vorhanden, Vorhandenheit, Vorhandensein
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
And because the function of the logos lies in merely letting something be seen, in letting entities be perceived (im Vernehmenlassen des Seienden), logos can signify the reason (Vernunft). And because, moreover, logos is used not only with the signification of legein but also with that of legomenon (that which is exhibited, as such), and because the latter is nothing else than the hypokeimenon which, as PRESENT-AT-HAND, already lies at the bottom (zum Grunde) of any procedure of addressing oneself to it or discussing it, logos qua legomenon means the ground, the ratio. And finally, because logos as legomenon can also signify that which, as something to which one addresses oneself, becomes visible in its relation to something in its ‘relatedness’, logos acquires the signification of relation and relationship. BTMR §7
The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence. Accordingly those characteristics which can be exhibited in this entity are not ‘properties’ PRESENT-AT-HAND of some entity which ‘looks’ so and so and is itself PRESENT-AT-HAND; they are in each case possible ways for it to be, and no more than that. All the Being-as-it-is (So-sein) which this entity possesses is primarily Being. So when we designate this entity with the term ‘Dasein’, we are expressing not its “what” (as if it were a table, house or tree) but its Being. BTMR §9
2. That Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being, is in each case mine. Thus Dasein is never to be taken ontologically as an instance or special case of some genus of entities as things that are PRESENT-AT-HAND. To entities such as these, their Being is ‘a matter of indifference’; or more precisely, they ‘are’ such that their Being can be neither a matter of indifference to them, nor the opposite. Because Dasein has in each case mineness (Jemeinigkeit), one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it: ‘I am’, ‘you are’. BTMR §9
Furthermore, in each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in each case mine (je meines). That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it ‘has’ this possibility, but not just as a property (eigenschaftlich), as something PRESENT-AT-HAND would. And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only ‘seem’ to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic – that is, something of its own – can it have lost itself and not yet won itself. As modes of Being, authenticity and inauthenticity (these expressions have been chosen terminologically in a strict sense) are both grounded in the fact that any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness. But the inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify any ‘less’ Being or any ‘lower’ degree of Being. Rather it is the case that even in its fullest concretion Dasein can be characterized by inauthenticity – when busy, when excited, when interested, when ready for enjoyment. (SZ:43) BTMR §9
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
What is meant by “Being-in”? Our proximal reaction is to round out this expression to “Being-in ‘in the world’”, and we are inclined to understand this Being-in as ‘Being in something’ (“Sein in …”). This latter term designates the kind of Being which an entity has when it is ‘in’ another one, as the water is ‘in’ the glass, or the garment is ‘in’ the cupboard. By this ‘in’ we mean the relationship of Being which two entities extended ‘in’ space have to each other with regard to their location in that space. Both water and glass, garment and cupboard, are ‘in’ space and ‘at’ a location, and both in the same way. This relationship of Being can be expanded: for instance, the bench is in the lecture-room, the lecture-room is in the university, the university is in the city, and so on, until we can say that the bench is ‘in world-space’. All entities whose Being ‘in’ one another can thus be described have the same kind of Being – that of Being-present-at-hand – as Things occurring ‘within’ the world. Being-present-at-hand ‘in’ something which is likewise PRESENT-AT-HAND, and Being-present-at-hand-along-with (Mitvorhandensein) in the sense of a definite location-relationship with something else which has the same kind of Being, are ontological characteristics which we call “categorial”: they are of such a sort as to belong to entities whose kind of Being is not of the character of Dasein. (SZ:54) BTMR §12
Being-in, on the other hand, is a state of Dasein’s Being; it is an existentiale. So one cannot think of it as the Being-presentat-hand of some corporeal Thing (such as a human body) ‘in’ an entity which is PRESENT-AT-HAND. Nor does the term “Being-in” mean a spatial ‘in-one-another-ness’ of things PRESENT-AT-HAND, any more than the word ‘in’ primordially signifies a spatial relationship of this kind. ‘In’ is derived from “innan” – “to reside”, “habitare”, “to dwell” (sich auf halten). ‘An’ signifies “I am accustomed”, “I am familiar with”, “I look after something”. It has the signification of “colo” in the senses of “habito” and “diligo”. The entity to which Being-in in this signification belongs is one which we have characterized as that entity which in each case I myself am (bin). The expression ‘bin’ is connected with ‘bei’, and so ‘ich bin’ (‘I am’) means in its turn “I reside” or “dwell alongside” the world, as that which is familiar to me in such and such a way. “Being” (Sein), as the infinitive of ‘ich bin’ (that is to say, when it is understood as an existentiale), signifies “to reside alongside …”, “to be familiar with …”. “Being-in” is thus the formal existential expression for the Being of Dasein, which has Being-in-the-world as its essential state. BTMR §12
As an existentiale, ‘Being alongside’ the world never means anything like the Being-present-at-hand-together of Things that occur. There is no such thing as the ‘side-by-side-ness’ of an entity called ‘Dasein’ with another entity called ‘world’. Of course when two things are PRESENT-AT-HAND together alongside one another, we are accustomed to express this occasionally by something like ‘The table stands “by” (‘bei’) the door’ or ‘The chair “touches” (‘berührt’) the wall’. Taken strictly, ‘touching’ is never what we are talking about in such cases, not because accurate reexamination will always eventually establish that there is a space between the chair and the wall, but because in principle the chair can never touch the wall, even if the space between them should be equal to zero. If the chair could touch the wall, this would presuppose that the wall is the sort of thing ‘for’ which a chair would be encounterable. An entity PRESENT-AT-HAND within the world can be touched by another entity only if by its very nature the latter entity has Being-in as its own kind of Being – only if, with its Being-there (Da-sein), something like the world is already revealed to it, so that from out of that world another entity can manifest itself in touching, and