it, in order to discover its ‘method’. Laying the foundations, as we have described it, is rather a productive logic – in the sense that it leaps ahead, as it were, into some area of Being, discloses it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry. To give an example, what is philosophically primary is neither a theory of the concept-formation of historiology nor the theory of historiological knowledge, nor yet the theory of history as the Object of historiology; what is primary is rather the Interpretation of authentically historical entities as regards their historicality. Similarly the positive outcome of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason lies in what it has contributed towards the working out of what belongs to any Nature whatsoever, not in a ‘theory’ of knowledge. His transcendental logic is an a priori logic for the subject-matter of that area of Being called “Nature”. [SZ:11] BTMR §3
We have shown at the outset (Section I) not only that the question of the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one that has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite forgotten in spite of all our interest in ‘metaphysics’. Greek ontology and its history – which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, DETERMINE the conceptual character of philosophy even today – prove that when Dasein understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the ‘world’, and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated [verfällt] to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident – merely material for reworking, as it was for Hegel. In the Middle Ages this uprooted Greek ontology became a fixed body of doctrine. Its systematics, however, is by no means a mere joining together of traditional pieces into a single edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have been taken over dogmatically from the Greeks, a great deal of unpretentious work has been carried on further within these limits. With the peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology, has, in its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes metaphysicae of Suarez to the ‘metaphysics’ and transcendental philosophy of modern times, determining even the foundations and the aims of Hegel’s [SZ:22] BTMR §6
Everyone who is acquainted with the middle ages sees that Descartes is ‘dependent’ upon medieval scholasticism and employs its terminology. But with this ‘discovery’ nothing is achieved philosophically as long as it remains obscure to what a profound extent the medieval ontology has influenced the way in which posterity has determined or failed to DETERMINE the ontological character of the res cogitans. The full extent of this cannot be estimated until both the meaning and the limitations of the ancient ontology have been exhibited in terms of an orientation directed towards the question of Being. In other words, in our process of destruction we find ourselves faced with the task of Interpreting the basis of the ancient ontology in the light of the problematic of Temporality. When this is done, it will be manifest that the ancient way of interpreting the Being of entities is oriented towards the ‘world’ or ‘Nature’ in the widest sense, and that it is indeed in terms of ‘time’ that its understanding of Being is obtained. The outward evidence for this (though of course it is merely outward evidence) is the treatment of the meaning of Being as parousia or ousia, which signifies, in ontologico-Temporal terms, ‘presence’ [“Anwesenheit”]. Entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence’; this means that they are understood with regard to a definite mode of time – the ‘Present’ BTMR §6
The two characteristics of Dasein which we have sketched – the priority of ‘existentia’ over essentia, and the fact that Dasein is in each case mine [die Jemeinigkeit] – have already indicated that in the analytic of this entity we are facing a peculiar phenomenal domain. Dasein does not have the kind of Being which belongs to something merely present-at-hand within the world, nor does it ever have it. So neither is it to be presented thematically as something we come across in the same way as we come across what is present-at-hand. The right way of presenting it is so far from self-evident that to DETERMINE what form it shall take is itself an essential part of the ontological analytic of this entity. Only by presenting this entity in the right way can we have any understanding of its Being. No matter how provisional our analysis may be, it always requires the assurance that we have started correctly. BTMR §9
