accounting, to count, to take account [Rede, talk MR, discourse MR, S. R: logos, articulatedness, speech]. The meaning being emphasized is that what 'Rede' refers to is the way in which it is most primordially revealed that something counts, is different or distinct, is numerable, is aught. What Heidegger calls "Rede" is the original revelation of difference, plurality; thus, the plurality revealed is not thereby revealed to have a definite number of members. Its having, for example, six members would have to be revealed through numeration and that would be a sort of explication. {See OUD, count, v.…II., intr.…5. to admit of being counted…6. to enter into the account….} As the designation for an existential, 'Rede' is properly speaking neither synonymous with nor equivalent to either 'speech' or 'language'. As name for a way of being in the world, however, I have chosen 'to account (of)' or 'to take account of' to translate Heidegger's 'Rede'. {See OUD, account…v.…3. trns. to hold (a thing to be so and so)….} Only for a Dasein who has done some accounting in the form of numeration would the plurality revealed have the sense that it is numerable. The accounting that 'Rede' refers to is a necessary condition for speech and for language. Richardson {R 66-67} gives good reasons for not translating the word by 'speech' or 'discourse'. On the other hand, Heidegger insisted that there is some way in which accounting necessarily entails or includes communication and speech. There are some cases in which he should, in my opinion, have used Sprache [speech, language] 'speech' rather than 'Rede' but did not do so. See ; communication [M itteilung]; disclosing, disclosedness.

{SZ (G2), BT m160-161} Heidegger writes with emphasis, "accounting is equiprimordial with affectivity and understanding," He has, however, introduced §34 (titled "Dasein and Rede. Die Sprache.") with the assertion that the foundational existentials that constitute the being of the There, the disclosedness of being-in-the-world, are affectivity and understanding. What Heidegger designates as Rede is not speech [Sprache] but is logically prior to speech, "accounting is the existential-ontological foundation for speech [Sprache]." Comprehensibility [Verständlichkeit] is articulated antecedaneously even prior to whatever explication grasps it. To account is to articulate comprehensibility so that accounting underlies and is presupposed by any explication and any asserting. "Meaning" is what we call whatever is articulable whether through explication or, more primordially still, through accounting. The structure [Gegliederte] that is articulated by counting, as total structure [als solches], is what we call the totality of signification [Bedeutungsganze]. <Properly speaking, therefore, accounting, meaning, and signification are more primordial than explication and speech.> This global structure can be broken down into significations. Significations are always meaningful since they are what is articulated of the articulable. Since accounting reveals the structure of what is understood as well revealing the There to be comprehensible and is thus a primordial existential of disclosedness and since disclosedness is originally constituted through being-in-the-world, accounting, too, must have some specifically worldly way to be. Thus, affective comprehensibility of being-in-the-world speaks out ]spricht sich aus] as accounting. <It is far from clear just what sort of necessity is expressed here by 'must'. I find no warrant for it. The Dasein who has accounting as a way to be in the world is essentially worldly, cannot exist without having worldly things revealed to it, cannot exist without being a disclosing of plurality. It does not need to be made worldly by some supplemental worldly something or other. Plurality is disclosed to affective understanding, and it is in fact the case that plurality comes to be spoken of, but the necessary connection between these facts seems utterly trumped up. It would be nearer the truth, perhaps, to say that what is affectively comprehended and counts for Dasein can acquire for her the potentiality to be noticed (explicated) and to be spoken out. An excellent case can be made that speech necessarily entails accounting but not that accounting necessarily entails speech. The bootlessness of Heidegger's effort suggests that thinking should suppress the urge a priori to devise a conjectural genesis for speech . No adequate grounding is provided here for the assertion several paragraphs later that accounting communication and drawing attention to [Bekundung] are just as inseparable from accounting as are that which counts for it [Beredete] and the respect by virtue of which what counts [das Geredete als solche] does so. That all four of these traits are existential and belong inseparably to what Heidegger has been calling "Rede" is, he alleges {SZ, BT m162}, rooted in the structure of Dasein's being [Seinsverfassung des Daseins]. He asserts baldly that these are not properties that admit of being gleaned only empirically from consideration of speech. Lamely, he adds that one or the other of the inseparable constituents may either be wanting or pass unnoticed in some factual forms of speech. The fact that they often do not get expressed verbally is asserted to indicate a certain manner of speaking [Rede] that could nevertheless not occur did it not come to be through the totality of the designated structures. The account being given here turns out to be rooted in nothing more than loudly asserted biases that Heidegger seems to share with lingualist philophosy. — «"Die Wahrheit ist da" bedeutet, wo nur es laut wirt, der Priester lügt…» [Where it is uttered loudly, "The truth is there" means: the priest lies. {Nietzsche, Der Antichrist §55, emphasis added}].

Perhaps remarkably, I find that once relieved of this wind-egg the material covered by the rest of this entry is quite acceptable. Skeptical relativists, however, especially lingualists, should make special note that phenomenology — especially when it concurs with Heidegger — is insisting that the ego or Dasein is necessarily self-transcending. Such a phenomenology would not be driven toward skeptical relativism if taking account of and so all ways of explicating were understood (however groundlessly) to be language involved necessarily . Nevertheless, those of us who are less disdainful toward epistemology than Heidegger and his closest following insist that proper evidence be provided for any such alleged eidetic necessity. {See Why Not…Skepticism…?}>

Comprehensibility's significational totality becomes verbal [komt zu wort]. Words accrue to significations, not the other way round: significations do not accrue to preexistent word-things . Speech occurs insofar as accounting is outspoken. This totality of words — taken as if accounting had some "worldly" being of its own — is thus to be found as an entity within-the-world like something ready. The verbal totality of outspoken accounting admits of being shattered into extant word-things. Existentially, <however> in so far as accounting is speech this is because that entity whose disclosedness is articulated, in the manner of significations, through speech exists in the manner of being-in-the-world that is thrown and that depends on the "world".

Accounting is the "significant" articulating of the comprehensibility of being-in-the-world, to which there belongs being with other Dasein [Mitsein], and such articulating is always maintained within some definite way of heedful [besorgenden] being-with-one-another. accounting is accounting of… What accounting counts need not be and usually is not the theme of any particular assertion. This structural moment is necessary to accounting because accounting co-constitutes being-in-the-world's disclosedness and is in its own structure pre-structured by disclosedness as the basic constitution of Dasein. What In accounting takes account of, what counts [das Beredete] for it is always "addressed [angeredet]" in some definite respect and within certain limits. Every accounting has that which, as such, counts for it, and that is what is said as such in wishing, inquiring, speaking about… respectively. Through what is said accounting communicates what it counts, what counts for it. All accounting of… is, in so far as it communicates through what counts for it, speaking out [Sichaussprechens].

The phenomenon of communication must be understood in an ontologically broad sense, as the analysis of statement has already shown. Communicating by stating, e.g., narrating, is a special case of communication grasped as an existential principle.

Heidegger is quite sympathetic to the insistence of nominalists that discursive speech is ill suited for stating unique, individual, nonrepeatable fact, but he rejects the nominalistic insistence that the connotation of a name be a particular representative image.

affectivity [Gestimmtheit; MR, R attunement]. See affectivity and understanding; feeling; care [Sorge]; anxiety; Dasein; Nothing (the) and anxiety.

Is it to be taken as brute fact that Dasein is directed toward its surroundings affectively, or is the fact to be understood functionalistically <i.e., biologically by reference to adaptations promoting the species' survival> or might it be the case that features of its surroundings inspire interest of themselves?

Why would the ego as transcendental choose to exist as ground for the perceivedness or perceivability of beings and so for their being? For the sake of what would the ego make itself responsible for its being in the world and so for the world? What about the world is worth caring about?

{From correspondence with MKS} Consider some of the ills that are most blatant — the set varies with times and circumstances — but in our epoch they include ills of hoary standing as well as those of more recent tradition: avarice, poverty, torment, torture, famine, disease, stupidity, overpopulation, warfare, environmental degradation, injustice, oppression, pettiness, civic cowardice, spittle licking… That the evil of all these be given to anyone who is aware doxically of the bearers for these evils belongs prominently to what openness is about. However, either the affective or the doxic awareness may occur quite vaguely; so it may occur in ways that do not objectivate much less grasp either the evils or their bearers. An appropriate and active affective position-taking doesn't come necessarily with the doxic consciousness: the former is not implicit in the latter but is an accomplishment, an achievement of the ego.[23] The relation between them is not analytic but synthetic the doxic is a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the affective. The former makes the latter possible but does not make it actual.

I have recently been telling you that goods and ills, value traits generally, can be given without ever being objectivated. In Heidegger's vocabulary, they are originally shown to and so are understood by Dasein without being explicated as good, evil, indifferent, etc.[24] In case I didn't say it clearly enough before, value traits necessarily are so given if they be given it all, for they are originally (in empiricist language "impressionally") given only through affects, and affects objectivate not anything at all. Doxic conscious processes alone objectivate, and so it is only through them that categorial form is given originally to the ego, and among doxic mental processes only those that are actions, those that single something out, objectivate anything, and they objectivate only what they single out. So, the good, the ill, the indifferent are given only through positive, negative, or neutral affects respectively. Traits which motivate the ego to take (whether actively or passively) affective position toward the entity positively or negatively or neutrally must indeed be intended in some doxic manner. However, this founding or conditioning cognitive intending needn't happen actively, and usually does not do so. So the traits that found the axiotic traits do not normally get explicated as the traits founding the axiotic trait. This status that they have remains "unknown". They can remain hidden, concealed, mysterious even though they be doxically (cognitively) co-intended so long as the doxic consciousness is passive.

DISPLACED EMOTIONS, RESENTMENT. Emotions can affect the ego without her knowing how they do so or what they are about: a cumulative miasma of indistinct woes that may be correctly interpreted to point to a plethora of ills. However, it may, perhaps just as readily, seem to point to none in particular. Or the affective position taken actively by the ego may be directed toward a narrow sub complex of the oppressive swarm: my spouse, my children, the rich, the poor, the politicians, the immigrants, the workers, the Jews, Whitey.

Since affects do not objectivate anything at all, they do not make anything distinct, even when the emotion is active, when the ego (Dasein) lives actively, alertly, wakefully (care-fully to coin a neologism) in the emotion. There can be affective awareness that is wakeful, active but that is grounded upon an indistinct doxic consciousness. Suppose that we apply, in analogy to Descartes' usage, the term 'clear' only to active, wakeful doxically intuitive conscious. Then affects will never be termed "clear" even though they be intuitive and wakeful or care-ful. Now the opposite of the Clear [German klar] is the Obscure [German dunkel, translated in other contexts as "dark"]. If daylight is metaphorically the Clear and Clarity then night is metaphorically the Obscure, the Dark and Obscurity, Darkness — even on a bright night {Heidegger, WIM:114 [E(1979) 105]}.

Affects and strivings as such are always obscure, unclear, no matter how open and alert (heedful, attentive, bright, active) they may be to what ought to be. To pretend that this makes them somehow bad or wicked or inferior to cognitions is simply stupid and perverse: philophosy.

affectivity and understanding. See understanding [Verstehen, Verstand].

{SZ, BT m148} As existentials affectivity and understanding are the characteristics of the original disclosedness of being-in-the-world. Attunement [Gestimmtheit] is the way that Dasein "sees" those possibilities that are her potentialities, those possibilities that ware constitutive for her [aus denen her es ist]. In projectively disclosing such possibilities, Dasein is always affected. Responsibility for Her ownmost potentiality-to-be is left to the fact of thrownness into the There.

{SZ, BT m339 ff} Understanding is never free-floating but always affectual. In being understood, the There is always just as originally either disclosed or concealed. Affectivity confronts Dasein with her thrownness and does so in such a way that thrownness is not recognized as such but is rather disclosed in a far more original manner through "how Dasein is". Existentially, to be thrown asserts: to be affected one way or another. Affectivity therefore is grounded in thrownness. Affectivity ever exhibits the way that I primarily am the thrown entity.

On the meaning of 'understanding [Verstehen]' developed in contrast to being attuned or affected.
{From correspondence with MKS}

Preliminary most general definition for understanding: insofar as something is understood by Dasein it is taken to belong to the world to which Dasein's understanding of it belongs (where this world is phenomenal and so is a world with a definite past and — perhaps somewhat less — definite present and a rather largely indefinite future) or else it is something that has been or might be imagined by Dasein. To belong to the world is the preliminary meaning of 'to be' so that to be understood is to be understood to be in some way. <As if what is imagined is imagined to belong to some world or else it is taken to be excluded from that world or as something that might belong to it or probably belongs to it.>

If the ways in which something is understood to be are called ontic modalities then ontic modalities will be distinguished from axiotic modalities, for the time being at least; the various ways in which something ought to belong to the world or ought to have belonged to the world would then be axiotic modalities.

To attempt an illustration: Dasein fears a surgical procedure; the procedure is understood to belong potentially to the world and to have therein a certain range of potential effects; moreover, its being feared is also something understood, as is Dasein's fearing it. The potentialities so understood could be further understood (i.e., explicated apophantically, judged) to be states of affairs that ought not to be because of those traits for which they are feared. But to understand them in this further way (rather than just to understand their being feared) does require to begin with a further understanding.

Now, if

a. a basic trait of Dasein's ways of being-in is that they are transcendent so that through them Dasein is with fellow Dasein among entities within the world, and
b. this means that Dasein is not self-enclosed, and
c. Dasein's ways of explicating (of understanding further something that has already been understood) are not necessarily restricted to the sort of "hermeneutical situation" characteristic of circumspection

then

d. Dasein's having been affected with fear by these potentialities may very well make it possible that this further understanding, when it does occur, be a disclosing of the fact (in this case a state of axiotic[2] affairs) that they genuinely ought not to be,

and

e. this disclosure would make possible the still further understanding (further explication) of the ontic state of affairs that Dasein's fearing them and their being feared show this axiotic fact about them.

So, to begin with, without this further understanding, Dasein understands the surgical procedure (however correctly or incorrectly) and "is affected by (Stambaugh, attuned to) it" with fear but does not objectivate its fear as showing what is feared to be something that ought not to be. Without this further understanding, the state-of-affairs as so far understood does not include its badness, its being bad, its being of a sort such that it ought not to be. Dasein's understanding of the surgical procedure founds the affect, but the affect does not yet found a further understanding of (does not explicate apophantically, objectivate) the procedure as one that ought not to be (at least so far as this set of potential consequences is concerned). Nor does the understanding of it or even its being disclosed to be feared yet found the further understanding (explication, objectivation) of the state of affairs that the fearing or the being feared shows what has so far been understood to be something that ought-not-to-be or shows the fact that these potentialities ought not to be.[3] Neither of these further facts (the one being about the surgical procedure, the other about the affect) is as yet explicated as belonging to the world. Neither belongs as yet for Dasein to the constitution (essence, nature, whatness) of these fearsome potentialities that are included in the surgical procedure's horizon of meaning.

Nevertheless, some of us phenomenologists hold that Dasein's fear does make it possible for Dasein to explicate either the surgical procedure as feared or Dasein's fear in these ways. But Dasein's attitude in making judgments that effect either direction of explication will be reflective rather than straightforward. If true, what they explicate will be something disclosed.

The projecting of any potential state of affairs involves projecting alternatives to it, anticipated future happenings understood to be happenings whose occurrence would preclude the other anticipated alternative(s) for the relevant time and situation. Thus, the better alternatives to the feared consequences of the surgical procedure will "call for (demand, require, stimulate)" Dasein's attention (at least insofar as they are understood, however, vaguely). They will stand out more prominently in the field of anticipated possibilities, and so a Dasein whose affectivity is such as to be able to be affected by such possibilities will be more likely to "commit itself" to one of those potentialities just because it is better, at least as an alternative to the feared potentiality. So it becomes likely that Dasein will chose one of those "for the sake of" avoiding the feared alternative and so not merely because the one alternative has been feared.[4]

ambiguity.

{PLT 66 (H54)} The more thoroughly the work is established in the figure [Gestalt] and so appears to stand apart from its being created (apart from its having been created), the more it seems to dissolve all relation to the human, the more simply the shock that such a work is comes into the open [ins Offene]. What is uncanny about the work, too, comes across that much more essentially does what is uncanny about it come across, and what is long familiar is the more essentially overthrown as well. <The English translation's play on the word 'thrust' introduces a piquant eroticism but may conceal more than the titillation is worth.> The more the work is thrust purely for itself into that openness of what-is that it has itself opened up, the more simply it thrusts us into this openness and thrusts us out of what is accustomed. To accord with this displacement means to transform the usual relationship to the world and to the earth and thenceforth to restrain all ordinary doing and valuing, observations and opinions so as to dwell in that truth which is made to happen by the work. Only this sort of restraint lets what is created be the work that it is. Letting the work be in this way is what we call preserving [Bewahrung] the work.

What is created can no more come to be without those who preserve it than any work at all can be without being created: any work needs those who preserve it no less essentially than it needs those who create it.

assertion, allegation. See copula; assertion, interpretations of; earth [Erde]; truth [Wahrheit].

{GP (G24) 312} If I say "A is B", I mean not only the being-B of A but the being-B of A as something unveiled. Its being unveiled is co-understood in uttering 'is' so that I need perform no supplementary judgment having as its content that the first judgment is true. The theory by which unveiledness <being true> is not included in "A is B" is Lotze's and stems from a perverse concept of truth, one which overlooks the includedness of being-true in the asserting behavior itself. An extant entity, for example, is in a certain sense true as something uncovered in the asserting rather than as something extant in itself: being uncovered is not extant in what is extant; rather, the extant entity occurs [begegnet] within the world of some Dasein, which world is disclosed for that existing Dasein. More precisely, asserting is, as communicating and determining pointing-out [H, exhibiting] a mode in which Dasein appropriates the uncovered entity as something uncovered…Asserting is pointing-out letting-the-entity-be-seen. The uncovered entity's relevant material determination gets expressly attributed to it through the entity's being indicatively appropriated in the way that it is as uncovered and in accord with its sense. The genuine relationship here is that the revealing appropriating of the extant entity in its being-thus [So-sein] is the very opposite of a subjectivization; instead, it is an attribution of the uncovered determinations to the entity just as it is in itself. <Seemingly: asserting includes understanding (and obscure, non-objectivated givenness) of what the assertion is about as it is asserted to be. Taken concretely, this understanding includes understanding of ways in which what the assertion is about would be encountered or would be given in the most originary manner it admits of. What is asserted as it is asserted is an occurrence in Dasein's history and so in the history of whatever communities Dasein does in fact belong to; it belongs to the world as it is for members of that community. What Dasein asserts normally keeps within the range of allegations that are familiar, at least in kind, to typical members of some of these communities. This need not be so, however; and, to the extent that it is not so, a different truth is alleged implicitly to have been wrested from the earth, has been explicated as belonging (allegedly) to the world. Insofar as the alleged state of affairs is, when it is given in the most originary way it admits of, as it has been alleged to be then a different truth has indeed been wrested from the earth. Here, I am assuming that earth is related to, perhaps identical with, what is otherwise called 'ground'. In that case, one of the basic traits of modern technology would be that its alleged states of affairs, insofar as they assume the mathematization of nature, cannot be given at all as they are alleged to be. Thus, when it is insisted that they are nonetheless true or likely to be true or even possibly true then this claim implicitly alleges that states of affairs cannot be given as they are alleged to be. As pragmatic thought, it comes to accept groundlessly alleged states of affairs as known to be true (pragmatism). Or it accepts such states of affairs as knowledge (instrumentalism). And in either case, it denies that non-formal, nonanalytic knowledge could be grounded in any manner other than what it asserts to be knowledge.

{H5 (UDK) 34 (PLT 45)} Like every other work, technological works set up a world . The world technology sets up would be a world such that what can be given must be either mental (Spiritual) or else subjective phenomena that are indicative signs for (are effects of) Objective causes. It is a world that includes the earth (what either is or could be given sensuously?) as the mentally or subjectively extant signs for Objectively extant entities.>

{GP (G24) 313-316} Truth pertains — as unveiling and in union with the unveiledness belonging to what is unveiled — to Dasein; truth exists…

{GP (G24) 310:15-311f.} …for being-true, as the unveiling of something, means precisely this very entity to which it refers, means this extant entity in its unveiledness…As a character belonging to what the assertion is about, unveiledness is a character belonging to the being of that extant entity…<This is another case in which the reader is likely to be misled by Heidegger's example and the context of the discussion. Aristotle's conception of assertion is being discussed, and Heidegger reads Aristotle as a thinker who conceived extantness to be the meaning of being as such. He has therefore been discussing assertions about extant entities, as such.> even if the copula is indifferent as to the meaning of being of what the assertion is about, still the assertion itself does not signify just 'being in general' but some entity in its unveiledness so that the alleged (syntactically formed) state of affairs includes (entails) how the entity or state of affairs would be given. The copula expresses the being-true of the assertion (syntactically formed state of affairs). This would seem to entail as well the way the state of affairs is to be given and along with it the way what the assertion is about (the state of affairs regardless of syntactical formation) is {BP 215:22–24}.

{SZ 158, BTMR 201} Heidegger seems quite expressly to deny that apophantic interpretation only occurs in one form. In fact BT does not hold even that all theory interprets under the influence of Objectivistic prejudices (with an Objectivistic Vor-sicht). See his discussion of the perversion of Aristotle's phenomenological approach to the analysis of the λόγος into a superficial 'theory of judgment'. {SZ 159; BTMR 202}

Much of the point Heidegger is making in the passage from page 122 of BTMR which Ihde cites has to do, it seems to me, with the claim that the mathematization of physical nature makes it impossible to conceive natural entities as sensuously perceivable at all. In that case, confirmation of particular physical theories cannot occur through direct observation of entities such as the theories postulate. Additional postulates are needed to connect the postulated entities with those (postulated) purely natural subjective phenomena (sensory data, ideas of sensation) which, it is postulated, can be perceived. <This is likely to be the most characteristic feature of setting-up [Ge-stell]; Gestell posits thinking about what it conceives to be real, Objective things to be practically groundless, related to thinking about them only indirectly, by way of subjective data of sensation that are postulated to be functionally dependent upon the Objects in lawful ways.> Naturally, the relation of the now purely "physical" Objects to the purely natural Subjective ones must be strictly external, "natural" causation. Theorems are, thereby, conceived to be confirmable only insofar as they can be conceived to make sensa predictable. This, I think, is what Heidegger is calling "explanation" and "investigation" at QCT 121. Thus, theorems in "exact" science are necessarily mathematical in the further sense that they must entail explanations that entail predictions. {QCT 119} It seems clear to me that what is being said about "science" in relation to technology and Gestell is said not of sciences generally but of "modern physics" as an exact and an experimental science. {QCT 14} Hence, it is not the case that all scientific thinking is technical. Indeed, scientific rigor requires, Heidegger tells us {QCT 120}, that the life-sciences and the moral sciences not be exact.

pragmatic (naturalistic) hermeneutics
{See moral sciences and hermeneutical pragmatism; hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of.}

These various misunderstandings of Heidegger's position all fail to appreciate that differing that explication or interpretation would be — when understood in the terms of Husserl's  phenomenology — a formal rather than a material universal so that its differing modes would not be related as genera and species. The modes deriving from circumspection would not be species of it, would not have to be like it.

assertion, relation to unveiling [(H) Enthüllen, revealing (MR)] and to circumspecting [Umsicht]. See assertion, allegation; truth [Wahrheit].

'Disclosing' and 'discovering' are terms for ways in which revealing occurs; the BT 199 passage (to the effect that when interpretation occurs in the form of assertion then what is interpreted is always interpreted on the basis "of what has already been disclosed in understanding or discovered circumspectively") says that the pointing out <Husserl: objectivating, which constitutes the most primitive of categorial forms ('this')] that is an essential feature of assertion always occurs on the ground of what has already been revealed either through understanding or through circumspection (the initial form which Dasein's interpreting necessarily takes). In order to occur authentically, assertion must remain within the range of what is revealed in one or the other of these ways (disclosure in the case of the understood or disclosedness in the case of what has been circumspectively interpreted). <It will be of great importance that authentic assertion not be limited to the range of what has been circumspectively interpreted.>

This implies that all authentic assertions — in contrast perhaps to idle talk — must be about something revealed in the one way or the other. Is this what was earlier meant in saying that a phenomenon is always something that shows itself? _That phenomena are understood and so revealed (or else are capable of being understood and so revealed). Most likely, the manifest, that which shows itself, is that which can be revealed).

But that which shows itself in this sense is nevertheless hidden. See Heraclitus: that of which there is seeing or hearing is nevertheless usually and for the most part hidden.

authenticity [Eigentlichkeit]. See selfhood; interpretation, authentic.

Authenticity is but a modification of inauthenticity.

being [Sein]. See earth [Erde].

{SZ 38} Being, which is the basic theme of philosophy, is no genus of any entity and yet has to do with every entity. Its universality is to be sought higher up than any entity. Being and being-structure lie above every entity and every possible determination there is of any entity whatsoever. Being is the transcendens <transcendent> pure and simple. The transcendence of the being of Dasein is an exception. The being of Dasein is transcendence insofar as there lies in transcendence the possibility and necessity of a most radical individuation. Every disclosure of being as disclosure of transcendence is transcendental cognition. The phenomenon of truth is veritas transcendentalis.

{MAL (G26) 193 (E 152)} However being may be articulated in essentia and existentia and however it be regionalized, being is always being of beings. Being, a s such and in its every meaning, is the being of beings. Being is distinct from beings, and only this distinction, this possibility of differentiating, achieves [lasts (gewährt)] any understanding of being at all. Put differently: carrying out this differentiating of being from beings is implicit in the understanding of being. This distinction alone makes possible such a thing as ontology. That is why we call this distinction without which no understanding of being is possible the ontological difference.

{ibid.} The neutral expression 'distinction' is used here since the real problem is the way in which what is distinguished, being and beings, are different or even separate. Closely linked to this problem of the ontological difference is the problem toward which we have been moving from the opposite direction, so to speak: the intrinsic connection of being and truth, the truth-character of being. The question concerning the original nexus of truth and being, the problem of the veridical character of being, belongs to logic as metaphysics.

being, history of

{Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens. 28} In the sense in which a city or a people has a history there is no history of Being. What is history-like about the history of Being can obviously be characterized by and only by how Being occurs. The way Being occurs is what we are calling the way in which Being is given [es gibt Sein]. What is historical about the history of Being is the manner in which Being is given , the how of its givenness, and that alone. That about Being which looks at first like a history of Being is the unfolding of the fullness of transformation [Wandlungsfulle] of Being.

being, the question about. See being [Sein].

{G65 432-435} The difference involved in the question about being can be fixed schematically through two pairs: being and thinking; and being and time. In the former pair, being is understood to be the beingness [Seiendheit] of any entity. Here, 'thinking' refers to objectivating asserting [das vorstellende Aussagen], which is the indicator that is to be followed in order to investigate the beingness of an entity. In the latter pair, it is understood to be that being whose truth is being asked about. Here, 'time' refers to the first indicator pointing to the essence of truth in the sense of the lightening, open in a relegated manner, of that play [Spielraum] wherein beyng is concealed and wherein it genuinely presents itself [sich verschenkt] in its truth for the first time. <The sort of thinking here called "objectivating asserting" seems either to be or to include the sort of thinking referred to on 435 as the suicide of philosophy that occurs when thinking strives to "make itself be understood".> The terms for the two pairs are not to be understood as if in the second 'time' were simply a replacement for 'thinking' in the first, as if there were just one question about the beingness of entities, which question is to be pursued in the one case following the clue of assertive objectivating and in the other case by following time as a clue, whereby "time" might be thought of according to the usual concept of it. On the contrary, the "role" of thinking on the one hand and of "time" on the other is fundamentally different in each case; their different significance gives a different signification to the word 'and' in each case, <This seems to imply that the two conjunctions have no term in common, unless it be 'being', but the variant spelling in the discussion of the second title indicates that the conjunctions may well have no term in common.> Still, by asking about being in the meaning of the title "being and time" there opens a possibility of conceiving in a more original way the history of the question about being in the sense of the title "being and thinking". i.e., to conceive it in a way that accords with the history of being [seinsgeschichtlich]. And with this possibility there opens the possibility to make the truth of being visible for the first time [zuerst] through the time-character of being; this becomes possible by indicating the prevalence of coming-to-presence and permanence in the essence of φύσις, of ίδέα, and of ούσία. In the history of being this indication is the more decisive because the time-character of beingness becomes more and more veiled in the subsequent history of being so that the attempt to link "time" with being (and the timelessness of the categories and of values) in any way whatsoever clashes immediately with resistance whose force obviously comes only from the blindness of not wanting to ask. Since the 'time'-character of being itself remains wholly alien because the question about the truth "about the "meaning") of beyng is not conceived at all, they saves they self by equating being with Dasein, whose "temporality" they understands because it refers after all somehow to human being. Thus everything departs from the way of the question about being however, however, and it is proven thereby that a title by itself can do nothing when the effort and the knowledge to interpret even its intent are wanting. But the knowledge needed can never be communicated and spread as can acquaintance with what is extant. Those who would pass that knowledge to one another must already be in transition in that they approach one another, sensing decisions and yet do not connect with one another. For that very knowledge is what the distraught individuals need in order for the decision to mature.

However, these very individuals bring with them the past of the concealed history of being, that detour — as it must seem — which metaphysics must take in order that it not attain being and so come to an end that is stark enough to require another beginning, one that helps return to the originality of the first beginning and that transforms what is past into what has not been lost.

This detour is, however, no detour in the sense of lacking a direct and shorter way to being. The detour is after all what first leads into the need for refusal and into the necessity of raising to decision that which (φύσις, άληθεια), in the first beginning, was only the sign for an offering [Geschenk] that did not admit of being grasped and preserved.

To proper transition there belong both the courage for what is ancient and the freedom for what is new. What is ancient is, however, not what is antiquarian, that which is inevitably extended as soon as what was sublime in the beginning [das anfänglich Grosse] — which remains incomparable in its sublimity on account of its first beginningness — gets into the Historical[historische] tradition and denial. What is ancient, i.e., that which nothing more recent can surpass in essentiality [Wesentlichkeit], is revealed only to historical [geschichtlichen] analysis and consideration. However, what is new is not what is "modern", what attains acceptance and approval in the prevalent Today and what persists as the hidden enemy, blind to itself, of everything decisive. What is new means here that which is fresh about the originality of beginning again, what ventures into the concealed future of the first beginning and what therefore cannot be "novel" but must rather be more ancient than what is ancient.

Those thinkers who are transitional and essentially ambiguous must also expressly also know this, that their questioning and stating is unconvincing [unverständlich] for that Today whose duration is incalculable. This is so not because the people of Today are not clever enough or have not been taught long enough for what is being said; rather, it is so because to understand would mean the destruction of their thinking. For conviction [Verständlichkeit] forces everything back into the range of prior objectivating. The task of transitional thinkers is to make unconvinced those who so ardently wish for the "convincing [Verständliche]" and to make over into not-yet-convinced [Nochnicht-Verständigte] those who do not know the Wither [Wohin] since the Whither brings with it something it is needed beforehand:[8] what is needed first is that the truth not be expected from any entity without doubt and grief. The not-yet-convinced, who have not yet assured their consent to everything but who have rather preserved in question the one and the only, beyng, are the beginning wanderers, who come from farthest and so are bearers of the highest future.

