entity

When we start from simple perception, let us reaffirm that the authentic moment in the perceivedness of the perceived is that in perception the perceived ENTITY is bodily there. In addition to this feature, another moment of every concrete perception of a thing in regard to its perceivedness is that the perceived thing is always presumed in its thing-totality. When I see a sensibly perceptible object, this familiar chair here, I always see—understood as a particular way of seeing—only one particular side and one aspect. I see, for example, the upper part of the seat but not the lower surface. And yet, when I see the chair in this way or see only the legs, I do not think that the chair has its legs sawed off. When I go into a room and see a cupboard, I do not see the door of the cupboard or a mere surface. Rather, the very sense of perception implies that I see the cupboard. When I walk around it, I always have new aspects. But in each moment I am intent, in the sense of natural intending, upon seeing the cupboard itself and not just an aspect of it. These aspects can change continually with the multiplicity of aspects being offered to me. But the bodily selfsameness of the perceived persists throughout my circling of the thing. The thing adumbrates, shades off in its aspects. But it is not an adumbration which is intended, but the perceived thing itself, in each case in an adumbration. In the multiplicity of changing perceptions the selfsameness of the perceived persists. I have no other perception in the sense of something else perceived. The content of perception is different, but the perceived is presumed as the same. GA20EN   §5

It is not intentionality as such that is metaphysically dogmatic but what is built under its structure, or is left at this level because of a traditional tendency not to question that of which it is presumably the structure, and what this sense of structure itself means. Yet the methodological rule for the initial apprehension of intentionality is really not to be concerned with interpretations but only to keep strictly to that which shows itself, regardless of how meager it may be. Only in this way will it be possible to see, in intentionality itself and through it directly into the heart of the matter, that of which it is the structure and how it is that structure. Intentionality is not an ultimate explanation of the psychic but an initial approach toward overcoming the uncritical application of traditionally defined realities such as the psychic, consciousness, continuity of lived experience, reason. But if such a task is implicit in this basic concept of phenomenology, then “intentionality” is the very last word to be used as a phenomenological slogan. Quite the contrary, it identifies that whose disclosure would allow phenomenology to find itself in its possibilities. It must therefore be flatly stated that what the belonging of the intentum to the intentio implies is obscure. How the being-intended of an ENTITY is related to that ENTITY remains puzzling. It is even questionable whether one may question in this way at all. But we cannot inquire into these puzzles as long as we cover up their puzzling character with theories for and against intentionality. Our understanding of intentionality is therefore not advanced by our speculations about it. We shall advance only by following intentionality in its concretion. An occasion for this is to be found in our effort to clarify the second discovery of phenomenology, the discovery of categorial intuition. GA20EN   §5

When we say that the relation of state of affairs is ideal and not real, this certainly does not mean—and this is the decisive point—that it is not objective or even the least bit less objective than what is given as real. Rather, by way of understanding what is present in categorial intuition, we can come to see that the objectivity of an ENTITY is really not exhausted by this narrow definition of reality, that objectivity in its broadest sense is much richer than the reality of a thing, and what is more, that the reality of a thing is comprehensible in its structure only on the basis of the full objectivity of the simply experienced ENTITY. GA20EN   §6

One sees in the antithesis of the two kinds of intuition a recurrence of the old contrast of sense and understanding. If one adds to this the conceptual pair of form and matter, the issue may be laid out in the following fashion: Sensuousness is characterized as receptivity and understanding as spontaneity (Kant  ), the sensory as matter and the categorial as form. Accordingly, the spontaneity of understanding becomes the formative principle of a receptive matter, and in one stroke we have the old mythology of an intellect which glues and rigs together the world’s matter with its own forms. Whether it is metaphysical or epistemological as in Rickert, the mythology is the same. Categorial intuition is subject to this misunderstanding only as long as the basic structure of intuiting and of all comportments—intentionality—is not seen or is suppressed. The categorial ‘forms’ are not constructs of acts but objects which manifest themselves in these acts. They are not something made by the subject and even less something added to the real objects, such that the real ENTITY is itself modified by this forming. Rather, they actually present the ENTITY more truly in its ‘being-in-itself.’ GA20EN   §6

Every phenomenological analysis of acts considers the act in such a way that the analysis does not really go along with the act, does not follow its thematic sense, but rather makes the act itself the theme, so that the object of the act is also thematized in terms of how it is presumed in the corresponding intention. This implies that the perceived is not directly presumed as such, but in the how of its being. This modification, in which the ENTITY is now regarded to the extent that it is an object of intentionality, is called bracketing. GA20EN   §10

