worldhood

The determination of Dasein as being-in-the-world is a unified and original one. Three elements can be brought out in this basic constitutive state and traced more closely back to its phenomenal composition: 1) being-in-the-world in the particular sense of the world, ‘world’ as the how of the being—ontologically, the WORLDHOOD of the world; 2) the entity as it is determined from the ‘who’ of this being-in-the-world and from the how of this being, how the entity itself is in its being; 3) in-being as such. GA20EN §19

We now proceed to the task of disengaging the first structure, which we have identified and designated as ‘world.’ We ask what is meant by ‘world’ (WORLDHOOD and the expectant present—state of making present and of expectancy)? What phenomenal constituents are expressed by it? GA20EN §21

When we designate the world as the wherein correlative to in-being, it is so regarded now with a view to the mode of being of in-being understood as preoccupation, in the with-which of concerned preoccupation. In thus being preoccupied with the world, Dasein always already finds its world, and this finding is not theoretical apprehension. The ‘already-being-involved-with’ is care in being concerned. As concerned preoccupation with the world Dasein lets itself encounter its world. Concern as the basic mode of Dasein permits encounter. In thus letting the world be encountered, Dasein discloses the world. All knowing, which as a mode of being of concern is built upon concern, merely lays out, interprets the disclosed world and happens on the basis of concern. Indeed, a particular correlation appears here. The more the initially experienced world is deprived of its WORLDHOOD (“unworlded,” as we shall later put it), that is, the more the initially experienced world becomes mere nature; the more we discover in it its mere naturality, for example, in terms of the objectivity of physics; the more cognitive comportment discovers in this way, then all the more does knowing itself become as such the proper way to disclose and to discover. It is in mathematics that knowing as such celebrates the triumph of the discoveries of entities. It is here that we in fact find knowing as such, which discovers, although even here not in a radical and definitive sense, rightly regarded. GA20EN §21

When we ask about the phenomenal structure of the world, we are asking about the how of the being in which the entity we call the world shows itself of itself as the encountered, we are asking about the being of the entity which is encountered in the leeway for encounter granted by concern. The structure of encounter of this entity world is not a conglomerate of modes of conception with which a subject clothes an object, of forms with which a world-stuff is adorned. The structures of encounter of that entity are rather those of the being of the world itself, insofar as the world can show itself in everyday Dasein, upon which basis it is and can be discovered. This character of the being of the entity which we call world and which we shall now draw out shall be terminologically conceived as WORLDHOOD, in order to circumvent the obscurity of knowing ‘WORLDHOOD’ understood not as a character of the being of the entity but rather as the character of the being of Dasein, and only through it and along with it that of the entity! GA20EN §21

To determine the WORLDHOOD of world is to lay open in its structure the how of the encounter, drawn from that encounter, of the entity in which Dasein is as in-being in accord with its basic constitution, in short to lay open the structure of the being of this entity. Phenomenological interpretation of the WORLDHOOD of the world does not mean a narrative description reporting on the outward appearance of things in the world, that there really are mountains, streams, houses, stairs, tables, and the like, and how all of this stands. We shall also never come to grasp the sense of the world if we could run through the sum-total of all the things in the world. In such an inventory and in every characterization of the outward appearance of a world-thing and of the particular relations among several of them we always think of the world-thing in advance already as a world-thing. But the issue is not really all that can be found in the world but rather the how of the being of such an entity and of every entity of this sort: the wherein as the possibility of being of the leeway of encounter of in-being. It is a matter of a transcendental exposition of WORLDHOOD from the being of Dasein qua in-being, not a narrative report of world-occurrences but an interpretation of WORLDHOOD, which characterizes everything that does occur as worldly. GA20EN §21

I am intentionally emphasizing the actual sense of the inquiry so forcefully because the question of the structure of the being of the world, of the WORLDHOOD of the world, is not at all so obvious. To put it more precisely, it is not at all obvious that the endeavor to grasp the being of the world originally now also automatically gives us the right approach to it. Furthermore, we shall see that the prevailing philosophical consideration of the being of the world already allowed itself to be guided completely by very definite presuppositions about the possibility of an original kind of apprehension of the world as well as about the sense of being which the world must have. We shall try to disregard all the wrong-headed presuppositions and to explicate the WORLDHOOD of the world as it shows itself in the everyday preoccupation of Dasein with its world. On this basis we shall then try to understand how this immediately given world, by virtue of particular motives which it in part entails, can in some of its directions be uncovered as nature. Such a discovery or interpretation is realized especially by the natural sciences. GA20EN §21

In what follows, we shall be concerned with the world as environing world [Umwelt] with respect to its WORLDHOOD, that is, with regard to the structure which characterizes every thing as a thing of the environing world. The WORLDHOOD of the world, that is, the specific being of this entity ‘world,’ is a specific concept of being. In opposition to the traditional question of the reality of the external world, we shall ask about the WORLDHOOD of the world as it is there in immediate everyday concern. We are asking about the world as it is encountered in the daily round of preoccupation; we are asking about the world around us, the environing world; more precisely, we are asking about the WORLDHOOD of the environing world. By asking in particular for an account of WORLDHOOD and specifying the aroundness in it, we thereby establish in its own right the genuine sense of place and space within the structural framework of the WORLDHOOD of the world. This gives us the division of the analysis of the WORLDHOOD of the environing world. 1. The WORLDHOOD of the environing world as such; 2. The aroundness of the world as a constitutive feature of WORLDHOOD. GA20EN §21