{G65 435} Those who are transitional must ultimately know that which stays unknown wherever there is insistence upon being convinced [upon perspicacity, Verständlichkeit]: that thinking about being, philosophy, can never be guaranteed [bestätigt] by "facts", i.e., by what-is [das Seiende]. Persuasion, convincing [Sichverständlichmachen] is philosophy's suicide. Those idolaters who worship "facts" never notice that their idols are lighted only by a borrowed radiance. Nor should they notice it. For they would then have to be at a loss and so be useless. However, idolaters and idols are needed wherever gods are fleeing and reveal their nearness by flight.

Being and Time.

{PLWBUH 91. BW 222–23} It is commonly believed that the undertaking of Being and Time went up a dead end. Let's let that opinion alone. The thinking which attempted a few steps in that treatise has still not moved beyond Being and Time. Perhaps it has penetrated in the meantime further into the subject. Be that as it may, as long as philosophy only busies herself with constantly obstructing the possibility of letting herself into the subject of thinking, viz., the truth of being, she will be in no danger of shattering on the impenetrability of that subject. Thus, "philosophizing" about shattering is separated by an abyss from thinking that shatters. Should the latter sort of thinking go well for someone that were no misfortune. Hers would be the only gift from being that can be appropriate to thinking.

being in the midst of [inter esse, Being-alongside MR]. See circumspection [Umsicht], as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding.

Being-there. See Dasein.

being-true. See unveiling [Enthüllen].

being-in. See intentionality.

If Dasein is being-in-the-world then entities within the world <Not "Things", the concept of Things and of substantiality came from thinking about 1.b below while disregarding (abstracting from) their being-within and so abstracting from their ways of being understood by Dasein.> are encountered by Dasein through its ways of being-in (-the-world); and, along with this, Dasein is open not only to entities within the world but to other Dasein. Hence, describing Dasein's ways of being-in (-the-world) entails describing:

1. entities within the world which have a way of being other than being-in

a. those ready-to-hand,
b. those present-at-hand,
c. those through which Dasein is being-with (=other Dasein and Dasein-like entities).

2. the world within which 1. are encountered by Dasein and in which Dasein has its being.

Investigations of 1. and 2. are to be carried out by describing

3. Dasein itself as an entity who is by being-in.

The intentionality of Dasein, that Dasein is consciousness of something, means that Dasein is being-in-the-world in such a way that Berkeley's way of conceiving this phenomenon is reversed. To perceive something means for Berkeley that the something is "in the mind", is one-sidedly dependent on the perceiving mind. Heidegger's way of conceiving being-in is such that Dasein cannot be a support for such one-sided dependence. Dasein and what she intends are mutually conditioning. Neither Dasein nor the world nor the entities Dasein understands can be indifferent to one another.

being-with [Mitsein]. See for-the-sake-of [Umwillen]; freedom.

{SZ (G2) 139; MFL (G26) 174–75} Being-with is possible as authentic relationship of existence only in as much as each and every co-existent is herself and can be so authentically. However, such freedom in being with one another presupposes that any entity characterized by Dasein as such (presupposes that any entity that instantiates neutral Dasein) has the possibility of self-determination. <it is only existent and coexistent Dasein that has the possibilities of self determination; what neutral Dasein entails — in the sense of implying it — is the eidos "self-determination", an entity outside of time, is essential to the eidos "Dasein"; this entails or implies that any possible existent Dasein is self determining. This is a big part of the reason why the reflexive use of zerstreuen is the one that is most relevant to Heidegger's use of Zerstreuung. This is, so far as I can yet make out, the way to make sense of the allegation that what is here being termed neutrality is the power [Mächtigkeit][9]. That the power is, so to speak, extolled as the power of origin seems to refer to its holding sway not merely over actual things of the kind but over any possible entity whatsoever that could be of the kind.> There is a problem about how Dasein that is essentially <with eidetic necessity> free can exist through being free in being with one another <How Dasein can dance in chains?>. Insofar as being-with is included among the basic metaphysical determinations of instantiating (dissemination), ultimately instantiation is grounded in the freedom of Dasein universally: metaphysically isolated, Dasein's metaphysical essential ground [Grundwesen] is centered by freedom. But this still doesn't tell us how, metaphysically, the freedom concept is to be comprehended. Heidegger purports to find "central problems here involving such matters as independence, being bound (obliged) rules, standards—this in a manner very like Kant's postulates of practical reason. For he writes, "ontological-metaphysical understanding is compatible with ontic inexplicability nevertheless!" He promises that a few of these problems will be touched upon when clarifying the world-concept (§11c).

biblical passages. See Da-; world.

SOME BIBLICAL PASSAGES RELEVANT TO THE DA- THROUGH WHICH DASEIN EXISTS, TO WORLD (EARTH, HEAVENS, GODS, AND MORTALS) AND TO 'THE WORD' AS CONCEIVED IN "THE ESSENCE OF LANGUAGE"

LUTHER TRANSLATION	JERUSALEM BIBLE
1. Mose. 1. Kapitel. Schöpfung der Welt. Der Mensch ein Bild Gottes. (cf. Ps. 104)	The Pentateuch. Genesis.
1. Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. (cf. Apg. 17,24; Rev. 4, 11; Hebr. 11:3; John 1:1-3)	1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2. Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe, und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser.	2. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water.
3. Und Gott sprach: Es werde Licht. Und es ward Liche. (cf. Ps.33:9; 2. Cor. 4:6)	3. God said, "Let there be light,". And there was light.
2. Kapitel 7. Und Gott der Herr machte den Menschen aus einem Erdenkloß, und er blies ihm ein den lebendigen Odem in seine Nase. Und also ward der Mensch eine lebendige Seele. (cf 1. Cor. 15:45.)	Chapter 2 7. Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being.
Evangelium des Johannes. 1. Kapitel	Gospel of John. Ch. 1
1. Im Anfang war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, und Gott war das Wort. (cf. John 1 1, 1.2; Ch. 17:5; Rev. 19:18.)	1. In the beginning was the Word: and the word was with God and the Word was God.
2. Dasselbe war im Anfang bei Gott.	2. He was with God in the beginning.
3. Alle Dinge sind durch dasselbe gemacht, und ohne dasselbe ist nichts gemacht, was gemacht ist.	3. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.
4. In ihm war das Leben, und das Leben war das Licht der Menschen. (cf. John 5:26.)	4. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men,
5. Und das Licht scheint in der Finsternis, und die Finsternis hat's nicht erkannt.	5. a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.a (aOr "grasp" in the sense of "enclose" or "understand.")
6. Es ward ein Mensch, von Gott gesandt, der hieß Johannes.	6. A man came, sent by God. His name was John.
7. Dieser kam zum Zeugnis, daß sie alle durch inn glaubten.	7. He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light, so that everyone might believe through him.
8. Er war nicht das Licht, sondern daß er zeugte von dem Licht.	8. He was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light.
9. Das war das wahrhavtige Licht, welches alle Menschen erleuchtet, die in diese Welt kommen.	9. The word was the true light that enlightens all men; and he was coming into the world.
10. Es war in der Welt, und die Welt ist durch dasselbe gemacht, und die Welt kannte es nicht.	10. He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him.
11. Er kam in sein Eigentum, und die Seinen nahmen ihn nicht auf	11. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.
Apostelgeschichten. 1 Johannes, 2. Kapitel	Acts. 1 John, Ch. 2
15. Habt nicht lieb die Welt noch was in der Welt ist. So jemand die Welt liebhat, in dem ist nicht die Liebe des Vaters. (cf. Jak. 4:4.)	15. You must not love this passing world or anything that is in the world. The love of the Father cannot be in any man who loves the world,
16. Denn alles, was in der Welt ist, des Fleisches Lust und der Augen Lust und hoffartiges Leben, ist nicht vom Vater, sondern von der Welt.	16. because nothing the world has to offer — the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions — could ever come from the Father but only from the world;
17. Und die Welt vergeht mit ihrer Lust; wer aber den Willen Gottes tut, der bleibt in Ewigkeit.	17. and the world with all it craves for is coming to an end; but anyone who does the will of God remains for ever.

bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen]. See art works; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; truth as unconcealment; truth, unconcealing and concealing, world and earth; setting up [Ge-stell]; technology; truth, works, and the sense in which they ought to be (i.e., merit being tended)'; truth [Wahrheit].

{QCT p. 11 f., ¶¶ 24-26} All bringing to the fore is grounded in revealing [Entbergen (=uncovering?)]. Everything depends upon our thinking bringing to the fore (E: bringing-forth) in its full scope and at the same time in the sense in which the Greeks thought it. {ibid. 11, ¶21} Through their interplay the four ways — causality — of bringing to the fore (E: bringing-forth) let what has not yet come to presence arrive into the coming to presence [ins Anwesen]. Accordingly, they are governed throughout in a unitary way by a bringing that brings what is coming to presence into <the?> shining forth [Vorschein]. What this bringing is Plato tells us (Symposium 205 b): ή γάρ τοι έκ το̃υ μή ̉οντος είς τό ό̉ν ίόντι ότωΰς.

Every letting take place [Veranlassung, E: occasioning] for anything at all which goes over into and goes forth into coming to presence [Anwesen] from what does not come to presence is ποίησις, is bringing to the fore. <In the translation of Franz Susemihl: "Allem demjenigen, was die Ursache dafür ist, daβ irgend etwas aus dem Nichtsein in das Sein übergeht, legen wir eine schaffende Tätigkeit bei>.

{QCT ¶ 21} To be a bringing to the fore, ποίησις, is not just the nature of getting something finished [Verfertigen], of artistically-poetic bringing something to appearing and into image. <Concerning what it brings to the fore, see 'technology'.> Φύσις the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing to the fore, is ποίησις. Φύσις is ποίησις in the highest sense. The modes of letting take place [E: occasioning], the four causes, are at play, then, within bringing to the fore. Through bringing to the fore, the growing things of nature as well as whatever is completed through the crafts and the arts come to appearance in each case. {QCT ¶ 22} But how does bringing to the fore happen, be it in nature or in art? What is the bringing to the fore that in it there plays the four fold way of letting take place? Letting take place has to do with the coming to presence of that which at any given time comes to shine forth. Bringing to the fore brings out of concealment into shining forth [Vorschein, the English trns. uses 'appearance']. It happens [ereignet sich] only insofar as what is hidden [Vorborgenes] comes into the unhidden. This coming rests and pendulates within revealing [Entbergen]. The Greeks called that αλήθεια. The Romans translated it veritas. We say "truth" and usually understand truth as correctness in representing [Richtigkeit des Vorstellens]. {ibid. 11-12, ¶ 23} Every bringing to the fore is grounded in revealing, and bringing to the fore gathers into itself the four ways of letting take place — causality — and governs them throughout. Only within their realm do end and means, the instrumental, occur. The instrumental is taken to be the basic trait of technology. The possibility of all productive finishing [herstellende Verfertigung] rests in revealing. Properly understood, technology is a way of revealing and is not a mere means. Thus, technology belongs to the realm of revealing, of truth. {ibid. 12, ¶25}

 {ibid. 12, ¶ 28} Two points should be noted in this connection. First, τέχνη is not merely a name for the activity and skill involved in handwork but also for the art of the sublime and the arts of the beautiful. Τέχνη belongs to bringing to the fore, to ποίησις; it is something poietic [etwas Poietisches]. Since bringing to the fore is ποίησις, τέχνη belongs to ποίησις, is something poietic. <This is here said only of τέχνη, not of technology, even though it is said of each that it is a way of revealing.> Secondly, and more importantly, until Plato's time the words τέχνη and έπιίσ́τήμη designated cognizing in the broadest sense, being thoroughly familiar with something, being canny about something [Sichauskennen in etwas], being acquainted with something (Sichverstehen auf etwas]. Such cognizing, canniness about something, gives access [gibt Aufschluβ, the English trns. uses 'provides an opening up']; it is revealing as what gives access [aufschlieβendes]. <This, too, is said of τέχνη but not of technology.> Aristotle {Nichomacean Ethics VI c 3-4} differentiates τέχνη from έπιίσ́τήμη by what they and how they reveal: τέχνη is a way of άληθεύειν; what it reveals is such as does not bring itself to the fore and does not yet lie <there> in the fore, hence something which can acquire different looks and can turn out either this way or that. The decisive thing about τέχνη, therefore, is not at all that it is a making and handling <manufacturing> but that it reveals, and only as revealing in the way <giving access> mentioned is τέχνη a bringing to the fore, something poetic. {ibid.13, ¶27} Every bringing to the fore grounds through revealing and is a way of revealing which gathers in itself the four ways of letting take place. {QCT (FNT) ¶¶24-26, p. 12-13} This is the result we come to by considering what the word τέχνη connotes and how the Greeks thought about what it designates, and it brings us to the same topics as did investigation into what the instrumental as such truly is. {¶ 28}

categorical imperative. See moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about.

choice, existence, and world. See world; world, existence of, and Dasein; bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen]; choosing, authentic and inauthentic; intentionality.

{BP 166} Dasein's choices <ways of assigning itself to possibilities> enable her to be in a world which is not the world she would be in had she, as she genuinely could have, made different choices. Given Heidegger's way of conceiving the intentionality of consciousness, the world exists as Dasein exists. By making herself be in the world, Dasein makes the world exist. The choices Dasein makes are "comportments" through which Dasein makes it impossible for certain persons, who Dasein could otherwise have become, to be in the world: her choices make it impossible that Dasein exist as any of the other persons who she could otherwise have been. By doing so, Dasein's choices make it possible for (enable) Dasein to exist as one of the persons she could have become. Dasein's choices make her be in the world; they do so as necessary, not as sufficient, conditions for being-in-the-world; being-in-the-world depends on other occurrences as well.

The openness that  characterizes Dasein's intentionality (Dasein's ways of being-in) entails that Dasein — in making it impossible for certain persons, who she could have been, to be in the world — makes it possible that a certain range of possible worlds are still possible while making some formerly possible worlds impossible. The ways in which Dasein commits  to her potentialities make her co-responsible for the world in which she exists. This is at least part of what Heidegger meant in asserting that, through the ways Dasein belongs to the world, the world exists as Dasein does.

The set, all of the possibilities considered in making the choice, is generated only through the choice. It can be disclosed to begin with only through the choosing itself; only through the choice can it be there for Dasein's understanding. So choosing also unveils something in an original way. But in this case, what is unveiled does not seem to have been understood beforehand. This would differentiate the unveiling entailed by choosing from that entailed in explicating (interpreting). Or would it? Does projecting the choosing entail a preliminary understanding of the set in question? This set seems clearly to be entailed in the moral value of the choosing.

From Heidegger's standpoint, it would seem as if there is some sort of equivocation involved when, as in the case of Stefan George, people lament the impossibility of "being all that one could have been." On the one hand it seems to refer to (a) something like the complete set of all the selves that Dasein ever could have become. Yet, on the other hand, it seems to refer to (b) just one member of this set, namely, the best one of them. If Dasein exists as a canceling of some possibilities then the set is an object but not one such as could have become actual, hence not one of which it could be truly said that it ought to become actual. The sole condition on which the set could become actual is that it have just one member; in that case, its coming about is assured. And then reference (b) is grammatically nonsensical since the members of a set of one cannot be compared. As Hartmann seems to have shown, the best of all my possibilities, were there such a possibility, would be unrecognizable. 'The best of all the possibilities that were considered in making the choice' may have a comprehensible referent but need not, even when some of the possibilities were better than others.

Kant does not pose the question, "Might possibility not mean something quite different when applied to Dasein's possibilities from what it means when applied to a natural thing ?" In nature, what is possible is also thought <usually and by Kant> to be necessary, implying that whatever can happen must happen, so that the possibilities included in the essence of the extant thing are restricted to the characteristics it has, has had, and will have. But suppose that Dasein's possibilities are contingent (non-necessary). Then Dasein will have possibilities that need not eventuate; it will not be true that she is going to do whatever she can do, and some of the things she can do are things she will not do. In that case, Dasein will make choices through which something she can do becomes possible and other things which she genuinely could have made possible lose all chance of coming about. Then Dasein cannot will not have an essence in the sense in which an extant natural thing might have an essence. The choices she makes will be "comportments" through which she makes it possible for one of the persons she could have been to be in the world and will make she impossible for some of the persons she could have been to be in the world. <— This somewhat awkward way of putting the matter — strictly in terms of making possible that certain of Dasein's potentialities eventuate and impossible that others do so — avoids any implication that Dasein's fiat is a sufficient condition for the eventuation of what she chooses to do, beyond the phase of willing and having willed its occurrence, most of Dasein's potentialities depend for their eventuating on how other Daseins comport, (the theistically inclined insist that eventuation depends upon the Divine will as well). As in the case of Dasein's involvement in the various perverse military adventures of its government: Dasein can be involved either against its will or willingly, and can be involved despite perhaps considerable effort to prevent the very occurrences in whose eventuation Dasein is involved by paying taxes, earning its willing, supporting its family, avoiding incarceration, etc. To say that because many things can happen against Dasein's will its will "makes no difference" is the conative equivalent of objectivism in logic (not taking note, for example, that an object's meaning acquires a new feature through the fact that Dasein makes a judgment about it); the claim reflects an abstract attitude which denies the difference just because the difference is not observable by "objective" methods. Just this sort of "merely subjective" difference is what would make the difference between acquiescing in governmental policy and opposing it when the difference which opposition makes is inadequate to prevent execution of the policy. Those who choose ineffectively lack freedom of action (liberty to do as they will); they do not lack freedom of will. The latter is an existential, a feature of any possible Dasein (Sartre even identifies it with the being of persons). It is impossible to differentiate persons who are free in this sense from persons who are not. It is, therefore, not something that persons can lose and still exist, and it is absurd to say of any persons that they would be better off without it or would be better or worse persons without it. To regret being free in this sense would be to regret that one exist at all.>

{BP 176} Heidegger asserts that to exist and to be extant are more different than are human beings and god, as understood in the tradition. One may ask, In what ways does Heidegger conceive Dasein to be like God as conceived in traditional ontology? An important clue is contained in his assertion that what differentiates being-in-the-world from being-within-the-world is that the former must make herself be in the world {G2 m80, 94}. <For a much more readily comprehensible account of this passage see José Ortega y Gasset, What Is Philosophy?, chapters 8-11 {Ortega y Gasset, J., WIP? chapters 8–11}.> It does this by making choices, assigning herself to potentialities, in the language of BT. {See also BP 127–28}

If god's willing what I will were a sufficient condition for my being-in-the-world then it does not seem as if my will would be necessary for my being in the world. God's choosing how I shall be in the world would make my being in the world necessary. In that case, Dasein would be extant as a finite substance who would have an essence in the traditional sense of that word. Such considerations may indicate why it is that deterministic theories, naturalistic as well as teleological tend to deny that human willing is a fundamentally distinct class of mental phenomena. But in that case — and also in case God's will were a necessary condition for Dasein's will — Dasein's extantness would be such (necessary and substantial) that its way of being would not be disclosed to Dasein but would be hidden from Dasein in such a way that Dasein could never have a genuine ("authentic") understanding of its way of being. That is, Dasein could never explicate its substantiality as having been understood antecedaneously. Were that the case, god might — and , if omniscient, would — know Dasein to be extant but its true way of being would be unknowable <save by revelation?> to Dasein, whose being in the world would only seem to be existence: a conclusion which phenomenology must regard as formally possible but materially absurd.

choosing, authentic and inauthentic.

That Dasein chooses does seem to entail reference to a being affected. But does the affect have actually to have occurred, or might it not remain a potential affect? It's my guess that the choice cannot be authentic unless the implied affect occurs; its occurring is a necessary condition for authenticity of the choosing. For example, a preference for the occurrence of what is chosen over its non-occurrence is a necessary condition but is not a sufficient condition for authentic choice. But inauthentic choice might entail only a reference to the possibility that occurring of what is chosen be preferred in fact to its non-occurring. If Dasein then does what was chosen but takes affectively a position that is other than a preferring then that might indicate that the conative position taken was wrong. I don't think being inauthentic entails being wrong.

Christianity. See thrownness.

{Heidegger, G40 115 (m81)} Heidegger agrees with Nietzsche's estimate that Christianity is Platonism for the People.

Heidegger's notion of thrownness is formulated explicitly to exclude the Absolute Idealists' notion that an existing person is the Perfect and Divine insofar as it makes itself be in the world. This sort of identity Heidegger rejects, a point of agreement with Kierkegaard, Hamann, Jacobi -- the Absolute Idealists' major contemporary theistic critics. Heidegger's notion is, however, also incompatible with the defining thesis of Christianity.

circumspecting, circumspection [Umsicht]. See assertion, interpretations of.

<This entry consists of comments written on a paper of a sometime CSU graduate student, Frederick Clark, who completed a Master of Arts in 1998.>

If the term 'striving' or 'conation' is reserved for circumspecting, then:

1. circumspecting, when it occurs as a comportment of Dasein, and judging are two distinct forms of volition or praxis and

2. it remains for the time being an open question whether there are non-voluntary ways in which striving (circumspecting) and cognitions might occur. BT speaks of circumspectively formative understanding as arising out of antecedent, unformed understanding. <Subsequent addition— Since he makes it clear that understanding is formed in so far as it occurs interpretatively, it really does not seem as if there should ever have been an issue here. The hermeneutical reading of Heidegger's work chooses, however, to overlook this point.>

1. Thus, there would seem to be left open the possibility that traits such as colors and shapes be given to involuntary or passive ways of understanding and that these traits are "bound up in" or "implicit in" what is ready-to-hand {Heidegger, BTMR 115 (SZ 83)}

2. So that a given way of being ready-to-hand might imply that certain sorts of traits are present-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand.

Quite universally, understanding — as the term is used here — is not any cognizance [Kenntnis] acquired through cognizing [Erkennen][10] but is rather a primordially [ursprünglich] existential kind of being, one which makes cognition and cognizance possible in the first place <is a necessary condition for their occurrence and a necessary constituent of any way in which Dasein is in the world> {Heidegger, BTMR 123 (SZ 161)}.

circumspection [Umsicht], as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding. See inauthentic self-understanding, origin of.

{BT 189 (H 148)} Heidegger does say that circumspecting is inauthentic understanding in its pure mode, and from this we can — safely, I think — infer that no explication of the being of what is within-the-world (much less of being-in-the-world) can give the needed <a genuine? appropriate? authentic?> account of it by straightforwardly explicating what is encountered in "Being-alongside." The MR translation here covers up quite a bit; as MR note {BTMR 80 fn. 4} it translates Heidegger's 'Sein bei.' Much of what gets obscured can be indicated by noticing that the phrase could be rendered in Latin by 'inter esse.' This would show the relation of the phrase to the concept of interest.

communication [Mitteilung]. See accounting, to count, to take account of [ Rede, talk MR, discourse MR, S. R: logos, articulatedness; speech].

{SZ 162} The phenomenon of communication must be understood in an ontologically broad sense, as the analysis of statement has already shown. Communicating by stating, e.g., narrating, is a special case of communication grasped as an existential principle. The articulation of understanding being-with-one-another is constituted by communication in the existential sense. This articulation brings about the "sharing" of being-affected-together and of the understanding of being-with. Being-affected-together and understanding-together of themselves reveal being-with essentially. In speech being-with is shared "expressly", which means that it already is but as something not grasped and appropriated, i.e., it already is without being shared.

{SZ 163:17} The nexus of speech with understanding and understandability becomes explicit through what we call "minding" [Hören - S: hearing; also heeding]. Minding belongs to the constitution of speech. And as linguistic utterance is grounded in speech so aural perceiving is grounded in minding. Minding… is Dasein's existential being-open as <its> being-with for others. Minding even constitutes the primary and authentic openness of Dasein for its ownmost possibility of being, as minding the voice of the friend whom every Dasein bears with her. Dasein minds because she understands. As being-in-the-world with the others understandingly, Dasein is "mindful" of being-there-with and of herself, and it belongs [ist zugehörig] to being-there-with and to herself through this mindfulness. Being-with is built up of this being-mindful-of-one-another: and has various possible ways to "follow", to go along with and among its privative modes, not-minding, resisting, defying, turning away.

{SZ 161} Discourse is constitutive for Dasein's existence insofar as its existence is the existential constitution of the disclosedness of Dasein. To discursive speech [redenden Sprechen] there belong the possibilities of hearing [minding, Hören] and keeping silent…

comporting [behaving, sich verhalten], circumspecting, and volition.

Suppose that what Husserl calls acts of the ego — in contrast to experiences in which the ego is passive, where no ego interest is awakened so that she does not busy herself with what is experienced — are in Heidegger's terms ways in which Dasein comports itself. All of Dasein's ways of comporting itself would then be practical, would be volitions. For any Dasein, its inital way of comporting itself would be circumspection, striving; conation [Tun?] is then the initial form of volition in the existence of any Dasein, but is by no means its only form.

In that case, all forms of volition would be forms of interpretation or explication in the terms of BT; they would be ways of understanding distinguished by an individual structure exemplifying a certain formal universal. All of them would be, for example, ways of understanding through which something understood gets understood as such and such.

It would remain an open question, however, whether all forms of interpretation are forms of volition. In particular, the possibility would remain open that some forms of circumspecting are not only pre-predicative and even pre-categorial but are non-voluntary, are passive strivings.

All assertion, all apophantic interpretation, judgment in all of its forms would be volitional, would be praxis. Asserting (stating, judging) is a kind of interpretation through which categorial forms, in particular, predicative forms are constituted (disclosed) for Dasein. Although judging objectivates that to which it gives categorial forms, it does not objectivate these categorial forms themselves. To objectivate these forms requires a further act, one interpreting not the objects previously judged about in the previous act but the logical form of the syntactically formed state of affairs constituted (brought to the fore? disclosed?) by that previous act of judging. The acts through which logical form is originally constituted (given, there for the ego) are never acts through which the constituted logical form is objectivated.

Analogously, circumspective interpretation will have, in all of its instances, certain kinds of traits; one of these will be that it is an understanding which constitutes <discloses?> ends and means, contexts of involvements for Dasein without objectivating them. Only through circumspection can utility or serviceability for a purpose be originally given. A consciousness which objectivates the serviceability of, say, the airplane on the runway as a value-property of the thing will be a consciousness from which what the airplane is as equipment and how it is equipment is concealed {Heidegger, QCT(L) 17}.

copula.

{BP Chapter Four, also 215} Even if the copula is indifferent as to the meaning of being of what the assertion is about, still the assertion itself does not signify just "being in general" but some entity in its unveiledness so that the alleged state of affairs (the syntactically-formed-state-of-affairs) includes (entails) how the entity or state of affairs would be given. The copula expresses the being-true of the assertion <syntactically-formed-state-of-affairs>. The question remains: Does this entailment entail at the same time the way the state of affairs is to be unveiled <and along with it the way what the assertion is about, i.e., the state of affairs, is or would be regardless of syntactical formation?>

creating, creative [Schöpfen, schöpferisch]. See art works; truth, works, and the sense in which they ought to be (i.e., merit being
tended).

Da-. See disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit]; gigantic (the) [Riesenhafte; better 'the Great'?]; world and openness of being; temporal ecstases, authentic and inauthentic.

{SZ 132f.} The entity which is essentially constituted by being-in-the-world is itself in every case its 'there [da]'. The expression 'Da' refers to the essential disclosedness of Dasein whereby Dasein is for herself 'there' at one with the Da-sein of world. The there is cleared (is clearing). Dasein understands herself and her world in the unity of the there. Figurative talk of the lumen naturale in persons refers to nothing other than the existential-ontological structure of this entity that is in such a way as to be her 'there.' Talk of her being illuminated means that as being-in-the-world she is cleared in herself, not through any other entity, but in such a way that she is herself the clearing. By her nature Dasein brings her 'there' along with her. Lacking her there, she would not be Dasein at all. Dasein is its disclosedness.

{SZ 175} The way in which everyday Dasein is its "there" is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity.

{BP 72} We distinguish not only terminologically but also for reasons of intrinsic content between the uncoveredness of a being and the disclosedness of its being.

See Nietzsche's saying {Der Antichrist §55} that is very fine if it be read with great care and with this emphasis, «"Die Wahrheit ist da" bedeutet, wo nur es laut wirt, "der Priester lügt…"» {From an eemail of 13 November 2004 to MKS}

danger (the). See assertion, allegation.

Is the danger that of interpreting Dasein's own way of being as if it were being within the world, either in the sense of being ready to hand or in the sense of being present at hand?

If entities are misunderstood to be, in their being, merely present at hand, as if readiness to hand were a status conferred upon them by Dasein then setting up [Gestell] is misinterpreted as conferring value upon what as such is <at least so far as anyone could tell> valueless. Then it is overlooked that Dasein is being called not to make entities be of value but to reveal equipment, serviceability, towards-which, in-order-to, standing reserve, etc.

The danger in that case is primarily that Dasein misinterpret its way of being, never recognizing that it entails being called upon to bring to the fore possibilities that call upon her to care or to be concerned for them.

The danger of failing to acknowledge this aspect of her way of being is all the greater if, as a striving, circumspection does not objectivate the context of involvements that it, normally, explicates simply with regard to which of Dasein's purposes the entities encountered can be used for, made to serve. Circumspecting itself will never correct the errors made by thinking when thinking interprets what is as if 'to be' meant merely 'to be present at hand.'

The task for thinking here should perhaps not be stated as if it were to alter or to transform the essence of setting-up. 'Affected' is not the translation needed for "the genuine threat" involved in what is going on between the essence of technics and the essence <Dasein> of humanity. <Heidegger's verb here [angehen] seems in this context to mean either "to be drawn" or "to attract" or "to attack."> Under the sway of setting-up, Dasein is under the threat of the possibility that humanity fail to enter upon a more original revealing and so fail to experience a more primordial truth <a more adequate interpretation of circumspection as a way of being-in?>.

Dasein. See Nothing (the) and anxiety; Nothing (the) and the turning; {WIM 10, G9 113}; Da-; disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; humanity [Mensch], essence of; existence [Existenz]; sexuality, Dasein's; understanding of being [Seinsverständnis]; temporality, Dasein's, continuity of.

I'm afraid I have misled many of my students by emphasizing (as a way of disabusing them of the once common misinterpretation which insisted that Heidegger was not a transcendentalist) the assertion that Dasein makes herself be in the world. What is most misleading about that is the suggestion it carries that the entity who is Dasein is in the world at all through some choice whereby an entity that was not in the world made being in the world its end. That would make Heidegger's thought voluntaristic [Augustine, Fichte, Goethe, Schelling, Schopenhauer, James (and Nietzsche?)] which it is not, so far as I can make out. I myself want to use the terms 'active' (or 'actional' or 'exigent') and 'passive' in such a way that either actional or non-actional consciousness is essentially spontaneous, where 'spontaneous' and 'inert' are opposites that really do exclude one another. There are degrees of actionality or of passivity but not of inertness. Any entity whose way of being requires continuous identifying synthesis is an entity whose being is spontaneous and who is made, in a conditional and finite way, to be in the world through continuous identifying synthesis. This seems to agree with the way 'active', 'activity', and 'passive' were used by both Descartes and Berkeley.