This bracketing of the ENTITY takes nothing away from the ENTITY itself, nor does it purport to assume that the ENTITY is not. This reversal of perspective has rather the sense of making the being of the ENTITY present. This phenomenological suspension of the transcendent thesis has but the sole function of making the ENTITY present in regard to its being. The term “suspension” is thus always misunderstood when it is thought that in suspending the thesis of existence and by doing so, phenomenological reflection simply has nothing more to do with the ENTITY. Quite the contrary: in an extreme and unique way, what really is at issue now is the determination of the being of the very ENTITY. GA20EN   §10

Consciousness, immanent and absolutely given being, is that in which every other possible ENTITY is constituted, in which it truly ‘is’ what it is. Constituting being is absolute. All other being, as reality, is only in relation to consciousness, that is, relative to it. “The common way of talking about being is thus reversed. The being which for us is the first is in itself the second, that is, it is what it is only in ‘relation’ to the first.” This first, which must be presupposed, which must already be there so that something real can manifest itself, this first being has the advantage of not needing reality. On the contrary, it is rather reality which has need of the first being. All consciousness is therefore absolute compared to any and every reality. GA20EN   §11

In point of fact, all of these determinations of being are derived with a view to working out the context of lived experience as a region for absolute scientific consideration. Perhaps precisely here the question of the being of the ENTITY should not be raised. In any case, we must first look into whether the sense of this ENTITY is determined in the process of bringing this region into relief, even if only in the sense that it is suspended as irrelevant for its being a region. GA20EN   §11

Likewise, in the consideration and elaboration of pure consciousness, merely the what-content is brought to the fore, without any inquiry into the being of the acts in the sense of their existence. Not only is this question not raised in the reductions, the transcendental as well as the eidetic; it gets lost precisely through them. From the what I never experience anything about the sense and the manner of the that—at any rate, only that an ENTITY of this what-content (extensio, for example) can have a certain manner of being. What this manner of being is, is not thereby made clear. Merely looking at the what-content means seeing the what as apprehended, given, constituted. The critical discussion of the reductions in terms of what they do to pose the question of being turns out to be negative, so much so that it shows that the determinations of being discussed in § 11 cannot be genuine. But above all, this conception of ideation as disregard of real individuation lives in the belief that the what of any ENTITY is to be defined by disregarding its existence. But if there were an ENTITY whose what is precisely to be and nothing but to be, then this ideative regard of such an ENTITY would be the most fundamental of misunderstandings. It will become apparent that this misunderstanding is prevalent in phenomenology, and dominates it in turn because of the dominance of the tradition. GA20EN   §12

It is an experience which is totally unnatural. For it includes a well-defined theoretical position, in which every ENTITY is taken a priori as a lawfully regulated flow of occurrences in the spatio-temporal exteriority of the world. Is this natural attitude perhaps only the semblance of one? This kind of comportment and experience is of course rightly called an attitude [Einstellung], inasmuch as it must first be derived from natural comportment, from the natural way of experience; one must so to speak “place oneself into” [hineinstellen] this way of considering things [and so assume an attitude toward them] in order to be able to experience in this manner. Man’s natural manner of experience, by contrast, cannot be called an attitude. Another issue is whether the character of the reality of man and of the acts which appear in this way of experience is the primary and authentic character; whether I experience the specific being of acts there or whether the specific being of comportments as such is actually obliterated, and the being of acts is defined merely in terms of their having occurred. The situation thus remains the same: although here the reality of acts is in a certain sense examined, the specific act-being of the comportments as such is nevertheless not examined. On the contrary, the specific being of acts is just distorted by this so-called natural attitude. That this attitude passes itself off as natural just serves to support the prejudice that in this sort of attitude the being of acts is given originally and authentically, and that every question about the being of acts must refer back to it. GA20EN   §12

Even if the ‘thing of nature called man’ is experienced as the zoon occurring in the world and his mode of being and his reality are determined, this does not mean that his comportments, the intentional in its being, are examined and defined. What is thus examined and defined is merely his being on hand as a thing, to which comportments are perhaps added as ‘appendages’ but are not really relevant for determining the character of the being of this ENTITY and do not constitute its way of being. But to the extent that this ENTITY is characterized by comportments, its way of being must also be knowable in its comportments. GA20EN   §12