Even environing WORLDHOOD, the being of the entity with which the caring, concerned preoccupation of Dasein first dwells, should not be understood in a primarily spatial sense. The ‘around’ and the ‘round about’ are not to be taken primarily spatially, and not spatially at all if spatiality is defined in terms of the dimensionality of metric space, the space of geometry. On the other hand, however, the continual resistance to spatiality which we are forced to adopt in the determination of in-being, in the characterization of world and still more in the account of the environing world, the constant necessity here to suspend a specific sense of spatiality, suggest that in all of these phenomena a certain sense of something like spatiality is still in play. This is in fact the case. For just this reason it is important from the start not to miss the question of the structure of this spatiality, that is, not to start from the spatiality which is specifically geometrical, a spatiality which is discovered in and extracted from the primary and original space of the world. Since it is a question of understanding the primary sense of world, a particular idea of space understood in terms of metric space must first be put out of play. On the contrary, we shall learn to comprehend the sense of metric space and the particular modification which motivates metrics in spatiality by reference to a more original spatiality. But first and foremost, we must come to understand the sense of WORLDHOOD. The outline of our reflection on the structure of the WORLDHOOD of the world is therefore marked off in the following two points: 1. The WORLDHOOD of the environing world as such, the encountered ‘in order to’ [Umzu], the deployment; 2. The aroundness, the primary spatial character of the ‘around’ [Um] as a constitutive feature of WORLDHOOD. GA20EN §21

This division already gives us an indication of the primary direction in which this analysis will look: even when we analyze space and spatiality, we must have already understood the sense of WORLDHOOD from the start. Consequently, the outline at the same time already contains a fundamental critique of the traditional way of explicating the reality of the world, that is, its WORLDHOOD, insofar as such an explication has ever been done at all and carried out as an explicit task. GA20EN §21

We now wish to proceed just as we did earlier by first trying to limit the phenomenal horizon prohibitively, defensively, which means to suspend the direction of vision which does not lead us to the authentic phenomenon. It is especially important in this analysis of the world in its WORLDHOOD, since the question of the structure of the being of the world was always formulated as the question of the structure of the being of nature, not only today and since modern science but in a certain sense already with the Greeks. Thus the entire constellation of concepts which we have at our disposal in characterizing the being of the world in a primary way comes from this way of considering the world as nature. In an original analysis of the world, which does not regard nature as primary, we are therefore at a total loss for concepts and even more for expression. GA20EN §22

Whenever Descartes asks about the being of an entity, he is asking, in the spirit of the tradition, about substance. When he speaks of substance, he is speaking mostly in the strict sense of substantiality. And substantiality is a particular mode of being, more accurately, the most distinctive and primary kind of being which can pertain to an entity at all. Now entities, entitative things in the broadest sense, which have the mode of being of substantiality, are substances. Descartes here follows, not only in expression and concept but also in subject matter, the Scholastic and so basically the Greek formulation of the question of entities. The word ‘substantia’ has a double meaning: first, the entity itself which is in the mode of being of substance, and at the same time substantiality. This corresponds to our distinction between world as the things which are in the world and WORLDHOOD as the mode of being of the world, where we must however emphasize that the sense of WORLDHOOD and the structure of substantiality are radically distinct. Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum. “By substance we can understand nothing other than something which ‘is’ in such a way that it needs no other entity in order to be.” Substantiality means extantness, being on hand, which as such is in need of no other entity. The reality of a res, the substantiality of a substance, the being of an entity, taken in a strict sense means extantness in the sense of non-indigence, not needing any producer or any entity which retains or bears this quality of having been produced. . . . Substantia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe Deus [ . . . only one substance which is in need of nothing whatsoever can be understood, and this indeed is God]. God is the only entity which satisfies this sense of substantiality. In other words, ‘God’ is the name for that entity in which the idea of being as such is realized in its genuine sense. Here ‘God’ is but a purely ontological concept and is therefore also called the ens perfectissimum [most perfect entity]. This determination of the being of God implies nothing whatsoever of a religious nature. God is simply the name for the entity in which we actually encounter an entity in accord with the concept of being as extantness. God is accordingly the only substance, the only entity which is in the supposedly ‘authentic’ sense of being. In the background of this talk of ‘ens perfectissimum’ there is of course a very specific concept of ‘ens’ and ‘being’ of which Descartes was no more clearly conscious than were the Greeks, who discovered it. GA20EN §22

Extension was identified as that which truly determines the being, that is, the substantiality of this entity. How does Descartes now, on the one hand, proceed to determine and justify the being of the world as res extensa; on the other hand, what is the basis from which Descartes arrives at this determination of the being of the world, and what is the primary kind of experience which is supposed to make the WORLDHOOD of the world accessible? Our replies will show how the question of the reality of the world, the WORLDHOOD of the world, was forced by Descartes himself in a very clear-cut direction. This direction enabled him to assume once again from the tradition, with some conceptual modifications, all the categories for the specification of the being of the world which the Greeks had already created. This process of resumption continued right into Hegel’s Logic. GA20EN §22

The being of the world is that which in it can be apprehended by means of a particular kind of apprehension, the mathematical, which Descartes takes as the very highest kind of knowledge. Underlying it is a very specific correlation of being and being-true and accordingly knowing. The world is not interrogated in regard to its WORLDHOOD as it first shows itself and thence determines spatiality, but rather the reverse: a particular idea of space, or a particular idea of extensio as the being-like condition for a particular knowability, is taken as the basis for an apriori evaluation of what can belong to the being of nature and what cannot. A particular ideal of knowledge with the criterion of certainty decides on what in the world is taken as authentic being. GA20EN §22