UNITY OF DASEIN
{BT 356, SZ 390}. The question of how Dasein acquires unity of her lived experiences is misguided. The relevant question is rather: in which of her own kinds of being does she lose herself in such a way that she must, as it were, pull herself together only subsequently out of her dispersion, and think up for herself a unity in which this together is embraced?

FINITUDE OF DASEIN
{G3 m206–07} The finitude of the Dasein in humanity is more original than is humanity itself. Humanity is the There [Da-] on the grounds of understanding being. Along with the There, the break occurs, i.e., there occurs the break that opens up into what is; this occurs in such a way that entities can manifest themselves as such for a self: reveal themselves in varying extensions, varying levels of clarity, varying degrees of certainty, reveal themselves, that is to say, as entities[17]. To be the locus for such breaking-in is a prerogative for the existent entity. Such entities are preeminent in that they are not merely extant in the midst of other entities without there being any revelation of being in the midst of entities as such.

Existence, as a particular type of being, is in itself finitude and is possible as finitude only on the grounds of understanding of being. Anything like being is — and must be — given only wherever finitude has become existent. Thus, understanding of being reveals itself to be the innermost ground of human finitude, of the finitude of the Dasein that is through any and every human being. The originality of understanding-of-being (of this innermost ground of Dasein's finitude) is the "universality" of understanding-of-being. Implicit in the prerogative, to exist, is the condition that the existent requires understanding-of-being.

A human being would not be able to be the thrown entity as a Self if she could not at all let what-is be as an entity. However, the existent entity must have so projected whatever is encountered that it is an entity if she is to let any entity be, be what, and be as it is. To exist means to be assigned [Angewiesenheit] {see Nothing (the) and the turning} to entities as an entity: assigned, that is, to being turned over through the way she is to entities and to being herself the locus among entities where responsibility for entities occurs.

Granted that Dasein grounds her potentialities insofar as they are her projects; still, never lose sight of the grounding's being conditional and finite. As usual, it's all by no means simple. Dasein's caring and choices and understanding and all that — her ways of "making" herself be in the world — are together only necessary conditions (at most) for her being in the world, not sufficient. This is an aspect of Dasein's finitude (and insubstantiality). All of this ties in with (let's not forget what is perhaps derivative but is nevertheless obvious — and about as simple as any of this gets) her being a thrown project. So she is spontaneous (self-generating, opposite of being inert) without being self-sufficient: self-grounding perhaps, but only very conditionally or contingently so.

{G3 207} If any human is human only on the ground of the Dasein that is through her then the issue concerning that which is more original than humanity is, as a matter of principle, no anthropological issue. All anthropology, including the philosophical, is bound to have posited the human in advance as human. The problem about the foundation of metaphysics is rooted in the issue concerning the Dasein in humans, i.e., the issue concerning her inmost grounds, concerning the understanding-of-being as finitude that is essentially existent. What this question asks about Dasein is, What is the essence of the entity who is to be defined in this way? In so far as Dasein's essence is implicit in existence, the issue about the essence of Dasein in the existential issue. But then every questioning about the being of any entity, and particularly the question about the being of that entity to the composition of whose being there belongs finitude as understanding-of-being, is metaphysics. Accordingly, the foundation of metaphysics is grounded in a metaphysics of Dasein. Kant, in whose philosophizing the problem of the possibility of metaphysics was awakened as never before nor since would have to have understood his inmost will all-too-little had this connection not been clear to him. In 1781 following completion of the Critique of Pure Reason, he wrote, "This sort of investigation will always be difficult. For it includes the metaphysics of metaphysics…{WW (Cass.) IX p. 198}"

DASEIN AND THE NOTHING
{G9 113 (m10)} Dasein means being held into the Nothing. Heidegger remarks in the margin of the first (1929) edition: "(1) but not merely that (2) but from this it is not to be inferred that everything is nothing but is rather, to the contrary, to acknowledge and to be receptive to what-is. Being and finitude."

{ibid. 15} Dasein's being held on the basis of concealed anxiety into the Nothing is what makes a human being the entity that holds a place open[11] for the Nothing [macht dem Menschen zum Platzhalter des Nichts]. We are so finite that we are unable to bring the Nothing before us in an original way. Being made finite [Verendlichung] is so entrenched in Dasein that the most proper and profoundest finitude [Verendlichung] is beyond the reach of our freedom. <In Heidegger's use of Verendlichung, is there a deliberate reference to verenden, to die: a reference to the fact that Dasein cannot, despite its inability to assure its continuation, assure its termination?>

{WIM113 ff. (m11 f.); BW 105 f.; PM 89 f.} The original openness of any entity at all as an entity — the state of affairs that it is a being and not nothing — arises only through the bright[12] night of the Nothing…The essence of the originally nihilating Nothing is that it alone brings Da-sein before a being as a being. <In the margin of his fifth (1949) edition copy, Heidegger remarked: genuinely (eigens) before Being of the being, before the difference.

DASEIN AS TRANSCENDENTAL EGO AND AS SEXED PERSON
{See the entry "sexuality, Dasein's", and my UKBDP and UAJWP, TIIS and TEBW. The rest of this entry is taken from an eemessage to MKS.}

I'm going to assume — as I myself think can be safely done — that Heidegger's views on these subjects would be quite like Husserl's despite the vocabulary differences. If lingualists consider that impossible, so much the worse for them; they hardly count. I tend to use 'Dasein' and 'ego' interchangeably. I have at least once been taken to task for attributing gender to the transcendental ego. The fact is, however, that there is for each monad only one ego. The so-called mundane ego, the ego in the world, is the transcendental ego (Dasein) insofar as she makes herself be in the world, as she must do if she is to be at all, on my interpretation. Some other sort of ego there is none.

I agree with Heidegger that Dasein has been in the world for a longish time and has been living with others through making choices either all or almost all of that time before she notices that she is in the world: a fact familiar under the heading Thrownness. Dasein lives as the They Self all this while, and Dasein's interpretation of her gender is that acquired from They. So Dasein might well be raised female for years before finding out (mostly also from They) that others disagree with this interpretation. That happened to Rilke, did it not?

Rilke was raised by his mother as a girl until the approach of school age; she even referred to him when using third person as sie rather than as er. Parts of this account are confirmed by Donald Prater in A Ringing Glass and by Claude David {David 196–97}. His mother had lost a daughter in childbirth and may have sought an Ersatz daughter. Be that as it may, it is quite conceivable that such a thing happen, even if the whole of it didn't happen to Rilke. It is possible that a male child be raised as if a female and so consistently as not to recognize that he is other than female. That state of affairs can be imagined, and one can quite vividly imagine empathizing with such a Mitdasein. In the child's self-interpretation, the traits attributed to self would be intended (quite "inauthentically") as feminine. Dasein would take himself, body and all, to be feminine and would probably think boys to be less like Dasein than girls are.

If and when disabused of this self interpretation then Dasein would (normally, anyway) cease to interpret himself as feminine (or would anyhow cease to interpret himself as feminine sexed, but I'm going to leave the whole sex-gender thing out here so far as possible). >From then on Dasein would interpret himself as male. Dasein's abiding self-interpretation (the ego's habitual belief about himself) would have changed in this respect. His former, now cancelled <aufgehobene?>, self-interpretation would still be retended along with the acts of "feminine" self-interpretation that actually took place and the formerly accepted "feminine" Dasein. Included with his retended former intending of himself[13] will be retentive consciousness of the ways he made himself be in the world corporeally back then, and the body through which he then belonged to the world will now be interpreted — quite correctly, given the example being feigned — to be the selfsame body through which he now belongs to the world. That body that was disclosed even then to Dasein's pre-interpretative understanding can now be <quite correctly> explicated as having been male all along. And this self-interpretation will now belong to the ego as an abiding belief concerning himself (Heidegger: will now belong to Dasein's Vorhabe).

{MAL (G26) 171–76; Heidegger, G2 136–39} Now, however there are the notions of "dissemination [Zerstreuung]" on the one hand and "dispersion/division [Zersplitterung/Zerspaltung]" on the other to be dealt with. I quite agree that these terms are dangerously suggestive. To me they suggest some sort of neo-neo-Platonic conception that the inferior and non-substantial emanates from the substantial, a terrible way of misunderstanding the relation between universals [here, the neutral] and individuals [here, existents]. Can an individual emanate from a universal without having first been included in the universal? And how could a temporal and individual entity be included in an entity outside time? I'd want to respond, "It can't," to both questions. If that's the best that could be done then I'd prefer the very negative characterization that the relation of exemplification or instantiation is in kind unlike any other, a relation sui generis. Still, there's an impulse and a requirement to strive to make the relation more explicit.

As you would expect, I'm seeking a way of reading this that doesn't involve any substantial entity at all. There seems to be a very strong reference to Plato if, as I want to do, Zerstreuung is taken reflexively rather than transitively. The translator obscures this by rendering it transitively so that Dasein's being zerstreut would be something done to Dasein and not by itself. But in its transitive use, zerstreuen is a synonym for dispersion and division. Heidegger, however, pretty clearly <certainly not as clearly as he should have made it> wants to distinguish between Zerstreuung and Zersplitterung/Zerspaltung. Used intransitively or reflexively, to be zerstreut means to be distracted and confused, heedless, distraught, fascinated, anxious, or troubled, besorgt.

And when used reflexively and adjectivally or adverbially it even means sometimes "to find oneself individuated, exceptional, unique {Pekrun 867} (other than neutral Dasein and other than They?)".

What Heidegger calls They is his version of what idealists and hermeneuts term Objective Spirit. I am reading Heidegger here to say that the term refers only as something like a proper name to a universal, to a "neutral" They that speaks, e.g., neither Chinese nor English nor any other language, a They having no existent members, to They universally. As proper name for a universal, what 'They' refers to is a universal all of whose instances are necessarily groups of persons whose members speak some language; the universal, however, speaks not at all. The historicist concept takes the "universal" to be identical with a class of actual entities who are members of a more or less inclusive group (family, socioeconomic class, nation <gender?>), and it acknowledges non-actual members only in the sense of members who will be but are not yet actual; these and only these are acknowledged to be "really possible". The position of Heidegger, as I am reading him, and of Hartmann is that such social classes are not "ideal" or "eidetic" entities in any proper sense of those words; they are universal only in that they include all actual entities of a certain class. Each They is an object that is not at all eidetic but is an actual group of actual persons; in Heidegger's terms these are existent but are existent insofar as they interpret themselves in a certain way. <Heidegger probably thought of this interpretation as a misinterpretation of the relevant existent entities as if they were entities within the world. However, it seems likely that he thought of this as a truth about factual They-selves rather than as an eidetic necessity.> What Husserl referred to as "personalities of a higher order" are objects of this sort.

The monad is the flux or stream of consciousness taken together with the ego who is its unity. The flux is said to be constituted  through transcendental functions by the transcendental ego. <Here, 'to be constituted' means "to be generated" as well as "to be there for Dasein (the ego)". The phrase often carries only the latter connotation.> The transcendental ego identifies herself automatically as the unity of the flux of mental processes which is there for the ego through the consciousness of "internal time". The ego thus identifies herself with what she generates or constitutes and so makes herself be in time, intending herself to exist at the present moment, intending herself as belonging to her "constituted" noematic correlate. In doing so she also identifies herself with the body that is automatically constituted for her. The fields and flux of sensory and kinesthetic and cœnæsthetic data belong to her body and  are constituted for the ego through the same synthetic functions (syntheses of identification, differentiation, and association) through which she makes herself be in time. So she makes herself be bodily as well as temporal. <Do not misread the term "data" here; the data are conceived holistically, in terms of field theory, not atomistically, the atomistic conception being a virtual paradigm for the utterly inert, the merely present, the eidetic.>. For a great long time, people (including phenomenologists as well as other Husserl opponents) tried to make out that all this implied that there is a multiplicity of egos: at least two (the transcendental and the mundane or worldly), sometimes more. That — I am saying (along with Cairns and anyone else with any sense at all, hence along with very few) — has all been nonsense; there is only one ego involved in any self (monad) and that ego is transcendental. (It is nonsense even when the ego makes herself be in the world through two or more relatively distinct personalities.) And when I was taken to task for thinking the transcendental ego sexed, I was rightly saying that any transcendental ego is sexed insofar as she makes herself be bodily through[14] a body that is male or one that is female. Transcendental egos are — or the known ones anyhow are — often male and often female, but transcendental egos are conceivable who would be neither. And the eidos "tranzendentale Ich überhaupt [transcendental ego universally]" is and can be neither male nor female nor some bodily entity that is neither male nor female. But any transcendental ego must make herself bodily and must (near as I can make out) do so through a body that will be either one of these three sorts or else both male and female (fairly rare but not unknown). It's my guess that the "transcendental instantiation" [the English trn. uses 'dissemination'] that is referred to in Guiding Principle 7 {G2 138} admits of any of these four possibilities, depending upon the individual and unique thrownness whereby Dasein is in fact characterized. Makes a kind of sense, gel?

To constitute herself as temporal and as bodily in the manner outlined in the preceding paragraph is distinctive of Dasein (the transcendental ego). Dasein's body is thus distinguished from all other bodies: other bodies are not shown to Dasein's understanding making themselves be temporal, worldly, bodily; they are entities that do not show themselves to be Dasein-like. And those that are nevertheless understood to be Dasein-like and so to make themselves be temporal, bodily, in-the-world are disclosed to Dasein in such a way that their making themselves to be in the world is not a sufficient condition for Dasein's being-in-the-world. Dasein's own making herself be in the world is disclosed to Dasein to be a necessary condition for her being-in-the-world. Her making herself be in the world (temporally, bodily, etc.) differentiates her way to belong to the world (its way to be) from the ways entities that are present or are ready belong to the world. These latter sorts of entities are the one ones said to be within-the-world.

What — besides the negative circumstance of their not showing to Dasein the fact that they make themselves be in the world — differentiates Dasein from other Dasein? Dasein and other Dasein are the instances, the existents to which neutral Dasein is "disseminated". This certainly does involve spatio-temporal relations as is commonly thought. But it involves them as they are involved in Dasein's strivings.

dealings, to deal [MR; Umgang, umgehen; commerce H]; to deal [umgehen].

{GP (G24) 431, BP 303 f.} Heidegger does not conceive of dealing with things as generating much less as creating contexts of functionality or involvement. Instead he writes that dealings make the context of equipment accessible, as one would expect since he conceives dealing with things to be a form of explication (interpretation). In Husserl's terms, dealings constitute such contexts for the ego, but they cannot objectivate what they thus constitute.

death, being towards. See Absurd (Husserl).

Heidegger was probably not trying to emphasize issues about the individuality of Dasein when he wrote that the occurrence of death is uncertain as to its when but certain as to its that. Sartre was right to say that Dasein cannot experience her own death. Heidegger did not, however, dissent from that claim and had, I think, no need to do so. No potential and, therefore, future experience can be experienced before its time, and 'death' in 'being toward death' is so conceived that it could not be experienced (by Dasein) if it does eventuate. Even events that are familiar in kind cannot be experienced in anticipation. Each of your potentialities is essentially the negation of its co-projected alternative(s), and death is, for Heidegger, the necessary counterpart to being-in-the-world since Dasein projects further being in the world to be a potentiality, and one that is projected as all potentialities are, namely problematically. The entity whom death, as the term is used here, would annihilate is Dasein, and this entity will be individual and unique whenever her ownmost potentiality eventuates. I'm inclined to think that the individuality of Dasein's death is, for Heidegger, a function of the individuality of those potentialities that she would be the negation of. Trivial or not, your body with its kinesthetic sensations will have to change in order for you to blow your nose.

So it might be more accurate to say that death receives individuality from care. To-have -been-in-the-world-(facticity)-through-individual-and-unique-comportments-that-have-occurred belongs to Dasein's self understanding. Thus Dasein's projected potentialities are projected to be individual and unique occurrences. There is no paradox involved in its being existentially true (i.e., true of any possible Dasein) that every comportment of Dasein (and every other actual occurrence as well) is individual and unique. Whatever else is true of them, Dasein's future comportments would include in their facticity Dasein's now past comportments.

Try thinking this way: that Dasein understands her being does not mean just that she interprets her being but also that she understands her being pre-interpretively (pre-objectively), including her affects and her speaking with whatever is revealed through them. So, she understands only through feeling the being toward death which the affect reveals; that is revealed only affectively and so is revealed without being objectivated, and she does so regardless of whether or of how she interprets her ownmost potentiality. A further understanding through which what is thus revealed might be interpreted is possible but need not happen in order for being toward death to be revealed or concealed interpretatively.

desever, to distance [Ent-fernung].

Ent-fernung is one of Dasein's ways of being with regard to her being-in-the-world; it is not to be understood as nearness [Entferntheit (Nähe)] much less as distance [Abstand]. The term is used in an active and transitive way. It denotes a Seinsverfassung of Dasein in respect to which activities like putting away and removing [Entfernen=in die Ferne bringen, to place at a distance] are only factual modes. Entfernen is nearing [Näherung], making distance, i.e., the something's remoteness, disappear. Dasein is essentially de-severing, approaching. As the being who she is, Dasein ever lets <some> be met close to her into the Near [es läβt als das Seiende, das es ist, je Seiendes in die Nähe begegnen]. Desevering uncovers distantness. Distantness is, like interval [Abstand], a categorial determination of beings unlike Dasein. < Does this mean that interval and distantness are reciprocal relations so that if x is distant from y then y is distant from x whereas Dasein's de-severing y does not entail a reciprocal de-severing of Dasein? What is at issue here?  Isn't Heidegger thinking of the distant as something such that to be used as means is alien to its nature? And so thinking that Dasein is something such that to be useful is alien to its nature? So isn't his misunderstanding of Kant's moral theory behind this rather forced notion on Ent-fernung?> Dissevering, in contrast, must be grasped as an existential. It occurs only insofar as any being at all occurs, for Dasein, uncovered in its distantness that distances, and intervals become accessible in what, of itself, is within-the-world. Two points are as little distanced from one another as are any two things at all, because, on account of the way they are, none of these beings can distance. They have only an interval that can be found and measured. {SZ 105}

disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]. See Da-; earth [Erde]; perceiving, perception; uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit]; unveiling [Enthüllen]; truth and being [Sein]; logic.

{SZ, BT m148} As existentials, affectivity and understanding are the characteristics of the original disclosedness of being-in-the-world.

{SZ, BT m220} Heidegger writes, "Being true as uncovering [Entdeckendsein] is a way in which Dasein is. That through which this uncovering is made possible must necessarily be called 'true' in a still more original sense." And he continues, "The most original foundations of uncovering herself are shown only by the existential-ontological foundations, even for uncovering". And {220-221}"There is disclosedness with and through [care], so that the most original phenomenon of truth is reached only with the disclosedness of Dasein." Disclosedness is the basic kind of Dasein, whereby she is her there. Disclosedness is constituted through affectivity, understanding, and discourse.

The uncoveredness of the innerworldly beings is grounded in the disclosedness of the world. However, disclosedness is the basic character [Grundart, basic way] whereby Dasein is its there…and disclosedness is constituted through all of Dasein's ways of being-in: affectivity, discourse, as well as all the ways in which understanding occurs. What is disclosed is three-fold: 1) world, 2) being-in, 3) the self; these three are said to be disclosed equiprimordially. Their three-fold equiprimordial disclosedness is the ground for being-true when the true is discovered and this three-fold structure makes uncovering possible, and uncovering as a way in which truth occurs makes it true that this self-same entity within-the-world is true in yet a third sense: it is discovered to be within-the-world as (hence apophantically) the entity is.

<It's tempting to think that anything discovered is an innerworldly being (and so is either ready or extant), but, although that is very likely to be involved in what Heidegger meant, I'd leave that an open question for now. Notice that when Stambaugh translates {SZ 218}, "To say that a statement is true means that it discovers the beings in themselves," she makes it seem that whatever statements are evidently true are so by uncovering something; so that 'heing evident' would be equivalent to 'being discovered'. This would mean (misleadingly and disastrously) that no statements are evident by what they disclose. It is made to seem as if Heidegger held that whatever is understood to be disclosed is interpreted (if at all then) as if it were innerworldly But Heidegger's wording used the definite article and said something more like:

What "the statement" refers to is the example employed in Heidegger's previous paragraph, a statement about a real thing (picture) that is indeed an innerworldly being rather than an entity whose temporality excludes the possibility that it have constituents that could be perfectly like constituents of some other entity and one that could be at most only partially given (hence an entity such that evidence can only confirm what is stated, even though the evidence does show the subject of the statement to be identical with what is given). So Heidegger's wording did not say that what holds for this statement (to be true means to discover) also holds for all statements. Moreover, the phrase clearly refers not to the proposition but to the asserting of the proposition, for Heidegger writes {SZ 220}, "Being true as uncovering [Entdeckendsein] is a way in which Dasein is. That through which this uncovering is made possible must necessarily be called "true" in a still more original sense." And he continues, "The most original foundations of uncovering itself are shown only by the existential-ontological foundations for uncovering itself" and "There is disclosedness with and through [care], so that the most original phenomenon of truth is reached only with the disclosedness of Dasein {SZ 220 f.}." Nowhere has he implied that statements about what care discloses necessarily conceal it or that they are bound to state it as if it were something innerworldly. On the contrary, he asserts that "The <ancient Greek> 'definition' of the truth as discoveredness and uncovering…grows out of the analysis of those of Dasein's ways of behaving that we are in the first place accustomed to calling 'true'".

It is quite appalling how eager many of Heidegger's translators and virtually all of his followers and commentators  are to deceive themselves or their readers. The deception enables them to introduce into his doctrine a crock of drivel dredged up from Kantian, romantic, existential, vitalistic, positivist, and pragmatic epistemologies. {See my MH?}>

Disclosedness (not discoveredness) is the most original phenomenon of truth. In and through essentially being its disclosedness, and as being therein disclosed, Dasein both discloses <the three-fold as above> and discovers.

Every disclosure of being as disclosure of transcendence is transcendental cognition. The phenomenon of truth is veritas transcendentalis. {SZ 38}

{GP (G24) 161 f. (m161 in E)} Discourse co-constitutes being-in-the-world's disclosedness and is in its own structure pre-structured by disclosedness as the basic constitution of Dasein…

{ibid. 307f.} …Disclosing is the mode in which the entity that we ourselves are, the entity that exists as does Dasein [daseiend ist], is unveiled [MR revealed].

{ibid. 72} We distinguish not only terminologically but also for reasons of intrinsic content between the uncoveredness of a being and the disclosedness of its being. The unveiling of the being that we ourselves are, the Dasein, and that has existence as its mode of being, we shall call not uncovering but disclosure, opening up… {ibid. 215}

{ibid. 102} A being can be uncovered, whether by way of perception or some other mode of access, only if the being of this being is already disclosed — only when I understand it. <Heidegger's use of the present tense here is of great importance. it indicates that he does not subscribe to the common view that preconceptual understanding cannot be explicated "in process."> Only on that condition can I ask whether it is or is not actual and set about in any way at all to ascertain its actuality. The relationship between uncoveredness of an entity and the disclosedness of its being must now be demonstrated more precisely, and it must be shown how the disclosedness (unveiledness) of being is founded, i.e., gives the grounding, the basis, for the possibility of the uncoveredness of beings. Put differently, the difference between uncoveredness and disclosedness must be grasped conceptually and their difference but also their possible unity must be conceived as possible and necessary. This involves the possibility of grasping the difference between the entity that is uncovered through uncoveredness and the being that is disclosed through disclosedness, i.e., of fixing the difference between being and beings, the ontological difference.

discourse.  See accounting, to count, to take account of [ Rede, talk MR, discourse MR, S. R: logos, articulatedness speech].

dissemination. See Dasein.

distress, distraction [sich zerstreuen, Zerstreuung; MH dissemination]. Distrait? Distraught? Distraction? Diversion?] See Dasein; falling [MR, Fallen].

dread. See anxiety.

earth [Erde]. See being [Sein]; Open, openness; disclosing, disclosedness; truth, unconcealing and_concealing, world and earth. <And compare the way Heidegger conceives the region he calls "earth" with Husserl's way of conceiving the region of material things. A material thing would be an object of which it is necessarily the case that it cannot be given adequately. Essentially, the thing's manner of givenness is such that it cannot possibly be given adequately. The thing's manner of givenness is not an accidental trait but is rather as essential to the thing as is, e.g., its shape. Things thus refer by their nature to ways in which they can be given to consciousness, ways in which they can show themselves to Dasein.>

{G5 (UDK) 33 (m36); PLT 47; BW 171} The earth shows itself only when she remains unrevealed and unexplained. The earth makes every attempt at penetration into her glance off…Cleared openly as she herself, the earth appears only where she is preserved and acknowledged to be the essentially undisclosable, to be what withdraws before all disclosure, and that means that she keeps herself ever closed. All earthly things and earth herself as a whole flow away in single varying harmony. The flowing away is no washing away <as when something that could otherwise be there is washed away by a current>. The stream that flows here is the flow, grounded in itself, of delimitation whereby each coming to presence is limited in its coming to presence. Thus is the same unknowing [das gleiche Sich-nicht-Kennen] occurs through every self-closing thing. <Any attempt to know what an earthly thing is "in itself" is a category error. Locke's formulation for what a thing is as substance is something like a paradigm for this category error. There is here not anything at all to be known. The thing is a union of variable temporal traits: that they will never all be disclosed is no ground for the conceit that there is a something which the traits conceal. This does not seem to imply that earth cannot be objectivated: the truth about it is that it harbors no further truth than that it is a union of traits. In Husserl's terms it is individual form {see Jordan, TFA} , spatio-temporal unity, and not anything at all other than unity of its traits; moreover, the same is true of each of its traits.> To institute the earth [die Erde Her-stellen] means: to bring the earth into the open as that which closes itself off. To do so is not to generate some representation or misrepresentation but to attend to and to interpret a state of affairs in its truth.

The work accomplishes this institution [Herstellung] by putting itself back into the earth. The earth's closing itself off is no uniform, rigid getting-stuck-on [Verhangenbleiben]; on the contrary, the closing itself unfolds into an inexhaustible fullness of simple modes and structures [Gestalten]…

No work-material essentiates anywhere in the work. It is even doubtful that, in explicating the essence of equipment, what the equipment is made of in its equipmental being [Wesen] is aptly designated as "stuff".

To establish a world and to institute the earth are two basic traits in the work's being-work [Werksein]. They belong together within the unity of being-work. This unity is what we seek when we think of how the work stands in itself and try to state that closedly unitary repose that characterizes the work's self-groundedness [Aufsichberuhens]. The self-groundedness does not involve being somehow entirely "self-caused". The work needs the artist if it is to be made at all. Its self-groundedness has to do instead with the work's eliciting what the artist will do in order that it be made. That the work draws the artist to do this has to do with the analog (in ποίησις as eventuating in the art work) of the τέλος involved in the occurrence of τέχνη {see QCT ¶14}; it has to do with that whereby the artist is drawn to take part in φύσις so that the work be completed {cf. QCT ¶ 23}. The work begins to affect mortals by affecting the artist by whose accord it is completed and so begins to affect further events in the occurring of a people, a civilization.

existence [Existenz]. See Da-; finitude of Dasein; humanity [Mensch], essence of; Nothing (the) and the turning.

{Heidegger, G3 m206; KPM 190–91} A human being is an entity that is in the midst of entities to such a degree that, in being amongst them, entities that she is not as well as the entity that she is always manifest to her together antecedaneously. This sort of being that humans possess, we call "existence". Existence is possible only on the ground of understanding-of-being.

In her behavior toward entities that she herself is not she finds such entities — which attend her and toward which she is directed — to have been there already confronting her: she can, fundamentally, never come to have mastery over them fundamentally, despite the whole of culture and technology… See "finitude of Dasein.

experience [Erfahrung]

{UZS 169–70); WL 66–67}. In its precise meaning, experience is eundo assequi: by going, to attain to something along the way, to attain to something through going a way [im Gehen, unterwegs etwas erlangen, es durch dem Gang auf einem Weg erreichen].

{UZS 169} To what does the poet attain through her experience of the word, her experience of the way the word is related to things? <Here, the word 'thing' means any Something, no matter what, that is in any way at all; so that even any god at all is a thing. Heidegger's meaning here is almost certainly that x is a thing so long as any true statement could possibly be made about x. Then, 'thing' would have the same reference as Husserl's 'object', the absolutely all-inclusive reference, and part of what Heidegger is projectively saying about things in relation to language is that no thing's potentialities could all of them be fulfilled unless the thing be spoken of and questioned, i.e., unless there be projective saying concerning it {UZS 164}.> Not to any mere knowledge [cognition, Kenntnis] She comes, through it, into the relationship between word and thing. This relationship is the word itself; each word includes the thing in such a way that it "is" a thing. Something presents itself to the poet, something striking transforms her relationship to Words.

The primal meaning <intent> of what is imposed — as lasting and the most sublime and yet as something still withheld. The poet could never undergo the experience that she has of the word if she were not prepared to sorrow, prepared for the feeling of being admitted into the nearness of what is withdrawn albeit prepared as well for what is reserved for an originary emergence.[15] It is an emergence that passes through a landscape <landscape = earth (UZS 205)>. Into that region there belongs the poet's estate <das Land des Dichters> as well as the dwelling of the gray goddess of fate [Norn].

{UZS 161} Scientific and philosophical investigations of speech and of language have their special right and their own importance. They are ready sources of useful stuff to know. However, scientific and philosophical cognition is one thing; experience of language is something else. Whether the attempt to open up for us the possibility of such an experience will be fortunate, and if fortunate, how far it will reach for each individual among us — none of us is in control of that. What's to be done is to show a way that opens up the possibility to experience language. Such ways have long been given. They are only seldom so walked that the possible experience of language comes itself to be spoken. In experiences we have of language, language brings itself to be spoken [zur Sprache]. One might think that that happens all the time in all speech. Only that whenever and however we speak a language that language itself never comes to word. In speaking, many things come to language, above all those that we talk about: a fact, an occurrence, a question, a purpose. We are able to speak a language straightforwardly, able to deal with and about something by speaking, only when language does not bring itself to being spoken but keeps to itself instead.

extant, present-at-hand [vorhanden]. See perceiving, perception; praesens [Praesenz].

Insofar as entities have traditionally been thought of as "Things," they have been conceived as present-at-hand. So, all entities thought of as Things are thought of as being-present-at-hand; but this cannot be converted.

falling [MR, Fallen]. See striving [Streben] and strivingly-to-be [Erstreben], striving-to-be [Erstrebnis].

Since "falling" is a temporal "ecstasis," it is an existential: if there be any Dasein at all then Dasein falls. So, it would seem that falling cannot be a sufficient condition for any trait that would distinguish Dasein in one epoch from Dasein in another epoch. What distinguishes the epoch of "the world as picture" has to be something other than falling then. I think it is rather a certain way of understanding, more particularly, a way of interpreting. Fallenness and circumspection make inauthentic self-interpretation possible, but they are necessary rather than sufficient conditions for it. The various misconceptions for which Dasein is responsible over the epochs, however fatal they may have been, have not been "fated" in the sense of being inevitable.