thus become accessible in its Being-present-at-hand. When two entities are PRESENT-AT-HAND within the world, and furthermore are worldless in themselves, they can never ‘touch’ each other, nor can either of them ‘be’ ‘alongside’ the other. The clause ‘furthermore are worldless’ must not be left out; for even entities which are not worldless – Dasein itself, for example – are PRESENT-AT-HAND ‘in’ the world, or, more exactly, can with some right and within certain limits be taken as merely PRESENT-AT-HAND. To do this, one must completely disregard or just not see the existential state of Being-in. But the fact that ‘Dasein’ can be taken as something which is PRESENT-AT-HAND and just PRESENT-AT-HAND, is not to be confused with a certain way of ‘presence-at-hand’ which is Dasein’s own. This latter kind of presence-at-hand becomes accessible not by disregarding Dasein’s specific structures but only by understanding them in advance. Dasein understands its ownmost Being in the sense of a certain ‘factual Being-present-at-hand’. And yet the ‘factuality’ of the fact (Tatsache) of one’s own Dasein is at bottom quite different ontologically from the factual occurrence of some kind of mineral, for example. Whenever Dasein is, it is as a Fact; and the factuality of such a Fact is what we shall call Dasein’s “facticity”. This is a definite way of Being (Seinsbestimmtheit), and it has a complicated structure which cannot even be grasped as a problem until Dasein’s basic existential states have been worked out. The concept of “facticity” implies that an entity ‘within-the-world’ has Being-in-the-world in such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its ‘destiny’ with the Being of those entities which it encounters within its own world. (SZ:56) BTMR §12
In the first instance it is enough to see the ontological difference between Being-in as an existentiale and the category of the ‘insideness’ which things PRESENT-AT-HAND can have with regard to one another. By thus delimiting Being-in, we are not denying every kind of ‘spatiality’ to Dasein. On the contrary, Dasein itself has a ‘Being-in-space’ of its own; but this in turn is possible only on the basis of Being-in-the-world in general. Hence Being-in is not to be explained ontologically by some ontical characterization, as if one were to say, for instance, that Being-in in a world is a spiritual property, and that man’s ‘spatiality’ is a result of his bodily nature (which, at the same time, always gets ‘founded’ upon corporeality). Here again we are faced with the Being-present-at-hand-together of some such spiritual Thing along with a corporeal Thing, while the Being of the entity thus compounded remains more obscure than ever. Not until we understand Being-in-the-world as an essential structure of Dasein can we have any insight into Dasein’s existential spatiality. Such an insight will keep us from failing to see this structure or from previously cancelling it out – a procedure motivated not ontologically but rather ‘metaphysically’ by the naïve supposition that man is, in the first instance, a spiritual Thing which subsequently gets misplaced ‘into’ a space. BTMR §12
From what we have been saying, it follows that Being-in is not a ‘property’ which Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not have, and without which it could be just as well as it could with it. It is not the case that man ‘is’ and then has, by way of an extra, a relationship-of-Being towards the ‘world’ – a world with which he provides himself occasionally. Dasein is never ‘proximally’ an entity which is, so to speak, free from Being-in, but which sometimes has the inclination to take up a ‘relationship’ towards the world. Taking up relationships towards the world is possible only because Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is as it is. This state of Being does not arise just because some other entity is PRESENT-AT-HAND outside of Dasein and meets up with it. Such an entity can ‘meet up with’ Dasein only in so far as it can, of its own accord, show itself within a world. BTMR §12
Even if it were feasible to give an ontological definition of “Being-in” primarily in terms of a Being-in-the-world which knows, it would still be our first task to show that knowing has the phenomenal character of a Being which is in and towards the world. If one reflects upon this relationship of Being, an entity called “Nature” is given proximally as that which becomes known. Knowing, as such, is not to be met in this entity. If knowing ‘is’ at all, it belongs solely to those entities which know. But even in those entities, human-Things, knowing is not PRESENT-AT-HAND. In any case, it is not externally ascertainable as, let us say, bodily properties are. Now, inasmuch as knowing belongs to these entities and is not some external characteristic, it must be ‘inside’. Now the more unequivocally one maintains that knowing is proximally and really ‘inside’ and indeed has by no means the same kind of Being as entities which are both physical and psychical, the less one presupposes when one believes that one is making headway in the question of the essence of knowledge and in the clarification of the relationship between subject and Object. For only then can the problem arise of how this knowing subject comes out of its inner ‘sphere’ into one which is ‘other and external’, of how knowing can have any object at all, and of how one must think of the object itself so that eventually the subject knows it without needing to venture a leap into another sphere. But in any of the numerous varieties which this approach may take, the question of the kind of Being which belongs to this knowing subject is left entirely unasked, though whenever its knowing gets handled, its way of Being is already included tacitly in one’s theme. Of course we are sometimes assured that we are certainly not to think of the subject’s “inside” (Innen) and its ‘inner sphere’ as a sort of ‘box’ or ‘cabinet’. But when one asks for the positive signification of this ‘inside’ of immanence in which knowing is proximally enclosed, or when one inquires how this ‘Being inside’ (“Innenseins”) which knowing possesses has its own character of Being grounded in the kind of Being which belongs to the subject, then silence reigns. And no matter how this inner sphere may get interpreted, if one does no more than ask how knowing makes its way ‘out of’ it and achieves ‘transcendence’, it becomes evident that the knowing which presents such enigmas will remain problematical unless one has previously clarified, how it is and what it is. (SZ:61) BTMR §13