The researches of Wilhelm Dilthey were stimulated by the perennial question of ‘life’. Starting from ‘life’ itself as a whole, he tried to understand its ‘Experiences’ in their structural and developmental inter-connections. His ‘geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie’ is one which no longer seeks to be oriented towards psychical elements and atoms or to piece the life of the soul together, but aims rather at ‘Gestalten’ and ‘life as a whole’. Its philosophical relevance, however, is not to be sought here, but rather in the fact that in all this he was, above all, on his way towards the question of ‘life’. To be sure, we can also see here very plainly how limited were both his problematic and the set of concepts with which it had to be put [SZ:47] into words. These limitations, however, are found not only in Dilthey and Bergson but in all the ‘personalistic’ movements to which they have given direction and in every tendency towards a philosophical anthropology. The phenomenological Interpretation of personality is in principle more radical and more transparent; but the question of the Being of Dasein has a dimension which this too fails to enter. No matter how much Husserl and Scheler may differ in their respective inquiries, in their methods of conducting them, and in their orientations towards the world as a whole, they are fully in agreement on the negative side of their Interpretations of personality. The question of ‘personal Being’ itself is one which they no longer raise. We have chosen Scheler’s Interpretation as an example, not only because it is accessible in print, but because he emphasizes personal Being explicitly as such, and tries to DETERMINE its character by defining the specific Being of acts as contrasted with anything ‘psychical’. For Scheler, the person is never to be thought of as a Thing or a substance; the person ‘is rather the unity of living-through [Er-lebens] which is immediately experienced in and with our Experiences – not a Thing merely thought of behind and outside what is immediately Experienced’. The person is no Thinglike and substantial Being. Nor can the Being of a person be entirely absorbed in being a subject of rational acts which follow certain laws. BTMR §10
The two sources which are relevant for the traditional anthropology – the Greek definition and the clue which theology has provided – indicate that over and above the attempt to DETERMINE the essence of ‘man’ as an entity, the question of his Being has remained forgotten, and that this Being is rather conceived as something obvious or ‘self-evident’ in the sense of the Being-present-at-hand of other created Things. These two clues become intertwined in the anthropology of modern times, where the res cogitans, consciousness, and the interconnectedness of Experience serve as the point of departure for methodical study. But since even the cogitationes are either left ontologically undetermined, or get tacitly assumed as something ‘self-evidently’ ‘given’ whose ‘Being’ is not to be questioned, the decisive ontological foundations of anthropological problematics remain undetermined. BTMR §10
Second, that entity which in every case has Being-in-the-world as the way in which it is. Here we are seeking that which one inquires into when one asks the question ‘Who?’ By a phenomenological demonstration we shall DETERMINE who is in the mode of Dasein’s average everydayness. (See the fourth chapter of this Division.) BTMR §12
But have we not confined ourselves to negative assertions in all our attempts to DETERMINE the nature of this state of Being? Though this Being-in is supposedly so fundamental, we always keep hearing about what it is not. Yes indeed. But there is nothing accidental about our characterizing it predominantly in so negative a manner. In doing so we have rather made known what is peculiar to this phenomenon, and our characterization is therefore positive in a genuine sense – a sense appropriate to the phenomenon itself. When Being-in-the-world is exhibited phenomenologically, disguises and concealments are rejected because this phenomenon itself always gets ‘seen’ in a certain way in every Dasein. And it thus gets ‘seen’ because it makes up a basic state of Dasein, and in every case is already disclosed for Dasein’s understanding of Being, and disclosed along with that Being itself. But for the most part this phenomenon has been explained in a way which is basically wrong, or interpreted in an ontologically inadequate manner. On the other hand, this ‘seeing in a certain way and yet for the most part wrongly explaining’ is itself based upon nothing else than this very state of Dasein’s Being, which is such that Dasein itself – and this means also its Being-in-the-world – gets its ontological understanding of itself in the first instance from those entities which it itself is not but which it encounters ‘within’ its world, and from the Being which they possess. BTMR §12
‘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
Within our present field of investigation the following structures and dimensions of ontological problematics, as we have repeatedly emphasized, must be kept in principle distinct: 1. the Being of those entities within-the-world which we proximally encounter – readiness-to-hand; 2. the Being of those entities which we can come across and whose nature we can DETERMINE if we discover them in their own right by going through the entities proximally encountered – presence-at-hand; 3. the Being of that ontical condition which makes it possible for entities within-the-world to be discovered at all – the worldhood of the world. This third kind of Being gives us an existential way of determining the nature of Being-in-the-world, that is, of Dasein. The other two concepts of Being are categories, and pertain to entities whose Being is not of the kind which Dasein possesses. The context of assignments or references, which, as significance, is constitutive for worldhood, can be taken formally in the sense of a system of Relations. But one must note that in such formalizations the phenomena get levelled off so much that their real phenomenal content may be lost, especially in the case of such ‘simple’ relationships as those which lurk in significance. The phenomenal content of these ‘Relations’ and ‘Relata’ BTMR §18