Is not falling conceived from Plato's presentation {Phaedrus 248C} of the fate of that charioteer who, distracted by unruly horses, is unable to follow god and to view any of the Truths, who grows heavy, becomes forgetful and evil, loses her wings and falls to earth? {See striving [Streben] and strivingly-to-be [Erstreben], striving-to-be [Erstrebnis].} Dasein can project potentialities only as occurrences of a type or kind, as examples of an eidos. An exigent ought-to-be {in N. Hartmann's sense; see my PEA 181 ff.} is bound to be an event of a required type and cannot be the actual future event or entity. Thus, what Dasein understands in projecting a for-the-sake-of is primarily something ideal. What is required, however, is an instantiation of this eidos, and this requirement refers to Dasein since it is Dasein who would be required to effect the ought-to-do whose occurrence would make the required instantiation more likely. For Dasein to be responsible to the relevant requirement (god?), Dasein must have grounds for understanding that what is required is within her power. In order for the anticipated striving to become being-striving-for through Dasein's commitment, her effort and heeding must be directed away from the eidos and to Dasein as she exists in her factual situation. This is falling.

Falling is not, however, otherwise conceived here in an especially Platonic fashion; the ideal is conceived here neither as the region for the only genuine entities nor as the region for that which is most worthy of care. For Plato and his closer followers, the idea of the Good is the pre-eminent good, is what is good in the pre-eminent sense, is that for whose sake the soul should exist. The soul's proper striving would be to know the good. It would not be to do good.[16] Here, however, the "participation" doctrine and with it the standard way of speaking about "realizing" ideas is rejected as a misinterpretation. Instead, what is required of Dasein is that it promote the chances for being of some instance of an axiotic law, where what is pre-eminently good are the instances.

feeling [Gefühl]. See affectivity; ought to be; moral law (Kant), Heideggers error about.

{GP (G24) 187 f} There are two essential moments in every feeling that are to be kept distinct: 1) feeling as feeling-for something <else> and 2) self-feeling through this having-feeling-for<-something-else>. It is essential to feeling not only that it be feeling for something <else> but that this feeling for something <else> at the same time enable a feeling for the self who is experiencing it and the state of this self, its being in the widest sense. For Kant, 'feeling,' taken in a formally universal way, refers to a mode of the ego's making itself open {see the entry "disclosing, disclosedness"}. In having a feeling about something <else> there lies at the same time in each case a self-feeling and, in self-feeling, a mode of becoming open to itself. The way I become open to myself through feeling is co-determined by that <something else> for which, in the feeling, I have a feeling. Feeling thus turns out to be no simple reflection on oneself but rather feeling oneself through having feeling for something <else>. (What Kant designates as feeling is not what we usually mean by the word in everyday understanding, — i.e., feeling understood as something indefinite, confused, a momentary inkling, etc. — in contrast to conceptually theoretical grasping and self-knowledge.) What is phenomenologically decisive in the phenomenon of feeling is that it directly uncovers and makes accessible what is felt and does so not in the manner of <straightforward?> intuition but in the sense of a direct having-of-oneself.

{ibid. 194} As a nonsensuous feeling, what Kant calls respect for the moral law would be, on the one hand, a feeling for the moral law and, on the other hand, an uncovering of the moral person as such, of the agent's dignity. In respect for the law, I submit to the law regardless of my inclinations, I set myself by it. This is a self-subordination whereby I subject myself to myself as the free self. In this subjection I am as I myself; it is at the same time self-elevation whereby I make myself open in my ownmost dignity. Respect is feeling but is at the same time willing to submit to the law and willing to be free and responsible. In it, the agent's existence becomes manifest, not in the sense that the agent takes cognizance of it but in the sense that the agent is, viz., is acting [ich handle]. Hence, respect for the law means eo ipso to do. The basic structure of respect as Kant understood it has been overlooked by phenomenology. Scheler's criticism of Kantian ethics missed the point entirely. {ibid. 193} Kant has a clear comprehension that the metaphysics of morals presents the ontology of human existence in its analysis of the human person. Moral feeling is the uncovering of human dignity; through respect, through moral action, the person makes herself. {ibid. 195. Cites Kritik der praktischen Vernunft in Werke (Cassirer), vol. 5, p. 107. (See Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and other Writings in Moral Philosophy, tr. and ed. by Lewis White Beck; Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949, p. 203.)} The genuine ontological meaning of the moral person is: the moral person exists as her own end; she is herself an end. Until the being of persons as objective ends is made explicit, the genuine ground for the differentiation between persons and things, subject and object, res cogitans and res extensa has not become distinct. <As presented here what Heidegger writes is quite acceptable, but there are grounds for thinking that the error he makes about Kant's conception of the moral law lead him astray in formulating several of his own concepts. {See the entry "moral law (Kant), Heideggers error about".}>

for-the-sake-of [Umwillen]. See freedom. <The concluding sections of MGL (e=MFL), a lecture course from summer semester of 1928, show that Heidegger's use there of 'umwillen' was already quite strongly and deliberately affected by analogies with Nietzsche's use of 'umwerten' and 'Umwertung' — a connection that is made much clearer beginning some eight years later in lectures that stem — according to Heidegger writing in the preface to Nietzsche I (1961, p.9) — from the period 1936-1940. Nietzsche's 'Umwertung' is often translated into English as "transvaluation". As he used it 'umwerten' refers to a transformation of all valuation; often and quite ridiculously this is read as if he really intended to help bring about a reversal of all valuations so that what formerly was taken to be worthy of love would be taken instead to be worthy of hate and vice versa. >

{G26 §11c, 238 ff. (e185 ff.); §§13, 14 and Appendix. The word 'umwillen' is used in these concluding pages of MGL } In the brief Appendix to MAL, titled "Ferne und Nahe [The Remote and the Near]", Heidegger writes, "Der Mensch ist ein Wesen der Ferne! [Any human is a remote being!]"} It seems to turn out that what Dasein is in the world for the sake of [das Umwillen des in-der-Weltseins] is literally a transformation of her willing, one that is primarily a change in how she wills, as well as whatever changes may be called for in what she wills, in case these are distinguishable, as seems unlikely.

In this view, the meaning assigned here to 'Umwillen' might be constructed by analogy to 'Umwerten' as that term is employed by Nietzsche. In Nietzsche's ASZ, a coming form of humanity, Übermensch replaces God as the ultimately sublime and is the "meaning", the ultimate purpose and justification for earth and for human life. God, Zarathustra tells us verily, was a conjecture and beyond anything human will might create; conjecture ought not to extend beyond what the will of humans could conceivably create, ought not to extend beyond that in whose creation one's own will might take part as, for example, "fathers and forefathers" of the Übermenschen. To participate thus in creating the Übermensch is to re-create oneself. This self-regeneration should be one's own best creation {ASZ 343 f., TSZ 197 f.; see III.A below}.

To be such a self-creating self would be to have become the ghost that otherwise runs before <Kaufmann perversely mistranslates, 'after'> one and is more beautiful <and so is to be preferred 'more to be loved'> than the self whose unactualized potentiality it otherwise is. {"Von der Nächstenliebe" in ASZ 324, TSZ 173, 197-198} Afraid of loving this, the proper self, we flee to the love of what is familiar and all-to-human (the nearest) {ibid.}. When solitude makes such a creative self weary then this way of being will begin to seem ghostly; what is genuinely sublime will seem a frightening ghost, and is likely to be declared false, a mere pretense and self-agrandisement. These are feelings that seek to do away with solitude. {TSZ 175, ASZ 326}

{MFL (G26) 245-246 (m in E)} It is an ontological <rather than a moral or an axiotic> principle that for-her-own-sake [Umwillen seiner] belongs to the essence of Dasein. Through its metaphysical neutrality, it says something about the essential constitution of Dasein. Dasein is for-the-sake-of, and in this for-the-sake-of is implicit the ground for the possibility of any existentielle so-far-as-I-am-concerned, whether egoistic or not egoistic, as well as for every so-far-as-she-is-concerned or -he-is-concerned and for every ontic concern. The for-her<-own>-sake has, as constitutive of Dasein's selfhood, universal scope: it is, in other words, the towards-which of Dasein as transcending transcended.

Pursuing the question about transcendence starting out from the problem of the world, we have come by way of the realm of ideas and the ε̉πέκεινα τη̄ς οΰσίας, upon what is, according to Plato beyond these, viz., upon the idea of the good, the ἰδέα τοῡ ̉̉αγαθοῡ. We must learn to see in the idea of the good what both Plato and especially Aristotle call the οΰ ̉ενκα, the for-the-sake-of [Umwillen], that for whose sake there is something.[18  This trait – lying beyond all entity and beyond the realm of ideas – is the trait that genuinely transcends the totality of the ideas and does so in such a way as to organize the whole of them. For-the-sake-of dominates, governs [überragt] the ideas, rules and organizes them in doing so, giving them the form of wholeness, κοινωνία, the form of concurrence and unity. Descrying, through the highest of ideas, οΰ ̉́ενκα there comes to the fore the nexus of the theory of ideas with the world-concept: the basic characteristic of the world. From this, from for-the-sake-of, the whole acquires its specifically transcendental form of organization. As that toward-which Dasein transcends, world is primarily for-the-sake-of.

The nature of a for-the-sake-of is to be there only where there is some willing. Now then, since transcendence forms Dasein's basic constitution, forms being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world must germinate and develop originally with and from the basic trait of Dasein's existence, namely from freedom. Where freedom is given there – and only there – some for-the-sake-of is given; and world is given only there. In short, freedom and Dasein's transcendence are identical. Freedom gives to itself its own inner possibility; necessarily, a free entity is transcending in and of itself.

This for-the-sake-of is to be grasped as metaphysical structure of Dasein, not with regard to the particular egoistic purposing [Zwecksetzung] of some factually existing <Dasein>. In order to understand being-in-the-world as transcendence, we must inquire still more precisely into this for-the-sake-of as metaphysical constitution and basic structure of world.

{MAL (G26) 245-247 (m in E)} The for-the-sake-of is what it is through and for some willing. However, willing here does not mean the existentielle-ontic act but rather the metaphysical essence of willing, its inner possibility: freedom. Any such for-the-sake-of will always have arisen through freedom. The for-the-sake-of's holding itself in the fore [Sichvorhalten] is implicit in the essence of freedom. Freedom itself is the origin of for-the-sake-of but is so not as if there were first freedom and then for-the-sake-of, rather at one with freedom is for-the-sake-of. It is in this respect inessential to what extent a being characterized by freedom is free in fact or to what extent she knows about her freedom; that she is free in the sense relevant here tells us nothing about the extent to which she is free or is only latently free, fascinated or entangled by others or by entities which do not exist as Dasein. Only free beings can be unfree.

That the basic being of transcendence is to be found in freedom means that the world, characterized primarily through for-the-sake-of, is the original totality of what Dasein gives <sets> itself to understand [was das Dasein als freies sich zu verstehen gibt]. Freedom gives itself to be understood; freedom is primal understanding, i.e., freedom is the primal project of what freedom itself makes possible. Dasein gives itself original constraint[19] through the project of every for-the-sake-of-which as such. Freedom binds Dasein to <obliges Dasein to?> herself in the ground of her being [Wesen]; more precisely, freedom gives Dasein the possibility of being bound [Möglichkeit der Bindung]. The whole of the constraint or bond [Bindung] which is implicit in for-the-sake-of is the world. According to this bond, Dasein commits [bindet] herself together with others to a potentiality to be [Seinkönnen] herself as potentiality-to-be-with in the potentiality to be amongst what is present-at-hand <Should this read, if the terminology of BT is used, "what is within the world"?>. Selfness is free commitment [Verbindlichkeit] for and to oneself <as being in the world>.

{BTS 134} Being-in is there as that for-the-sake-of-which Dasein is.

form-matter distinction (in aesthetics), Heidegger's critique of. See earth [Erde]; value [Wert]; moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about.

Heidegger denies that the concept of matter as the opposite of form is applicable at all to the art work as such. The medium, that which is thing-like about the work, is in no way independent of what is unconcealed through it, viz., earth in its relation to world. The relation is in no way like that of matter to form, content to form, or datum to interpretation. The term matter is seemingly applicable because creating involves activities like those of the craftsman. But the idea of form in the form-matter distinction depends upon the idea of a function, of a use which the use-thing serves and which determines the form the thing must take. The art work, on the other hand, is not shaped to serve any use. The work is rather elicited, so to speak, by that which sets itself, through the creating activity, into the work. This feature of the work and of creation has been characterized "correctly" in the claim that beauty is a species of intrinsic or primary value. <It seems likely that Heidegger was not as competent as he makes out to appraise the correctness of claims about primary value. Elsewhere {see the entry moral law (Kant)  in these Notes.} Heidegger adopts rather blindly the widespread although fatally mistaken view, mistakenly attributed to Kant, that what is good in itself or by its essential nature (persons, good will, the moral law, pure reverence…) cannot be a means to any end. Here, he is pretty clearly extending the same error to cover the art work. That the work's being created is elicited by truth that "is to be bound into the work" is just as compatible with its and its medium's being used to some end as a person's being used to some purpose is compatible with that person's being an entity of a sort that ought to be whatever may become of her potential usefulness.>

Langer, working within the traditional framework of form and matter, conceives the apprehension of "significant form" as involving a biological function and so as serving a purpose, viz., a need for the symbolic transformation of lived experience. This need is supposed as one occurring in just one biological species. Without supposing a need to form concepts of lived experience as such, Langer could not understand what would motivate the apprehension of significant form (presentational symbols) since, without such a need, structural analogies between a sensory Gestalt and a reflectively perceived Gestalt would not motivate any special interest in the sensory Gestalt; and so it would not be apperceived as a significant form. Langer does not admit that anything can be of interest of itself, i.e., be essentially and by its own nature worthy to be cared for. This feature of her aesthetics and the resulting need to posit a biological need is symptomatic of her positivistic and naturalistic leanings.

freedom. See choice, existence, and world; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; for-the-sake-of [Umwillen]; world.

{MAL (G26) 245-246} The metaphysical essence of willing, its inner possibility is freedom. Any such for-the-sake-of will always have arisen through freedom. That the for-the-sake-of hold itself in the fore [Sichvorhalten] is implicit in the essence of freedom. Freedom itself is the origin of for-the-sake-of but is so not as if there were first freedom and then for-the-sake-of, rather at one with freedom is for-the-sake-of. It is in this respect inessential to what extent a being characterized by freedom is free in fact or to what extent she knows about her freedom; that she is free in the sense relevant here tells us nothing about the extent to which she is free or is only latently free, fascinated or entangled by others or by entities which do not exist as Dasein. Free beings alone can be unfree.

The traditional interpretation of freedom seeks to emphasize spontaneity, sua sponte, beginning on its own, in contrast to any mechanical, compelled sequence. However, such an "on its own" or "by itself" remains vague without the emphasis on selfness [Selbstheit], and that means: one must draw transcendence back into freedom, must even seek in freedom itself the basic being [Grundwesen] of transcendence.

{MAL (G26) 185} Dasein's transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom gives itself inner possibility; a being as free is in itself necessarily transcending.

{MAL (G26) 257-258} We seldom seize possession of the very time whose possession, in a metaphysical sense, we ourselves are; only seldom do we master this power which we ourselves are; only seldom do we exist freely.

{MAL (G26) §11 c}

{G31 and G42}I n the summer semester of 1930 (begun April 29), Heidegger held a lecture course whose content was first published posthumously (1982) with the title Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (G31). The title is identical with that of Schelling's chief work on freedom which was the subject of a later (1936) lecture course (G42). The 1930 course was a detailed discussion of Kant's conception of freedom; its Conclusion is titled "The Genuine Ontological Dimension of Freedom. The Root of the Question about Being in the Question about the Essence of Human Freedom. Freedom as Ground of Causality". Here he discusses Kant's restriction of the problem of freedom to the problem of causality. The problem of freedom in traditional metaphysics was identified with the problem of a particular kind of causality. Of all thinkers in this tradition, Kant is said to have treated the issue in the most radical way. Causality is the basic category of being as extantness [Vorhandensein - presence-at-hand MR] within the traditional understanding of the being of entities.

Heidegger proposes to replace this conception with a thesis that gives the problem of freedom precedence over that of causality: the problem of being as such [überhaupt] — the basic problem of philosophy as such — is in itself a problem of freedom. The question about the essence of human freedom is the basic problem of philosophy, even the question about being is rooted in that about freedom. {See the entry "world, existence of, and Dasein".} To demonstrate this basic thesis is a matter of conceiving the problem in concepts that always and necessarily co-conceive whoever is doing the conceiving, in concepts which address that entity in the root of its existence [of its Dasein].

Neither of Kant's approaches to the problem of the actuality of freedom raises the question about the being-character of that being — whether actual or possible — whose being is under investigation. The possibility-character as well as the actuality-character of freedom as freedom (much less the relationship obtaining between the two) remains undefined even though it is their relationship alone that is being treated throughout.

<It is puzzling that nothing similar is said in the 1936 lectures on Schelling {Gesamtausgabe 42}. Is this explainable by the NSDAP ideology — involving emphasis on the People, the Nation, and its destiny that would have become prevalent by 1936. Since May of 1933, students at the University of Freiburg were required to belong to the NSDStB, whose members were required to join the NSDAP.>

gigantic (the) [Riesenhafte]. <Better, 'the Great'? Better still, 'the Sublime'?> See Da-..

{G5 (HW) 95 (m88); e QCT 135} The gigantic is that whereby the quantitative becomes a quality in its own right and becomes thereby an exceptional sort of greatness. Each historical epoch is great in a manner that sets it apart from other epochs; moreover, each has its own concept of greatness as well. But just as soon as giantism — in planning and calculating and instituting and securing — sublimates [umspringt ;exalts, elevates] into something <taken to be> Qualitative in its own right <Enlightened, Classical, Ancient, Christian, Romantic, Imperial, Modern, Optimistic, Metaphysical, Critical,  Positive, Anxious, PostModern, PostPostModern…> it thus becomes a distinctive, exceptional sort of magnitude. What is gigantic and what seemingly is always completely calculable converts by that very sublimation into something incalculable. That it is now incalculable remains an invisible shadow cast everywhere about all things once the human self has become the subjectum and the world become picture, Weltanschauung.

{ibid. 112 (m104), App. 13; e154} Customary opinion sees in this shadow nothing more than want of light if not the outright denial of light. However, the shadow is in truth the open howbeit obscure [undurchdringliche] evidence [Bezeugung] of concealed luminance [Leuchten]. If shadow be conceived in this way then we experience [erfahren] the incalculable as that which is manifest in beings albeit withdrawn from objectivation [Vorstellung] and which indicates {See the entry "assertion, allegation".} the hidden being [Sein].

{ibid. m88} Through this same shadow, the modern world sets itself out interpretatively into a place withdrawn from objectivation [Vorstellung], and thus it imparts to this incalculable that qualitativeness which is peculiar to it as well as imparting to it historical uniqueness. The shadow refers, however, to something else, something that is withheld from the ken of today's human selves. But humanity will be able neither to experience nor to ponder what is thus withheld from it so long as it blunders about in mere denial of the present age. Fleeing into tradition is compounded of humility and vainglory and by itself accomplishes nothing unless it be the turning away from the historical moment and blindness toward it.

{ibid. 95 (m87-88)} The gigantic is not being thoroughly thought through when (in the form of what-progressively-hasn't-ever-yet-been-there-before) it is found to be an outcome of the blind urge to exaggerate and to caricature. <Stereotypification, ideal typification (Weber) seem to be the sort of thing being referred to here.> To think, for example, that the cliché "Americanism" elucidates the gigantic is not to think at all.

Humanity will know about this incalculable — i.e., will preserve it in its truth — only by creatively inquiring and shaping through the force that is proper to reflection. Reflection of that sort displaces those who approach [den künftigen Menschen] into that inbetween whereby they pertain to being while remaining alien nonetheless among beings.[20] This open inbetween is the Da-sein, the word being understood in the sense of the ecstatic realm of the revealing and concealing of being. {ibid. 113 (m104), App. 15. See also the entries "being in the midst of [inter esse, Being-alongside MR]" and "circumspection [Umsicht], as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding"}.

givenness. See intentionality.

{GP (G24) e168} Traditionally the reference of being to the self was to the self as the perceiver, the self as contemplative. Now the reference of being to self is to be understood as primarily a reference to getting along in the world as the basic comportment through which being is understood. In projecting possibilities and carrying them out, Dasein understands being and world .

god, neo-Kantian conceptions of. See gods, god; gods, absence of.

Compare these notions of god with the concept of a practical explanation for there being anything at all rather than not anything at all in Fichte's notion of the moral world-order.

{Source - U. Dierse, "Gott" in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter et al. vol. 3, 793, 794}

Hermann Cohen: the god of Israel, who promotes morality, becomes that ideal which guarantees actualization of the moral ideal {Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens (2. edn., 1907) 449 ff.} <cf. Lessing, "The Education of the Human Race">. Cohen's earlier neglect of the need for moral salvation is corrected in his later works. In the correlation God-Nature, 'God' refers to the warranty [Gewähr] that something existent will always be there as field for the endless progression of morality. {Cohen, Der Begriff der Religion System der Philosophie (1915) 51} In the correlation god-humanity, god makes it possible for humanity to be saved from sin through the work of humanity upon itself. {ibid. 64} <cf. Herder on human freedom> As individuals, human beings discover themselves through knowing sin <cf. guilt in BT> attaining thereby a personal god-relationship <relationship to principles of good and evil, i.e., values?>. {ibid. 116} The concept of god is the concept of the Unconditioned, which is the condition for whatever there is; what can be said of the Unconditioned in itself is only that it is both actual and knowing. {Ethik des reinen Willens (2. edn., 1907) 439 ff., 446, 450 ff.}

Wilhelm Windelband conceived the concept of god to be the concept the metaphysical anchor for the totality of value-experience {Windelband, Einführung in die Philosophie (1914) 392} or the concept of the "ground" for the moral world order or the concept of the ideal of truth which assures the actualization of the good and the unity of the moral ideal with actuality {System der Philosophie (3. edn., 1907) vol. 1, 395, 429 f.}.

Heinrich Rickert conceived god to be the highest, superhuman, transcendent value-reality [Wertrealität]. {Richert, Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie (1921) 340 f.; "Vom System der Werte in Logos 4 (1913) 320 f.}

Georg Simmel objected to these concepts of god; he held that god must be conceived to be a person, if one is going to conceive of god at all, rather than to be a sterile principle contrasted with the world. In that case, god must be conceived to be a person who separates itself from itself in order thereby to attain an opposite (which is notion, efficacy, and life) while still being included in these ways within the one divine unity. {Simmel, Philsophische Kultur (3rd edn., 1923) 205 ff., 210, 213. Cf. §412 of Hegel's Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences.}

The neo-Kantians rejected Henri Bergson's concept of a divine being who, as unceasing life, makes itself become personal by evolving into free, personal actions. {H. Driesch, Wirklichkeitslehre (1917) 339 ffl; cf. Bergson, Creative Evolution (1912 German trn. p. 253)}

gods, absence of.

That gods are absent during an era means that what is habitually being striven toward during that time is not relevant to the needs of the era. The accustomed strivings are therefore not correctly esteemed, however intensely they may be esteemed. The customs and the state of the institutions they involve are not sanctioned by the gods; the gods have withdrawn from them. To await the gods' return is to feel the inappropriateness of the institutions and feel the need for more appropriate ones, for institutions that can be correctly esteemed and so can have the gods' sanction. That they can be correctly esteemed (be good) or correctly preferred (be better than others) is a necessary condition for divine sanction. It is probably not a sufficient condition, however; for the gods are those of an historical people and probably will sanction only certain sorts of institutionalized strivings rather than sanctioning any of the range of strivings that might otherwise mitigate the felt need. No merely human authority can provide a genuine way out of such a time of need. By hypothesis, the prevailing institutions are correctly felt to be unsuitable, inappropriate. Any "salvation" must be such as the people could correctly find right, appropriate, not just some proposal that they might be persuaded (by Barrett or some other demagogue) to accept.

{UZS 219 f; Heidegger, WL 139 f.} Customs, positive laws formulate — so far as they are rightly estimable — laws that are not higher only than mortals and their institutions but higher as well than the gods who cannot but sanction them. No one has descried nor will anyone ever descry a source from which these latter laws come to be given. Mortals have, however, the potentiality to be seized, to be apprehended by such laws without needing to receive them from gods. Just, lawful institutions can nurture that potentiality; unjust institutions can further the potentiality to be seized by the need for change, the need of the era. The sensing of such a need cannot reveal any course of salvation from it. Contrary to the historical vision of Hegel and other Necessitarians, there is — during a time of need — no such thing as the state of affairs that shall have replaced the needy one and that might be given beforehand through the passions of historical figures, no matter how heroic.

gods, god. See choice, existence, and world; value; god, neo-Kantian conceptions of; gods, absence of.

Kierkegaard: Human beings can predestine nothing before God does so but are merely lone individuals from whom God requires everything ethically yet who are to require nothing for themselves: "Yet you gain thereby that God cannot be rid of you, not even in all eternity." Werke [ed. E. Hirsch, (1950-66)) 26, 174; 16/I, 139,126ff. <As cited in U. Dierse, "Gott" in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie 3, p. 796>.

Should, on the other hand, the human being be faced with a variety of requirements from a plurality of gods then a choice would have to be made, one which would, if made ethically, be affected yet not predestined by divine requirements.

ground [Grund]

{MAL (G26) 152} Why should holding something to be true always have its ground? Is this so merely because it is how humans commonly try on the average to act? Or is it so rather because holding something to be true as such, the true statement itself, and as a true statement, has a relation to something like ground? {Gesamtausgabe 26, 152} Is truth as such related to ground? And what is meant here by ground? And If ground belongs to the essence of truth is this essential connection then the ground for the requirement that any true judgment be grounded? And does the postulate of a ground for certainty follow from this requirement that true assertion be grounded? And what does it entail that a requirement {see the entry "value [Wert]"} follows from the essence of truth?

hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of. See my essay, "Multiple Heideggers?…"; disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; ontological investigation as a possible type of explication; world; pre-structure [Vorstruktur]; introspection; moral sciences and hermeneutical pragmatism.

{SZ, BT m315} To avoid the "circle" of understanding would be to set aside the fundamental structure of care through which Dasein is constituted as being in every instance ahead of herself beforehand.

What has been the standard reading of Heidegger's theory of interpretation and of the hermeneutical circle is a very serious error. The error is well illustrated by Berstein's version of it. The standard reading is reported by Mueller-Vollmer {Mueller-Vollmer 35}:

Heidegger and, following him, Gadamer insist that all forms of interpretation in real life and in the human sciences are grounded in understanding and are nothing but the explication of what has already been understood.

This would become a quite accurate reading if the phrase "are nothing but the explication of" were replaced by "explicate"; Mueller-Vollmer did not resist the temptation to exaggerate the significance of what he was writing. Bernstein proudly generates a similarly extravagance that is scandalously different from Heidegger's view

… contrary to that tradition within hermeneutics that seeks to draw a rigorous distinction between understanding and interpretation (and to relegate these activities to different subdisciplines), Gadamer maintains that there is no essential difference between understanding and interpretation. All understanding involves interpretation, and all interpretation involves understanding. (This claim scandalizes those who think that there is or can be "objective understanding," freed from all prejudices and not "contaminated" by interpretation.) The continuity of understanding and interpretation is evident in the phenomenon of translation, Gadamer points out {WM 361}. For there is no translation without highlighting, and all highlighting involves interpretation… {Bernstein 138 f.}
…We can see why for Gadamer the process of understanding can never (ontologically) achieve finality, why it is always open and anticipatory. We are always understanding in the light of our anticipatory prejudgments and prejudices, which are themselves changing in the course of history. This is why Gadamer tells us that to understand is always to understand differently…We should always aim…at a correct understanding of what the "things themselves" say…an analysis of the ongoing and open character of all understanding and interpretation can be construed as distortive only if we assume that a text possesses some meaning in itself that can be isolated from our prejudgment.

In just about every nontrivial aspect, Bernstein's reading is in very serious error. The reading denies correctly enough that a text has meaning that is independent of the prejudices which are brought to the text in interpreting it. It is plausible and even, I think, eidetically necessary that the outcome of every interpretation is affected by the prepossession and purpose of the interpreter. In Heidegger's terms, every artifact comes about through interpretation [Auslegung, explication]. So there is surely an important sense in which no text or other artifact has meaning in isolation from all interpretation. There is, however, no ground for the assertion that an artifact has no meaning of its own or is meaningless in itself. Heidegger meant something quite different however when he wrote that interpretation in the moral sciences can be genuinely rigorous only by working out its "pre-structures" in terms of the things themselves rather than letting them be dictated by fancies and popular conceits.

For interpretation in the moral sciences, the importance of recognizing the inevitability of pre-structure in all forms of interpretation is precisely to recognize the risk of explications ruled by purposes and prepossessions alien to the material (the topic) that is being interpreted.[21] For Heidegger (no less than for Husserl or for Weber) what is being interpreted, the topic of investigation, in the moral sciences is indeed something unique and is not exhaustible by any interpretation. It is nonetheless a determinate event and defines the range[22] of true interpretations of that topic, no matter whether the primary topic be the actions involved in generating the artifact or the artifact that is the correlate of those conscious acts. So far as it is determinate, that truth does indeed involve a pre-structure [Vorstruktur] and is indeed incomprehensible in isolation from it. But the determining pre-structure is that involved in the generative act itself. It is most decidedly not the pre-structure of some other interpretation. Other interpretations must allege either explicitly or by implication that they are explicating the of this one. They are true insofar as this allegation is true, untrue insofar as it is not.

{GP (G24) 303, 310; Ortega y Gasset, J., WIP? 20–28} These structures can be brought into a cultural realm for the first time by being explicated in a more authentic way, and when this happens, if it does, then it happens only through the voluntary action of an ego. However, such traits need not have a cultural or any subjective origin though they certainly may have, as when true statements are made about cultural facts. In such a case a previously veiled fact about the moral might become for the first time an explicit truth about that world itself, a world which would thereby have been expanded and enriched. <Does this help with the relation of world to earth in Heidegger?> Insofar as truth is intended through the explicating, truth is not timeless, not ever, not even when it is truth about timeless states of affairs. That a timeless truth is known is not a timeless truth but an historical one …The mode of being of what is explicated is, however, implicit in what is explicated regardless of whether it is or is not explicated. That whose way of being is not extantness does not change its mode of being through being explicated. To the extent that explication is authentic and interested in the being of the explicandum, it explicates appropriately how this entity is, explicates the entity in its own mode of being. Nevertheless, whether explication will do this depends upon the explicator. Whether the explicator is or is not able to fulfill the task of authentic explication of, e.g., the mode of being of Dasein, depends in large part upon the internal history and tradition of the explicator. How the explicator tends habitually to explicate will make it more or less likely that her explication will follow an established pattern. The explicator's habits of explicating will have been, to begin with at least, assimilated from other Dasein so that this aspect of the interpreter's internal tradition will have been conditioned by the larger tradition into which the explicator has been socialized and enculturated.