If we now ask what shows itself in the phenomenal findings about knowing, we must keep in mind that knowing is grounded beforehand in a Being-already-alongside-the-world, which is essentially constitutive for Dasein’s Being. Proximally, this Being-already-alongside is not just a fixed staring at something that is purely PRESENT-AT-HAND. Being-in-the-world, as concern, is fascinated by the world with which it is concerned. If knowing is to be possible as a way of determining the nature of the PRESENT-AT-HAND by observing it, then there must first be a deficiency in our having-to-do with the world concernfully. When concern holds back (Sichenthalten) from any kind of producing, manipulating, and the like, it puts itself into what is now the sole remaining mode of Being-in, the mode of just tarrying alongside… . (das Nur-noch-verweilen bei …) This kind of Being towards the world is one which lets us encounter entities within-the-world purely in the way the look (eidos), just that; on the basis of this kind of Being, and as a mode of it, looking explicitly at what we encounter is possible. Looking at something in this way is sometimes a definite way of taking up a direction towards something – of setting our sights towards what is PRESENT-AT-HAND. It takes over a ‘view-point’ in advance from the entity which it encounters. Such looking-at enters the mode of dwelling autonomously alongside entities within-the-world. In this kind of ‘dwelling’ as a holding-oneself-back from any manipulation or utilization, the perception of the PRESENT-AT-HAND is consummated. Perception is consummated when one addresses oneself to something as something and discusses it as such. This amounts to interpretation in the broadest sense; and on the basis of such interpretation, perception becomes an act of making determinate. What is thus perceived and made determinate can be expressed in propositions, and can be retained and preserved as what has thus been asserted. This perceptive retention of an assertion about something is itself a way of Being-in-the-world; it is not to be Interpreted as a ‘procedure’ by which a subject provides itself with representations (Vorstellungen) of something which remain stored up ‘inside’ as having been thus appropriated, and with regard to which the question of how they ‘agree’ with actuality can occasionally arise. (SZ:62) BTMR §13
Thus, to give a phenomenological description of the ‘world’ will mean to exhibit the Being of those entities which are PRESENT-AT-HAND within the world, and to fix it in concepts which are categorial. Now the entities within the world are Things – Things of Nature, and Things ‘invested with value’ (“wertbehaftete” Dinge). Their Thinghood becomes a problem; and to the extent that the Thinghood of Things ‘invested with value’ is based upon the Thinghood of Nature, our primary theme is the Being of Things of Nature – Nature as such. That characteristic of Being which belongs to Things of Nature (substances), and upon which everything is founded, is substantiality. What is its ontological meaning? By asking this, we have given an unequivocal direction to our inquiry. BTMR §14
The derivative form ‘worldly’ will then apply terminologically to a kind of Being which belongs to Dasein, never to a kind which belongs to entities PRESENT-AT-HAND ‘in’ the world. We shall designate these latter entities as “belonging to the world” or “within-the-world” (weltzugehörig oder innerweltlich). BTMR §14
A glance at previous ontology shows that if one fails to see Being-in-the-world as a state of Dasein, the phenomenon of worldhood likewise gets passed over. One tries instead to Interpret the world in terms of the Being of those entities which are PRESENT-AT-HAND within-the-world but which are by no means proximally discovered – namely, in terms of Nature. If one understands Nature ontologico-categorially, one finds that Nature is a limiting case of the Being of possible entities within-the-world. Only in some definite mode of its own Being-in-the-world can Dasein discover entities as Nature. This manner of knowing them has the character of depriving the world of its worldhood in a definite way. ‘Nature’, as the categorial aggregate of those structures of Being which a definite entity encountered within-the-world may possess, can never make worldhood intelligible. But even the phenomenon of ‘Nature’, as it is conceived, for instance, in romanticism, can be grasped ontologically only in terms of the concept of the world – that is to say, in terms of the analytic of Dasein. 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
To the everydayness of Being-in-the-world there belong certain modes of concern. These permit the entities with which we concern ourselves to be encountered in such a way that the worldly character of what is within-the-world comes to the fore. When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous. This conspicuousness (SZ:73) presents the ready-to-hand equipment as in a certain un-readiness-to-hand. But this implies that what cannot be used just lies there; it shows itself as an equipmental Thing which looks so and so, and which, in its readiness-to-hand as looking that way, has constantly been PRESENT-AT-HAND too. Pure presence-at-hand announces itself in such equipment, but only to withdraw to the readiness-to-hand of something with which one concerns oneself – that is to say, of the sort of thing we find when we put it back into repair. This presence-at-hand of something that cannot be used is still not devoid of all readiness-to-hand whatsoever; equipment which is PRESENT-AT-HAND in this way which is still not just a Thing which occurs somewhere. The damage to the equipment is still not a mere alteration of a Thing – not a change of properties which just occurs in something PRESENT-AT-HAND. BTMR §16
The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy all have the function of bringing to the fore the characteristic of presence-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand. But the ready-to-hand is not thereby just observed and stared at as something PRESENT-AT-HAND; the presence-at-hand which makes itself known is still bound up in the readiness-to-hand of equipment. Such equipment still does not veil itself in the guise of mere Things. It becomes ‘equipment’ in the sense of something which one would like to shove out of the way. But in such a Tendency to shove things aside, the ready-to-hand shows itself as still ready-to-hand in its unswerving presence-at-hand. BTMR §16
Similarly, when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence (Zugegensein) has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a break in those referential contexts which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environment announces itself afresh. What is thus lit up is not itself just one thing ready-to-hand among others; still less is it something PRESENT-AT-HAND upon which equipment ready-to-hand is somehow founded: it is in the ‘there’ before anyone has observed or ascertained it. It is itself inaccessible to circumspection, so far as circumspection is always directed towards entities; but in each case it has already been disclosed for circumspection. ‘Disclose’ and ‘disclosedness’ will be used as technical terms in the passages that follow, and shall signify ‘to lay open’ and ‘the character of having been laid open.’ Thus ‘to disclose’ never means anything like ‘to obtain indirectly by inference’. BTMR §16