It is in this way that one first tries even today in phenomenology to define the environmental thing in its being. Yet this definition is in its approach not essentially different from that of Descartes. Here too, a thing is approached as an object of observation and perception, and perception is then, as it is typically put, complemented by value judgment. As we shall see, the authentic environmental being of the thing is passed over here just as it is in Descartes’s extreme formulation of res corporea as res extensa. This characterization of the worldly thing as a value-laden thing of nature is all the more fateful as it gives the impression that it is in fact a genuine and original characterization, where there is in fact in the background the full structure and the constitution of a thing of nature, a thing with properties, qualities, some of which are qualities of value, predicates of value. The thing remains naturalized; we do not come across the entity as an environing world, nor is the WORLDHOOD of this world brought into focus or for that matter explicated. Such concrete questions are not even asked because this determination arises from a characteristic exemplary approach to the world which prompts us to assume in the first instance that a thing is as it is present in an isolated perception of it. But when we make some fundamental inquiries into this kind of determination of the world, we see clearly, especially from Descartes, that the being of the world is always characterized relative to particular kinds of experience and capacities of apprehension—sensation, imagination, intellect—which have themselves arisen in the context of a particular characterization of man, namely, in the context of the familiar anthropological definition homo animal rationale. A particular biological and anthropological interpretation favors certain potential kinds of apprehension of the world and these decide on what is accessible in the world in its being and thus on how the being of the world is itself determined. GA20EN §22

It is thus in Descartes that we see most clearly and simply that a whole chain of presuppositions deviates from the true phenomenon of the world. We saw how Descartes tries to reduce all the determinations of corporeal being, what British empiricism, precisely in conjunction with him, later called the secondary qualities of sensation as opposed to the primary qualities, to the basic determination of res extensa, to extensio, in order to enable a knowledge of the world which in its degree of certainty is no different from the knowledge of res cogitans. But it is also already evident that the being of the world, which on the basis of certain judgments is first conceived as nature, cannot even be obtained by a theoretical reconstruction which goes from the res extensa back to the sensory thing and then to the value-laden thing, but that by doing so the specific theoretical objectification is retained and the analysis is led astray even further. The world would remain deprived of its WORLDHOOD, since the primary exhibition of the authentic reality of the world should be referred to the original task of an analysis of reality itself, which would first have to disregard every specifically theoretical objectification. The course of the scientific inquiry into reality shows, however, that the original mode of encounter of the environing world is always already given up in favor of the established view of the world as the reality of nature, so that we may interpret the specific phenomena of the world in terms of its theoretical knowledge of the objectivity of nature. GA20EN §22

If we consider this work of Descartes in relation to the constitution of the mathematical sciences of nature and to the elaboration of mathematical physics in particular, these considerations then naturally assume a fundamentally positive significance. But if they are regarded in the context of a general theory of the reality of the world, it then becomes apparent that from this point on the fateful constriction of the inquiry into reality sets in, which to the present day has not yet been overcome. This constriction dominates the entire past tradition of philosophy. It was in a way prepared by Greek philosophy, not in the extreme sense of mathematization but in accord with a natural tendency of knowing. The world was experienced as pragmata, as the “with which of having to do with it”; and yet it was not understood ontologically in this sense, but instead in the broadest sense as a thing of nature. That the question of the reality of the world continues to be oriented primarily to the world as nature also serves to show, however, that the original way of encountering the environing world evidently cannot even be directly grasped, that this phenomenon is instead typically passed over. This is no accident, inasmuch as Dasein as being-in-the-world in the sense of concern is absorbed in its world in which it is preoccupied, is so to speak exhausted by that world, so that precisely in the most natural and the most immediate being-in-the-world the world in its WORLDHOOD is not experienced thematically at all. The world is experienced expressly only when it is apprehended in some sort of theoretical intention. The world thus encountered in theoretical intention becomes thematic when we inquire into its being theoretically. GA20EN §22

But how shall the WORLDHOOD of the world now be positively determined? How can something be said about the structure of WORLDHOOD so that we first of all disregard all theory and particularly this extreme objectification? We shall organize our considerations by following the plan already announced and exploring 1) the characters of the WORLDHOOD of the world as such and 2) the structure of aroundness as a distinctive constitutive feature of WORLDHOOD. The first task, the analysis of the WORLDHOOD of the environing world, in accord with the subject matter divides into three steps: a) the exposition of the characters of encounter of the world, b) the interpretation of the structure of encounter, that is, the exposition of the phenomenal correlation founding these characters of encounter, and c) the determination of the basic structure of WORLDHOOD as deployment totality. GA20EN §23

These steps serve to clarify four questions about the tradition: 1) why the authentic structure of the being of the world, [what we have called] primary WORLDHOOD, was from the start and has ever since been passed over in philosophy; 2) why this structure of being, even when a replacement phenomenon equipped with value predicates is brought in for it, is still held to be in need of explanation and derivation; 3) why it is explained by being clarified and founded in a fundamental stratum of reality; 4) why this founding reality is conceived as the being of nature and that in terms of the objectivity of mathematical physics. GA20EN §23

We first see only very roughly that these characters of reference, referential totality, and familiarity together make up the specific presence of the world as environing world, but this does not give us a truly phenomenological understanding of this structure of WORLDHOOD. We can gain such an understanding only by an interpretation of the founding correlation among these phenomenal characters, that is, by laying open the way in which these phenomena (referential totality, references, familiarity) now constitute the specific manner of encounter of the environing world. We therefore proceed to the second point of our preliminary outline. GA20EN §23

Two things stand out from what has already been shown. First, the things of the environing world are encountered in and from references. The proper phenomenal way of envisaging WORLDHOOD allows us to encounter the world first rather than an isolated thing. This points to a priority of the reference over the thing which shows itself in the reference. The mode of access is concerned preoccupation and not a free-floating and isolated perception of the thing. The view that reality can be found in bodily presence and this in turn in the isolated thing of nature will even more strikingly prove to be a phenomenal and so a phenomenological deception. GA20EN §23

It is now a matter of discerning this peculiar structural correlation in which the world in its WORLDHOOD appresents the specific thing of the world, references are encountered in a totality of references and individual things are encountered in the references. It is to be shown that the environing world of concern has a distinctive function in the constitution of WORLDHOOD in general, and that it lets us encounter the world precisely in a double direction, first relating to the presence of the nearest available things and then relating to the presence of extant things always already on hand. The analysis of the structure of encounter of WORLDHOOD is accordingly divided into three parts: a) a more detailed phenomenological interpretation of the environing world of concern, which up to now has been drawn out only in very rough outline. We shall call this specific environing world of concern the work-world; b) the characterization of the specific function of encounter of this work-world for encountering the nearest things in the world around us, thus the sense of this specific character of reality, the character referred to when we say that something is handy; g) the specific function of encounter of the work-world for letting us encounter that which is always already there, which means the peculiar connection whereby, out of the environing world of concern and in it, the world as a whole, the public world and the world understood as nature are appresented. GA20EN §23