The circle would be vicious if it were necessary — as Platonic Judaeo-Christian tradition has ever held — that perfect comprehension precede any imperfect comprehension. Plato's account in Meno, for example, says that the soul was omniscient in its state of existence prior to life. The Platonic position entails that omniscience must precede any other knowledge whatsoever. Plato avoids the viciousness only by maintaining that the original knowledge was intuitive, i.e., not acquired through action but by having what is known given or presented to the soul.

The Platonic forms or ideas became thoroughly internalized in the divine mind through being assimilated to biblical traditions <Did this first happen, among known thinkers, in the work of Philo of Alexandria (30 B.C.-50 A.D.)?> The relationship in Meno between the original pre-life omniscience, obscure memory of that, and learning as recollection was absorbed into the similitude of the finite spirit to the divine, especially through innate ideas. {See the entry Christianity.} So long as knowing was conceived to be acquaintance with ideas, this frame of reference might be considered adequate by the faithful. It even worked quite well for material things once they had been conceived to be numerical in their true structure and not at all like what the senses receive. Knowing was now thought, by those who could follow modern thought, to be acquainted with actual things in time and space. There was now thought to be a knowledge of them that was beginning at last genuinely to approximate divine acquaintance with them. It was knowledge of them as spatio/temporal. Being divinely exact and being powerful as well, it would surely lead eventually to very exact knowledge not just of mortals as bearers of innate concepts but of them as material, corporeal beings as well.

Plato's position recurs in the thinking of Romantic idealists and hermeneuts of the early nineteenth century. Identity of each human spirit with Nature or with God or with the Absolute Spirit was then taken to include an obscure yet complete (adequate) intuition of all truth. Care was taken to insist that the intuition could only occur obscurely so as to defend against the implication that some human spirit might become omniscient. It had then to be argued that the perceiving of itself which is inherent in every mental process [Erlebnis] can only occur obscurely, that attentive perceiving of one's own actions (attentive reflection, "introspection") is not possible. {See the entry "introspection".}

humanity [Mensch], essence of. See Dasein; thrownness [Geworfenheit].

{PLWBUH89–90; BW 221–22} The essence of humanity consists in being more than merely human if being human is taken as "being a rational creature." The more means: more original and therefore more essentially in terms of his essence. Here something enigmatic becomes manifest: a human being is through being thrown. As the ek-sisting counter-throw [Gegenwurf] of being, human beings are more than animal rationale, precisely to the extent that they are less bound up with humanity conceived from subjectivity. Humanity is not the lord of beings. Humans are the shepherds of being. This makes more rather than less of humanity; a human being gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by being itself into the preservation of being's truth. The call comes as the throw from which the thrownness of Dasein derives. In their essential unfolding within the history of being, humans are the beings whose being as ek-sistence consists in their dwelling in the nearness of being. A human being is the neighbor of being. This is humanism in which humanity's historical essence is at play [auf dem Spiel steht] in its provenance [Herkunft] from the truth of being. The ek-sistence of each human being stands and falls through such play.

Husserl, Edmund. See object [Gegenstand]; persons and personalism, Heidegger's misrepresentation of Husserl's position.

{MAL (G26) 169 (E 134)} Heidegger (1923-1924) falsely alleges that insofar as Husserl describes every directing-oneself-toward as involving a cognizing [MFL knowing] he characterizes all intentional behavior as νόησις and so conceives all intentionality as cognitive meaning upon which all other modes of behavior then build. In this connection Heidegger refers with seeming approval to Scheler {Scheler, "Liebe und Erkenntnis" in GW6 77–98} as having pointed the way to a more adequate concept of intentionality. He then goes on to tie this conception of intentionality to the problem of the relation of "subject" to "Object".

Heidegger thus denies without mention a central distinction in Husserl's thought as it had developed since the Logical Investigations between Objects and objects [Gegenstände]. The latter denotes in that use the membership of the most inclusive class, a class that is necessarily a member of itself inasmuch as there belong to it any and all subjects — in the logical sense that has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever differences there may be between persons, selves, Dasein and other entities) — about which true utterances might occur. To suggest that Heidegger was ignorant of this distinction and of the entailed distinction between doxic mental processes that do and those that do not include any awareness of categorial form is wildly implausible. The misrepresentation was deliberate and calculated regardless of whether Heidegger did or did not find the distinction to be acceptable.

ideas, theory of, and the representational theory of perception. See subject, <the>.

The "theory of ideas" is common to both rationalist and empiricist traditions as well as to the vitalistic and voluntaristic opponents of rationalism and empiricism. Insofar as perceiving is a psychological phenomenon, physiology gives no account of perceiving. For that you would need a psycho-physics, a science dealing with correlations between the occurrences conceived physiologically and conceived psychologically.

The representational theory of perception is strictly epistemological and/or metaphysical; it has no empirical standing at all, not even as an hypothesis. Moreover, much the same conception originated among the Greeks, most clearly the atomists. However, they are using the Eleatic distinction between the way of truth and the way of seeming or convention. That distinction gets assimilated quite uncritically by those sophists who make themselves champions of "the apparent" as misconceived by the Eleatics.

Still, Husserl may be right in thinking that some variation of the representational theory of knowledge is implicit in all Objectivistic and naturalistic theories. As soon as Dasein is interpreted as if she were "only" a part of the world (Heidegger, a "being within the world") then it becomes impossible to think that the world itself can be given (disclosed) to Dasein. When Dasein is conceived just to be a constituent of the world then she can have given her of the world only an idea, view, or representation. For it then seems as if whatever is given to understanding is in the understanding as a component of the self, and the world itself could not, one thinks, be a component of what exists only as a part of the world. What is so conceived is not conceived as Dasein (an entity who makes itself be in the world, for whom being in the world is an achievement). Instead the self as so conceived is a mind or a subject or subjectivity. The Mind, the Subject, or Subjectivity cannot be conceived to be open, self-transcending, etc.

immanent. See world, existence of, and Dasein.

inauthentic self-understanding, origin of. See circumspection [Umsicht], as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding; uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit]; self-understanding [Selbstverständnis].

{GP (G24) 308; BP m308} Insofar as Dasein exists (and this means insofar as an entity is in such a way that it is in a world) that entity is true, i.e., entities are unveiled, disclosed, uncovered to her together with the unveiled world. Uncovering anything extant is grounded in that Dasein as existent already comports herself to some world that is disclosed [erschloβen]. Existing, she understands something like her world, and with the disclosedness of her world she is herself unveiled for herself at the same time. Self-understanding, this disclosedness of Dasein to herself is initially attained in fact by way of the self-understanding taken over from things with which Dasein dwells and which she uncovers in whatever way. Because this disclosedness — and at one with it the uncoveredness of entities within the world — belongs to the essence of Dasein, we can say: Dasein exists through truth, i.e., through her unveiledness and that of the beings toward which she comports herself. Only because, existing, she essentially is through truth can Dasein as such err and only so is there concealment, dissemblance, obfuscation of what is.

inauthenticity. See authenticity [Eigentlichkeit]; interpretation, authentic; uncanniness; thrownness [Geworfenheit].

Inauthenticity is above all, I think, a function of interpretation. While interpretation occurs in at least two different forms — circumspecting and asserting — I'm going to concentrate on its connection to asserting. I'm quite sure that Dasein also uses herself inauthentically. <Though Heidegger misinterprets Kant's Moral Law, he will not have overlooked Kant's insistence that we imperfectly rational entities can misuse ourselves, can violate our duties toward ourselves. It's quite likely, I think, that Heidegger agreed with this.> So far as either sort of interpretation occurs inauthentically, it is misinterpretation. In any case, however, it will be much more a matter of attending to oneself wrong-headedly than of not attending to oneself. Moreover, the error in the inauthentic and erroneous interpretation will arise in the predicative and perhaps in the communicative functions of assertion rather than in its indicative function. In its indicative function, asserting simply attends in a global way to something that has been understood. When what is being explicated is some constituent of Dasein herself, whatever predicating singles out for attention has already been not just understood but disclosed to Dasein. The disclosing need not be, and for the most part is not, voluntary; it is not something Dasein actively does. If I recall correctly, Heidegger never uses erschlieβen in the active voice when referring to Dasein's self understanding; he always uses a reflexive form in a way that requires a passive voice translation in English. This is one of the reasons for my reading his use of 'Selbstverständnis' as an unstated agreement with Descartes' view that the understanding is entirely passive <where 'passive' is the opposite of 'voluntary' rather than meaning 'inert' (as it would if its opposite were 'spontaneous''>.

She understands passively, for example, in her continual understanding (retending) of having-been-in-the-world that makes possible her sense of the thrownness and uncanniness of her way of being). In this sort of passivity, Dasein achieves something and is very far from being inert. This understanding of her having-been-in-the-world is an essential feature (is an existential) for any possible Dasein and is not something that Dasein either need voluntarily or even (initially at least) can do voluntarily. It is not a consciousness of a set or a collection, a sort of consciousness that would require Dasein to perform a series of "indicatings [Husserl–"objectivatings" [Vorstellungen]. So, having-been-in-the-world is not necessarily an effect of any form of interpreting, so thrownness and facticity aren't characteristics that Dasein must provide herself with, ist nichts was das Dasein sich besorgen muβ. So even if Heidegger thought, as he probably did, that Dasein is providing and circumspecting throughout its existence, its doing so continually accrues to its having-been-in-the-world (as a sort of by product) without the need for a further providing "comportment". Otherwise, instantiation of the existential would be prevented – and Dasein's existence along with it — by a vicious regress.

If Dasein had to exist first in order then through some "doing" or comportment or "deed" to come to have been in the world then she would be unable to project anything at all without already having been (without being-in-the-world?). To make this work, it seems to me, would require some variant of nativist belief in a Dasein-eidos that is somehow obscurely given to include all that Dasein has been, is, and ever will be: the projected future would then not be a synthetic accomplishment but would have been analytically implicit already in what Dasein is, and what she is would already have been implicit in whatever she was.

Facticity and being thrown into a world are indeed necessary conditions for projecting and for existing, and they belong to the ground for care and for existence, for being-in-the-world, etc. But then projecting belongs to the necessary conditions and so to the ground for choosing. Choosing cannot occur initially in order to project potentialities or in order to choose. Dasein must have been in the world through making choices and so must have already fallen if she is to understand (experience) choosing as a potentiality; she cannot project choosing, however, without having experienced choice, and she cannot choose to choose without projecting choosing. She must have made choices before she can decide whether to make choices. She must have experienced instances of choosing before she can decide whether she prefers not to make any choice at all. Her preference here will be authentic to the extent that her interpretation of existence as choice is adequate.

intentionality. See givenness; perceiving, perception; disclosing, disclosedness; being-in.

{GP (G24) 71} As intentional, perceiving is always directed toward the extant itself. Implicit in perception itself is a tendency toward grasping, a sense of direction [Richtungssinn]. Through its sense of direction, perception intends the extant in its extantness. <It is not clear that Heidegger's use agrees with Husserl's. For the latter a tendency to grasp does not seem to be included in perceptual intending, especially in cases where the perceiving ego has never grasped (attentively intended) anything.>

interpretation, authentic. See assertion, allegation; assertion, interpretations of; assertion, relation to unveiling [(H) Enthüllen, revealing (MR)].

I think that interpretation is to be called authentic when and only when its purpose is to explicate its subject matter as it shows itself to be. It is likely that Heidegger thought that even such interpretation is at risk of erring and probably that what is interpreted will not ever, as interpreted, show itself to be altogether free of errancy.

introspection. See hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of; world.

When it alleged itself to have become independent of the prevailing philophosical views of its own and subsequent times, psychology carried with it a host of biases of that very sort which it had resolved to think about no longer. These included the still pervading bias against self-observation or introspection. This bias has nothing whatsoever to do with the requirements of scientific method or of rigorous empiricism. It is a function rather of the cosmological biases whereon the psychologist as such eschews to think.

Kant, Immanuel. See moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about

Heidegger's principal quarrel with Kant is that Kant expects whatever shows itself to be revealed in the manner of perception — a form of dislocing. Kant conceived the range of phenomena too narrowly. He was blinded thereby to the possibility that the being in itself of what can be perceived is a phenomenon, does show itself, but does not show itself to <straightforward > perception. The manner of being of what can be sensuously perceived (of the material) is extantness (being-present-at-hand). Kant grasps this way of being and identifies it with satisfying the conditions for transcendental apperception as he understood it (syntheses of apprehension, recognition, etc. — being understandable in terms of the forms and categories).

language. See language is speech; renunciation, abjuring [Verzicht]; persons and personalism.

language is speech.

The sounding voice is a bodily appearance. We are very far from sharing the attitude that denigrates what is merely sensuous about language in favor of what one calls the meaning, the signification of what is spoken and what one then dignifies as something spiritual, as the spirit of language. <Understood phenomenologically, the "content" of an utterance, when the utterance is a statement, is something spiritual only when one is speaking of persons and personal acts or of complexes of persons and complexes of personal acts. Heidegger seems to be referring to theories which hold that the meaning of an utterance is something universal and so something eidetic where an awareness of universals is attributed only to rational beings and where "rational being" and "person" are used as equivalents. What is spoken of is the "content" no matter what it is that is spoken of: insofar as something bodily is spoken of then the content is bodily and is not spiritual. All objects, whether individual, actual, mental, real, material, eidetic, singular, or universal have horizons of meaning such that the object's essence refers to ways in which consciousness or understanding of the object can occur (ways of "givenness") and these include the entire range of ways in which the object (Heidegger: the entity) can be spoken of in this or that language. There is not anything at all about which no statement can be made, much as there is not any thing (object) whatsoever about which no true statement can be made.

This is the legitimate sense in which the being of any thing is inseparable from language, from "words": the essence of any entity remains unfulfilled to the extent that what the entity is has not been truly stated, and that means stated in whatever way in which it could be truly stated. See "Das Wesen der Sprache" (lectures of December, 1957) E="The Nature of Language") in {UZS 164; WL 62} where Heidegger uses 'thing [Ding]' for any something-that-is in any way whatsoever, no matter what. He uses it there, that is to say, for whatever can be thought of, everything that either is or could be categorially formed.>

Heidegger goes on to say {UZS 168; Heidegger, WL 65} that a poet experiences [through poesy] what would enable her to learn that the word first lets a thing appear and therefore lets it be given [anwesen] as the thing that it is. This experience involves the experience of a power, a governance [Walten], the experience of a dignity of the word, than which no farther and no higher dignity can be conceived.

The word itself is the relationship of word and thing insofar as the word holds each and every entity into being and keeps it in being. Without the word that does this, the whole of things, the "world", sinks away [sinkt…weg] into obscurity <sinks into earth, the dense, the unexplicated?>, including the "ego"; there sinks away that which meets the poet in wonder and in dream and that the boundary of which brings her to the source [Quelle] of names.

leaping forth [vorspringen]. See leaping in <for> someone; moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about; UKBDP and UAJWP 288 ff.

In contrast to 'leaping in,' leaping forth, implies doing something for another in the sense of setting an example that shows how to do something, where it is not thought that the person's action in following the example can be equivalent to (the same as, perfectly alike) what I did. <We can have only similar, not perfectly like, projects and acts.> In that case, leaping forth, unlike leaping in for, respects the uniqueness of each participant's projects and acts, decisions, resolves. Each can do what no one else can do. Each has an irreplaceable calling. <However wondrous this may be, it is no less true that no one can possibly do in the relevant sense what someone else can do — no matter what she does nor how. The purposes of ethics require, however, great emphasis on the fact that each can — in a great many important respects — do things that are quite similar to what others can do. Without some such emphasis, Heidegger's differentiation of leaping-forth from leaping-in is likely to be applied in thoroughly pernicious ways.> Some ways of conceiving equality would, however, be incompatible with authentic respect for Dasein.

leaping in <for> someone [einspringen]. See leaping forth [vorspringen]; UKBDP and UAJWP 288 ff.; moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about.

 The account of leaping-in involves a reference to the Kantian conception of reification [Verdinglichung]. 'Einspringen' in one of its most frequent usages, means 'to stand in for someone (in carrying out a task),' that is, 'to take the place of' or 'to substitute for' someone.

Heidegger seems to be alleging that trying to behave in this way is bound to entail reification both of the person for whom I seek to stand in and of myself. That is, I am bound to be regarding the other person as replaceable in the execution of the task, and this would entail regarding the person I am leaping in for as an entity present-at-hand. The assumption is that I am thinking that we can do the same thing and regarding all who do the same thing as equal, i.e., as equivalent to one another. But then I think, by implication, of myself as equivalent to and replaceable by others so that Dasein, in so thinking, misunderstands her own being as that of an entity present at hand, or in any event as being within the world. This would occur whenever Dasein understands what it does in solicitude for others as 'doing for them what they either can or will not do for themselves.' {See my "UKBDP" or "UAJWP"288 ff.}. <Heidegger was trying here to provide a justification in his terms for the widespread doctrine that to use a person as means for some purpose is morally wrong. This doctrine is false and perverse. That those who hold it usually attribute it to Immanuel Kant only adds another falsehood and augments the perversity. There was absolutely nothing worthwhile to be achieved by supporting the doctrine. The attempt to do so merely led Heidegger into serious and dangerous error. To use someone as a means to an end is quite often, perhaps most often, morally acceptable. It is quite impossible in any case to communicate with someone and not use her as means to that end — and communication will be in the service of other ends as well, in the normal case.

Kant's moral theory forbids the use of someone for a purpose only when the intended purpose is not such that the person is bound, as a rational agent, to respect the principle of the action, that is, when it is not the case that the person used ought to consent to being used in the intended way. when the principle of the action is not fit to serve as a universal law for all rational entities. If reformulating that standard pseudo-Kantian position is not the point of Heidegger's discussion of what he calls "leaping-in" then it is quite difficult to find any point to it at all. In dealing with one another people do not normally fret over the order of the universals of which their projected doings would be instances nor ought they to do so. When someone does think about exactly how alike comportments can be (when someone undertakes to make assertions about that topic), she would be in error were she to think that they can be perfectly alike. This is so, however, whether they be her own, those of others, or those of others compared with her own. Moreover, it will also be so whether they be authentic or inauthentic. Heidegger's differentiation of "leaping forth" from "leaping-in" is probably best ignored for pedagogical as well as for ethical reasons. It is quite absurd to suggest that teaching ought to occur only through example.>

logic. See my MH?; truth as unveiledness and being-true; truth as unconcealment; disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; assertion, interpretations of.

{Seebohm, Føllesdal and Mohanty, PFS vii} The editors of Phenomenology and Formal Sciences make clear their conviction that they are in a position to mandate what Logic can be as well as what Logic is when they proclaim, "…M. Heidegger decided that logic…is not a proper philosophical topic. Despite all other differences he shared this attitude with the Hegelian tradition and this tradition had as well a powerful <sic> in the development of the post-Husserlian European phenomenal movement."

{Fay, in PFS 1–2} In the same anthology, Thomas Fay calls Heidegger's Freiburg inaugural address <"Was ist Metaphysik?"–not so identified by Fay> Heidegger's "best known attack on logic". He also alleges that Heidegger had – by the time of SZ (1929) – reversed the demand he had made in his The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism "that logic emancipate itself from grammar…and now demands that grammar be liberated form (sic) logic". When he elaborates {ibid. 9–10} on this allegation, he notes Heidegger's insistence that traditional logic, from Plato and Aristotle on, transformed ἀληθεια into ιδέα so that coming to presence, φύσις has ever since been interpreted as extantness, presence-at-hand. However, Fay co-ordinates, "The apophantic 'as' of the proposition with which λόγος came to be identified, when it is ontologically interpreted…" with making assertions about entities taken to be extant, present-at-hand {ibid. 10}. He says that Heidegger insists that "If the beings with which man comports himself are to manifest the richness of their Being to him…[t]hey must be seen as involved with man in a world." But Fay goes on to say, "It is only within such an horizon of meaningfulness that they can be open to man on the deepest level, as this being, e.g., as hammer" and he strongly suggests that this deepest of levels is Being as interpreted hermeneutically. Fay has not noted that Heidegger considered this sort of hermeneutical interpretation to be the pure mode of inauthentic interpretation. {See the entries "circumspection [Umsicht}, as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding" and "inauthentic self-understanding, origin of" and Heidegger, BTMR 189, SZ 148)}.] Fay's presentation, therefore, makes it seem as if "the more primordial grasp of Being" to which beings should be opened up {Fay in PFS 10} were a grasping of them as ready to hand.. This would mean that apophantic interpretation about Dasein will either have to misrepresent what it has understood to be present-at-hand or else misrepresent it to be ready(-to-hand) so that authentic, true apophantical ("logical") interpretation of Dasein would be quite impossible. That there might be a sort of explication whose explicandum is taken neither as extant nor as ready but rather as being-in-the-world is not even considered; the standard misreading of BT excludes any such possibility. That is why the enormous Heidegger-literature that accumulated over the last seventy-four or so years deserves to be dismissed so far as it shares this set of biases, as it does with no exceptions that I am familiar with or have so far heard rumor of, whether it be anti- or pro-Heidegger or otherwise Heidegger-related.

If Husserl's acceptance of the earliest versions of this misreading of Heidegger was the reason for his apparent break with his protégé then it was among the great misfortunes that led to the morass of schisms and subschisms and metaschisms that has come to be called "phenomenology". Is it really likely that Husserl was no more able than Fay to find in Heidegger's work very close affinities with his own late development? Fay seems to find that Husserl's late view of logic as yet another positive science with its own set of prejudices and dogmas "led him to an impasse", and asks, "Has Heidegger's thinking with its rejection of logic…taken the other branch of phenomenology up yet another blind alley?" {Fay, op. cit. 21} The interrogative form does not mask Fay's accord with the view of his editors: we right thinking practioners of the science of logic know Heidegger's efforts to explicate λόγος to be anti-logical.

metaphor.

{SVG (G10) m88–89} The metaphorical only occurs within metaphysics. Heidegger's formulation here is very sloppy. The likely meaning is as follows.

Insight into the inadequacy of the differentiation (if not separation) of the sensory from the non-sensory, the physical from the non-physical <as in Brentano's way of differentiating the sensory from the noetic?> makes it possible to dispense with metaphysics. Metaphysics loses its status as the paradigmatic [maβgebende] way of thinking to which all other thinking was to be subordinate. The concept of "metaphor" which served this way of thinking can now be dispensed with as well. In this paradigmatic sense, the concept of metaphor is so conceived that it would be applicable only within metaphysics, for it would apply only as part of the effort to transfer the ideal of exactness from the physical (the sensory stimuli) to the non-physical (the alleged sensory data or sensory impressions).

moods. See affectivity.

moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about

{GP (G24) 195-196 (e138)} Heidegger accurately quotes the most relevant passage from Kant's Grundlegung {427-428, Prussian Academy pagination; Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals 95}. He goes on to interpret it as saying that "Any human person exists as an end in herself; she is never a means, not even a means for God; before God, too, she is her own end." But what Kant said is only that no rational being can be of worth only as a means. Kant did not say that she is, as a rational being, never a means. That the way Heidegger, along with many others, reads Kant here is a serious error will be realized by reading the concluding paragraph to Kant's discussion of the third thesis in his "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" {Kant, On History 14}. The misreading is such drivel that it would proscribe my using your ears as organs by which to communicate with you; it is so widespread[25] as to indicate that work in the field of ethics might better be suspended altogether until the error is corrected.

moral sciences and hermeneutical pragmatism. See ontological investigation as a possible type of explication; hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of; praesens [Praesenz]; my MH? and VPMS and HRTS; pre-structure [Vorstruktur]. {See my VPMS and HRTS for an explanation of this use of 'moral sciences'.}

There is a pragmatic variation of skepticism in the moral sciences that traces its roots to Heidegger and phenomenology and sees itself and Heidegger affiliated to the pragmatic skepticism of the later William James and the instrumentalism of John Dewey. Richard Rorty and Richard Bernstein, for example, seem to view themselves in this manner. This view of themselves and of the nature of interpretation in the moral sciences may be called hermeneutical pragmatism. Examination of what appears to be a principal thesis of hermeneutical pragmatism can illuminate some important issues in the phenomenology of the moral sciences. The thesis in question will serve here as starting point for one such line of investigation. It is a thesis presented by Bernstein in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism together with the allegation that it is derived from Heidegger by way of Gadamer:

… there is no essential difference between understanding and interpretation. All understanding involves interpretation, and all interpretation involves understanding. (This claim scandalizes those who think that there is or can be "objective understanding," freed from all prejudices and not "contaminated" by interpretation.) {Bernstein 138–39}

Elaborating on this, Bernstein asserts that a text or other topic in the moral sciences has no meaning that is independent of the prejudices which are brought to the text in interpreting it.

We can see why for Gadamer the process of understanding can never (ontologically) achieve finality, why it is always open and anticipatory. We are always understanding in the light of our anticipatory prejudgments and prejudices, which are themselves changing in the course of history…what the "things themselves" say will be different in light of our changing horizons and the different questions that we learn to ask…analysis of the ongoing and open character of all understanding and interpretation can be construed as distortive only if we assume that a text possesses some meaning in itself that can be isolated from our prejudgment. {ibid.}

While much of this supposed elaboration seems as if it might well be true, attribution of the thesis which it supposedly elaborates to Heidegger is false. Attributing it to Gadamer is probably false as well.

The plausible and the seemingly true parts of the elaboration do appear to be entirely compatible with the positions of Heidegger and Gadamer however. It is plausible and even, I think, eidetically necessary, that the outcome of every interpretation is affected by the purposes and other prepossessions (doxic, affective, and conative habits) of the interpreter. In Heidegger's terms, every artifact comes about through interpretation [Auslegung, explication]. So there is surely an important sense in which no text or other artifact has meaning in isolation from all interpretation. There is, however, no ground for the assertion that an artifact has no meaning of its own or is meaningless in itself. Heidegger meant something quite different when he wrote that interpretation in the moral sciences can be genuinely rigorous only by working out its "pre-structures" in terms of the things themselves rather than letting them be dictated by fancies and popular conceits.

For interpretation in the moral sciences, the importance of recognizing the inevitability of pre-structure in all forms of interpretation is precisely so as to recognize the risk of explications ruled by purposes and prepossessions alien to the material (topic) being interpreted itself.[26] For Heidegger no less than for Husserl or for Weber there is a determinate[27] truth concerning that topic whether the primary topic be the actions involved in generating the artifact that is the correlate of those conscious acts. So far as it is determinate, that truth does indeed involve a pre-structure and is indeed incomprehensible in isolation from it. But the determining pre-structure is that involved in the interpreter's topic, which belongs to the generative act itself. It is most decidedly not the pre-structure of some other interpretation. Other interpretations must allege either explicitly or by implication that they are explicating the pre-structure of this one otherwise they are not interpretations of the relevant topic. They are true insofar as this allegation is true, untrue insofar as it is not.

<How all this works is in urgent need of elaboration so as to correct certain current misrepresentations of what scientific rigor could mean in the moral sciences, misrepresentations many of which are especially current in post-sensible babble.>

Nothing (the) and anxiety. See Nothing (the) and the turning; Da-.

{Heidegger, WIM 110-111 [m8, E (1979) 102-103} To be affected by a mood does not merely unveil the whole of entities in the way peculiar to that sort of mood: this unveiling is at once the basic occurring of our Da-sein. Being affected [Gestimmtsein] – through which one "is" thus and so – lets us find ourselves (insofar as we are affected by it through and through) to be in the midst of the entities as a whole. [Emphasis added.] Heidegger gives as examples of moods whereby we thus find ourselves: boredom; joy at a beloved friend's being present. Yet moods, precisely when they lead us to the whole of entities in this way, conceal the Nothing from us. So now we are still less of the opinion that to negate (deny) the whole of the entities that show up through moods would be to conceive <represent> the Nothing. To conceive the Nothing could happen adequately and originally only through a mood that shows the Nothing and that does so through the meaning of what it most properly reveals [die ihrem eigensten Enthüllungssinne nach das Nichts offenbart]. Does being so affected as to make such conceiving possible occur in the Dasein of human beings? This occurring is not just possible but is – momentarily and rarely – actual through the basic mood of anxiety . Anxiety is permeated by a quiet that is peculiar to it. Like fear, it is intentive. It is anxiety over…, but not over this or that. Anxiety over… is always for the sake of… [Angst um…], but not for the sake of this or that. The indefiniteness of that over which and for the sake of which we are anxious is, however, no mere lack of definiteness but is instead the essential impossibility of definiteness. Anxiety, Heidegger says, is Dasein's original way of being-towards-death, and it reveals the Nothing; the Nothing is what anxiety reveals. This does indeed mean that what anxiety reveals is no entity at all. What it reveals is also not the annihilation of entities. It is also not logical negation of the proposition (syntactically formed state of affairs) that some entity is or that there are some entities. The impressional consciousness of the Nothing is affective it neither constitutes anything syntactically formed nor does it grasp any syntactically formed states of affairs. What it reveals it never reveals clearly, even though it be revealed in a very bright, care-ful, heedful way. <So the original consciousness of the Nothing is never a consciousness of it as an object, never objectivates it. The Nothing's way of being given is essentially affective, and so it is nondoxic consciousness. It is not said here that the Nothing is inconceivable on the contrary, Heidegger says quite explicitly that he is explicating the sole manner in which the Nothing is to be adequately and originally conceived (see above). And he is introducing an extension of the concept expressed by the verb 'vorstellen', which I translate, following Cairns' usage, as 'to objectivate'; it is often translated as 'to represent'. Whereas, the term's use by Husserl restricted it to consciousness that is both attentive and doxic, we now have a more general conception: that which is a theme or topic for active consciousness whether the active consciousness be doxic or affective.[28] Perhaps the new concept can be expressed: a theme is conceived [vorgestellt] insofar as there is either a clear awareness of it or a bright (care-ful) awareness of it. Another way of expressing it might be to say that the evident is that of which there is either a clear or a bright consciousness. In many ways this extension was already strongly suggested by Brentano's assertion that there is an emotional analog of evidence and by the view of both Scheler and Hartmann as well as of Husserl that emotions are receptively, impressionally conscious of states of axiotic affairs.
The lecture does say, "The Nothing is neither an object nor any entity whatsoever." { WIM in WM (G9) 115 (m12, BW 106)} This suggests although it does not strictly imply that Heidegger conceived whatever he referred to as an object to belong to a subregion or subclass of entities. He immediately goes on to say that the Nothing is not conceivable either on its own [für sich] or as something next to but dependent on entities. It is conceivable only as it is revealed through anxiety of the "quiet" sort that is to occur if Dasein heeds the state of affairs that the Nothing averts Dasein's heedfulness away from the Nothing toward the whole of entities and into the being of entities. {ibid. 114 (m11)} As it is given in this way through anxiety, Nothing is the making possible of the openness of any entity as such for human Dasein. Hence the Nothing's being disclosed through anxiety is what makes possible the declarative function of assertion, the function through which there occurs the transition from circumspective interpretation to apophantic interpretation. The Nothing belongs in an original way to the essence <of being[29]> itself: in that the being of entities occurs, the Nothing nothings.
The Nothing is evidently or authentically revealed only to anxiety and only insofar as anxiety is bright, is "active", care-ful. Only when so given is the Nothing conceived, but so given it is conceived. Anxiety is, however, not always but only rarely bright. There is a preconceptual, passive, obscure way of being anxious that does not conceive [vorstellen] but misconceives [verstellen] the Nothing.
The Nothing can be conceived and spoken of truly, with evidence. It can be genuinely conceived, however, only as it would be given through anxiety, that is, the very way it is presented in the lecture. That this is so must be understood to show that the nothing is essentially a state of axiotic affairs: the Nothing is the dreadful alternative with which the whole of what-is is paired as a problematic (and attractive?) possibility. {See the entry "Absurd (Husserl) and the ownmost possibility"}. Through anxiety, the whole, the totality of entities is the subject [In der Angst wird das Seiende im Ganzen hinfällig]: it is the theme, the topic for an attending that is not doxic, and one that is founded on a non-interpretative understanding (passive, automatic, and so non-objectivating doxic consciousness) of it as merely possible, as an open rather than a problematic possibility.>

All things and we ourselves sink into a certain indifference, an irrelevance {WIM ibid. m9, G9 111, E (BW 102f.)}.[30] Anxiety reveals the Nothing in union with slipping away of the whole of what-is. This Nothing and this slipping away of all that is neither a negating nor an annihilating; these would be cognitive states of affairs, matters potentially to be explicated apophantically. Instead, what is being referred to is a state of affairs that is given affectively, one that is a no longer appealing to or attracting Dasein through her interests. The "slipping away is neither an understanding entities to be nonexistent nor a striving to make or to keep something nonexistent but is an axiotically negative revealing.