In such privative expressions as “inconspicuousness”, “unobtrusiveness”, and “non-obstinacy”, what we have in view is a positive phenomenal character of the Being of that which is proximally ready-to-hand. With these’ negative prefixes we have in view the character of the ready-to-hand as “holding itself in”; this is what we have our eye upon in the “Being-in-itself” of something, though ‘proximally’ we ascribe it to the PRESENT-AT-HAND – to the PRESENT-AT-HAND as that which can be thematically ascertained. As long as we take our orientation primarily and exclusively from the PRESENT-AT-HAND, the ‘in-itself’ can by no means be ontologically clarified. If, however, this talk about the ‘in-itself’ has any ontological importance, some interpretation must be called for. This “in-itself” of Being is something which gets invoked with considerable emphasis, mostly in an ontical way, and rightly so from a phenomenal standpoint. But if some ontological assertion is supposed to be given when this is ontically invoked, its claims are not fulfilled by such a procedure. As the foregoing analysis has already made clear, only on the basis of the phenomenon of the world can the Being-in-itself of entities within-the-world be grasped ontologically. (SZ:76) BTMR §16
What do we mean when we say that a sign “indicates”? We can answer this only by determining what kind of dealing is appropriate with equipment for indicating. And we must do this in such a way that the readiness-to-hand of that equipment can be genuinely grasped. What is the appropriate way of having-to-do with signs? Going back to our example of the arrow, we must say that the kind of behaving (Being) which corresponds to the sign we encounter, is either to ‘give way’ or to ‘stand still’ vis-à-vis the car with the arrow. Giving way, as taking a direction, belongs essentially to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always somehow directed (ausgerichtet) and on its way; standing and waiting are only limiting cases of this directional ‘on-its-way’. The sign addresses itself to a Being-in-the-world which is specifically ‘spatial’. The sign is not authentically ‘grasped’ (“erfasst”) if we just stare at it and identify it as an indicator-Thing which occurs. Even if we turn our glance in the direction which the arrow indicates, and look at something PRESENT-AT-HAND in the region indicated, even then the sign is not authentically encountered. Such a sign addresses itself to the circumspection of our concernful dealings, and it does so in such a way that the circumspection which goes along with it, following where it points, brings into an explicit ‘survey’ whatever aroundness the environment may have at the time. This circumspective survey does not grasp the ready-to-hand; what it achieves is rather an orientation within our environment. There is also another way in which we can experience equipment: we may encounter the arrow simply as equipment which belongs to the car. We can do this without discovering what character it specifically has as equipment: what the arrow is to indicate and how it is to do so, may remain completely undetermined; yet what we are encountering is not a mere Thing. The experiencing of a Thing requires a definiteness of its own (ihre eigene Bestimmtheit), and must be contrasted with coming across a manifold of equipment, which may often be quite indefinite, even when one comes across it as especially close. BTMR §17
The peculiar character of signs as equipment becomes ‘especially clear in ‘establishing a sign’ (“Zeichenstiftung”). This activity is performed in a circumspective fore-sight (Vorsicht) out of which it arises, and which requires that it be possible for one’s particular environment to announce itself for circumspection at any time by means of something ready-to-hand, and that this possibility should itself be ready-to-hand. But the Being of what is most closely ready-to-hand within-the-world possesses the character of holding-itself-in and not emerging, which we have described above. Accordingly our circumspective dealings in the environment require some equipment ready-to-hand which in its character as equipment takes over the ‘work’ of letting something ready-to-hand become conspicuous. So when such equipment (signs) gets produced, its conspicuousness must be kept in mind. But even when signs are thus conspicuous, one does not let them be PRESENT-AT-HAND at random; they get ‘set up’ (“angebracht”) in a definite way with a view towards easy accessibility. BTMR §17
In establishing a sign, however, one does not necessarily have to produce equipment which is not yet ready-to-hand at all. Signs also arise when one takes as a sign (Zum-Zeichen–nehmen) something that is ready-to-hand already. In this mode, signs “get established” in a sense which is even more primordial. In indicating, a ready-to-hand equipment totality, and even the environment in general, can be provided with an availability which is circumspectively oriented; and not only this: establishing a sign can, above all, reveal. What gets taken as a sign becomes accessible only through its readiness-to-hand. If, for instance, the south wind ‘is accepted’ (“gilt”) by the farmer as a sign of rain, then this ‘acceptance’ (“Geltung”) – or the ‘value’ with which the entity is ‘invested’ – is not a sort of bonus over and above what is already PRESENT-AT-HAND in itself – viz, the flow of air in a definite geographical direction. The south wind may be meteorologically accessible as something which just occurs; but it is never PRESENT-AT-HAND proximally in such a way as this, only occasionally taking over the function of a warning signal. On the contrary, only by the circumspection with which one takes account of things in farming, is the south wind discovered in its Being. (SZ:81) BTMR §17
But, one will protest, that which gets taken as a sign must first have become accessible in itself and been apprehended before the sign gets established. Certainly it must in any case be such that in some way we can come across it. The question simply remains as to how entities are discovered in this previous encountering, whether as mere Things which occur, or rather as equipment which has not been understood – as something ready-to-hand with which we have hitherto not known ‘how to begin’, and which has accordingly kept itself veiled from the purview of circumspection. And here again, when the equipmental characters of the ready-to-hand are still circumspectively undiscovered, they are not to be Interpreted as bare Thinghood presented for an apprehension of what is just PRESENT-AT-HAND and no more. BTMR §17