The question asks about what being means. The sense of being is what is asked for [das Erfragte] in the question, what is to be arrived at in the question. This means that what the question as such has to attain, what is to be brought out in the answer, is the sense of being. Examined more carefully, what is asked about in what is thus asked for? When being is thus asked for, it involves inquiring into the basic character of the ENTITY, what defines an ENTITY as ENTITY. What defines the ENTITY as ENTITY is its being. The sense of being implies what is asked about [das Gefragte]—the being of the ENTITY. In other words, what is asked for implies what is asked about. If the ENTITY is to be defined in its being, it must be interrogated on its being. What is asked about—the being of the ENTITY—and so the demonstrative definition of the sense of being is demonstrable only if the ENTITY itself as ENTITY is interrogated on its being. This means that the ENTITY must in itself be accessible in its being. What is interrogated [das Befragte] is the ENTITY itself. What is asked about implies what is interrogated, the sense of being of an ENTITY implies the ENTITY itself. Thus, to begin with, we have elicited a threefold distinction in the structure of the question and the inquiry. Very formally, these are: 1. What is asked for: the sense of being. 2. What is asked about: the being of entities. 3. What is interrogated: the ENTITY itself. GA20EN   §16

Let us begin with the third part. In order to seek the being of the ENTITY through questioning, the ENTITY itself must be interrogated on its being. For this, what is interrogated must necessarily be experienced in itself. We call many a thing an ENTITY or what is, and many of them in a different sense. What-is is in a certain sense everything of which we speak, which we intend, toward which we act, and, even if only as to something inaccessible, everything to which we are related and all of that which we ourselves are and how we are. Now which ENTITY is to be experienced in itself? Which ENTITY is it then in which the potential sense of being can be obtained and read off? And in the event it can be determined, what is the mode of experience and of access to this ENTITY, so that it can become manifest in itself? In regard to the determinations of what is interrogated, the unfolding of the question of being contains a double determination: first, that of the ENTITY which is to give the sense of being originally and authentically; and the other is the determination of the right sort of access to the ENTITY in order to bring out the sense of being. GA20EN   §16

Second, the question contains what it asks about. This implies that what is interrogated, the ENTITY, is interrogated on something. In the inquiry the ENTITY is not accepted purely and simply in itself; it is undertaken ‘as’ and taken up as this and that; it is taken in regard to its being. In the question the interrogated is addressed: one as it were inquires of it about its being. What is interrogated is an ENTITY insofar as something is sought in it. The inquiry includes this interrogation on something. This interrogation needs the indication of a direction which it has to take in order to bring out in the ENTITY its being. Not only must the right kind of experience of the ENTITY itself be fixed, but also the regard in which I have to take the interrogated ENTITY must be determined, so that I may catch a glimpse of the likes of ‘being’ in it at all. We shall provisionally determine the regard from these two points of view: first from the direction of the inquisitive looking upon, and second from the on-which in the ENTITY, in regard to which what is interrogated is to be quizzed. GA20EN   §16

Working out the articulation of the question is the preliminary experience and explication of the questioning ENTITY itself, of the Dasein which we ourselves are. It is a matter of an ENTITY to which we have this distinctive, at any rate noteworthy, relationship of being: we are it itself—an ENTITY which is only insofar as I am it. It is a matter of an ENTITY which to us is the nearest. But is it also what is first given to us, that is, the immediately given? In this respect it is perhaps the farthest. Thus it happens that when we ask about it as such, when this ENTITY is defined, it tends not to be defined at all from an originary apprehension of itself. This ENTITY which we ourselves are and which in respect to its givenness is the farthest from us is to be defined phenomenologically, brought to the level of phenomenon, that is, experienced in such a way that it shows itself in itself, so that we draw out of this phenomenal givenness of Dasein certain basic structures which are sufficient to make the concrete question of being into a transparent question. That we with good reason or almost of necessity first ask about this ENTITY, the Dasein, in such a way that we exhibit it provisionally, that we necessarily begin with it, will be established from our growing knowledge of the structure of the being of this very ENTITY. It will be shown that the necessity in the question of being to start from the clarification of questioning as an ENTITY is demanded by this ENTITY itself, by the questioning. This ENTITY, the questioner, itself makes use of a particular sense of being, just the sense which, as we already noted, maintains itself in a certain lack of understanding, a lack which must be defined. Our next task is now the explication of Dasein as the ENTITY whose way of being is questioning itself. GA20EN   §17