But the work-world essentially shows still other relations which belong to its WORLDHOOD. A craftsman’s work, the shoe, is in its sense usable for something. Concerned preoccupation with the work in its very production is however a matter of using something for the shoe to be produced. Not only is the work as finished itself usable for . . . , but as produced it already bears in itself the reference of usability: in the work as produced, materials are also used. The work itself has a way of being-dependent-on, the shoe on leather, thread, nails, leather from hides taken from animals which are raised by others and so become available. Here we should make note of something peculiar, namely, that these world-things, animals, actually produce themselves in reproduction and growth. Here we finally have the reference to something worldly, which of itself is always already there for the concerned preoccupation of production. The worldly as already extant is put to use not only in the work itself but also in tools like hammers, tongs, nails: steel, iron, ore, minerals, wood. Here too, the reference is to entities which in a certain sense ultimately do not need to be produced for concern, and for that very reason are in an emphatic sense usable, are always already present. Thus, along with the reference to the public environment, the work refers to the world of nature, but nature here understood as the world of the disposable, nature taken as the particular world of products of nature. GA20EN §23

We maintain that the specific world of concern is the one by which the world as a whole is encountered. Correlatively, we maintain that the world in its WORLDHOOD is built neither from immediately given things, not to speak of sense data, nor for that matter from extant things always already on hand belonging to—as everyone puts it—a nature existing in itself. The WORLDHOOD of the world is grounded rather in the specific work-world. This proposition must now be demonstrated in the phenomena of the environing world. GA20EN §23

But handiness is the presence of an immediately available environmental thing such that preoccupation dwells precisely in the references of serviceability and the like as a concerned reaching for something, getting it ready for use. We can now expressly keep an eye on what is thus encountered, for example, in making an instrument present by looking after it and looking around to see whether in the end it should not be arranged differently in view of that for which it is an instrument. When we look at the tool in this way, the now handy environmental thing is thematic in its handiness. But this thematization still remains wholly and simply in the kind of sight which guides the genuinely concerned use of the thing, in circumspection. But at the same time this thematization of handiness is the transitional step to a potentially independent mode of concerned preoccupation—in the care of merely looking at . . . ; the handy entity placed under care is now merely viewed. For this to be possible, the environmental thing of utility must be concealed precisely in its specific referential relations as a utensil so that it may be encountered solely as a thing occurring in nature. This covering up or masking is performed by concern insofar as being-in-the-world is now modified to a state of solely looking, a mere looking which interprets. This modification of in-being means, so to speak, the attempt on the part of Dasein not to be in its most immediate environment any longer. It is only when we absent ourselves from the environing world by stepping out of it, as it were, that we gain access to the presumably authentic reality of the primary thing of nature. The mode of encounter of the natural thing in the character of bodily presence, a characteristic obtrusiveness which things of the world show insofar as they are merely perceived, this character of bodily presence has its basis in a specific “unworlding” of the environing world, a deprivation of its WORLDHOOD. Nature as object of natural science is in general discovered only in such an “unworlding.” But the reality of the environing world is not a diminished bodily presence, a degraded nature. GA20EN §23

I can at any time perceive natural things in their bodily presence directly, that is, without running through the founding steps beforehand, because it belongs to the sense of being-in-the-world to be in these founding steps constantly and primarily. I have no need to go through them because the Dasein, which founds perceiving, is nothing but the way of being of these very founding steps, as concerned absorption in the world. Because bodily presence itself is founded in the immediate environmental data, this means that the world (or more accurately the WORLDHOOD of the world) is grounded in the primary presence of what is placed under care, in the specific handiness of the work-world. That environmental things do not come forward for perception into this particularly emphatic bodily presence is closely related to their particular kind of presence, handiness, which is founded in the references, which in turn are founded in the primary presence of what is of concern. This founding character permits us to understand a basic phenomenal trait of the WORLDHOOD of the environing world: presence in the manner of inconspicuousness, its presence precisely on the basis of not yet being apprehended and nevertheless having discovered primarily, permitting encounter. GA20EN §23

It will perhaps be said that just this extant on hand, environmental nature, is the most real, the authentic reality of the world, without which earth, ground, everything earthy, earthen, and earthly cannot be, perhaps not even Dasein itself. The work-world bears within itself references to an entity which in the end makes it clear that it—the work-world, what is of concern—is not the primary entity after all. Precisely when we are led from an analysis of the work-world, in following its references to the world of nature, finally to recognize and to define the world of nature as the fundamental stratum of the real, we see that it is not the authentic being in every concern that is placed under care which is the primary worldly presence, but rather the reality of nature. This conclusion, it seems, cannot be avoided. But what does it mean to say that the world of nature is the most real? Literally, it still only refers to that entity in the world which satisfies the sense of reality, that is, WORLDHOOD in a superlative sense. But this does not mean that this sense of WORLDHOOD, which the world of nature as the always already on hand satisfies, is to be drawn from the world of nature understood as objectivity. Just because nature is of concern among the environmental things themselves in the environing world and is encountered in this concern, the sense of WORLDHOOD can not be read off from mere nature. The environmental references, in which nature is present primarily in a worldly way, tell us rather the reverse: nature as reality can only be understood on the basis of WORLDHOOD. The entitative relationships of dependence of worldly entities among themselves do not coincide with the founding relationships in being. GA20EN §23