One might be tempted to cite the abundant use of ‘signs’ in primitive Dasein, as in fetishism and magic, to illustrate the remarkable role which they play in everyday concern when it comes to our understanding of the world. Certainly the establishment of signs which underlies this way of using them is not performed with any theoretical aim or in the course of theoretical speculation. This way of using them always remains completely within a Being-in-the-world which is ‘immediate’. But on closer inspection it becomes plain that to interpret fetishism and magic by taking our clue from the idea of signs in general, is not enough to enable us to grasp the kind of ‘Being-ready-to-hand’ which belongs to entities encountered in the primitive world. With regard to the signphenomenon, the following Interpretation may be given: for primitive man, the sign coincides with that which is indicated. Not only can the sign represent this in the sense of serving as a substitute for what it indicates, but it can do so in such a way that the sign itself always is what it indicates. This remarkable coinciding does not mean, however, that the sign-Thing has already undergone a certain ‘Objectification’ – that it has been experienced as a mere Thing and misplaced into the same realm of Being of the PRESENT-AT-HAND as what it indicates. This ‘coinciding’ is not an identification of things which have hitherto been isolated from each other: it consists rather in the fact that the sign has not as yet become free from that of which it is a sign. Such a use of signs is still absorbed completely in Being-towards what is indicated, so that a sign as such cannot detach itself at all. This coinciding is based not on a prior Objectification but on the fact that such Objectification is completely lacking. This means, however, that signs are not discovered as equipment at all – that ultimately what is ‘ready-to-hand’ within-the-world just does not have the kind of Being that belongs to equipment. Perhaps even readiness-to-hand and equipment have nothing to contribute (nichts auszurichten) as ontological clues in Interpreting the primitive world; and certainly the ontology of Thinghood does even less. But if an understanding of Being is constitutive for primitive Dasein and for the primitive world in general, then it is all the more urgent to work out the ‘formal’ idea of worldhood – or at least the idea of a phenomenon modifiable in such a way that all ontological assertions to the effect that in a given phenomenal context something is not yet such-and-such or no longer such-and-such, may acquire a positive phenomenal meaning in terms of what it is not. BTMR §17
When we speak of having already let something be involved, so that it has been freed for that involvement, we are using a perfect tense a priori which characterizes the kind of Being belonging to Dasein itself. Letting an entity be involved, ‘if we understand this ontologicailly, consists in previously freeing it for (auf) its readiness-to-hand within the environment. When we let something be involved, it must be involved in something; and in terms of this “in-which”, the “with-which” of this involvement is freed. Our concern encounters it as this thing that is ready-to-hand. To the extent that any entity shows itself to concern – that is, to the extent that it is discovered in its Being – it is already something ready-to-hand environmentally; it just is not ‘proximally’ a ‘world-stuff’ that is merely PRESENT-AT-HAND. BTMR §18
– the “in-order-to”, the “for-the-sake-of”, and the “with-which” of an involvement – is such that they resist any sort of mathematical functionalization; nor are they merely something thought, first posited in an ‘act of thinking.’ They are rather relationships in which concernful circumspection as such already dwells. This ‘system of Relations’, as something constitutive for worldhood, is so far from volatilizing the Being of the ready-to-hand within-the-world, that the worldhood of the world provides the basis on which such entities can for the first time be discovered as they are ‘substantially’ ‘in themselves’. And only if entities within-the-world can be encountered at all, is it possible, in the field of such entities, to make accessible what is just PRESENT-AT-HAND and no more. By reason of their Being-just-present-at-hand-and-no-more, these latter entities can have their ‘properties’ defined mathematically in ‘functional concepts.’ Ontologically, such concepts are possible only in relation to entities whose Being has the character of pure substantiality. Functional concepts are never possible except as formalized substantial concepts. BTMR §18
Substantiality is the idea of Being to which the ontological characterization of the res extensa harks back. “Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum.” “By substance we can understand nothing else than’ an entity which is in such a way that it needs no other entity in order to be.” The Being of a ‘substance’ is characterized by not needing anything. That whose Being is such that it has no need at all for any other entity satisfies the idea of substance in the authentic sense; this entity is the ens perfectissimum. “… substantia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe Deus.” Here ‘God’ is a purely ontological term, if it is to be understood as ens perfectissimum. At the same time, the ‘self-evident’ connotation of the concept of God is such as to permit an ontological interpretation for the characteristic of not needing anything – a constitutive item in Substantiality. “Alias vero omnes , non nisi ope concursus Dei; existere posse percipirnus.” All entities other than God need to be “produced” in the widest sense and also to be sustained. ‘Being’ is to be understood within a horizon which ranges from the production of what is to be PRESENT-AT-HAND to something which has no need of being produced. Every entity which is not God is an ens creature. The Being which belongs to one of these entities is ‘infinitely’ different from that which belongs to the other; yet we still consider creation and creator alike as entities. We are thus using “Being” in so wide a sense that its meaning embraces an ‘infinite’ difference. So even created entities can be called “substance” with some right. Relative to God, of course, these entities need to be produced and sustained; but within the realm of created entities – the ‘world’ in the sense of ens crealum – there are things which ‘are in need of no other entity’ relatively to the creaturely production and sustentation that we find, for instance, in man. Of these substances there are two kinds: the res cogitans and the res extensa. BTMR §20