It must basically be stressed that the following considerations will not try to present the thematic analysis of Dasein as such; but several essential basic structures are first located in what we have in advance in order to permit us to ask even more basic questions from them. Dasein is to be laid out in its basic constitution, in its average understanding, so that we may articulate the question of being lucidly. In the initial explication only a few phenomena are to be made manifest. But these are the very phenomena which we are to understand as fundamental structures of Dasein. The first aim of this analysis is therefore not so much a fully realized apprehension of all specific structures. Its first aim is rather to lay out the basic constitution of this ENTITY as a whole. This does not require the unbroken fullness of the structures included in this totality along with the adequate and full research horizon which accompanies these structures in their entirety. This is why it is so important first of all to gain the security of the line of sight and to have the theme of the investigation clearly before us. This theme is not a strange and unfamiliar matter but on the contrary the nearest, which is perhaps precisely why it leads us astray into mistakes. What constantly conceals the phenomenal context to be laid open in this ENTITY is the mistaking and misinterpreting indigenous to our intimate familiarity with the ENTITY. But just to the extent that this ENTITY is in one respect especially close to the investigator, it is that much easier to pass over. The obvious is not even a possible theme at the outset. Since the securing of the direction of vision and the setting aside of misleading lines of questioning remains the immediate requirement, it is urgent at the outset to bring an immediately phenomenal and basically coherent set of structures into view. GA20EN   §18

This designation ‘Dasein’ for the distinctive ENTITY so named does not signify a what. This ENTITY is not distinguished by its what, like a chair in contrast to a house. Rather, this designation in its own way expresses the way to be. It is a very specific expression of being which is here chosen for an ENTITY, whereas at first we [normally] always name an ENTITY in terms of its what-content and leave its specific being undetermined, because we hold it to be self-evident. GA20EN   §18

But the provisional indication of this character at the same time contains specific directions for us relating to the subsequent analysis. The specification ‘to be’ the being directs us to understand all phenomena of Dasein primarily as ways of its ‘to-be.’ This prohibits us from experiencing and interrogating this ENTITY, Dasein, on its ‘outward appearance,’ on what it is composed of, on parts and layers which a particular kind of consideration can find in it. Outward appearance, be it ever so broadly defined, in principle never gives the answer to the question of the way ‘to be.’ Body, soul, spirit may in a certain respect designate what this ENTITY is composed of, but with this composite and its composition the way of being of this ENTITY is from the beginning left undetermined; the least of all the possibilities is to extract it afterwards from this composite, since this determination of the ENTITY which characterizes it as body, soul, and spirit has placed me in a completely different dimension of being really extraneous to Dasein. Whether this ENTITY ‘is composed of’ the physical, psychic, and spiritual and how these realities are to be determined is here left completely unquestioned. We place ourselves in principle outside of this experiential and interrogative horizon outlined by the definition of the most customary name for this ENTITY, man: homo animal rationale. What is to be determined is not an outward appearance of this ENTITY but from the outset and throughout solely its way to be, not the what of that of which it is composed but the how of its being and the characters of this how. GA20EN   §18

In these preliminary considerations it is becoming clear to us that even if we are not falsely educated by philosophical prejudices and theories about the subject and consciousness, even if we approach these phenomena to some extent without encumbrances, there are still difficulties in actually seeing what must be seen. The natural approach, even though it is not philosophically reflected and conceptually defined, does not really move in the direction of seeing the Dasein as such. Instead, inasmuch as it is a mode of being of this very Dasein, it tends to live away from itself. Even the way in which it knows itself is determined by this peculiarity of Dasein to live away from itself. In order to have a preliminary orientation at all on the sense in which all the characters of this being are to be taken, we offer the pointer that this ENTITY is the very ENTITY which we ourselves are. GA20EN   §18