Here again, we have the same confusion as above in the characterization of the ‘in-itself’ and of the founding relationships in their explicitness. What stand among themselves in an entitative relation and these relations themselves are not identical with the founding relations in being. For the time being, it can only be said that even the extantness of nature as environing world, that is, as it is experienced quite implicitly and naturally, that just this presence is first discovered in its sense and is there upon and in the world of concern. The work-world appresents both what is always already on hand and what is immediately handy for the particular concern. It is thus becoming clear that the analysis of the WORLDHOOD of the world is centered more and more on this distinctive presence of what is of concern. Consequently, to the extent that we succeed in clarifying this presence, it will become possible to arrive at a phenomenological understanding of the structure of WORLDHOOD as a whole. GA20EN §23

The founding of the proximally present handy entity in the always already present extant-on-hand, primarily the founding of these characters of being of handiness and extantness in the presence of what is of concern, has provided us with an initial phenomenological insight into the structure of encounter in WORLDHOOD. The function of encounter belonging to this presence of what is of concern has thus shown itself to us in a remarkable priority. If fundamental characters are exhibited in this way, further phenomenological interpretation of this presence must bring about a more transparent categorial understanding of WORLDHOOD. It is thus that the constitutive function of familiarity, which was expressly specified as a factor of WORLDHOOD, will then become clear. We shall later specify this moment in greater detail in conjunction with a closer determination of the presence of what is of concern, in particular, of the work-world. But now, this analysis of the structure of encounter belonging to the environing world is still in need of a fundamental clarification in the direction of the phenomenon which we simply introduced without further specification at the beginning of our analysis. There we said that environmental things are encountered in references in the character of ‘serving to,’ ‘useful for,’ ‘conducive to,’ and the like; WORLDHOOD is constituted in references, and these references themselves stand in referential correlations, referential totalities, which ultimately refer back to the presence of the work-world. It is not things but references which have the primary function in the structure of encounter belonging to the world, not substances but functions, to express this state of affairs by a formula of the ‘Marburg School.’ GA20EN §23

When we say that the basic structure of WORLDHOOD, the being of the entity which we call world, lies in meaningfulness, this amounts to saying that the structure as we have characterized it thus far, the references and the referential contexts, are basically correlations of meaning, meaningful contexts. In what follows, we shall treat only what is most necessary for the characterization of these phenomena, specifically to the extent that it contributes to the elucidation of meaningfulness. Phenomenology in particular has time and again sensed the urgency of bringing that complex of phenomena which is usually summarized under the heading of ‘signs’ once and for all definitively out into the open. But these have remained only approaches. Husserl does some things in the second volume of the Logical Investigations, where the first investigation deals with signs in connection with demarcation of the phenomenon of verbal meaning from the universal phenomenon (as he says) of signs. Moreover, the universal scope of phenomena such as signs and symbols readily gives rise to using them as a clue for interpreting the totality of entities, the world as a whole. No less a figure than Leibniz sought in his characteristica universalis systematization of the totality of entities by way of an orientation to the phenomenon of the sign. Recently, Spengler, following Lamprecht’s procedure, has applied the idea of symbol to the history of philosophy and metaphysics in general, without providing a properly scientific clarification of the group of phenomena named by it. Most recently, in his work Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer has tried to explain the various domains of life (language, knowledge, religion, myth) by viewing them basically as phenomena of the expression of spirit. He has likewise sought to broaden the critique of reason presented by Kant into a critique of culture. Here too the phenomenon of expression, of symbol in the broadest sense, is taken as a clue for explaining all the phenomena of spirit and of entities in general. The universal applicability of formal clues such as ‘Gestalt,’ ‘sign,’ ‘symbol’ thus easily obscures the originality or non-originality of the interpretation thus achieved. What can be a suitable approach for aesthetic phenomena can have exactly the opposite effect in elucidating and interpreting other phenomena. What comes to light here is in fact a peculiar context which generally determines the human [i.e., spiritual] sciences in their development. In relation to such attempts, which are basically always violent, the object, the spiritual, which is at issue here, offers less resistance than in the field of natural science, where nature immediately takes its revenge on a wrongheaded approach. Because of our specific non-relationship to the spiritual, such objects and phenomena are more readily subject to misinterpretation, since the misinterpretation realizes itself as a spiritual product. It is understandable and applicable as a spiritual product and so can itself take the place of the subject matter to be understood, so that for a long time certain sciences of the spiritual could stand in a presumed relationship to it. This peculiar non-relationship is connected with the fact that this world of objects then seems to be easily understood and defined by anyone and by arbitrary means, and that in the field of these objects there is a peculiar lack of need for a suitable conceptuality, without which the natural sciences, for example, simply could not advance. Obviously, just such attempts at interpretation under the guidance of such universal phenomena from which all and sundry can be made—for ultimately each and every thing can be interpreted as a sign—pose a great danger for the development of the human sciences. GA20EN §23

If we now try to provide an initial clarification of the basic structure of WORLDHOOD by an interpretation of the phenomenon of meaningfulness, we must remember that a full understanding of this phenomenon can be obtained only from an adequate interpretation of the basic phenomenon from which it is now drawn for thematic investigation, from being-in-the-world as the basic constitution of Dasein. Only the progressive explication of this structure of being-in-the-world can insure an understanding of meaningfulness. At the present stage of the analysis, therefore, we must try to grasp this phenomenon of meaningfulness less by tracing its own structures than by distinguishing it from kindred structures. These kindred phenomena, reference, sign, relation, point back to meaningfulness as the root of their phenomenal genesis. GA20EN §23

With the use of the sign, the employment of the arrow, and the corresponding taking of the sign from the vantage of the one who understands it, a particular appresentation of the environing world is accordingly explicitly placed under care. This explicit concern in encountering the environing world is not focused on information but on the being-in-the-world which at first does not know thematically. It is this concerned being-in-the-world and not, say, the propensity of an isolated knowing, which institutes signs, simply because world is inexplicitly encountered in references. It is because world is present, uncovered as the wherein of Dasein, and WORLDHOOD has this referential structure as a comprehensible structure, it is on this basis that the environmental sign-things are on hand and handy. As environmentally handy things, signs are always instituted. But we must pay heed to the correct sense of the institution of signs; that is, a twofold distinction must be noted: 1) merely taking something as a sign and 2) producing a sign-thing. GA20EN §23