Hardness gets taken as resistance. But neither hardness nor resistance is understood in a phenomenal sense, as something experienced in itself whose nature can be determined in such an experience. For Descartes, resistance amounts to no more than not yielding place – that is, not undergoing any change of location. So if a Thing resists, this means that it stays in a definite location relatively to some other Thing which is changing its location, or that it is changing its own location with a velocity which permits the other Thing to ‘catch up’ with it. But when the experience of hardness is Interpreted this way, the kind of Being which belongs to sensory perception is obliterated, and so is any possibility that the entities encountered in such perception should be grasped in their Being. Descartes takes the kind of Being which belongs to the perception of something, and translates it into the only kind he knows: the perception of something becomes a definite way of Being-present-at-hand-side-byside of two res extensae which are PRESENT-AT-HAND; the way in which their movements are related is itself a mode of that extensio by which the presence-at-hand of the corporeal Thing is primarily characterized. Of course no behaviour in which one feels one’s way by touch (eines tastenden Verhaltens) can be ‘completed’ unless what can thus be felt (des Betastbaren) has ‘closeness’ of a very special kind. But this does not mean that touching ( Berührung) and the hardness which makes itself known in touching consist ontologically in different velocities of two corporeal Things. Hardness and resistance do not show themselves at all unless an entity has the kind of Being which Dasein – or at least something living – possesses. BTMR §21
But quite apart from the specific problem of the world itself, can the Being of what we encounter proximally within-the-world be reached ontologically by this procedure? When we speak of material Thinghood, have we not tacitly posited a kind of Being – the constant presence-at hand of Things – which is so far from having been rounded out ontologically by subsequently endowing entities with value-predicates, that these value-characters themselves are rather just ontical characteristics of those entities which have the kind of Being possessed by Things? Adding on value-predicates cannot tell us anything at all new about the Being of goods, but would merely presuppose again that goods have pure presence-at-hand as their kind of Being. Values would then be determinate characteristics which a Thing possesses, and they would be PRESENT-AT-HAND. They would have their sole ultimate ontological source in our previously laying down the actuality of Things as the fundamental stratum. But even prephenomenological experience shows that in an entity which is supposedly a Thing, there is something that will not become fully intelligible through Thinghood alone. Thus the Being of Things has to be rounded out. What, then does the Being of values or their ‘validity’ (“Geltung”) (which Lotze took as a mode of ‘affirmation’) really amount to ontologically? And what does it signify ontologically for Things to be ‘invested’ with values in this way? As long as these matters remain obscure, to reconstruct the Thing of use in terms of the Thing of Nature is an ontologically questionable undertaking, even if one disregards the way in which the problematic has been perverted in principle. And if we are to reconstruct this Thing of use, which supposedly comes to us in the first instance ‘with its skin off’, does not this always require that we previously take a positive look at the phenomenon whose totality such a reconstruction is to restore? But if we have not given a proper explanation beforehand of its ownmost state of Being, are we not building our reconstruction without a plan? Inasmuch as this reconstruction and ‘rounding-out’ of the traditional ontology of the ‘world’ results in our reaching the same entities with which we started when we analysed the readiness-to-hand of equipment and the totality of (SZ:100) involvements, it seems as if the Being of these entities ‘has in fact been clarified or has at least become a problem. But by taking extensio as a proprietas, Descartes can hardly reach the Being of substance; and by taking refuge in ‘value’-characteristics (“wertlichen” Beschaffenheiten) we are just as far from even catching a glimpse of Being as readiness-to-hand, let alone permitting it to become an ontological theme.Descartes has narrowed down the question of the world to that of Things of Nature (Naturdinglichkeit) as those entities within-the-world’ which are proximally accessible. He has confirmed the opinion that to know an entity in what is supposedly the most rigorous ontical manner is our only possible access to the primary Being of the entity which such knowledge reveals. But at the same time we must have the insight to see that in principle the ‘roundings-out’ of the Thing-ontology also operate on the same dogmatic basis as that which Descartes has adopted.We have already intimated in Section 14 that passing over the world and those ‘entities which we proximally encounter is not accidental, not an oversight which it would be’ simple to correct, but that it is grounded in a kind of Being which belongs essentially to Dasein itself. When our analytic of Dasein has given some transparency to those main structures of Dasein which are of the most importance in the framework of this problematic, and when we have assigned (zugewiesen) to the concept of Being in general the horizon within which its intelligibility becomes possible, so that readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand also become primordially intelligible ontologically for the first time, only then can our critique of the Cartesian ontology of the world (an ontology which, in principle, is still the usual one today) come philosophically into its own.To do this, we must show several things. (See Part One, Division Three.) 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
To what extent has our characterization of the ready-to-hand already come up against its spatiality? We have been talking about what is proximalty ready-to-hand. This means not only those entities which we encounter first before any others, but also those which are ‘close by’. What is ready-to-hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness. To be exact, this closeness of equipment has already been intimated in the term ‘readiness-to-hand’, which expresses the Being of equipment. Every entity that is ‘to hand’ has a different closeness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring distances. This closeness regulates itself in terms of circumspectively ‘calculative’ manipulating and using. At the same time what is close in this way gets established by the circumspection of concern, with regard to the direction in which the equipment is accessible at any time. When this closeness of the equipment has been given directionality, this signifies not merely that the equipment has its position (Stelle) in space as PRESENT-AT-HAND somewhere, but also that as equipment it has been essentially fitted up and installed, set up, and put to rights. Equipment has its place (Platz), or else it ‘lies around’; this must be distinguished in principle from just occurring at random in some spatial position. When equipment for something or other has its place, this place defines itself as the place of this equipment – as one place out of a whole totality; of places directionally lined up with each other and belonging to the context of equipment that is environmentally ready-to-hand. Such a place and such a muliplicity of places are not to be interpreted as the “where” of some random Being-present-at-hand of Things. In each case the place is the definite ‘there’ or ‘yonder’ (“Dort” und “Da”) of an item of equipment which belongs somewhere. Its belonging-somewhere at the time (Die jeweilige Hingehörigheit) corresponds to the equipmental character of what is ready-to-hand; that is, it corresponds to the belonging-to (Zugehörigkeit) which the ready-to-hand has towards a totality of equipment in accordance with its involvements. But in general the “whither” to which the totality of places for a context of equipment gets allotted, is the underlying condition which makes possible the belonging-somewhere of an equipmental totality as something that can be placed. This “whither”, which makes it possible for equipment to belong somewhere, and which we circumspectively keep in view ahead of us in our concernful dealings, we call the “region”. BTMR §22