Nothing (the) and the turning. See Absurd (Husserl) and the ownmost possibility; Nothing (the) and anxiety; Dasein; finitude of Dasein; my "TIIS" (German) or "TEBW" (English) 204–05}.

{WIM in WM (G9) 114 (m11, BW 105} Through anxiety — when it is a quiet that is ordained (required) absolutely[31] so that anxiety is no longer a fleeing from…  — there is an implicit drawing back from, one that issues from the Nothing [emphasis added]. For the Nothing, rather than attracting, is essentially repugnant, forbidding [ist wesenhaft abweisend]. However, as such, the Nothing's essential averting-from-itself is preferability of what-is as a whole, insofar as this preferability makes the whole of the what-is slip away into irrelevance, makes it lose the appeal it had through Dasein's interests. Essence of the Nothing is to Nothing to Nothing is to make what-is averse to being for itself and is to direct toward the whole of what is (the whole of the beënt, das Seiende) that is slipping away into irrelevance this averting-directing is the essence of the Nothing and is that whereby there is given the Nothing that turns Dasein around [umdrängt]. <By thus turning around, Dasein is able concretely to attend to the holy: to what is, to the meaning of being, and to the Nothing. And she is able to do so regardless of her prior interests, making it possible that she attend concretely to what is disclosed but not grasped through the indicative function of assertion {see my MH? ¶¶22-36}.> 

{my TFA, especially 64–65} Heidegger holds that in all of Dasein's  projecting of her possibilities, understanding of them is problematic and is anxious. The way They understands possibilities obscures from Dasein the states of affairs:

• that each projected possibility is not merely possible but is threatened, is in question as to its eventual happening or not happening

• that the chances some of them have of happening would be fostered by intermediary potentialities that are themselves problematic and dependent on choices

• that some of these intermediary potentialities (potential means) would depend upon choices that Dasein alone can make since they require, given Dasein's spatiality, changes that could occur only in the kinaesthesia through which Dasein herself is in the world.

The way They understands Dasein's potentialities would have this effect by distracting Dasein from her "ownmost potentiality": the possibility that Dasein no longer be able to be in the world. <Is Dasein inclined, predisposed to be so distracted? Is it so inclined through Their disinclination to let Dasein explicate its way of being as guilty, responsible? By Their disinclination to let Dasein explicate its ownmost potentiality?> For the possibility that Dasein no longer be able to be in the world at all any more shows Dasein to be responsible not just for those potentialities that she was and is committed to but for all those that she could have chosen but did not, all of the problematic possibilities she has understood, that is, for all the potentialities that were and are being negated, made impossible through her choices {see my "TIIS" (German) or "TEBW" (English) 204}.

Throughout Dasein's existence, the world as it has been given in her experience has been a world with Dasein in the midst of its entities, so that, by experience Dasein cannot exclude the possibility that the world will not be at all if Dasein is no longer able to be in the world, and there is also no ground that excludes such a possibility a priori, and this is, perhaps what is most dreadful about the ownmost possibility.

The ownmost possibility entails a non-interpretative understanding that the world, is a problematic possibility, that the negation of all entities is a possibility: entails The Nothing. {ibid. 199–205 and my "TFA".}

Insofar as dread occurs as flight in the face of these states of affairs, they either do not get explicated or do not get explicated authentically. When, instead, Dasein does not flee them but endures them, abides, dwells with them then there arises the possibility that truth about them will be bound into works of thought or of art; dread is then a quiet, a calm passion.

nominalism.

Heidegger is quite sympathetic toward the nominalistic insistence that discourse can indeed state unique, individual, nonrepeatable fact. But he rejects the accompanying insistence that the connotation of a name be a particular representative image.

object [Gegenstand]. See technology [Technik]; Husserl, Edmund; persons and personalism, Heidegger's misrepresentation of Husserl's position.

{VA (G7) m24} Heidegger seems to use 'Gegenstand' as if it were equivalent to 'Objekt', as if objectivating [Vorstellen] always occurs straightforwardly so that it is always Objectivating [Objektivieren] and would always disregard the ways in which what is objectivated can be revealed.

ontological difference [ontologische Differenz]. See disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; being [Sein].

{GP (G24) 102 (e 72)} Only on the way toward solving the basic ontological problem of the difference and relationship between being and beings can the Kantian thesis "being is not a real predicate" be at once both grounded and complimented by a radical interpretation of being at large as extantness (actuality, being there, existence).

ontological investigation as a possible type of explication. See hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of; moral sciences and hermeneutical pragmatism.

{SZ (G2) 307–08 (m231–32)} Ontological investigation is a possible type of explication. Explication has been characterized as the working out and appropriation of an understanding. Every explication has its purpose, its foresight, and its preconceiving. When explication occurs in the form of [32] Interpretation [Interpretation], becoming a task [Aufgabe] of research, then the totality (which we call the "hermeneutical situation") of these "presuppositions" needs to have some preliminary clarification and certification through some grounding experience of the "object" that is to be disclosed [Grunderfahrung des zu erschlieβenden "Gegenständes"]. Ontological interpretation, which is to lay an entity into the open in respect of its very own structure as being [die Seiendes hinsichtlich der ihm eigen Seinsverfaβung freilegen soll], is obliged to bring the thematic entity into the purpose [Vorhabe] of the research through an initial phenomenal characterization, a characterization against which all subsequent steps in the analysis are tested. All subsequent steps also need to be guided by the possible pre-view of that being-type[33] to which the exemplary entity belongs [Vor-sicht auf die Seinsart des betr. Seienden]. Purpose and foresight then together predelineate that set of concepts [Vorgriff (E: preconception)] into which all <relevant> being-structures are to be raised.

Open, openness [offen, Offene]. See Da-; truth as unconcealment; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; earth [Erde].

{Heidegger, UKW (E=OWA)} The Open is that place among beings where all uncovering must occur. The earth is that which in its essence cannot be fully uncovered. Truth on the other hand pertains to the world in its conflict with earth so that unconcealment (truth) can never be complete [traditionally: "adequate" or "clear and distinct"] about beings insofar as they are earthly. There are, however, no unconcealed truths. Regarding earth "as such" (that is, considered out of relation to world and unconcealing) there are no truths. About that which is not of the world (that which never has been unconcealed, never has been in the Open) there is no truth. Unconcealment is essentially clarifying, lightening. The essence of truth excludes total unconcealment of what is. Omniscience is an essential impossibility, an impossible ideal. Note that the essence of world (the meaning of Being as such) and the essence of truth and the human essence are not subject to this condition to which beings (at least those which are earthly) are subject. [Traditionally speaking: truth, Being, and beauty as well are "transcendentals".]

Note, however, that whatever withholds itself from unconcealment is such that it can be unconcealed. Earth and what is of the earth will never come into the open altogether. But there is no earthly thing which cannot come into the Open. Earth has no inscrutable being in itself. That earthly beings will never be unconcealed altogether is a matter of the essential finiteness of unconcealing or clarifying; there is no implication here that the meaning of Being cannot be brought into the open.

In the creating of art works there is unconcealed the essence of unconcealing (the openness of the Open, etc.) whereas in equipment as something made there is unconcealed the use to which the thing can be put and that which enables the thing to serve this purpose [traditionally speaking: the form and matter of the functioning thing], including reliability <which has some connection with what traditionally has been called the uniformity of nature; see the definition of will in Kant's Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals together with the discussion there of technical imperatives and rules of skill.>

{See UKW in HW (G5) 23 (E=OWA, 35)} Yet the utility of equipment or the serviceability which is its essence conceals from recognition <conceals from understanding in so far as it occurs as circumspection?> what the entity is apart from its usefulness and thus conceals what in the one frame of reference is called the thing's matter. Heidegger, however calls what thus disappears in serviceability reliability. In creating a work of art, on the other hand, that into which truth is put is not made to disappear but rather is made to stand out as it is: rock comes into the open as rock, words as speech, etc. {OWA 46} But in that case the thing into which truth has turned itself is precisely not a thing for use. There is no concealed "material" in the art work. Here, instead, the "medium", what is thing-like about the work, stands out in its own right as a vehicle for truth.

Truth, openness of the Open, unconcealing in their being or essence <often translated here by 'nature' as in 'the nature of…'> indicate to the artist what ought to be <Heidegger's wording is 'is to be'> "expressed through" or "turned into" the work. In this sense, that which is to be unconcealed in the work elicits the creating of the work. Creation is the way truth puts itself into works. <In traditional terms, its doing so is self-caused, something transcendental.> In its essence, by its nature, Unconcealment elicits a tendency to overcome concealment; world elicits a tendency to overcome earth. <This seems pretty clearly to be Heidegger's analog to Brentano's position that all knowledge and even all objectivation (representations, ideas) is good in the primary sense, is good "in itself"; Brentano's position was his analog of Aristotle's doctrine that, by nature, all human persons desire to know. In Heidegger's analog it would extend presumably to the unconcealment that occurs through affects or through explication. In what sense does Unconcealment elicit the tendencies referred to? What does such a tendency entail? The most defensible elaboration would be — it seems to me — that through unconcealing the state of affairs that being unconcealed is better than being concealed shows itself (is given), being concealed is worse than being unconcealed. What is concealed "is to be" unconcealed. To prefer that what is concealed be unconcealed affords a motive to bring about its unconcealment. The to prefer that state of affairs harbors the potentiality to effect the unconcealing; it does not, however, effect the unconcealing. Preferring that some state of affairs be asserted as it shows itself to be is not yet an asserting that it is so.> Another way of expressing this might be: that unconcealment ought to be belongs to the essence of truth so that art as a way in which truth occurs is co-responsible with the artist for the being of the work.

World depends upon (needs and so elicits) unconcealing. Unconcealing is, however, the essence of humanity. <By nature human Dasein prefers that what is concealed be unconcealed.> Consciousness or the Open can, however, exist only insofar as some being is in the Open and so belongs to the world. World and humanity belong thus together in their essence, need one another. It is by responding to the need of truth to be unconcealed in works that a mortal's way of being open takes the form of creating a work and so becomes the way of being of the artist.

"The world is the self-disclosing openness of the broad paths of the simple and essential decisions in the destiny of an historical people." {OWA 48}

perceiving, perception. See ready, ready to hand; showing itself, relation to assertion and semblance [Schein]; intentionality; uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit].

{GP (G24) 95–107; (E 68–76)} Probably, Heidegger holds that an entity's being perceived would mean that it is "actual". In any event, the perceiving would normally be a believing in the perceived as such, i.e., an accepting of the perceived as belonging to the world. If its being perceived means that it is actual, this implies only that the perceived belongs to the world if the perceiving does. On this point, Descartes' dream and evil genius hypotheses are instructive.

Being perceived or ceasing to be perceived does not affect what is perceived, more precisely, its being perceived does not affect it so as to change it or alter what previously was unperceived or so as to make it, respectively, extant or nonextant. What befalls the perceived is just that it comes to be true of it that it is perceived, is no longer perceived, was perceived, etc. by a certain Dasein under certain circumstances. Concerning these states of affairs there is truth no less than about how things change, come into being or go out of being. That these latter are not sensuously perceivable states of affairs implies neither that there is no truth about them nor that the only truth about them is exclusively a truth about Dasein.

{BP 68} Implicit in the intentional directional sense of perceiving — whether it is illusory or not — there is an intending of the perceived as extant in itself. <In this, Heidegger follows Husserl in rejecting the traditional claim that what is perceived is (considered strictly, just as merely perceived) merely contemplated without being believed, disbelieved, doubted, etc., i.e., that perceiving is strictly apositional.> When we describe, whether scientifically or pre-scientifically, an extant thing perceived such as a window, what we find before us in it is, in the first place, determinations that belong to it as a thing for use or Zeug; we also find determinations like hardness, heaviness, extension, which belong to the thing not as window but as pure material thing. We can cover up the equipment-character that makes up its use-character and is what stands out at first in our natural commerce with such things. In natural commerce with equipment — with tools, vehicles, measuring instruments, we understand something like instrumentality [Zeughaftigkeit],and we understand something like materiality [reality (Dinglichkeit)] in finding material things before us. The perceivedness of the extant thing is not to be found among its traits of either of these sorts.

{BP 69} The traditional notions and controversies floated about what is disclosed and how it is disclosed indicate ways in which thinking about perceiving as a subject-object relation has misconceived intentionality. Perceiving, being intentional, falls so little into a subjective sphere that, as soon as we wish to talk about such a sphere, perceiving immediately transcends it. On the other hand, perceivedness is not a "real <material?> predicate;" its being perceived by me doesn't alter the extant thing although it does belong to the thing. Perceivedness is not to be equated with extantness; it is a necessary not a sufficient condition of access to extantness. {BP 76} Not being a material determination of the thing, perceivedness is not something extant though it does belong to something extant; it belongs in some sense to the Object but is not itself something Objective, yet it is not anything subjective. How this is possible can be grasped from the nature of time {GP (G24) 446–52 (e314–18)}. Perceivedness belongs to Dasein's intentional perceptual comportment insofar as that comportment makes it possible that the extant be encountered in itself. Perceiving uncovers the extant and — as uncovering — perceiving lets the extant be uncovered in some specific manner: it takes away coveredness from the extant and gives it freely [releases it (gibt es frei)], so that it can show itself in itself. Precisely because this mode of discovering [Aufdecken][34] is implicit in perceiving itself by its intentional meaning, uncovering belongs to the meaning of every natural looking around oneself [Sichumsehens] and of every natural orienting oneself toward something. {BP 69-70} Perceiving is releasing letting the extant be encountered. Transcending is uncovering. Dasein exists as uncovering. The uncoveredness of the extant is what makes possible its release as something met with [eines Begegnendes]. Perceivedness, i.e., the specific sort of release of a being through perceiving, is a mode of uncoveredness in general. Uncoveredness also characterizes the release of something in producing or in judging about[35] {ibid. 98–99 (e70 f.)}.

{ibid.} Through its sense of direction, the perceptual intentio is directed toward uncovering what is extant in its extantness. In the intentio itself there is implicit an understanding of extantness, be it only a preconceptual one. Through this understanding what is meant by extantness is unveiled, unlocked [aufgeschlossen], as we say, disclosed [erschlossen]. We are referring to the disclosedness given through the understanding of extantness. This understanding of extantness is implicit as preconceptual understanding antecedaneously in the intentio of perceptual uncovering as such. Here 'antecedaneous' does not mean that I should first have to make clear to myself the meaning of extantness in order to perceive what is extant. Antecedaneous understanding of extantness is not antecedent in the order of clock time that we measure. To the contrary, the antecedaneousness of the understanding — which belongs to perceptual uncovering — of extantness means: This understanding of extantness, actuality in the Kantian sense, is antecedaneous, i.e., belonging to the essence of perceptual comportment, in such a way that it has no need of first being executed by me; but instead it is implicit in the basic makeup of Dasein herself that she existingly understand the kind of being belonging to the extant entity toward which she existingly comports; and she has this understanding regardless of how far this extant entity is or is not uncovered and regardless of whether it has or has not been uncovered adequately and appropriately. There belongs to the intentionality of perception not just intentio and intentum but to a large extent understanding of the manner of being of that which is intended through the intentum.

Just how such antecedaneous preconceptual understanding of extantness (actuality) is implicit in the uncovering of what is extant — what its being implicit means and how it is possible — will concern us later. The point for now is that uncovering comportment toward what is extant keeps to an understanding of extantness and that to such comportment, i.e., to the existence of Dasein, there belongs disclosedness of extantness. Uncoverability, i.e., the perceivability of what is extant, presupposes the disclosedness of extantness. Perceivedness is grounded, so far as its possibility is concerned, in understanding of extantness. Only when we have thus traced perceivedness to its basis, i.e., when we analyze this understanding of extantness that belongs essentially in this way to the full intentionality of perception, have we put ourselves in a position to clarify the meaning of the extantness (the meaning of 'existence' in Kant's sense of the word) which we have thus far understood. {BP 71 f.} <At least roughly, existence means, for Kant, that whatever can be perceived and so whatever can belong to the world must conform to certain most general rules, the forms and categories, and that there is an implicit awareness of this condition for all existence.>

Contrary to Kant's interpretation (actuality equals perception), that to which Kant recurs presents a wealth of structures and structural moments. The first that we notice is intentionality. To this belong not only intentio and intentum but, just as originally, a mode of uncoveredness of the intentum uncovered through the intentio. However, there belongs to the entity which is perceived in the perception not just the state of affairs that it is uncovered, the uncoveredness of the entity but also that the way of being of the uncovered entity is understood, i.e., disclosed. We distinguish not only terminologically but materially between the uncoveredness of an entity and the disclosedness of its being.

persons and personalism, Heidegger's misrepresentation of Husserl's position. See object [Gegenstand]; Husserl, Edmund.

{SZ (G2) m47–48}. Heidegger attributes to Husserl the doctrine of Scheler that neither persons nor their acts can be objects [Gegenstände]. Note that the quotations which Heidegger gives to elaborate on this doctrine are all from Scheler's Formalism… rather than from Husserl's works. Scheler insisted that the act of a person is never an object [Gegenstand] "…for it is the nature of the being of acts to be vividly experienced [erlebt] and to be reflexively given only in being executed [im Vollzug]". Heidegger continues the elaboration: the person exists only in executing intentional acts, and he gives this as a reason why the person is "essentially not an object".

Husserl, however, uses the word 'object' in a quite different way. In any event, he did so by 1913, when both the first book of his Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology…and Scheler's Formalism… appeared. Husserl uses 'object [Gegenstand]' in such a way (in his inaugural address at the University of Freiburg) that if something (an act or a person, for instance) were not an object then it would have to be the case that there is no true statement that could possibly be asserted about it (including the statement, "She is not an object"). Thus Husserl has written

Any possible object [Gegenstand] — logically speaking, "any subject of possible true predications" — has, prior to all predicative thinking, precisely its modes of becoming the object of a regard that not only objectivates but intuits it and even reaches it in its very own [leibhaftigen] selfhood, that "grasps" it. {ID1 (HUA3)10, m11; see also {Husserl, EHIL 12-13; Husserl, "Die reine Phänomenologie, Ihr Forshcungsgebiet und Ihre Methode" in AV (HUA25) 72–73; see "W-INAUGFRB.HTML on this Web site.}

In these passages, Husserl differentiates sharply between those objects [Gegenstände] that are and those that are not Objects [Objekte]

However, in the passage Heidegger refers to in Husserl's Logos article, what Husserl actually says {PASW in HUA25 p. 319} is that a genuinely pure psychology would restrict its field of investigation to the purely mental and so to persons only insofar as they are bearers of mental traits and that such a psychology would not conceive the mental as a real natural Object, i.e., as something psycho-physical. The psycho-physical attitude is characteristic of psychology when it is pursued as a natural, an Objective science. In the psycho-physical attitude the mental is approached as a subject for an Objective natural scientific method. This way of thematizing the mental, he says, cannot give the person practicing it access to the purely mental (=the purely psychical in the terms used in the BT passage) as such, i.e., to the essence of the mental.

It seems to me that Heidegger thoroughly and quite knowingly misrepresents Husserl's position by identifying it with the views of Scheler's personalism. That position does indeed insist that neither the being of persons nor their actions can be objects. Personalism is usually a type of what is sometimes called "process philosophy"; it holds that the actions of persons are not objects. Whatever it is that is here meant by "an object" seems to be something different from what Husserl speaks of as Gegenstände. The personalist does seem at least to hold that what is being said of persons is true. The distinction between persons or their acts as process and as objects is related to the Spinozistic distinction between natura naturata (nature as consisting of distinct, finite components) on the one hand and on the other natura naturans. Natura naturans is nature as the infinite and divine generative process through which the totality has its unity.[36]

The contrast between Husserl's view of what a person is and Scheler's personalistic one is all the more striking since Husserl quite agrees with Scheler that any person's being is spontaneous and is continuous, having no discrete parts. There are at least two important theses that seem to account for the major differences between Husserl's view on the one hand and the personalistic and vitalistic and existential (Jaspers, Marcel) ones on the other.

1. THE IDENTIFICATION OF DISTINCTION WITH PARTITION, SEPARATION. The latter view seems to hold that differentiation (which is here often equated with finitude) is introduced by the intellect into a unity that by its essential nature is alien to and tolerates no such limitations. Hence, differentiation and distinction are conceived to misrepresent what genuinely exists (as it is in itself). Hence, the Real (variously: Existence, Substance, Duration, Life, Will) is often said to have no parts at all. Finitude and differentiation are, therefore, often spoken of as apparent or as phenomenal, where the apparent is then contrasted with what is (non-phenomenally) Real, Substantial, Absolute.

ad 1. Husserl, on the other hand, differentiates several senses in which something may have parts.[37] Parts may indeed be relatively self-sufficient, i.e., capable of existing without being parts of the whole in relation to which they are being considered – like its doors in relation to an automobile. Such parts are said to be concrete (self-sufficient), at least in relation to one another. In his vocabulary, however, w may have parts y and z that are inseparable from it, and so are non-self-sufficient in relation to w. Such constituents are said to be abstract parts of w. Here 'abstract' has as its opposite only the adjective 'concrete'. Their being abstract does not imply that they are either ideal or that they are general or that they are concepts. And y and z will be inseparable with respect to w regardless of whether or not w belongs as a separable or an inseparable part to a further unity. Even if there were some all-inclusive unity x with respect to which no constituent would be self-sufficient, still its non-self-sufficient constituents (abstract parts) need be no less real than x. Any assumption that x would somehow be more real or more independent than its non-self-sufficient parts is unwarranted.

Husserl maintains that the ego [Heidegger: Dasein] has only non-self-sufficient parts and that the ego is non-self-sufficient in relation to its parts. The pure ego, the unity of the flux of consciousness, and the discriminable constituents of the flux (the discriminable lived experiences for example) are mutually founding; the being of the ego requires that of the constituents no less than the being of the constituents requires that the ego be and be just as it is. The terms of the relation condition one another mutually. <A controversial point in the interpretation that I defend is that this remains true whether the ego be considered from the natural (psychological) attitude or from the transcendental attitude.>

Something similar is true of all other phenomena, of whatever the ego may be conscious of as something distinct from itself. Each discriminable lived experience has its multiplicity of intended objects, and among these are the ones that are objects distinct from the mind to which the lived experience belongs. Each of these "transcendent" objects is a unity quite analogous to the unity which is this mind. Each of them is a unity of characteristics that are abstract parts of that particular intended unity. Moreover, the unity is just the phenomenal unity of these phenomenal characteristics. They and it condition one another mutually.

Whatever stands out as a phenomenon (an object for consciousness) is a unity of this sort. Every consciousness is essentially intentive. Whatever it is intentive to is an object and is a phenomenon for that consciousness. Insofar (and only insofar) as it is a phenomenon for some consciousness, every object is dubbed a noema. The lived experience to which it refers as noema is given the name noesis. Noesis and noema are mutually conditioning phenomena.

2. LANGUAGE IS CONCEIVED TO BE PRIMARILY ABSTRACT, CONCEPTUAL, INTELLECTUAL, UNNATURAL. The use of language in asserting propositions is seemingly taken to be primary. More importantly, propositions are understood to be combinations of general terms regardless of whether these are understood nominalistically or realistically. Either way, it is believed that propositions can really assert only general facts. This type of cosmology holds that in itself being is temporal and individual and not differentiated (see 1 above). Thus, the discursive (and so far as reason or intellect or cognition is concerned, at least) primary use of language is quite unable to state anything about Reality or Existence (Being in itself).

ad 2. Our discussions over the last two weeks of assertions or propositions as the states of affairs that are "meant" in discourse have addressed this point. So, too, will our continuing discussion of the manners of givenness and the intentional horizons that are essential to such states of affairs.

Any state of affairs whatsoever can come to have syntactical form for the ego regardless of whether the state of affairs be something temporal or something actual or something personal or a process or something nonexistent or something that (like the corners of a sphere) could not possibly exist. In order to have a formal structure — in the sense that Husserl eventually developed, an object need not be ideal (Heidegger: extant) in its manner of being.

Is it at all likely that Heidegger was unfamiliar with the differences between Husserl's way of using 'Gegenstand' and Kant's and Scheler's '? Is it likely, for instance, that he was not familiar with the very explicit statement in Husserl's Freiburg inaugural address about how this word is to be used in his phenomenology? Or, for that matter, would he have overlooked the way the word is defined in Ideas I? If not, then why did he deliberately misrepresent Husserl's position? Is Heidegger not looking to displace both Scheler and Husserl and to place himself at the head of a movement toward a new conception of the extra mental?

phenomenon. See showing itself, relation to assertion and semblance [Schein]; unveiling [Enthüllen].

{SZ (G2) 38–40 (m28–31)} The signification for the expression 'phenomenon' is to be established as: what shows itself of itself [Sich-an-ihm-selbst-zeigende], the manifest. The φαινόμενα are the totality of what can be brought to light which the Greeks sometimes simply identified with τἁ ὅντα (what is). There is the possibility that something show itself as what of itself it is not. Showing itself in this way, an entity "looks as if…" This is called just seeming, and the Greeks also used the singular φαινόμενον in this way to mean the "apparently so", what is not as it seems. Everything depends on seeing how what is named by 'φαινόμενον' in both of its significations (what is manifest as well as what seems to be so) is interrelated The signification "just seeming to be so" is parasitic upon the signification "is manifestly so". Just seeming is the privative modification of being manifest, of being clearly so. The signification of φαινόμενον (the "apparent") entails the original signification (phenomenon: the manifest) as a secondary founding signification. We shall employ the term 'phenomenon' for the positive and original signification of φαινόμενον and differentiate the phenomenon of the Apparent as its privative modification. However, what is expressed by either of these terms has to begin with nothing what so ever to do with what is called "Appearance [Erscheinung]" much less with "mere Appearance". What are called symptoms of illness [Krankheitserscheinung] would be corporeal occurrences that show themselves and that by showing themselves and through doing so "indicate" something that does not show itself. Such an occurrence's showing itself goes along with the presence of some set of disorders that do not show themselves. Insofar as appearance is the appearance "of something" what is meant is precisely not: to show itself but is rather the betokening of something that does not show itself through something that does show itself. What appears by being betokened in this way is something that does not show itself. Here, however, the "not" is not by any means to be confounded with the privative not which is characteristic of appearing [Schein]. What has Appearance for its way of not showing itself can even be something that never shows. All indications, representations [Darstellungen], symptoms, and symbols have this basic formal structure of appearance.

Even though "appearance" is not and never is a showing-itself in the sense of being a phenomenon, appearance is possible only on the grounds of something's showing itself. The showing itself that makes appearance possible is, however, not Appearance itself. The latter is the being betokened [das Sich-melden] through something that does show itself. When the term 'Appearance' is said to refer to something whereby something Appears without itself being Appearance then the concept of phenomenon is not being delineated but is rather being presupposed, and that presupposition remains covered up [verborgen] because, in this characterization, the expression "to Appear" is being used equivocally. That whereby something "Appears" means here that whereby something is betokened, meaning "does not show itself" while, in the locution "without being itself 'Appearance'", the word 'Appearance' means "showing itself". This showing-itself belongs essentially to that whereby something is betokened <and does not belong essentially to what is allegedly being >. Phenomena <since they essentially have ways of showing themselves>, however, are never Appearances in this sense while every alleged Appearance refers to phenomena. When 'phenomenon' is defined employing such an unclear concept of "Appearance" then everything becomes confused, and a "critique" of phenomenology on such a basis is obviously a peculiar undertaking.

The expression "Appearance" can be equivocal in its own right: meaning, on the one hand, appearing in the sense of being betokened without showing itself and, on the other hand, meaning that through which the betokened betokens, that which indicates, through its showing itself, something which does not show itself. And, finally, "Appearing can be used as the term for phenomena in the genuine sense as what shows itself. When these three different states of affairs are all designated as "Appearance". confusion is unavoidable.

The confusion is enormously heightened by yet another meaning which 'Appearance' can take on, namely "mere Appearance". Appearance is taken to be the equivalent of elicitation [Hervorbringung] or of something elicited, where the elicited is not constitutive of, is accidental in relation to the genuine being of what elicits it. This happens when something betokens so as, by showing itself, to indicate something not manifest where this latter is understood to be referred to not just as not manifest but as something that is essentially never manifest. Now what betokens and does indeed show itself is taken to show itself to emanate from what it betokens and ever to disguise and conceal this latter. Such not-showing that conceals is nevertheless not Seeming [Schein]. Kant employed the term Appearance with this connotation. To him, Appearances are "the objects [Gegenstände] of empirical intuition", are what shows itself through such intuition. What thus shows itself (and is phenomenon in the pure and original sense) is taken at the same time to be "Appearance" in the sense of betokening emanation of something that conceals itself through that Appearance.

Insofar as some phenomenon is constitutive for "Appearance" where it means "being betokened by something that shows itself" yet where that phenomenon is nevertheless susceptible of being transformed privatively to seeming [Schein], even Appearance can come to be mere seeming. Thus, a person can look in certain illuminations as if her cheeks were flushed; the redness that then shows itself might then be taken to betoken presence of fever that indicates in turn some disorder in the organism.