WORLDHOOD is the specific presence and encounter for an understanding concern. Understanding absorption in the world discovers the world, the referential connections in what they uniquely are, in their meaning. An understanding concern thus encounters what is understood—meaning. GA20EN §23

The references and referential connections are primarily meaning. The meanings are, according to our earlier considerations, the structure of being of the world. The referential whole of the world is a whole of meaningful connections, meaningfulness. If we define meaningfulness as the specific structure of the whole of understandability, this should not be coupled with the assertion that here again the world and WORLDHOOD are still conceived only as objectivity; here we do not have the very being of the world but the world as objective, to be sure now not objective for observation and research but for concerned understanding; here again as well meaningfulness only refers to the way of being apprehended. We shall return later to this potential objection. GA20EN §23

Some things should be said about meaningfulness by way of summary. Being-in-the-world as concerned understanding lets us encounter something self-signifying in self-meaning. This self-signifying meaning [sich deutendes Bedeuten] constitutes meaningfulness and is the presence of the world, insofar as it is discovered in understanding concern. Presence of the world is the WORLDHOOD of the world as meaningfulness. The correlations of meaning which we now take as references are not a subjective view of the world, which in addition and to begin with would still be something else, for instance, an initially immediate world, which then would refer to something else for the preoccupation with it. Rather, concern itself is the being of the entity, which is only in this way and has no other being. GA20EN §23

If the WORLDHOOD of the world is defined as a totality of references, this should not be misunderstood as saying that the environmental things, the ‘substances,’ are now dissolved into lawlike correlations of functions. Instead, the specification of reference as meaning points to the appresentational sense of references. This sense is what it is only in its grounding in the presence of what is of concern, of the work-world. As I have already emphasized, all further understanding will go back to the phenomenon of the presence of what is of concern in the authentic sense, to the analysis of being-in-the-world in its particular sense as concern, which has the mode of being of pure letting-become-present—a remarkable kind of being which is understood only when it is seen that this making present and appresenting is nothing other than time itself. GA20EN §23

Our task now is to see the structure of meaningfulness, which we are trying to bring out as the authentic constitution of WORLDHOOD, in the context of the question of an interpretation of Dasein with regard to the question of being as such. In order to reach this goal, it is necessary, by means of a summary consideration, to extricate the question of the world understood as meaningfulness from a perverse horizon oriented to some theory or other of the reality of the external world or even to an ontology of actuality. The provisional clarification of meaningfulness and the prior stage of the interpretation of the reality of the world antecedes such an epistemology or ontology of the world with the exposition of the question of being as such, that is, with the interpretation of Dasein. The complex of questions involving epistemology (subject-object) or ontology (of nature) thus does not touch the interpretation of Dasein in its being at all. In order to attain this end and to bring this provisional analysis of meaningfulness to a conclusion, we shall consider five points: a) The reality of the external world is exempt from any proof of it or belief in it. b) The reality of the real (the WORLDHOOD of the world) cannot be defined on the basis of its being an object and being apprehended. c) Reality is not interpreted by way of the character of ‘in itself’; rather, this character is itself in need of interpretation. d) Reality is not to be understood primarily in terms of the bodily presence of the perceived. e) Reality is not adequately clarified by the phenomenon of resistance as the object of drive and effort. GA20EN §24

The initial question of the WORLDHOOD of the world, which was set forth as meaningfulness, is not at all the question of whether there is something like an external world, whether the external world is after all real. This line of questioning implies the view that the reality of the world must and can be proved or that at least, as Dilthey thought, our claim in believing in the reality of the external world should be justified. Both views are absurd. To wish to prove that the world exists is a misunderstanding of the very questioning. For such a questioning makes sense only on the basis of a being whose constitution is being-in-the-world. It is absurd to wish to subject to a proof of existence that which founds in their very being all questioning of a world and all attempts to prove and demonstrate that the world exists. World in its most proper sense is just that which is already on hand for any questioning. The question persists only on the basis of a constant misunderstanding of the mode of being of the one who raises this question. For this mode of being and this being, that is, for this questioning, it is constitutive that something like the world is always already discovered, can be encountered as an entity, can show itself as an entity. GA20EN §24

The question of the reality of the external world is in part defined on the basis of an extrinsic understanding of Kantian philosophy, or better put, under the influence of considerations which Descartes initiated. It is a question which has continuously occupied the epistemology of the modern era more or less explicitly. But this was always under the assurance that naturally no one doubted the reality of the external world. It is nonetheless always presupposed here that this reality, WORLDHOOD of the world, basically is still something which perhaps could be proved, or more accurately, if we were in an ideal state, we would in the end have proved it. That the world is real is however not only not in need of proof, it is also not something which for lack of rigorous proofs must then be merely believed, in view of which one has to dispense with knowledge and be content with faith. This talk of faith in the reality of the “world” presupposes that it can actually be proved. The view goes back to the first one, which aspires to some sort of proof. But here it should be noted that the recourse to a belief in reality does not correspond to any phenomenal finding. Dilthey’s treatise also took this line of inquiry. This treatise is not important because it so formulates the problem, which just shows that Dilthey did not understand the actual problem. It is important in relation to another phenomenon, that of resistance, which he touched on here and which we have to discuss later in greater detail. GA20EN §24