The declaration of the genuine meaning of in-being does not also already guarantee seeing the phenomenon which it expresses. But at the same time it is also more than a mere verbal definition; it fixes our line of sight above all prohibitively, it indicates where we do not have to look. But from our account of the fundamental character we already know that, to demonstrate all the determinations of being under discussion, we should look to the ENTITY which in each instance we are, to the extent that and as we are it. Dasein, insofar as it is at all, is in the way of being of in-being. This means that in-being in the sense already defined is not a ‘property’ of the ENTITY called Dasein, not a property which it has or does not have, which devolves upon it or which it might add to itself, without which it could be just as well as with it, so that at first one could conceive the being of Dasein otherwise, to some extent without in-being. In-being is rather the constitution of the being of Dasein, in which every way of being of this ENTITY is grounded. In-being is not merely something thrown into the bargain for an ENTITY which even without this constitutive state would be Dasein, as if the world, in which every Dasein as Dasein always already is, were at times first added to this ENTITY (or conversely this ENTITY to it) so that this ENTITY then could at its leisure enter into a ‘relation’ with the world. Such entering into relations with the world is altogether possible only insofar as Dasein already is being-in-the-world on the basis of its being-involved-with. . . . GA20EN   §19

When this relationship of being between subject and object is reflected upon, for ordinary observation there is an ENTITY called nature already given in the widest sense, which becomes known; this ENTITY is also always found first, cultivated and cared for by Dasein precisely because it is being-in-the-world. In this ENTITY, the knowing which knows it is not to be found. This knowing must therefore be somewhere else, if it is at all. Likewise, however, in the entitative thing which knows, in the human thing, knowing is not on hand and so not perceivable, ascertainable like the color and extension of this human thing. But the knowing must still be in this thing, if not ‘outside’ then ‘inside’; this knowing is ‘inside,’ ‘in’ this subject-thing, in mente. GA20EN   §20

In directing-itself-toward and apprehending, Dasein does not first get out of itself, out of its inner sphere in which it is encapsulated. Rather, its very sense is to be always already ‘outside’ in the world, in the rightly understood sense of ‘outside’ as in-being and dwelling with the world, which in each instance is already uncovered in some way. Dwelling with the matter to be known does not involve abandonment of the inner sphere, as if Dasein leaps out of its sphere and is no longer in it but still is found only at the object. Dasein in this ‘being outside’ with the object is also ‘inside,’ rightly understood; for it is as being-in-the-world that Dasein itself knows the ENTITY. [And in turn,] the apprehending of what is known is not like returning from an expedition of plunder with its acquired booty back into the ‘housing’ of consciousness, of immanence; for in the very apprehending as well and in having, preserving, and retaining what is apprehended, the knowing Dasein remains ‘outside.’ In knowing about a context of being of the world, even in merely thinking of it, in merely representing it without originally experiencing it, I am no less with the entities outside in the world, and I am not in the least with myself on the inside. If I merely represent the Freiburg Cathedral to myself, this does not mean that it is only immanently present in the representing; rather, this mere representing is in the genuine and best sense precisely with the entities themselves. Even the forgetting of something, in which the relationship of being to what is known is apparently obliterated, is nothing but a particular modification of being-involved-with. Only on this basis is forgetting possible. All delusion and all error, in which in a way no relationship of being to the ENTITY is secured but is instead falsified, are once again only modes of being-involved-with. GA20EN   §20

Alias vero omnes, non nisi ope concursus Dei existere posse percipimus. “We clearly perceive from the very sense of substantiality that every other ENTITY is only with help from, which means in need of, the co-presence [concurrence] of God.” By its very sense, every ENTITY other than God needs to be produced and sustained, while the presence of Something qua God is characterized by the absence of such need, non-indigence. An ENTITY in need of production and sustenance in its existence and presence is therefore ‘ens creatum’ when we regard its presence from the standpoint of authentic being. GA20EN   §22