Phenomenon — that which shows its of itself — signifies the characteristic way of being encountered that something has. In contrast, Appearance means some ontic referential relation that is so inherent in an entity itself that what does the referring (what serves as token) is able to fulfill this its function only when it does show itself of itself, i.e., when it is a phenomenon. Appearance and Seeming are themselves founded in such a phenomenon albeit in differing ways. The confusing multiplicity of the "phenomena" that get called phenomenon, Appearance, mere Appearance can be unraveled only when the concept "phenomenon", viz., that which shows itself of itself, is understood from the outset

Something's being understood always entails a phenomenon, and its being understood makes possible a formed understanding, an interpretation of it. <Thus, whatever is in fact understood and even whatever has the potentiality to be understood is an object [Gegenstand] in Husserl's sense of that word.> A formed understanding is an unveiling. Unveiling is a way of interpretation, i.e., all unveiling is interpreting. <Can a given phenomenon be unveiled in several ways? If this is equivalent to asking whether a single phenomenon can have different ways of being most originarily given then the answer is definitely negative. That is, no phenomenon can instantiate mutually exclusive kinds of originary or authentic givenness.>

What is encountered circumspectively is necessarily something within the world.

{GP (G24) 307 (BP m307)} The unveiling [H, (=MR revealing) enthüllen] of an extant being, e.g., nature in the broadest sense, we shall call uncovering [Entdecken]. The unveiling of the being that we ourselves are, Dasein, and that has existence as its mode of being, we shall call not uncovering but disclosure, opening up [Erschlieβen, Aufschlieβen].

poetry [Dichtung]. See creating, creative [Schöpfen, schöpferisch]; selfhood; interpretation, authentic; choosing, authentic and inauthentic; for-the-sake-of [Umwillen]; leaping forth [vorspringen]; leaping forth [vorspringen]; poetry [Dichtung]; striving [Streben] and strivingly-to-be [Erstreben], striving-to-be [Erstrebnis]; value [Wert].

{Drosdowski, Grebe, Duden, et al. 518} poesy [Poesie] English: poetry, poesy French: poisie Italian: poesia Spanish: poesva). The word 'Poesie' was borrowed near the end of the 16th century for the French 'poésie' (derived from the Greek ποίησις by way of Latin 'poesis') and designates an activity that brings something to the fore, creation, especially poetic [dichterische] creation, the art of poetry [Dichtkunst], poesy [Gedicht].

{GP (G24) 244 (BP 172f.)} Poesy isn't anything else than the creative [elementare] coming to words (i.e., being discovered [Endecktwerden]) of existence as being-in-the-world. Only through what is <creatively> expressed does the world become visible for the others who were blind to it before. To show this let us listen to a passage of Rainer Maria Rilke from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge <here Heidegger quotes at length from pp. 49-41 of Rilke, Werke. Auswahl in zwei BþsSnden (Leipzig, 1955)>

Notice how the world, i.e., being-in-the-world — Rilke calls it "life" — springs out at us from the things in such an elementary way. What Rilke in these sentences reads out of the exposed wall has not been imagined into them; quite the contrary, the description is possible only as explication and making clear what is "actually" in this wall, what in the natural relationship to it jumps out of it. The poet is able not just to see this original, albeit unconceptual and not in the least theoretically invented world but also to understand what is philosophical in the concept of life that Dilthey sensed and that we grasp by means of the conception of existence as being-in-the-world.

The section heading for the subsection in which this passage occurs is "The for-the-sake-of-which. Mineness as the basis for inauthentic and authentic self-understanding". And Heidegger asserts in the section's opening paragraph that Dasein is being-in-the-world insofar as she [und als solches] is for-the-sake-of-herself [ist es umwillen seiner selbst]. That Dasein exists means that she is for the sake of her own potentiality-to-be-in-the-world [In-der-welt-seinkönnens]. Here there shows itself that structural moment that moved Kant to characterize the person ontologically as end, without inquiring further into the structure of purposiveness and the question of its ontological possibility. <Whether Heidegger correctly understood Kant on this point or not {see the entry "moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about"}, what led Kant to this characterization of the person was what he called the dignity of each person, and this dignity belongs, he maintained, to each person insofar as each has the potentiality to act with a good will, i.e., the potentiality to do something that unconditionally ought to be, (in Heidegger's terms, something that "is to be"). The potentiality so to act is the potentiality to do something that ought unconditionally to be done, the potentiality to act in a way that would have (would embody) moral value.> For Kant then, the ontological possibility of the person's being an end in itself rested on the presence of the universal moral law in the mind of the person as transcendental (in his sense) and the potential efficacy of the moral law to inspire pure respect and thus to determine the will: on potential autonomy. In contrast to the interpretation in Kantian transcendental idealism of the transcendental self as a universal and absolute ego, Heidegger emphasizes that the self is in each case my own, and he is insisting here that Dasein's ways to be in the world are ever characterized as her own so that their status as Dasein's own is not something secondary and merely phenomenal.

What is it then, for Heidegger, that makes Dasein's selfhood, her being-in-the-world, a being for the sake of her self? Is her being for herself groundless? It seems to me that what makes Dasein a being for the sake of herself must also ground Dasein's choice if and when Dasein "chooses herself explicitly", chooses in such a way as to exist authentically. This would seem to mean that what does so also grounds a preference for resoluteness, for choosing herself more rather than less explicitly.

 poiesis. See bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen].

possibility, Dasein's. See choice, existence, and world.

From Heidegger's standpoint, it would seem as if there is some sort of equivocation or else a fallacy of composition involved when, as in the case of Stefan George and his circle, people lament the impossibility of "being all that one could have been." On the one hand it seems to refer to something like the complete set of all the selves that Dasein ever could have become. Yet, on the other hand, it seems to refer to just one member of this set, viz., the best one of them. If Dasein exists as a canceling of some possibilities then the set is an object but not one such as could have become actual though each member could have), hence not one of which it could be truly said that it ought to become actual. The sole condition on which the set could become actual is the necessitarian condition that it have just one member. In that case, its coming about is assured. And then the second reference is grammatically nonsensical since there are no comparable sets. As N. Hartmann seems to have shown, the best of all my possibilities, were there such a possibility, would be unrecognizable. The phrase 'all of the possibilities that were considered in making the choice' may have a comprehensible referent but the set need not include any best member, not even when some of the possibilities were better than others. {See the entry "best of what is attainable" in the Husserl Notes on this site.}

praesens [Praesenz]. See moral sciences and hermeneutical pragmatism.

{GP (G24) 433; BP m433} Praesens in Heidegger and the field of open possibilities in Husserl seem to be the analogs in their thought to intellectual intuition in Kant's pre-critical writings, Fichte, and Schelling and to visio intellectualis in Nicholas of Cusa, who conceives it to be God's knowing (scientia Dei), that toward which all persons strive as toward their highest good {De Possest 38}, and to what Scotus Erugena {De divina natura 2, 20} calls intuitus gnosticus.[38]

{ibid. 434} In interpreting being via time, Latin terms are deliberately used for all temporal determinations in order to differentiate them from the time-determinations of temporality in the sense previously used <where they referred to Dasein's temporality?> What does praesens mean in regard to time and temporality as such? Handiness and unavailability are certain variations of a single basic phenomenon, one which we characterize formally as presence [Anwesenheit] and absence [Abwesenheit], and generally [allgemein] as praesens. When the readiness-to-hand or the being of an entity is said to have a praesensial meaning, this signifies that this type of being is understood temporally, i.e., via the temporalizing of temporality in the sense of the ecstatic-horizonal unity as so far characterized. The two phenomena <N.B.>, present and praesens are not the same. Even praesens and Now — where time is an irreversible now series — are not identical since the Now characterizes the intratemporal — the ready-to-hand and the extant — whereas praesens should be the condition for the possibility of understanding readiness-to-hand as such <as well as for the possibility of understanding extantness as such>. Everything handy is "within time," is intratemporal. To understand something to be handy includes understanding this entity through the type of being called readiness-to-hand. Such antecedaneous understanding of handiness is supposed to be made possible precisely by praesens.

{ibid. 435 (BP 306} Praesens is also not at all the same as the present. The present, the making present of…, we characterized as one of the ecstases of temporality. What 'praesens' designates is, as the name itself implies, not any ecstatic phenomenon such as we use 'present' and 'future' to refer to; in any case, what it refers to is not the ecstatic phenomenon of temporality in respect of its ecstatic structure. Nevertheless, there is a non-contingent relationship between present and praesens. The ecstases of temporality are not simply jerks to… [entrückungen zu…] as if the direction of the jerk might as well be into nothing [gleichsam ins Nichts geht] or as if the direction were as yet indefinite. Instead, there belongs to every ecstasis as such a horizon which that ecstasis conditions and one without which that ecstasis would not be fulfilled. The making present — be it authentic in the sense of the moment or inauthentic — projects that which it makes present, that which in and for a certain present can be encountered, via something like praesens.

<In Husserlian terms, it seems that 'praesens' refers to a field of open possibilities which conditions the projecting of attractive (problematic) possibilities, the possibilities about which Dasein can care. There is an open horizon of possible occurrences whose occurrence is probable provided that certain conditions be met, even when there seems no way in which those conditions can in fact be met. A reactor meltdown, for example, might occur that would have been preventable had there been someone there who knew which switches to throw. Or sharp edged stones of a certain range of shapes were always hand axes even before any animal learned to use them as cutting tools. Every projected possibility fulfills or confirms the open possibility that it be projected, understanding that open possibility is a necessary condition for the projecting of the possibility as one that stands to choice: that is as a potentiality, a possibility that attracts [anmutende Möglichkeit]. To project it (make it present) is for the possibility to confront Dasein as something she might choose, in the sense of her being drawn toward it, being attracted by it — commit to it, and such a confrontation confirms or fulfills the open possibility: it is (was) a possibility such as could be chosen by Dasein situated, thrown in just this way. {See my PPV} Heidegger writes {GP (G24) 410; BP m410}, "Inurement must have an antecedaneously revealed sphere [Umkreis] unveiled out of which something can be expected".

Would Heidegger be willing to say that unrecognized utility such as that of the hand axe that was there to be found was extant in Nature? Both his terminology and the context suggest that Heidegger does not mean to say that unrecognized utility is nevertheless extant (present-at-hand) in that which "has" it. The unrecognized equipment is said to be "unavailable [abhanden]", and being unavailable is just a mode [not of readiness-to-hand but] of what is ready-to-hand. A single piece of equipment can be ready-to-hand and become unavailable or vice versa. When it is unavailable, equipment is still equipment and refers in its being to circumstances under which it would be handy (ready-to-hand). The relevant circumstances would include that an entity be there who is so situated (see above) as to be able to project using the equipment "in order to".>

Dealings with a thing require that Dasein have an antecedaneous pre-interpretive understanding of them, an understanding that is not formed in the manner of interpretation. {See the entries "dealings, to deal" and "serviceability".} Such an understanding would seem to include an understanding that Dasein's present occurs within a horizon of "open" possibilities that Dasein has not projected so that the possibilities in which Dasein is engaged are understood to occur within a horizon of more "obscurely" understood possibilities. The potentialities which Dasein is striving to make present <to "actualize"> and the previously attractive possibilities that she has not chosen are "automatically", i.e., pre-interpretatively, understood to have been projected to be possible only within a horizon of other possibilities, together with which they would come to praesens if they were to occur at all.

The same sort of thing will be true of whatever possibilities Dasein now understands to have already been; they will be understood to have come to such a praesens. Moreover, any possibilities — save, perhaps, for the most dreadful — that Dasein can now understand to be able to come about at a future time will have to be understood to be able to come to praesens.

pre-structure [Vorstruktur]. See for-the-sake-of [Umwillen]; my MH? from ¶ 6 on.

Dasein's traits, its properties or possessions (its habits in interpreting, understanding, feeling, striving) pre-possess; that is, they give Dasein motives for attending <for the sake of a familiar for-the-sake-of type?> to what is familiar and for doing so in familiar ways.

presence [Praesens]. See praesens [Praesens].

{GP (G24) 452 ff. (m in BP)} Despite the fact that Heidegger clearly wanted to dissociate the reference of 'presence' from that of 'Now' or present time, that reference has almost invariably been emphasized in the literature on Heidegger. The English use of the world, like the German use derives from Latin præsentia which derives from the adj. præsens. See OUD {Little, Fowler and Coulson, OUD 1573–1574}. The adjective uses derive from the verb præesse to be before or to be at hand where the opposite would be (as Heidegger emphasizes) "to be absent". I find that it would be entirely proper to emphasize the relation of 'presence' to the Latin verb præsentare to present, place before, etc. in late and medieval Latin, to present to a person as a gift.

The Perseus Digital Library {http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2337946} cites the following from Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary:

praesentia , ae, f. [praesens].
I. In gen., a being before, in view, or at hand; presence (class.; cf. conspectus): alicujus aspectum praesentiamque vitare, Cic. Cat. 1, 7, 17 : desiderium praesentiae tuae, id. Fam. 5, 8, 5 : urget praesentia Turni, Verg. A. 9, 73 . — In plur.: deorum praesentiae, Cic. N. D. 2, 66, 166 : praesentiam sui facere,to present one's self, to appear, Dig. 42, 1, 53 : praesentia animi, presence of mind, readiness, resolution, courage, Caes. B. G. 5, 43, 4 ; Cic. Mil. 23; Plin. 8, 25, 38, § 92. — For the phrase in praesentia (sc. tempora), v. praesens, s. v. praesum. —
2. Impression, efficacy, effect: tanta est praesentia veri, Ov. M. 4, 611 . —
II. In partic., protection, assistance: PRAESENTIAE MATRIS DEVM, Inscr. Grut. 28, 4 .

I am strongly inclined to treat presence in such a way that presence belongs properly to whatever is understood but belongs to it whether it be understood or not; its presence is very like its way(s) to be given.

Original familiarity with any <ready> entity is implicit in dealing with it in a manner suitable to it. Dealing suitably with it is constituted with to its temporality through a certain retentively-presentiating of the equipment context as such. in so far as it is precursive understanding of involvement, letting-be -involved is what first allows the entity to be understood as the entity that it is, i.e., with regard to its being. To the being of this entity there belongs <sic> its material content – the specific whatness – and a way being. Encountered in a everyday manner, the whatness of this entity is delineated by the character of equipment. The manner whereby entity – equipment – that is of this sort of materiality is is what we call being-ready or readiness, which we differentiate from being on hand. Readiness is the piece of equipment's type of being [Seinsart]. What will interest us here for the time being is solely its readiness as a type of being, and what now interests us about it is its temporal possibility, i.e., how we understand readiness temporally.

Now when a certain tool is not readily available and must be sought, it not at hand. Still, it has not ceased to be ready for use wherever it is. It is still a tool, still serviceable though now absent. Being absent and its opposite, being present are modifications of the tool's being, equipment can undergo such modifications without ceasing to have readiness as its type of being, its way of being equipment; its being absent does not make it useless. So we see that a tool's absence and its at-handness are modifications of a single basic phenomenon: universally, a tool can be ready at hand; the self-same tool can come to be absent. Absence and presence are each of them a distinct modalities — that we designate formally "absentness [Abwesenheit]" and "presentness [Anwesenheit]" respectively — of a single basic phenomenon that we designate universally as "presence [Praesenz]". <Defined in this way, it seems clear that 'presence' is the name for a universal that would be instantiated by whatever is absent as well as by whatever is present, but it is neither said nor implied that absentness and presentness dichotomize what instantiates presence. Some entities are of a kind such that entities of that kind are either absent or available at hand if they exist and some Dasein exists. However, it also seems clear that an entity absent in relation to some Dasein is often readily available in relation to other Dasein. Moreover there may well be entities that can not instantiate presence at all; presence is probably such an "entity". In so far as an entity is disclosed to Dasein, the way it actually is disclosed is its presentness and it exemplifies presence. However, the self-same entity exemplifies presence no less when it is only potentially disclosed to Dasein; in this case, it exemplifies presence through its absentness, absentness occurs through the state of affairs that the entity's potential ways to be disclosed are not actualized. Absentness would seem to be a modality of presence that calls to be disclosed, and not just disclosed but authentically explicated. This distinction between presentness and absentness is related to the issue in Descartes as to the meaning of the phrase "present and apparent to an attentive mind" in defining 'clearly perceived'. If (contrary to fact) Descartes were to allow that some objects are perceivable potentially even though not yet perceived then there would be an issue as to whether these can be present without being either apparent or attended to. It would make quite good sense to maintain that a state of affairs that is not presented (is not given) is nevertheless present in the sense of being manifest just because it could be presented or given. That Heidegger is unwilling in BT to allow that there are truths regarding such a state of affairs is a different issue; see the entry "truth and being [Sein]".>

In case the being of some entity or the ready availability of some entity has some praesential sense then this state of affairs entails that its being-type is being understood temporally, and this entails that it is understood through the temporalization of temporality, where temporality is the ekstatic-horizonal unity that we have characterized. We shall now choose Latin expressions for all time traits when what the interpretation treats is in time; this is done in order to differentiate — terminologically as well as conceptually — these time-traits from the temporal traits of temporality in the sense that has been discussed up to now.

What does presence mean with respect to time and to temporality universally? What is referred to is not the Now, the present moment or present phase [Gegenwart], not what common time interpretation refers to, for example, when it is said that time is an irreversible sequence of Nows. The Now is a trait of being-within-time, of what is ready and of what is extant. Presence, however, should constitute the condition for possibility of understanding readiness as such. <Does he really mean that it is the sole condition for this possibility? Probably not, the definite article seems misplaced here. At most it might be necessary, perhaps insufficient to assure the possibility it is said to condition. Is presence the temporality of the understanding of universals? Or the temporality of their ways of being given?> This preliminary understanding of the readiness as such of what is ready is made possible by presence. The Now, being a trait of time as within-time-ness therefore cannot be assimilated by the Temporal interpretation of the being of entity, in this case readiness. Every popular characterization of time for what is ready, every definition of the Now, even when the ready has been understood, makes use of time in a still more original sense than it defines. The common characterization of the being of entities that takes its cue time — temporal, timeless, supertemporal — is not relevant for our purposes.

Presence is a more original phenomenon than the Now is. The Moment [Augenblick] is more original than the Now because what it designates is a mode of the coming to be present [Gegenwärtigens, presentiating] of something, a mode that can find expression when Now gets said. Since this brings us back to the topic of the present: is Presence identical with the present after all? By no means.

projects. See self-understanding [Selbstverständnis]; death, being towards; Absurd (Husserl) and the ownmost possibility.

Any project involves the full disclosedness of being-in-the-world.

Each of Dasein's projects is threatened with non-fulfillment (unless, perhaps, one considers hypothetical or conditional projects of the form "if x is given then y). This seems to be part of what being-towards-death is all about.

ready, ready to hand. See perceiving, perception.

<Entities that are ready to hand are those beings within the world that are serviceable for achieving some goal or purpose. The serviceability of any such entity is given only in its being used, and using it explicates, interprets how it belongs to the world. It is usable for the purpose whether or not any Dasein understands that state of affairs. To have utility given is to explicate the entity in a circumspect way. This does entail understanding the entity to be useful. But understanding of this sort does not state or assert anything at all about the equipment that gets used; this sort of understanding does form something syntactically but does not form anything categorially. Something analogous is true about Dasein's being affected by the potentialities that she projects, and about any emotion whatsoever. The being affected would be intuition of the axiotic state of affairs that the potentiality is of a kind that ought to be. This would entail an obscure intuiting of this axiotic state of affairs but no asserting of it.>

What Dasein finds ready-to-hand she must already have understood in an unformed preliminary way <obscurely>. If sensing can, by abstraction, be derived from perceiving and perceiving from valuing and valuing from striving, that does not in the least indicate that sensations could have a being apart from their being-present-at-hand-within-the-world, their place in the context of involvements which is their being in themselves. The point here is, however remotely, analogous to that of the Gestalt psychologists. Context is not imposed — through some intellectual or psychological or biological function — upon sensations that would otherwise be either isolated [atomism] or chaotic [Kantianism, vitalism (including Nietzsche?), pragmatism]. Dasein's ways of interpreting explicate rather than create the involvements. Even in producing, Dasein goes along with the way things are. Being true is emerging out of hiddenness or out of forgetfulness, not out of context, even when Dasein's ways of being in the context have a lot to do with the hiddenness.

renunciation, abjuring [Verzicht]. See saying, projective; appearing [Erscheinen, Schein (νομός?)].

{UZS 169; Heidegger, WL 66} The poet experiences an imperative [Walten], she experiences a dignity belonging to the word, a dignity than which no further and higher can be conceived. The word, however, is also that good <NB. Gut, means also "estate" here; the use of "possession" in WL is very misleading> that is assigned and entrusted in an extraordinary manner to the poet as poet. In the same experience, there is experienced the poet's vocation in the sense of being called to the word as to the wellspring of Being. {UZS 168, WL 65} What is experienced includes <the state of affairs> that only the word lets a thing[39] appear and be present as the thing that it is. <That is, the state of affairs that its relation to the word is no less essential to the thing than are its ways of appearing.> The word says itself to the poet as that which holds a thing in its Being and preserves it there. All of this is included, is implicit, in the poet's experience of the thing in relation to the word: she experiences the word insofar as the word bestows relation [Beziehung] to a thing. The poet's experience of the word makes possible that the poet learn a new attitude toward the word and its relation to things. The experience makes possible the insight that Stephan George put into the words,

Kein Ding sei wo das wort gebricht
(There be not any thing at all where the word is lacking)
or
(Let there be not any thing at all where the word is wanting!)

{UZS 167; Heidegger, WL 65} >From experience of the word, George has learned to abjure the opinion he formerly cherished concerning the relationship of word and thing. The renunciation is made possible by the way the poet experiences the word, and the renunciation concerns the way of interpreting the word-thing relation that had long been cultivated before. To renounce here includes to be prepared for a different relationship of word to thing. Heidegger states in what seems a deliberately obscure way, "The doing-without which the poet learns is of a kind with that replete [erfüllten: fulfilled (perhaps positive?)] renunciation to which alone there speaks what has long been concealed and what, properly speaking, has already been plighted. {169, WL 66}" <The way of interpreting the word-thing relation that needs to be renounced seems to me to be the long accepted notion that statements state propositions and propositions are syntheses of ideas so that only ideas can be stated. This alleged fact about the essence of logos was touted by Hegel as a divine property of language. Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer) accepted this alleged state of affairs concerning the nature of language but drew from it as premiss conclusions opposite to Hegel's: the nature of language makes it quite impossible to state what truly is, namely, Will. So, Nietzsche was led to conclude that intellect, reason, logos can state about a thing only what is common to it and other things and can really state about it only what is relevant to ways of being used that it has in common with other things. The thing's unique and individual being, they thought, is beyond the comprehension of intellect, reasoning, and thinking. Beyond its inevitable and essential limits thinking is impotent and debilitating; the insistence that every topic be thought about is a sign of decadence.>

Here, to renounce is to be prepared for a different relationship of word to thing. The renunciation is required for the poet to do as she is enjoined: to let herself enter upon the now experienced relationship of word and thing. To do so would be to enter a realm or region. {UZS 168, WL 165} Being bid to enter upon this region entails a type of imperative, an injunction [Geheiβ] which George follows: From now on let no thing be allowed as being where the word is wanting.

George's experience of the word-thing relationship enables him to forego his previous ways of relating to the word, and something is pledged him in the revocation, a calling [Geheiβ] which he will not renounce.

revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]. See disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit];Da-; freedom; revealing, ways of; truth, unconcealing and concealing, world and earth; truth as unconcealment; truth, works, and the sense in which they ought to be (i.e., merit being tended); truth and being [Sein]; Open, openness [offen, Offene]; technology; unveiling [Enthüllen]; setting-up [Ge-stell]; truth [Wahrheit]

{TK 24–25} The happening of truth is the happening of revealing and is that to which freedom is most intimately and nearly related. All revealing pertains to a harboring and concealing. But what frees is the mystery; the mystery is always self-concealing. All revealing comes from the Open [Freien], goes into the Open [Freie], and brings into the Open [Freie]. The freedom of what is free (open) does not consist in boundless will nor in being bound by mere laws. <Which two positions regarding freedom are here being alleged to be mistaken is not quite clear. The characterization seems to be most appropriate to a pair of ideals regarding freedom that are most prominent in the controversy over voluntarism in theology. The second of the two mentioned positions seems to indicate that Heidegger considered the conception of freedom as autonomy to be at best inadequate.> Freedom (openness) is rather the clearing-concealing in whose clearing there flutters the veil by which the essence of all truth is disguised and which lets the veil itself appear as that which disguises. Freedom (openness) is the realm of that ordaining [Geschick] which brings every revelation on its way.

{ibid. 25-26} If we consider the essence of technology then we experience setting-up [Ge-stell] as an ordaining of revelation. Then we art staying within the open (free) of ordaining whereby we are by no means locked into an obscure compulsion to pursue technology blindly or to rebel against it helplessly and condemn it as the Devil's work. On the contrary, if we open up the essence of technology authentically we are taken into a claim that had not been hoped for. The essence of technology rests in setting-up [Ge-stell]. The reigning of technology belongs into ordaining [Geschick]. Because ordaining [Geschick] always conducts human being onto a way or revealing, human being insofar as it is thus under way, continually goes along the edge of the possibility of pursuing and persisting in nothing but what is revealed through setting up for use [Bestellen] and of taking all measures from that alone. To do so closes off the other possibility. viz., human being rather and more and ever more initially [anfänglich] lets itself into the essence of unconcealing and its unconcealment in order to experience as its essence the accustomed (habitual) belongingness to revealing.

Brought between these possibilities human being is endangered from ordaining [Geschick]. The ordaining [Geschick] which belongs to revealing is, as ordaining [Geschick], danger and this is true of every way of ordaining [Geschick] and, therefore, necessarily.

In whatever way the ordaining [Geschick] of revealing may reign, the unconcealedness in which all-that-is currently shows itself harbors the danger that human being err about what is unconcealed and misinterpret it. <All-that-is is apparent, shows itself, presents itself, is to be intuited. However, there is always the possibility of erring about what shows itself, etc. and  misinterpreting what shows itself, even when what presents itself is intuited.>

{ibid. 26} When all that comes to presence presents itself in light of the cause-effect nexus then even God can lose her mysterious remoteness. God can then sink to a mere cause,, causa efficiens. She then becomes, even in theology, the god of the philosophers, viz., of those philosophers who conceive the Unconcealed and the Concealed in terms of the causality of making without once considering the essential provenience of this sort of causality.

Then, too, the sort of unconcealment that represents Nature to be a calculable nexus of forces can provide outcomes that are correct even though the danger remains that, precisely through these correctly arrived at results, the truth is lost.

{ibid. 26-27} The ordaining [Geschick] of revelation is not just some danger or other but is the danger. <Isn't this a Heideggerian version of the doctrine that (moral) evil is invariably some manner of being ignorant? The danger in freedom is that of making a wrong choice through ignorance, through overlooking particular, concealed aspects of the various potentialities.>

When ordaining [Geschick] reigns as setting-up [Ge-stell] then it is of all dangers the highest. Two aspects to the highest danger are here evident. here is evident in two respects. {TK 26} See setting-up [Ge-stell] as a way ordaining.

Every way of revealing, including setting-up, is an ordaining of sending [Geschick]. Setting-up ordains sending in that it puts demands that Dasein order. Poesis is also a sending in the sense that it sends Dasein into a way of revealing.

revealing, ways of. See revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung].

Whatever is revealed to us in any way at all is revealed to our understanding or consciousness through conscious processes. Some of these revelations occur through actional mental processes, including all that sails under respected ensigns like "knowledge" and "science." Many ways of revealing are less revered, however. Often many of them are even despised, and rightly so in many cases since quite a number of them are harmful, and quite a lot are morally evil and outright wicked and vicious. But the disapproval is on the other hand often quite mistaken and itself thoroughly harmful, even wicked. As ways of taking position judgment and reasoning are no less voluntary and are no less moral phenomena than taking position through strivings is.

saying, projective. See renunciation, abjuring [Verzicht]. truth and being [Sein]; earth [Erde].

{This interpretation of Heidegger's concept was worked out in correspondence with Ms. Kara Noel.}

{UZS 196 (E 90)} If the nearness of poesy [Dichtung] and thinking is nearness of <projective> saying [Sagen] then we conjecture that the Eventuating [Ereignis, E. appropriation] holds sway [waltet] as that saying wherein language attracts, draws [zusagt] us to its essence. This commendation [Zusage, E. vow] of its essence to us doesn't just go off into the void but has instead already found a suitable recipient. Who better suited than humanity. One of us humans is human only insofar as she (by commending language's commendation of its essence) is needed [gebraucht; E. "is needful to"; "used" would not be a proper translation although the potentiality to be used is suggested] to speak language for language. (Emphasis added.)

That poesy and thinking are neighbors is not the outcome of some process such that poesy and thinking move toward one another — from where one hasn't a clue — into a nearness that would come about only through that process. The closeness that brings them near is itself that eventuating from which poesy and thinking are referred into the property [das Eigene] of their essence.

The rendering [Riβ] renders [reiβt] poesy and thinking into nearness to one another. It is the outline [Zeichnumg, sketch, drawing]. So the rendering outlines poesy and thinking in the rendering of their essence as neighbors. It is an outline which they do not themselves generate. This outline <form? eidos?> belongs to the un-finite [Un-endlichen]. There the parallels <likenesses, the analogies> of poesy and thinking intersect.

Poesy and thinking are not separate if separation means being cut off into unrelateds. They are parallels beside one another, surpassing themselves in contrast to one another. In truth they are, in their own obscurity [Dunkel] essentially kept apart from one another in their own way through a delicate yet distinct [helle] difference. We must reject the opinion that the neighborliness of poesy and thinking is merely a matter of a garrulous muddle thereby each would take out unsecure loans from the other.

{UZS 205-206} In dialects, differing landscapes speak: that is, the earth speaks in the way Dasein speaks. The essence of language announces itself [sich ankundigt] in Hölderlin's elegy "Going Upon Land" to be projective saying, to be what moves all. This must be understood through what is said in the fifth stanza of the elegy "Bread and Wine": To be human is so to be that, when the good is there [wenn das Gut[40] da ist] and a god cares for me with gifts <enables me to act>, just then I neither know nor see that it is so. I must first suffer it <live, bear it>, but now I name my most loved: now, now words for it must emerge like blossoms. <If the good were not there (in the open) Dasein could not make itself be in the world through its choices, through its response to the good and to the possibility that is mine and that the god allows to be open to me.> Such words would be the mouth in bloom; in such language earth blossoms to the blossoms of heaven. The mouth here is not some type of organ belonging to the body represented as organism. Instead, body and mouth belong into the flow and growth of the earth, wherein we mortals flourish, out of which we receive what has flourished through a certain constancy to the ground that is our home [Bodenständigkeit, what is Bodenständig is true to that ground or basis that is its home — compare the meaning of 'stellen' and 'Gestell']. When earth is lost we indeed also lose what stands rooted in the ground. <Isn't the meaning here something like: what is not spoken of (not indicated or objectivated in such a way that it can be spoken of, not categorially formed at all) does not admit of being misspoken? So that to be so indicated is to admit the threat of untruth? Of falsity in the case of predicative judging, understanding when it occurs in the form of assertion? Wouldn't projective saying be saying that projects these potentialities: as its danger on the one side and as its "estate", the good it seeks on the other?>

{ibid. 207} Heidegger cites another draft of "Bread and Wine"'s fifth stanza, seemingly to the effect that to bring this way of occurring to word is long and arduous. The moment [der Augenblick] is bright in comparison, and those who so serve what is heavenly are versed in the earth [kundig der Erde]. Heidegger reads this as placing language, the word, in the region [Gegend] as that region that lets earth and heaven, the flow of the profane and the power of the sublime encounter [meet, ent-gegnen] one another, the region that makes earth and heaven into world-regions. <And that makes itself, as the Da- of Dasein, be a world-region, be in the world?> The mouth flourishes by doing so. What Hölderlin says in this figure, which far from being something farfetched, is deliverance [recovery, rescue, bergen] of the word back into its essential lineage, is bringing the word to the fore via its beginnings, is the gentle power of fusion implicit in being-able-to-hear. <'Fusion' here translates Einfalt, a substantive from einfaltig, simple whose opposite is vielfältig <manifold>. In Husserl, this would be something like the ability monothetically to grasp what has antecedaneously been understood (constituted) polythetically.> The saying that is essential to genuine thinking and to poesy always has this power. Through saying <which is at least potentially (projectively) monothetic grasping of what is said>, what has antecedaneously been understood to be a multiplicity is taken to be unitary and acquires the sense 'a something' [Etwas][41]. <To do so includes the state of affairs that what has been understood acquires for consciousness the most basic categorial form[42].> Where the saying is authentic (where the judgment is true, for example) what is thus taken to be unitary has genuinely the unity that is thus as something unitary. Otherwise, the constituted unity is merely that of an alleged state of affairs (multi-membered object or thing as alleged). So, where the saying is authentic or genuine, the members now interpreted as belonging together genuinely do belong together, and the grasping explicates what is [Seiendes]. Or it may perhaps explicate the meaning of being.