The reality of the world is not a problem in the sense of whether it actually exists or not, but the question of the reality of the world persists in the question of how WORLDHOOD is to be understood. But even if it is said that the initial question of the existence of the world is naturally and obviously contrary to sense, which is often heard, this will not do phenomenologically. This countersense must be allowed to assault the phenomenon, so to speak, by way of the positive vision of the phenomenon of in-being and the world. In other words, the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world must be seen in order to be able to make the statement that it contravenes sense, it infringes the basic constitution of that of which we speak. The ‘self-evidence’ of the existence of the world must become transparent in a Dasein by way of the positive vision of the phenomenon of in-being. Ontic-existentiell self-evidence is given with the being of Dasein, but ontologically it is puzzling. GA20EN §24

The second question of the reality of the real, the question of the being of the WORLDHOOD of the world, cannot mean an investigation into how the world now actually manages to be. To begin with, such a question, if it is to be scientifically useful, presupposes that we understand what is meant by ‘being’ if we wish to explain how the entity brings it about, that it is. But this understanding of ‘being,’ to be acquired in advance, then no longer even lets us get to the point of asking in this way. For this question involves taking being as its own entity, it tries to explain being in terms of an entity. When it becomes clear how absurd it is to expect, so to speak, a trick from being which it uses in order to be, and when a question of being thus understood is then referred back to the entity, this in no way means that nothing can be made of ‘being-in-itself’ but always only of the entity insofar as it is something apprehended, something objective in a consciousness. This would bring us to the familiar proposition that an entity always is only for a consciousness. This proposition is known as the ‘principle of immanence,’ which keeps all epistemologies busy over its pros and cons. It has led directly to the problem of knowledge, without benefit of asking what might be meant by ‘immanence,’ what findings from the phenomena themselves are taken up in it, if it says anything at all, and what is basically meant by the proposition “An entity always is only for a consciousness.” 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

But reality is just as little to be understood primarily in terms of bodily presence. It must of course be admitted that bodily presence is a genuine phenomenal character to the extent that I keep to the particular kind of access to entities which perceives, merely looks at them. But precisely in this kind of access to WORLDHOOD, especially if I take perception to be the simple perception of a thing, the world is no longer accessible in its full WORLDHOOD, in its full meaningfulness as it encounters concern. In the pure perception of a thing, the world shows itself instead in a deficient meaningfulness. I am using the word ‘deficient,’ deficiens, in accordance with the old traditional term. Meaningfulness as it is encountered in perception is deficient, it lacks something which it actually has and would have to have as a world. It detracts from the originality of the world when we merely look at it as a manifold of things. GA20EN §24

All the same, it must be said that the phenomenon of resistance is not the original phenomenon. Rather, resistance in its turn again can only be understood in terms of meaningfulness. The authentic correlation of world and Dasein (if we can speak here of correlation at all, which is not my opinion) is not that of impulse and resistance or, as in Scheler, will and resistance, but rather care and meaningfulness. This correlation is the basic structure of life, a structure which I also call facticity. For something can be encountered in its resistivity as a resistance only as something which I do not succeed in getting through when I live in a wanting-to-get-through, which means in being out toward something, which means that something is already primarily present for caring and concern, which presence is the basis upon which there can first be a presence of the resistant at all. No resistance, however great, is capable of giving something objective. If resistance were the authentic being of entities, then the relationship of being of two entities with the greatest resistance between them, and so the intense pressure of one entity against another, would involve bringing something like a world into presence. But this is not directly given between two entities in a relationship of resistance. The pressure and counterpressure, thrust and counterthrust, of material things never allow something like a world in the sense of WORLDHOOD to come into being. Instead, resistance is a phenomenal character which already presupposes a world. GA20EN §24

Resistance as well as bodily presence find their ground in this, that WORLDHOOD already is. They are particular phenomena of an isolated encounter, isolated to a particular kind of access involved in sheer striving. The conception of the entities of the world as resistance is then associated in Scheler with his biological orientation, with the question of how a world in general is given for primitive life forms. In my view, this method of clarifying by analogy from primitive life forms down to single-celled animals is wrong in principle. It is only when we have apprehended the objectivity of the world which is accessible to us, that is to say, our relationship of being toward the world, that we can perhaps also determine the WORLDHOOD of the animal by certain modified ways of considering it. The reverse procedure does not work, inasmuch as we are always compelled to speak on the basis of the analogy in analyzing the environing world of the animals. This environing world therefore cannot be the simplest one for us. GA20EN §24

The theme under consideration is Dasein in its basic constitution, being-in-the-world. This unitary phenomenon was first brought into view by regarding one of three directions, that of the structural moment of the world, understood as the world of everyday Dasein. We first worked out this WORLDHOOD in its general structure as meaningfulness. GA20EN §25

We thus did not begin with extensio, with the definition of reality which can be obtained in an extreme epistemological orientation. This possibility nevertheless remains of such a correct definition of the world primarily on the basis of extension and spatiality and with a view to a certain objectivity of natural knowledge. And this indicates that in some sense spatiality still belongs to the world, that spatiality is a constitutive element of the world. But this certainly does not mean that the being of the world could be defined primarily and solely in terms of spatiality, as Descartes sought to do, that all other possible characters of the reality of the world are founded upon spatiality. Instead, the question arises whether it is not just the other way around, whether spatiality is to be explicated from WORLDHOOD, whether the specific spatiality of the environing world as well as the type and structure of space itself and its discovery, the manner of its possible encounter, pure metric space for example, can be made understandable only upon the WORLDHOOD of the world. And this is in fact the case. GA20EN §25

Space and spatiality as a basic constitution of the world are to be explicated only upon the world itself in compliance with the task of phenomenological analysis. This means that spatiality is to be exhibited phenomenally in the world of everyday Dasein and made manifest in the world as environing world. That world is environing world is due to the specific WORLDHOOD of space. It is incumbent on us to see this WORLDHOOD of space, to see primary spatiality, and to understand the space of the environing world and its structural correlation with Dasein. Only then are we in the position to avoid a course which is always and above all adopted, even by Kant, for the definition of spirit and spiritual being. This course always involves defining spirit negatively against the spatial, defining res cogitans negatively against res extensa, conceiving spirit always as non-space. By contrast, the original analysis of WORLDHOOD and its spatial character leads us to see rather that Dasein itself is spatial. There is absolutely no reason to oppose this and to think, on the basis of whatever metaphysical presuppositions, that spirit, person, the authentic being of man, is some sort of an aura which is not in space and can have nothing to do with space, because we associate space primarily with corporeality and so move in constant fear of materializing the spirit. GA20EN §25

