(…) A primeira e mais óbvia destas [três concepções do desejo de ver] seria o desejo quotidiano de ver, tal como se manifesta na nossa curiosidade quotidiana. O desejo por detrás deste “ver”, enquanto modo de compreensão do Dasein, não se limita a ver com os olhos (SZ, 170). Abrange também, por exemplo, o desejo de ouvir e de ter ouvido. Mas também não se restringe a uma pura apreensão sensorial, se por apreensão sensorial entendermos a apreensão direta de um dado objeto que afecta os nossos sentidos. Isto não quer dizer, porém, que esta forma quotidiana do desejo de ver se dirija para um “além” suprassensível. Porque, de fato, continua a ser uma orientação geral para o domínio sensível, mas nesta orientação é dirigida para além dos objetos dados como presentes, dirigida para algo ainda não visível, algo ainda não presente. O desejo por detrás da visão da curiosidade é, muito simplesmente — como o alemão Neugier implica — um desejo pelo novo.
The first and most obvious of these (three conceptions of the desire to see) would be the everyday desire to see, as manifest in our everyday curiosity. The desire behind this “seeing,” as a mode of Dasein’s understanding, is not restricted to seeing with one’s eyes (SZ, 170). It also encompasses, for example, a desire to hear and to have heard. Yet nor is it restricted to a pure sensory apprehending, if by sensory apprehending we mean the straightforward apprehending of a given object that affects our senses. This is not to say, however, that this everyday form of the desire to see is directed toward a suprasensible “beyond.” For it indeed remains a general orientation toward the sensible realm, yet in this orientation is directed beyond those objects given as present, directed toward something not yet visible, something not yet present. The desire behind the vision of curiosity is, quite simply—as the German Neugier implies—a desire for the new. Its vision is a seeing in the sense of a kind of understanding, as §31 of Being and Time, “Da-sein as Understanding,” has already made clear. Yet it is not an understanding that seeks to understand in the sense of to know (Wissen) or to be “knowingly in the truth.” It is a seeing that seeks only to have seen, a knowing that seeks ”merely to have known” (SZ, 172). The word have is important here. For it indicates that in curiosity, we somehow evade our own having-been. And this is why Heidegger, when later analysing the temporality of curiosity, will describe it in terms of Dasein’s fleeing before its own thrownness, before the mortality of its own being-toward-death: ultimately, as a fleeing in the face of the Augenblick, of a vision immanent in the “glance of the eye” and belonging to the originary and primordial time of our existence. (SZ, §68c, 346ff)