‘In the region of’ means not only ‘in the direction of’ but also within the range (Umkreis) of something that lies in that direction. The kind of place which is constituted by direction and remoteness (and closeness is only a mode of the latter) is already oriented towards a region and oriented within it. Something like a region must first be discovered if there is to be any possibility of allotting or coming across places for a totality of equipment that is circumspectively at one’s disposal. The regional orientation of the multiplicity of places belonging to the ready-to-hand goes to make up the aroundness – the “round-about-us” (das Um-uns-herum) – of those entities which we encounter as closest environmentally. A three-dimensional multiplicity of possible positions which gets filled up with Things PRESENT-AT-HAND is never proximally given. This dimensionality of space is still veiled in the spatiality of the ready-to-hand. The ‘above’ is what is ‘on the ceiling’; the ‘below’ is what is ‘on the floor’; (SZ:103) the ‘behind’ is what is ‘at the door’; all “wheres” are discovered and circumspectively interpreted as we go our ways in everyday dealings; they are not ascertained and catalogued by the observational measurement of space. BTMR §22
Regions are not first formed by things which are PRESENT-AT-HAND together; they always are ready-to-hand already in individual places. Places themselves either get allotted to the ready-to-hand in the circumspection of concern, or we come across them. Thus anything constantly ready-to-hand of which circumspective Being-in-the-world takes account beforehand, has its place. The “where” of its readiness-to-hand is put,to account as a matter for concern, and oriented towards the rest of what is ready-to-hand. Thus the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places – sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated distinctively in terms of changes in the usability of what the sun bestows. Here we have something which is ready-to-hand with uniform constancy, although it keeps changing; its places become accentuated ‘indicators’ of the regions which lie in them. These celestial regions, which need not have any geographical meaning as yet, provide the “whither” beforehand for every special way of giving form to the regions which places can occupy. The house has its sunny side and its shady side; the way it is divided up into ‘rooms’ (“Räume”) is oriented towards these, and so is the ‘arrangement’ (“Einrichtung”) within them, according to their character as equipment. Churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according to the rising and the setting of the sun – the regions of life and death, which are determinative for Dasein itself with regard to its ownmost possibilities of Being in the world. Dasein, in its very Being, has this Being as an issue; and its concern discovers beforehand those regions in which some involvement is decisive. This discovery of regions beforehand is co-determined (mitbestimint) by ,the totality of involvements for which the ready-to-hand, as something encountered, is freed. (SZ:104) BTMR §22
De-severing does not necessarily imply any explicit estimation of the fatness of something ready-to-hand in relation to Dasein. Above all, remoteness never gets taken as a distance. If farness is to be estimated, this is done relatively to deseverances in which everyday Dasein maintains itself. Though these estimates may be imprecise and variable if we try to compute them, in the everydayness of Dasein they have their own definiteness which is thoroughly intelligible. We say that to go over yonder is “a good walk”, “a stone’s throw”, or ‘as long as it takes to smoke a pipe’. These measures express not only that they are not intended to ‘measure’ anything but also that the remoteness here estimated belongs to some entity to which one goes with concernful circumspection. But even when we avail ourselves of a fixed measure and say ‘it is half an hour to the house’, this measure must be taken as an estimate. ‘Half an hour’ is not-thirty minutes, but a duration (Dauer) which has no ‘length’ at all in the sense of a quantitative stretch. Such a duration is always interpreted in terms of well-accustomed everyday ways in which we ‘make provision’ (“Besorgungen”). Remotenesses are estimated proximally by circumspection, even when one is quite familiar with ‘officially’ calculated measures. Since what is de-severed in such estimates is ready-to-hand, it retains its character as specifically within-the-world. This even implies that the pathways we take towards desevered entities in the course of our dealings will vary in their length from day to day. What is ready-to-hand in the environment is certainly not PRESENT-AT-HAND for an eternal observer exempt from Dasein: but it is encountered in Dasein’s circumspectively concernful everydayness. As Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a corporeal Thing which is PRESENT-AT-HAND; it does not ‘devour the kilometres’; bringing-close or de-severance is always a kind of concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed. A pathway which is long ‘Objectively’ can be much shorter than one which is ‘Objectively’ shorter still but which is perhaps ‘hard going’ and comes (SZ:106) before us as interminably long. Yet only in thus ‘coming before us is the current world authentically ready-to-hand. The Objective distances of Things PRESENT-AT-HAND do not coincide with the remoteness and closeness of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. Though we may know these distances exactly, this knowledge still remains blind; it does not have the function of discovering the environment circumspectively and bringing it close; this knowledge is used only in and for a concernful Being which does not measure stretches – a Being towards the world that ‘matters’ to one (… Sein zu der einen “angehenden” Welt). BTMR §23