Descartes   says: Verumtamen non potest substantia primum animadverti ex hoc solo, quod sit res existens, quia hoc solum per se nos non afficit . . . [Yet substance cannot be first discovered merely from the fact that it is a thing that exists, for this alone does not by itself affect us]. But an ENTITY which is authentically, the substance, God, cannot be apprehended first of all from this alone, that it is. We thus cannot directly apprehend an ENTITY primarily by relating to its way to be. It is precisely the being of an ENTITY which is not accessible to us in this way. Quia hoc solum, for the being of an ENTITY taken purely for itself, per se nos non afficit, by itself does not ‘affect’ us. Consequently, says Descartes  , we have no primary and original access to the being of the ENTITY as such. What Descartes   expresses here in this way, that the being of an ENTITY taken purely for itself does not affect us, is later formulated by Kant   in the simple sentence, “being is not a real predicate”; that is, being is not a datum which can be apprehended by way of any kind of receptivity and affection. Precisely because we are not capable of apprehending the being of entities primarily and in isolation, but always first apprehend what an ENTITY is, in Greek the eidos, its outward appearance, we must therefore, even in the apprehension of the being of the authentic ENTITY, start with the attributes, through which the nature of the ENTITY and its being are then presented. This peculiar principle, that being for itself cannot be experienced by us in the ENTITY because it does not affect us, is perhaps, without Descartes   knowing it and also perhaps without Kant   ultimately understanding it in his thesis, the most clear-cut formulation of the being of the ENTITY which we call world. In a wholly formal sense, it establishes that we are not affected by the being of the world as such. This concept of affection would of course require an elucidation of its subject matter, and this elucidation in turn would have to lean on a prior adequate analysis of the being of the ENTITY which we ourselves are. There is indeed an ENTITY which can be grasped directly and only primarily from its being and, if it is to be understood philosophically, must so be grasped. GA20EN   §22

What the proposition basically means, what is seen in it, is not that an ENTITY is dependent on consciousness in its being nor that something transcendent is actually at the same time something immanent. The phenomenal finding in this proposition is rather that a world is encountered. The phenomenon itself thus directs us to interpret the structure of encounter, the activity of encountering. And the more we go about this without prejudice, the more authentically is the ENTITY encountered ascertainable in its being. GA20EN   §24

The being of entities does not lie in the activity of encountering, but the encounter of entities is the phenomenal basis, and the sole basis, upon which the being of entities can be grasped. Only the interpretation of the encounter with entities can secure the being of entities, if at all. It must be stated that the ENTITY as an ENTITY is ‘in itself and independent of any apprehension of it; accordingly, the being of the ENTITY is found only in encounter and can be explained, made understandable, only from the phenomenal exhibition and interpretation of the structure of encounter. In this case explanation is inadequate, inasmuch as it is a derivative, inferior mode of expository interpretation and uncovering of the ENTITY. Every explanation, when we speak of an explanation of nature, is distinguished by its involvement in the incomprehensible. It can be flatly stated that explanation is the expository interpretation of the incomprehensible, not so that this exposition would let us comprehend the incomprehensible, for it remains incomprehensible in principle. Nature is what is in principle explainable and to be explained because it is in principle incomprehensible. It is the incomprehensible pure and simple. And it is the incomprehensible because it is the “unworlded” world, insofar as we take nature in this extreme sense of the ENTITY as it is discovered in physics. This is connected with the fact that in this kind of explanation and discovery of the world as nature, nature is still investigated and interrogated only with regard to the presence of the ENTITY in it; and this ENTITY is admitted only insofar as it is determined by laws of motion which remain invariant, unaltered, always the same for every possible approach and regard under which the consideration of nature is placed. It should be observed here that all propositions and proofs given in physics or mathematics are certainly comprehensible as propositions, as discourse about something, but that about which they speak is itself the incomprehensible. As the incomprehensible, it is likewise the ENTITY which simply does not have the character of Dasein at all, while Dasein is the ENTITY which is comprehensible in principle. Since understanding belongs to its being as being-in-the-world, world is comprehensible to Dasein insofar as it is encountered in the character of meaningfulness. GA20EN   §24

When we consider the determination of the ‘in-itself’ as a character of worldhood, we can here very briefly recall what we said earlier, that the ‘in-itself’ is not an original character; it still has a phenomenal genesis, it is still in need of expository interpretation, even though it is generally taken to be in no need of interpretation. Why is the reality of the world so readily characterized by the ‘in-itself’? Why do we find comfort in the mere stipulation of this character without any clarification of it? It has to do with the fact that this ‘in-itself of the world is introduced reactively, so to speak, against an interpretation of the being of the world as apprehended, against the determination of the actuality of the actual as objectivity for a scientifically objective knowledge. It is reactive in the counterclaim that the ENTITY is ‘in itself.’ Appeal is made to the fact that all ‘natural’ and scientific knowing aims at the determination of an ENTITY which is in itself in its being. But then the matter is allowed to rest with this appeal, without asking what it now really means. GA20EN   §24