To DETERMINE the nature of the res corporea ontologically, we must explicate the substance of this entity as a substance – that is, its substantiality. What makes up the authentic Being-in-itself (An-ihm-selbstsein] of the res corporea? How is it at all possible to grasp a substance as such, that is, to grasp its substantiality? “Et quidem ex quolibet attributo substantia cognoscitur; sed una tamen est cuiusque substantiae praecipua proprietas, quae ipsius naturam essentiamque constituit, et ad quam aliae omnes referuntur.” Substances become accessible in their ‘attributes’, and every substance has some distinctive property from which the essence of the substantiality of that definite substance can be read off. Which property is this in the case of the res corporea? “Nempe extensio in longum, latum et profundum, substantiae corporeae naturam constituit.” Extension – namely, in length, breadth, and thickness – makes up the real Being of that corporeal substance which we call the ‘world’. What gives the extensio this distinctive status? “Nam omne aliud quod corpori tribui potest, extensionem praesupponit …” Extension is a state-of-Being constitutive for the entity we are talking about; it is that which must already ‘be’ before any other ways in which Being is determined, so that these can ‘be’ what they are. Extension must be ‘assigned’ [“zugewiescn”] primarily to the corporeal Thing. The ‘world’s”extension and substantiality (which itself is characterized by extension) are accordingly demonstrated by showing how all the other characteristics which this substance definitely possesses (especially divisio, figura, motus), can be conceived only as modi of extensio, while, on the other hand, extensio sine figura vel motu remains quite intelligible. BTMR §19
If we subject Descartes’ Interpretation of the experience of hardness and resistance to a critical analysis, it will be plain how unable he is to let what shows itself in sensation present itself in its own kind of Being, or even to DETERMINE its character (Cf. Section 19). BTMR §21
In connection with our first preliminary sketch of Being-in (See Section 12) , we had to contrast Dasein with a way of Being in space which we call “insideness” [Inwendigkeit]. This expression means that an entity which is itself extended is closed round [umschlossen] by the extended boundaries of something that is likewise extended. The entity inside [Das inwendig Seiende] and that which closes it round are both present-at-hand in space. Yet even if we delay that Dasein has any such insidencss in a spatial receptacle, this does not in principle exclude it from having any spatiality at all, but merely keeps open the way for seeing the kind of spatiality which is constitutive for Dasein. This must now be set forth. But inasmuch as any entity within-the-world is likewise in space, its spatiality will have an ontological connection with the world. We must therefore DETERMINE in what sense space is a constituent for that world which has in turn been characterized as an item in the structure of Being-in-the-world. In particular we must show how the aroundness of the environment, the specific spatiality of entities encountered in the environment, is founded upon the worldhood of the world, while contrariwise the world, on its part, is not present-at-hand in space. Our study of Dasein’s spatiality and the way in which the world is spatially determined will take its departure from an analysis of what is ready-to-hand in space within-the-world. We shall consider three topics: 1. the spatiality of the ready-to-hand within-the-world (Section 22); 2. the spatiality of Being-in-the-world (Section 23); 3. space and the spatiality of Dasein (Section 24). [SZ:102] BTMR §21
If space is constitutive for the world in a sense which we have yet to DETERMINE, then it cannot surprise us that in our foregoing ontological characterization of the Being of what is within-the-world we have had to look upon this as something that is also within space. This spatiality of the ready-to-hand is something which we have not yet grasped explicitly as a phenomenon; nor have we pointed out how it is bound up with the structure of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand. This is now our task. BTMR §22