If Dasein, in its concern, brings something close by, this does not signify that it fixes something at a spatial position with a minimal distance from some point of the body. When something is close by, this means that it is within the range of what is proximally ready-to-hand for circumspection. Bringing-close is not oriented towards the I-Thing encumbered with a body, but towards concernful Being-in-the-world – that is, towards whatever is proximally encountered in such Being. It follows, moreover, that Dasein’s spatiality is not to be defined by citing the position at which some corporeal Thing is PRESENT-AT-HAND. Of course we say that even Dasein always occupies a place. But this ‘occupying’ must be distinguished in principle’ from Being-ready-to-hand at a place in some particular region. Occupying a place must be conceived as a desevering of the environmentally ready-to-hand into a region which has been circumspectively discovered in advance. Dasein understands its “here” (Hier) in terms of its environmental “yonder”. The “here” does not mean the “where” of something PRESENT-AT-HAND, but rather the “whereat” (Wobei) of a de-severant Being-alongside, together with this de-severance. Dasein, in accordance with its spatiality, is proximally never here but yonder; from this “yonder” it comes back to its “here”; and it comes back to its “here” only in the way in which it interprets its concernful Being-towards in terms of what is ready-to-hand yonder. This becomes quite plain if we consider a certain phenomenal peculiarity of tlae de-severance structure of Being-in. (SZ:108) BTMR §23
As Being-in-the-world, Dasein maintains itself essentially in a desevering. This de-severance – the farness of the ready-to-hand from Dasein itself – is something that Dasein can never cross over. Of course the remoteness of something ready-to-hand from Dasein can show up as a distance from it, if this remoteness is determined by a relation to some Thing which gets thought of as PRESENT-AT-HAND at the place Dasein has formerly occupied. Dasein can subsequently traverse the “between” of this distance, but only in such a way that the distance itself becomes one which has been desevered. So little has Dasein crossed over its de-severance that it has rather taken it along with it and keeps doing so constantly; for Dasein is essentially de-severance – that is, it is spatial. It cannot wander about within the current range of its de-severances; it can never do more than change them. Dasein is spatial in that it discovers space circumspectively, so that indeed it constantly comports itself de-severantly towards the entities thus spatially encountered. BTMR §23
When space is discovered non-circumspectively by just looking at it, the environmental regions get neutralized to pure dimensions. Places – and indeed the whole circumspectively oriented totality of places belonging to equipment ready-to-hand – get reduced to a multiplicity of positions for random Things. The spatiality of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world loses its involvement-character, and so does the ready-to-hand. The world loses its specific aroundness; the environment becomes the world of Nature. The ‘world’, as a totality of equipment ready-to-hand, becomes spatialized (vcrraumlicht) to a context of extended Things which are just PRESENT-AT-HAND and no more. The homogeneous space of Nature shows itself only when the entities we encounter are discovered in such a way that the worldly character of the ready-to-hand gets specifically deprived of its worldhood. BTMR §24
In accordance with its Being-in-the-world, Dasein always has space presented as already discovered, though not thematically. On the other hand, space in itself, so far as it embraces the mere possibilities of the pure spatiail Being of something, remains proximally still concealed. The fact that space essentially shows itself in a world is not yet decisive for the kind of Being which it possesses. It need not have the kind of Being characteristic of something which is itself spatially ready-to-hand or PRESENT-AT-HAND. Nor does the Being of space have the kind of Being which belongs to Dasein. Though the Being of space itself cannot be conceived as the kind of Being which belongs to a res extensa, it does not follow that it must be defined ontologically as a ‘phenomenon’ of such a res. (In its Being, it would not be distinguished from such a res.) Nor does it follow that the Being of space can be equated to that of the res cogilans and conceived as merely ‘subjective’, quite apart from the questionable character of the Being of such a subject. (SZ:113) BTMR §24
The answer to the question of who Dasein is, is one that was seemingly given in Section 9, where we indicated formally the basic characteristics of Dasein. Dasein is an entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in each case mine. This definition indicates an ontologically constitutive state, but it does no more than indicate it. At the same time this tells us ontically (though in a rough and ready fashion) that in each case an “I” – not Others – is this entity. The question of the “who” answers itself in terms of the “I” itself, the ‘subject’, the ‘Self’. The “who” is what maintains itself as something identical throughout changes in its Experiences and ways of behaviour, and which relates itself to this changing multiplicity in so doing. Ontologically we understand it as something which is in each case already constantly PRESENT-AT-HAND, both in and for a closed realm, and which lies at the basis, in a very special sense, as the subjectum. As something selfsame in ‘manifold otherness, it has the character of the Self. Even if one rejects the “soul substance” and the Thinghood of consciousness, or denies that a person is an object, ontologically one is still positing something whose Being retains the meaning of PRESENT-AT-HAND, whether it does so explicitly or not. Substantiality is the ontological clue for determining which entity is to provide the answer to the question of the “who”. Dasein is tacitly conceived in advance as something presentat-hand. This meaning of Being is always implicated in any case where the Being of Dasein has been left indefinite. Yet presence-at-hand is the kind of Being which belongs to entities whose character is not that of Dasein. (SZ:115) BTMR §25
But if the Self is conceived ‘only’ as a way of Being of this entity, this seems tantamount to volatilizing the real ‘core’ of Dasein. Any apprehensiveness however which one may have about this gets its nourishment from the perverse assumption that the entity in question has at bottom the kind of Being which belongs to something PRESENT-AT-HAND, even if one is far from attributing to it the solidity of an occurrent corporeal Thing. Yet man’s ‘substance’ is not spirit as a synthesis of soul and body; it is rather existence. BTMR §25
In our ‘description’ of that environment which is closest to us – the work-world of the craftsman, for example, – the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work (in Arbeit), those Others for whom the ‘work’ (“Werk”) is destined are ‘encountered too’. If this is ready-to-hand, then there lies in the kind of Being which belongs to it (that is, in its involvement) an essential assignment