If the being of the world were definable only in terms of being apprehended, then the one chance of nevertheless still clarifying the ‘in-itself’ would be by an ever greater disregard of the subject. But how would that be possible without the basic constitutive state of in-being? But since the being of the world becomes comprehensible in the encounter, the understanding of the ENTITY in itself is as such revealed only in a radical interpretation of Dasein. The more originally and the more authentically this ENTITY is explicated in its being, the more radically can knowing and entities as potentially knowable then be explicated. Because objects are independent of the subject, their being can be explicated only in subjectivity properly understood, but it cannot consist in being a subject. GA20EN   §24

We shall now try to grasp the basic phenomenon of Dasein as being-in-the-world in a second direction. We are saying that this ENTITY which has the mode of being of being-in-the-world must now be more accurately defined. But with this formulation we in a certain sense move away from a rigorous consideration of the phenomenon of Dasein. This becomes evident when we recall that this ENTITY which we call Dasein has its what-determination in its ‘to-be.’ It is not any specific “what” which in addition would have its mode of being; rather, what the Dasein is is precisely its being. This indicates that we cannot undercut this expression ‘the ENTITY which has the mode of being of Dasein’ with something that reverses the entire line of questioning. When we say, actually wrongly, ‘the ENTITY which has the mode of being of Dasein,’ we cannot mean that this ENTITY is something like a thing on hand in the world, which is first specifiable of itself purely in its “what” and which on the basis of this what-content now also has a specific mode of being just like a thing, chair, table, or the like. Because the expression ‘the ENTITY of the character of Dasein’ always suggests something in the order of the substantiality of a thing, it is basically inappropriate. GA20EN   §26

Phenomenological research is the interpretation of entities with regard to their being. For such an interpretation, what is put into prepossession is what it has in advance as its thematic matter: an ENTITY or a particular region of being. This ENTITY is interrogated with regard to its being. In other words, that with regard to which [woraufhin] what is put into prepossession is interrogated, the view to which [woraufhin] it is seen and to be seen, is being. Being is to be read off in the ENTITY; that is to say, what phenomenological interpretation puts into pre-view is being. It has put a temporally particular ENTITY into prepossession. It asks about the being of the ENTITY. Such a question about the being of the ENTITY is a clear and sure guide for the investigation only when that with regard to which the ENTITY is interrogated, namely being, is adequately elaborated and conceptually determined. The more originally and the less prejudicially the elaboration of what is put into pre-view is brought about, the less one uses fortuitous, seemingly self-evident and worn-out concepts which are unclear in their origin, then all the more surely will concrete research into being attain its ground and stay rooted there in its native soil. GA20EN   §32

This phenomenon of ‘being,’ which takes the lead and so decides the way for all research into being, must be elaborated. As we showed earlier, this calls for the interpretation of the very questioning; what is needed here is the clarification of the very structure of research into being, of the interrogation of the ENTITY with regard to its being. The formulation of the question can as such be clearly realized only when it has become clear what questioning, what understanding, what taking a view, what an experience of an ENTITY is, what the being of an ENTITY in general means, in short, when all that we mean by Dasein has been elaborated. GA20EN   §32

Reading off the genuine totality of being requires that the ENTITY as a whole be given. To the extent that care became manifest as the being of this ENTITY, this means that the whole is in principle never given, and the purported reading is in principle impossible. In regard to Dasein itself and our previous elaboration, we have obtained full clarity on the following points: The being of this ENTITY is care; among other things, care means being out for something; Dasein’s concern includes a concern for its own being. As being out for something, it is out for what it still is not. As care, Dasein is essentially underway towards something; in caring it is toward itself as that which it still is not. Its own sense of being is to always have something before itself which it still is not, which is still outstanding. That something is always still outstanding means that the being of Dasein as care, insofar as it is, is always incomplete; it still lacks something so long as it is. GA20EN   §33

1) Upon dying, the Dasein of others is also a no-longer-Dasein in the sense of no-longer-being-in-the-world. When they have died, their being-in-the-world is as such no more. Their being is no longer being ‘in’ a world, ‘involved in’ a disclosed world. Their still-being-in-the-world is that of merely being on hand as a corporeal thing. The unique change-over of an ENTITY from the kind of being belonging to Dasein, whose character is being-in-the-world, to a bare something which is still only on hand is especially evident here. This bare “still being on hand” is the extreme counterinstance to the foregoing kind of being of this ENTITY. Strictly speaking, we can no longer even say that something like a human body is still on hand. We must not deceive ourselves. For with the dying and the death of others, an ENTITY is indeed still on hand, but certainly not their Dasein as such. GA20EN   §33