What we have already said about the ontological indefiniteness of Dilthey’s foundations holds in principle for this theory too. Nor can the fundamental ontological analysis of ‘life’ be slipped in afterwards as a substructure. Such a fundamental analysis provides the supporting conditions for the analysis of Reality – for the entire explication of the character of resisting and its phenomenal presuppositions. Resistance is encountered in a not-coming-through, and it is encountered as a hindrance to willing to come through. With such willing, however, something must already have been disclosed which one’s drive and one’s will are out for. But what they are out for is ontically indefinite, and this indefiniteness must not be overlooked ontologically or taken as if it were nothing. When Being-out-for-something comes up against resistance, and can do nothing but ‘come up against it’, it is itself already alongside a totality of involvements. But the fact that this totality has been discovered is grounded in the disclosedness of the referential totality of significance. The experiencing of resistance – that is, the discovery of what is resistant to one’s endeavours – is possible ontologically only by reason of the disclosedness of the world. The character of resisting is one that belongs to entities with-the-world. Factically, experiences of resistance DETERMINE only the extent and the direction in which entities encountered within-the-world are discovered. The summation of such experiences does not introduce the disclosure of the world for the first time, but presupposes it. The ‘against’ and the ‘counter to’ as ontological possibilities, are supported by disclosed Being-in-the-world. BTMR §43
[SZ:254] But along with this tranquillization, which forces Dasein away from its death, the “they” at the same time puts itself in the right and makes itself respectable by tacitly regulating the way in which one has to comport oneself towards death. It is already a matter of public acceptance that ‘thinking about death’ is a cowardly fear, a sign of insecurity on the part of Dasein, and a sombre way of fleeing from the world. The “they” does not permit us the courage anxiety in the face of death. The dominance of the manner in which things have been publicly interpreted by the “they”, has already decided what state-of-mind is to DETERMINE our attitude towards death. In anxiety in the face of death, Dasein is brought face to face with itself as delivered over to that possibility which is not to be outstripped. The “they” concerns itself with transforming this anxiety into fear in the face of an oncoming event. In addition, the anxiety which has been made ambiguous as fear, is passed off as a weakness with which no self-assured Dasein may have any acquaintance. What is ‘fitting’ [Was sich … “gehört”] according to the unuttered decree of the “they”, is indifferent tranquillity as to the ‘fact’ that one dies. The cultivation of such a ‘superior’ indifference alienates Dasein from its ownmost nonrelational potentiality-for-Being. BTMR §51But how are we to DETERMINE what is said in the talk that belongs to this kind of discourse? What does the conscience call to him to whom it appeals? Taken strictly, nothing. The call asserts nothing, gives no information about world-events, has nothing to tell. Least of all does it try to set going a ‘soliloquy’ in the Self to which it has appealed. ‘Nothing’ gets called to [zu-gerufen] this Self, but it has been summoned [aufgerufen] to itself – that is, to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. The tendency of the call is not such as to put up for ‘trial’ the Self to which the appeal is made; but it calls Dasein forth (and ‘forward’) into its ownmost possibilities, as a summons to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self. BTMR §56
The scientific projection of any entities which we have somehow encountered already lets their kind of Being be understood explicitly and in such a manner that it thus becomes manifest what ways are possible for the pure discovery of entities within-the-world. The Articulation of the understanding of Being, the delimitation of an area of subject-matter (a delimitation guided by this understanding), and the sketching-out of the way of conceiving which is appropriate to such entities – all these belong to the totality of this projecting; and this totality is what we call “thematizing”. Its aim is to free the entities we encounter within-the-world, and to free them in such a way that they can ‘throw themselves against’ a pure discovering – that is, that they can become “Objects”. Thematizing Objectifies. It does not first ‘posit’ the entities, but frees them so that one can interrogate them and DETERMINE their character ‘Objectively’. Being which Objectifies and which is alongside the present-at-hand within-the-world, is characterized by a distinctive kind of making-present. This making-present is distinguished from the Present of circumspection in that – above all – the kind of discovering which belongs to the science in question awaits solely the discoveredness of the present-at-hand. This awaiting of discoveredness has its existentiell basis in a resoluteness by which Dasein projects itself towards its potentiality-for-Being in the ‘truth’. This projection is possible because Being-in-the-truth makes up a definite way in which Dasein may exist. We shall not trace further how science has its source in authentic existence. It is enough now if we understand that the thematizing of entities within-the-world presupposes Being-in-the-world as the basic state of Dasein, and if we understand how it does so. BTMR §69