We shall designate the phenomenal structure of the WORLDHOOD of space as the aroundness of the world as environment [Umwelt, the world around us]. We have accordingly already ordered our analysis of WORLDHOOD so that we first dealt with WORLDHOOD and in the second place put the aroundness of WORLDHOOD as the constitutive aspect of our closest world. GA20EN §25

The first two phenomena, remotion and region, refer back to orientation. If spatiality belongs primarily to WORLDHOOD, then it is not surprising if we now show phenomenally that in the analysis of the WORLDHOOD of aroundness we have already made use of its characters, albeit implicitly. Among the characters of the world relative to its WORLDHOOD we have cited that of being handy, which we defined as the presence of what is immediately available in concern. This determination of the ‘immediately’ includes the phenomenon of nearness. GA20EN §25

This concludes our analysis of the world with regard to its WORLDHOOD. The structure of this analysis of the WORLDHOOD of the world is important for the understanding of the subject matter, since it seeks to show that spatiality can be interpreted only on the basis of WORLDHOOD. This applies in particular when it is a matter of rendering intelligible the structure of homogeneous space, which is regarded as a basis in natural science. GA20EN §25

Furthermore, what is procured in everyday concern can be present in care such that it appears as something which is intended to be of use to others, excite them, get the better of them, which stands in some sort of relation to the others, mostly without explicit awareness of it. The others are there with us everywhere in what we are preoccupied with and directly in the world-things themselves, specifically those others whom one is with everyday. Even in absorption in the world, Dasein does not disavow itself as being-with, as which my being-with with others and the co-Dasein of others with me can be grasped. This being-with-one-another is not an additive result of the occurrence of several such others, not an epiphenomenon of a multiplicity of Daseins, something supplementary which might come about only on the strength of a certain number. On the contrary, it is because Dasein as being-in-the-world is of itself being-with that there is something like a being-with-one-another. This being of others, who are encountered along with environmental things, is for all that not a being handy and on hand, which belongs to the environmental things, but a co-Dasein. This demonstrates that even in a worldly encounter, the Dasein encountered does not become a thing but retains its Dasein-character and is still encountered by way of the world. In comparison to what was said earlier, a discordant note is heard here. We have here a worldly encounter of something whose mode of being can be taken neither as being handy nor as being on hand. This indicates that the structure of WORLDHOOD is more than what the previous analysis yielded. This structure involves not only the appresentation of environmental things. A world can also appresent Dasein, that of others as well as my own. GA20EN §26

We must therefore keep in mind that the WORLDHOOD of the world appresents not only world-things—the environing world in the narrower sense—but also, although not as worldly being, the co-Dasein of others and my own self. But this means that a worldly encounter of something does not yet decide for itself about the kind of being of what is encountered. This can be appresented as being handy and being on hand, co-Dasein or self-Dasein. Not to be denied phenomenally is the finding that co-Dasein—the Dasein of others—and my own Dasein are encountered by way of the world. On the strength of this worldly encountering of others, they can be distinguished from the world-things in their being on hand and being handy in the environing world and demarcated as a ‘with-world,’ while my own Dasein, insofar as it is encountered environmentally, can be taken as the ‘self-world.’ This is the way I saw things in my earlier courses and coined the terms accordingly. But the matter is basically false. The terminology shows that the phenomena are not adequately grasped in this way, that the others, though they are encountered in the world, really do not have and never have the world’s kind of being. The others therefore cannot be designated as a ‘with-world.’ The possibility of the worldly encounter of Dasein and co-Dasein is indeed constitutive of the being-in-the-world of Dasein and so of every other, but it never becomes something worldly as a result. Whenever the qualification ‘with’ is added to the phenomenon ‘world’ and we speak of a ‘with-world,’ things are turned the wrong way. This is why I now have used the term ‘being-with’ from the start. By contrast, the world itself is never there with us, it is never Dasein-with, co-Dasein; it is that in which Dasein is at any given time as concern. Of course, that still does not adequately clarify this remarkable possibility of the world, namely, that it lets us encounter Dasein, the alien Dasein as well as my own. We shall be able to make this clarification only in later contexts. GA20EN §26

So far, we have considered the question of the structure of the world as WORLDHOOD (meaningfulness) and the question of the who of this being-in-the-world. Here the theme was always being-in-the-world, which we identified as the basic constitution of Dasein. The special explication of the world and of the Anyone were always only specific emphases of this structural whole of being-in-the-world itself. Finally, it was shown that the Dasein in the Anyone itself represents only a specific way of being-in-the-world. The who of Dasein is in each instance a way to be, whether authentically or inauthentically. Thus the question of the who of this entity also referred back to a kind of being, to a kind of being-in-the-world. But this implies that the being of Dasein is to be defined ultimately from in-being as such, and that only the correct explication of this basic phenomenon, of in-being, provides the warrant for founding the remaining co-original structures of Dasein. This is also why, already at the beginning of the analysis, we interjected a provisional characterization of this constitutive state of being, in which we first clarified in very rough fashion the sense of this ‘in.’ in contrast to a merely spatial ‘in’ It can now be asserted more clearly that the being of Dasein is not of the mode of being of the world, it is neither the being-handy nor the being-on-hand of something. It is just as little the being of a ‘subject,’ whose being would repeatedly, in a formally unexpressed way, have to be taken as being on hand. Should we be permitted to maintain the orientation to a world and a ‘subject,’ however, we could then say that the being of Dasein i