Thus the significance-relationships which DETERMINE the structure of the world are not a network of forms which a worldless subject has laid over some kind of material. What is rather the case is that factical Dasein, understanding itself and its world ecstatically in the unity of the “there”, comes back from these horizons to the entities encountered within them. Coming back to these entities understandingly is the existential meaning of letting them be encountered by making them present; that is why we call them entities “within-the-world”. The world is, as it were, already ‘further outside’ than any Object can ever be. The ‘problem of transcendence’ cannot be brought round to the question of how a subject comes out to an Object, where the aggregate of Objects is identified with the idea of the world. Rather we must ask: what makes it ontologically possible for entities to be encountered within-the-world and Objectified as so encountered? This can be answered by recourse to the transcendence of the world – a transcendence with an ecstatico-horizonal foundation. BTMR §69
What seems ‘simpler’ than to characterize the ‘connectedness of life’ between birth and death? It consists of a sequence of Experiences ‘in time’. But if one makes a more penetrating study of this way of characterizing the ‘connectedness’ in question, and especially of the ontological assumptions behind it, the remarkable upshot is that, in this sequence of Experiences, what is ‘really’ ‘actual’ is, in each case, just that Experience which is present-fit-hand ‘in the current “now”’, while those Experiences which have passed away or are only coming along, either are no longer or are not yet ‘actual’. Dasein traverses the span of time granted to it between the two boundaries, and it does so in such a way that, in each case, it is ‘actual’ only in the “now”, and hops, as it were, through the sequence of “nows” of its own ‘time’. Thus it is said that Dasein is ‘temporal’. In spite of the constant changing of these Experiences, the Self maintains itself throughout with a certain selfsameness. Opinions diverge as to how that which thus persists is to be defined, and how one is to DETERMINE what relation it may possibly have to the changing Experiences. BTMR §72
If historiology is rooted in historicality in this manner, then it is from here that we must DETERMINE what the object of historiology ‘really’ is. The delimitation of the primordial theme of historiology will have to be carried through in conformity with the character of authentic historicality and its disclosure of “what-has-been-there” – that is to say, in conformity with repetition as this disclosure. In repetition the Dasein which has-been-there is understood in its authentic possibility which has been. The ‘birth’ of historiology from authentic historicality therefore signifies that in taking as our primary theme the historiological object we are projecting the Dasein which has-been-there upon its ownmost possibility of existence. Is historiology thus to have the possible for its theme? Does not its whole ‘meaning’ point solely to the ‘facts’ – to how something has factually been? BTMR §76
Saying “now”, however, is the discursive Articulation of a making-present which temporalizes itself in a unity with a retentive awaiting. The dating which is performed when one uses a clock, turns out to be a distinctive way in which something present-at-hand is made present. Dating does not simply relate to something present-at-hand; this kind of relating has itself the character of measuring. Of course the number which we get by measuring can be read off immediately. But this implies that when a [SZ:417] stretch is to be measured, we understand that our standard is, in a way, contained in it; that is, we DETERMINE the frequency of its presence in that stretch. Measuring is constituted temporally when a standard which has presence is made present in a stretch which has presence. The idea of a standard implies unchangingness; this means that for everyone at any time the standard, in its stability, must be present-at-hand. When the time with which one concerns oneself is dated by measuring, one interprets it by looking at something present-at-hand and making it present – something which would not become accessible as a standard or as something measured except by our making it present in this distinctive manner. Because the making-present of something having presence has a special priority in dating by measuring, the measurement in which one reads off the time by the clock also expresses itself with special emphasis in the “now”. Thus when time is measured, it is made public in such a way that it is encountered on each occasion and at any time for everyone as ‘now and now and now’. This time which is ‘universally’ accessible in clocks is something that we come across as a present-at-hand multiplicity of “nows”, so to speak, though the measuring of time is not directed thematically towards time as such. BTMR §80