However, genuinely projective saying understands <at least implicitly: interprets, explicates> things (Husserl: objects) simply in the sense absolutely[43]. It takes them, using Husserl's terms, within their openly endless horizons of meaning, their horizons of projected explication. Every thing is the simple unity of such an openly endless manifold and is not to be genuinely understood otherwise. The world is appropriately to be understood only as the simply absolute unity of four-fold world-regions: earth, heavens, gods, mortals.

The power of language is limitless, provided language be saying that is projective. This is how Heidegger explicates the concluding line of Stephan George's poem "The Word". See renunciation.

There is not any thing (object in Husserl's sense?) at all which cannot be spoken of projectively. "Renounce other (abstract) ways of saying" is what "is to be learned" from experiencing (cf. "experience") poesy. What the poet experiences is a certain power [walten, which means also "governance", seems here to refer to something very like an ordaining, an imperative]; she experiences a certain dignity of the word (of language) such that no farther reaching and higher dignity can be conceived. However, the word is that good[44] delegated and entrusted in an exceptional way to the poet as poet.

science [Wissenschaft]

{SZ (G2) 472 (m357 and in BT)} The "logical" concept of science understands science with respect to its results and defines it to be a "nexus of explanatory[45] and true — i.e., valid, correctly formed — propositions". The existential concept of science understands it, in contrast, to be a mode of existence and therefore to be a mode of being-in-the-world, a mode that uncovers or discloses either what-is or being. A fully adequate existential interpretation of science can only be carried out once the sense of being and the relation between being and truth have been understood on the basis of the temporality of existence…It is only within this understanding that the ideal of phenomenology can be developed — in contradistinction to the pre-conception that has already been indicated.

{ZWB in HW (G5) 77 ff. (m71 ff.)} The essence of what today is called science is research. It is essential to research that cognition, as practice [Vorgehen], orient itself toward a realm of beings — of nature or of history. Here, procedure does not mean just method or procedure; every practice has need of an open region [Bezirkes] within which it already moves. However, the opening up of such a region is the basic practice of research. The opening-up is carried out here by projecting within some realm of beings, e.g., within nature, a definite outline of nature-processes. The project predelineates in what way cognitive practice has to commit itself to the region which is opened up. It is this commitment or stricture which is the rigor of research. Through its projection of the outline and through the definition of rigor, the practice of research assures itself of its region of objects within the relevant realm of being [Seinsbereiches].

selfhood. See self-understanding [Selbstverständnis]; world; inauthentic self-understanding, origin of; within the world [MR, innerweltlich; intraworldly H]; world in the strictly ontological sense.

{GP (G24) 242ff. (BP 176f.)}. Dasein has a peculiar selfsameness with herself; her way of being identical with herself Heidegger calls "selfhood" and distinguishes its self-identity from the way of being identical with themselves that characterizes entities whose way of being is to be within the world. Dasein is like all other entities in that she is self-identical in a formal-logical sense in which other entities are identical with themselves. The difference is not just that Dasein is conscious of its selfsameness while natural things are not. She  is in a way that is her own, in a way such that she has herself, and only because she has herself can she lose herself. Because selfhood (i.e., "being-its-own [Sich-zu-eigen-sein]" belongs to existence, the existing Dasein can choose herself explicitly [eigens] and by so doing determine her existence primarily and chiefly starting from that choice; that is, she can exist authentically.[46] But she can also let herself be determined in her being by the others and exist inauthentically through forgottenness of herself.

Moreover, inauthenticity belongs to the essence of factual [faktischen, factical MR] Dasein. Authenticity is but a modification of inauthenticity, not a total elimination of it. Inauthentic existence is not some sort of merely phenomenal, impure existence. Dasein is determined in her possibilities by those entities to which she relates as to entities within-the-world, and she first understands itself by way of such entities, i.e., she is at first unveiled to herself through inauthentic selfhood [in der uneigentlichen Selbstheit]. Dasein's everyday self-understanding is maintained in inauthenticity, that is, in such a way that Dasein knows about herself without expressly reflecting in the sense of actively carrying out an internal perception such as would be directed back toward herself. <The meaning here seems to be that Dasein's everyday self-understanding is straightforward rather than reflective. It is straightforward even in knowing about itself, which would probably entail making assertions about itself.>

The possibilities for authentic or for inauthentic choosing are, it is here implied, equiprimordial; neither possibility is the more primordial. Yet it is also said quite explicitly that inauthentic choosing and selfhood come first factually. Dasein's everyday self-understanding seems in some way to conceal the possibility of authentic choosing and authentic selfhood from Dasein. In what sense, then, is everyday self-understanding an understanding at all? If it is an understanding then misunderstanding is a way of understanding and understanding (even self-understanding) can be either not veridical [intuitive] at all or inadequately veridical.[47] "Unveiled" to itself through its inauthentic selfhood, Dasein (Heidegger seems to be alleging) is in fact this being-within-the-world yet it seems equally true that this self, who she is, genuinely[48] did have the potentiality to choose differently, a potentiality that "called" to Dasein.

The analysis of circumspection shows how it is possible that everyday self-understanding arise out of the things with Dasein deals. We have seen that a preliminary understanding of relevance totalities, of contexts of significance, i.e. of world in general is needed if there is to be an understanding of that being [Seiende] that is nearest us and that meets us in all we encounter. From that world as it has now been understood, we come back to entities within-the-world. That is, because we exist, we already understand world beforehand and so are constantly enabled, in a certain manner by way of the being of what is encountered, to understand and to come to meet ourselves as within-the-world. Shoemakers are not shoes but the cobbling equipment belonging to the functional context of their worlds is understandable as what it is, viz., equipment of this sort, only by way of the worlds that are pertinent to those functional contexts (and that belong the constitution of the existence of each such shoemaking Dasein. Although cobblers are not shoes, each by existing is that cobbler's world and that without that world it would be impossible to discover an equipment-context as within-the-world and to maintain oneself within and through that context. Primarily, we meet with ourselves not via things as things (i.e., taken in isolation) but rather via things as within-the-world. That is why this self-understanding which everyday Dasein has depends much more upon the immediacy and the originality [Ursprunglichkeit] of being-in-the-world than it depends upon the scope and penetration of Dasein's acquaintance with the things as such. <It seems, then, that any world, (mis-)understood in this sort of way, is an entity within-the-world, as the continuation seems to show.> Even what comes to meet Dasein in a merely fragmentary way, even what is understood in some Dasein in a merely primitive way — such as the world of the child — is fraught with world, insofar as Dasein is something within-the-world. . <See senses 3 and 4 in the entry "world". The "world of the child" is extant within-the-world, and it is fraught with world at least in that it is bound to incorporate (through its unique individual form or structure) the formal universal worldhood. Thus, an infant who had not yet achieved understanding of being in a world with other Dasein still understands a world; what is thus primitively understood is, in Heidegger's terms, something (extant?) within-the-world, and belongs in this way to the world. In another terminology, it might be called an idea or a representation of the world or a Weltanschauung and conceived as something like a picture of the world, one that might be thought in some sense to correspond to the world. In the terms Husserl uses at one point in Crisis, it would be a world-appearance. In the terms he otherwise uses, it would be an ideal [Idee], but not an eidos. Since it would have its open horizons of meaning it could be identified by the child at a less primitive stage as having been all along a fragment, something like a partial view, of the world.> Through understanding herself via the things, each Dasein, as being-in-the-world, understands herself by way of her world. What matters here is whether existing Dasein with her existential possibilities <to choose either explicitly or not to do so, to choose in a more rather than a less authentic way?> is competent over and above that to [ursprunglisch genug ist, um] see in its own rignt the world that always was unveiled <note that the verb here is not 'disclosed'> along with Dasein's existence and to help put it into words and thereby to make it expressly visible for others.

self-understanding [Selbstverständnis]. See unveiling [Enthüllen]; selfhood; for-the-sake-of [Umwillen].

{SZ (G2) m146} Any project concerns the whole disclosedness of being-in-the-world: understanding has, as potentiality-to-be, its own possibilities and these are predelineated for it by the scope or range of what is disclosable by understanding. <It may be that the phrase "the range of what can be disclosed by understanding" refers here to what Husserl would call the "open possibilities" for occurrences of a given sort.> This means that understanding can place [legen] itself primarily into the disclosedness of the world, i.e., Dasein can, in the first place and mostly, understand herself by way of her world. <Can adopt something like the "natural attitude"?>. Or she can cast herself on the other hand into the for-the-sake-of-which, i.e. into Dasein's existing as herself. This means in turn that understanding is either authentic, emanating from Dasein's own self as such, or else it is inauthentic. The "in-" in "inauthentic" doesn't assert that Dasein closes herself off from herself and now understands only the world. Since Dasein's being-herself is being-in-the-world, world belongs to her being-itself. In contrast, authentic understanding and inauthentic understanding alike can be either pure [echt] or impure. As potentiality-to-be, understanding is permeated altogether by possibility. To adopt one of these basic possibilities of understanding is not thereby to discard the other.Rather, the understanding's adopting one of them is an existential modification of the project as project of the whole [des Entwurfs als Ganzen] because understanding always concerns the perfect disclosedness of Dasein as being-in-the-world. On the one hand <inauthentic understanding>, the understanding of world always includes understanding of being-in; on the other hand <authentic understanding>, to understand existence as such is always an understanding of world. Dasein has, as factual, always adopted one or the other of the possibilities of understanding.

Understanding, through its projective character, makes up existentially what we call the sight of Dasein. Dasein's sight is existentially together with the disclosedness which characterizes the There, and sight is exactly as primordial as Dasein herself in the characteristic basic ways in which she is: as circumspecting in concern <Besorgen, providing, S taking care of things>, as considerateness of concern <Fürsorge>, as sight of being [Sein] as such for the sake of which Dasein always is as she is. "Transparency" is what we shall call that sight which relates to existence primarily and as a whole. We choose the term to characterize "selfknowledge" when this is properly understood in order to point out that self-knowledge is not a matter of perceptual seeking out and viewing of some self-point but is rather a matter of grasping understandingly the perfect disclosedness of being-in-the-world by penetrating the moments of its essential composition. Whatever entity has her being through existing sees [sichtet] herself only insofar as her being – as being in the midst of [bei] the world and being-with others – has become just as primordially [gleichursprünglich] transparent to her as have the constitutive moments of her own existence.

{SZ (G2) m15-16} To have an understanding of her ownmost being and ever to maintain herself within a certain explicatedness of her being belongs to Dasein's ownmost being. This doesn't at all mean, however, that Dasein might take up this most immediate [nächste] pre-ontological explication of her own being as a proper clue [Leitfaden]: as if this understanding of being had to arise from some thematically ontological meditation [Besinnung] upon the constitution of her ownmost being. On the contrary, Dasein has – just through one of the sorts of being belonging to it – the tendency to understand her own being by way of that being <marginal note: meaning here by way of the extant> to which it relates essentially, constantly, and to begin with [zunächst]. This tendency, which we shall show to be the ontological reflection of the world-understanding back upon the explication of Dasein, is implicit in Dasein herself and thereby in her own understanding of being.

sense of being [Sinn des Seins, Seinssinn].

The sense of being is not something that stands behind being but is being itself in so far as it stands out into Dasein's understanding. The sense of being cannot be brought into opposition either to what-is or to being (as the sustaining "ground" of what-is) since "ground" becomes accessible only as sense — and this is so even where sense is what is groundless about senselessness.

serviceability [Dienlichkeit].

{SZ (G2) m83} In a manner analogous to that in which the telos determines the hylomorphic synholon in Aristotle, serviceability is fundamental for the constitution of equipment. Whatever is ready-to-hand has appropriateness and inappropriateness (and its "properties" are bound within these characters as presence-at-hand is bound within readiness-at-hand) As what constitutes equipment, serviceability (reference) is, however, also not any appropriateness of an entity but is rather the condition for the possibility that any entity be characterized by appropriateness. That the being of the ready-to-hand has reference means that it has of itself the character of being-referred. Only through being referred, as the entity that it is, to something does any entity come to be discovered: there is something in which the referred entity has an end. The characteristic of what is ready-to-hand is having an end [die Bewandtnis]. Having an end is the Being of any entity that has been freed within the world wherefor it has been freed. There is something or other wherein it has, as a being, an end. There being something wherein it has an end is the ontological character of the Being of such a being

Being freed within the world entails something that ought to be <Heidegger: is to be>. In some cases, what ought to be requires that something serve as means to the actualization of what ought to be. What ought to be, so far as its occurrence is conditioned or contingent, refers to that on which it depends as its in-order-to.

So far as what ought to be refers to a requirement that something be done in order that what ought to be occur, The ought to be requires whatever serves or enables it, including what ought to be done as well as any equipment required in order to do it.

The ought to be limits what can serve its occurring and limits how what is done will serve it. This limits the appropriate means of doing what is to be done, including the range of appropriate equipment that may be employed.. Thus, the range of properties for the appropriate equipment is delimited. The reference of the ought to be to what serves it is the involvement which the equipment has. The equipment's having an end, a towards which, entails both the ought to be and that which is appropriate to serving this end (the piece of equipment or the materials as well as the relevant properties of both). It <the end?> calls for these.

{MAL (G26) 212 (m in E); SZ (G2) 116} That "towards which" the subject, as subject, transcends is not an Object, not at all this or that being be it a determined thing or a being of its own kind or some other sort of life form. What is transcended is not the towards which but is the Object, or more precisely, is an entity such as can have a characteristic way of being encountered. What the subject transcends toward is what we call world.

{SZ (G2) m84} Heidegger calls circumspective dealing with things within the world 'letting them have their ends'. Letting something have an end means making it possible for Dasein to encounter it within the world. The ends and references involved are discovered by Dasein, not made by her.

setting-up [Ge-stell, NOT enframing]. See technology [Tecknik]; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; appearing [Erscheinen, Schein (νομός?)]; being [Sein]; within the world [MR, innerweltlich; intraworldly H].

{Grimm, vol 10, 2195-2196} GESTELLE, GESTELL, n., ahd. gistelli, mhd. gestelle, coll. zu ahd. mhd. stal, statio, sededs, locus, gestell, stütze. daneben ein fem. ahd. gestellida, collocatio, status, situs, mhd. gestellide… 1) stellung: gestelle, positio HAYME (1738 254.a) aufstellung, lage: ahd….westfal. gestell, zustand, geschick: et es en üwel gestell, wann de bäcker soll backen un het kein mel…} {Grimm, vol. 4, Gefoppe-Getreibs,4221}

die allgemeine bedeutung von stellen ist stehen machen, von legen und setzen unterschieden nach dem umfange der fläche, die mit dem boden in berührung kommt. 'in ihrem eigentlichen gebrauche kommen diese wörter darin überein, dasz sie bedeuten: einen körper dergestalt an einen ort bringen, dasz er ruhen könne…was liegen soll, das legt man, was blosz stehen und also weder liegen noch sitzen soll, das stellt man' EBERHARD SYNON. (1795 ff.) 6,41 doch werden die 3 verba in einer reihe von wendungen, besonders in abgezogenem gebrauche, aber zum theile auch bei concretem obj. in eigentlichem sinne synonym gebraucht, weil man nur bei einzelnen körpern sitzen, liegen und stehen unterscheidet… <the common signification of stellen is to make something to stand, differentiated from legen and from setzen by the comparative area of surface which comes into contact with the supporting ground . 'in their proper use, these words agree in that they signify: a body's being  placed so that it can rest…one lays what is to lie what should just stand so that it neither lies nor sits that one stands, sets upright) EBERHARD SYNON. (1795 ff.) 6,41 nevertheless the 3 verbs are used synonymously in a range of idioms, especially in abstract uses although to some extent for concrete objects as well since one differentiates sitting, lying and standing only with reference to single bodies>
    

{SZ (G2) m36} Does the move to conceive "external" nature as non-apparent and sense data and emotions as the only apparent natural events give rise to transcendental thinking whereby the transcendental mental attributes are contrasted with the natural ones? The phenomenological concept of phenomenon differs from the Kantian one in that there is not, behind the phenomena, something else. Yet what should be a phenomenon can very well be hidden [verborgen] <in contrast with the Wittgensteinian concept of phenomena?>. The opposite of 'phenomenon' is covered-up-ness [Verdecktheit]. <Doesn't this imply that revealing is uncovering, unconcealing? If not, why not?>

{TK 26} When ordaining [Geschick] reigns as setting-up [Ge-stell] then it is, nevertheless, the highest danger. The danger here is evident in two respects.

First, as soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns human being even as object [Gegenstand] but rather exclusively as resources [Bestand] and people are no longer anything but that for whom resources are structured [Besteller des Bestands] — then human being goes to the most extreme edge of the abyss, viz., to where she herself is to be taken as nothing but resource components [Bestand]. Thus threatened, humanity sets itself up, feet set wide apart and arrogates to herself the form Lord of the Earth. In this way it comes to seem as if whatever is encountered had standing [bestehe] only insofar as it were something made for people. <What is spoken of here seems to be very much like a pragmatic variation of phenomenalistic doctrine. What-is includes, other than people, only quale, and quale are elements in Ernst Mach's sense or J.S. Mill's sensibilia. Among these there are no "natural kinds". Moreover, there is no order to be discovered among these quale other than that which can be discovered through relevance to human interests. The sole patterns that will be discovered will be relevant to ways of predicting, i.e., controlling, the sequence of quale, the course of experience so as to achieve whatever ends people might have.> This seeming brings about an ultimate deceptive appearance, according to which a person would encounter nothing at all except for herself, meaning by that only "her" components [bestand]. Heisenberg has rightly pointed out that today's people must appear to themselves in this way {Heisenberg 27}. Thereby, human being today encounters herself, i.e., her essence, nowhere at all. Human being stands so emphatically in the train of the demand made by setting-up [Ge-stell] that it does not receive [vernimmt, i.e., intuit] the demand as a claim, i.e., she overlooks herself as being addressed by the demand. Thus, she fails to listen to <that in the claim which shows> in how far human being ek-sists through her essence in the realm of an exhortation and, therefore, never can encounter only herself. <It would have been helpful of Heidegger to point out that every demand makes a claim that address es the person who receives it in her freedom and openness. Each claim is subject to the question, "Is it right? Is it justified? Is it to be followed?" {See: Brentano, VUSE 12; Brentano, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong § 10}>
Second, setting-up [Ge-stell] does not endanger only human being in her relationship to herself and to all that is. As ordaining [Geschick] it refers to revealing of the type setting up for use [Bestellen]. Where this type of revealing dominates, it expels every other possibility of revelation. Above all, setting-up [Ge-stell] conceals that revealing <and so conceals that manner of ordaining> which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what comes to presence come to the fore into appearing. In comparison, setting up [Stellen] which challenges presses toward a motility which is oppositely oriented toward that which is. Where setting-up [Ge-stell] reigns, regulating <managing?> and securing do not even let their own basic trait, viz., revealing, come to light as a revealing.

Thus, the setting-up which makes demands does not just conceal a former way of revealing (viz., bring-to-the-fore) but conceals as well revealing as such and conceals along with it that wherein unconcealment takes place, i.e., truth.

Setting-up [Ge-stell] dissembles the seeming and reigning of truth. The ordaining [Geschick] that ordains into setting up for use [Bestellen] is thereby the most extreme danger. What is dangerous is not technology. The mystery of its essence is what is dangerous: its essence as an ordaining of revealing

The threat which technology involves has already affected human being in its essence. The dominance of setting-up [Ge-stell] threatens with the possibility that human being could fail to turn into a more original revealing and so fail to experience a more initial truth

<A theory in Objective science makes its symbols refer to some alleged abstract stratum of entities within the world., e.g., things merely insofar as they are physical. It is concerned in a special way with what is encountered within the world.; its revealing is ordained in a special way. The physicist is concerned in the experimental situation exclusively with that aspect of his experience, that component of himself which is taken to be most directly the result of the causal operation of physical bodies in the surroundings, viz., with what he perceives insofar as the perceived involves what have for research the meaning of sensations, especially visual sensations, so long as these are taken to be the basis for the most accurate measuring techniques.>

{TK 23 f.} The essence of technology is shown by what we call setting-up [Ge-stell]. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is the gathering of that positing that posits human being revealing what is actual, in the manner we call ordaining [Geschick], as Bestand. Posited in this way as challenged, human being stands in the essential realm of setting-up [Ge-stell]. Human being cannot enter into relation to setting-up [Ge-stell] subsequently. Thus, the question as to how we might get in touch with the essence of technology is always too late when put in this form. However, a question that never comes too late is whether we experience ourselves authentically as the one whose doing and leaving-be are always challenged by setting-up [Ge-stell], sometimes openly, sometimes not. Above all, the question whether we let ourselves authentically into that wherein setting-up [Ge-stell] itself essentiates [west].

If we do not merely represent technology technologically, i.e., from the point of view of humanity and its machines then we may attend to the claim characteristic of our epoch concerning the being not only of humanity but of all that is, nature and history. What claim is meant? That our existence is in every respect — whether playing or driven or harried or pressed — challenged to take up planning and calculating above all. What is it that speaks through this challenging? Does it come simply from a spontaneous whim of human being? Or do beings themselves concern us through it and do so in such a way that they themselves speak to us of their planability and calculability? In that case wouldn't it be true that even being [Sein] would be challenged to allow beings to appear calculable <i.e., as having primary qualities as their basic albeit non-phenomenal components [Bestand]? Yes, indeed! And more: that human being is challenged — i.e., set up, — to the same degree as being is set up — to secure whatever beings concern it as the content of its planning and calculating and challenged to arrange things this way without foreseeable limit. The name for the gathering characteristic of that challenging which would so set up being and human being that they would mutually set one another up is called setting-up [Ge-stell]. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is the way this claim is made [spricht an] by that in which and from which being and human being in the age of technology thus concern one another <in the way alleged by the claim>. We hear this claim, which conditions the constellation of our epoch, through the mutual setting themselves up on the part of being and human being. Setting-up [Ge-stell] concerns us immediately and in everything. It no longer concerns us as something present because we no longer meet up with it <since setting-up [Ge-stell] is not something Objective?> within the representing's limits (which limitations allow us to think of presence [Anwesen] as the being of beings). At first, that is why setting-up [Ge-stell] seems strange. It goes on being astonishing principally insofar as it is not anything ultimate, instead it is setting-up [Ge-stell] itself that first secretly intimates to us what authentically governs the constellation of being and human being.

{ID 26-28} That being and human being should belong together [Zusammengehören] in the manner of the <alleged?> mutual challenging brings amazingly close to us that and how a human being makes being her own whereas being is dedicated [zugeeignet] to the essence of humanity. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is governed by a peculiar appropriating and dedicating [ein seltsames Vereignen und Zueignen]. This belonging [Eignen] wherein being and human being belong mutually to one another [einander ge-eignet sind] is to be simply experienced, i.e., what we call the eventuating [Ereignis] is to be dwelt upon. Er-eignen originally means er-äugen, i.e., to find by looking for [erblicken, to call something to the seeker by looking, looking at [im Blicken zu sich rufen, an-eignen].

{OWA?} Unconcealedness of what-is always goes along some way of revealing.

sexuality, Dasein's. See Dasein.

<From correspondence with MKS, August-September, 2002.>

{MAL (G26)) 171-176 (MFL 136–39)}  The sexuality of Dasein is taken up as part of an approach to the problem of transcendence as Heidegger conceives it. Understanding Dasein's transcendence is a main problem in explicating the understanding of being, "the basic problem of metaphysics as such". Heidegger's analysis of the existence of Dasein is an effort to approach this problem in the right way, the way it requires. The analysis is, he writes, neither anthropological nor ethical <and is also not psychological, presumably>; its aim is rather to explicate this entity in its being as such. The entity who understands being is to be the theme of an explication that aims to bring out, to lay out, to make explicit the being of this entity as that being shows itself through the entity's understanding. <There seems to be already operative here a preliminary view that this understanding is such that the entity's being shows itself, is given through it.>

This is the context in which the term 'neutrality' is introduced. The entity in question is to be an entity that is not indifferent toward its being. In Being and Time it is said that the being of this entity is problematic to that entity <a problematic as contrasted with an open possibility?> The term 'Dasein' rather than 'human [Mensch]' is chosen to designate this entity because the concern is with what must be true of any entity of which it can be truly said that this entity's attitude toward the entity's being is not an attitude of indifference. One truth about such an entity seems to be that any such entity must understand her being. <This is an illustration of the intellectualism that vitalists and existential phenomenologists find so deplorable in phenomenology proper. They often allege quite mistakenly that Heidegger shares their revulsion.> What Heidegger wants his explication to bring out are traits that must belong to any such being regardless of whether that entity be a member of the species Homo sapiens or not. And they are to be true of any such entity regardless of whether or not it belongs to a species that reproduces sexually. In this context, Heidegger declares that the explication is to be carried out prior to all factual concretion. <This seems about as close as he will come to saying that the analysis will be concerned with the entity's factual traits as open possibilities, as "eidetically reduced"; the interpretation is not interested in these possibilities in the way in which Dasein, the entity being interpreted, is normally interested in possibilities. Normally, Dasein is interested in that limited group of occurrences that it understands to be possible and that includes (whether or in what way Dasein is aware of this) only members relevant to its interests, and all members of any such grouping are problematic possibilities. Possibility means something quite different for this sort of interpretation from what it means for Dasein in its everydayness.>

Guiding principle 3 says that this neutral Dasein is to be arrived at by an analysis whose method is not abstraction, i.e., the explication does not generalize from factually given cases (empirically), it is not an empirical investigation. It is not going to let its concepts (the existentials) be dictated by fancies and popular conceits, as They dictates everyday self-interpretation. <This is about as close as Heidegger will come to admitting that his Daseinsanalytik is eidetic description. His reasons for not admitting this more openly seem to me complex. There seems to me no doubt at all that he has a near pathological hangup about being "original", about owning what he writes as private property. He is obsessed with, as Tom Nenon puts it, "covering his tracks". I myself find this deplorable; Russell said rightly that this sort of attitude reduces thinking to the level of stock jobbing. There are probably also career-political motives involved; he has the Freiburg chair practically sewn up but wants to keep other possibilities open. And he is leery of asserting the description to be synthetic and a priori even though it is neither empirical (a posteriori) nor analytic: an exaggerated falliblism.>

Guiding principle 4 draws a perfectly sharp distinction between two ways of using 'Dasein'.

• Used the one way it refers to (denotes) existent entities and those alone. Taken that way, every Dasein is a concrete entity who is in the world through its interests, and is concerned by the potentialities it projects to be both possible and problematic. When the Dasein so referred to is human then it is in virtually all cases (all known to me anyway, but this will be an empirical concept) sexed, even when she doesn't yet interpret herself to be sexed, and is sexed as either male or female but as both only in very rare cases. This the most familiar way that Heidegger uses the word.

• What the word denotes when used the other way never exists, and is here distinguished terminologically as "neutral Dasein". <Here the word is used as if it were a proper name for a universal while it is used as a common name for each and every entity that exists when the word is used the other way. Here I am following Dorion Cairns usage, and wishing the Hell that Heidegger had been less obscure in his vocabulary. This seems to remove perplexity as to where Heidegger stood on the being of universals; universals, of which existentials are a subclass, are a class or a region[49] of entities belonging to the world, to what is given [was es gibt]. Heidegger's views on this subject cannot be reconciled with those of Quine[50] and his followers any more that they can be reconciled with nominalism. They also cannot be reconciled, in my opinion with any sort of naturalism, including lingualism or literary monism.[51]>

{MAL (G26) 181 (MFL144)} Neutral Dasein — also called (in principle 6) Dasein universally [Dasein überhaupt] — is not existent. Existent Dasein's way to be is intrinsically temporal while neutral Dasein belongs to one or the other of the two regions that Heidegger characterizes as nontemporal [das Unzeitige].

Heidegger is remarkably vague about the three regions that are differentiated by reference to time. They are: 1. what is within time [das Innerzeitige] (nature and history); 2. what is outside of time; and 3. what is above time [das Überzeitige]. The reader is left to guess to which of the three she is to assign either existent Dasein on the one hand or neutral Dasein on the other hand. My guess is that neutral Dasein belongs to the region of entities that are outside of time. He ends the lecture course with extended discussion ibid. 144–54} attempting to show that entities of all three regions are related to time. Phenomenology does not, I think, need to quarrel with this claim so long as it be admitted that there are entities outside time (eidetic objects) and that there are other nontemporal objects (entities) as well. Were I to hazard a guess as to how Heidegger himself thought about this issue, I should say that neutral Dasein, universal Dasein or Dasein as such, is related to time as such in such a way that each and every openly possible existent Dasein would have factually to show itself to itself to be — would have to be disclosed to itself to be — intrinsically temporal. <NOTE: Otherwise put, the two eide are so related that whatever instantiates neutral Dasein, any possible existent Dasein, must experience itself to be temporal and to be characterized by its individual and unique (existent) temporality.>

Hence any openly possible instance into which neutral Dasein might be "dispersed" would have to be (to exist) in time in the manner called "temporality"; each would have to have its own unique temporality.

While all familiar Dasein or Mitsein is somehow sexed, it is not the case that every Dasein is bound to be sexed, not even if it happens to be true that all existing Dasein is in fact sexed somehow or other. I should further guess that existent Dasein would be biregional; it must make itself be "in time" insofar as it exists at all, and it must do so through projecting potentialities each of which must be temporal (in time) while the projecting is a necessary condition for existent Dasein's being in time yet is not itself within time but is instead super temporal (is "transcendental" in something approximating Husserl's sense of that word.) Neutral Dasein on the other hand is neither in time nor above time but is related to temporality as proper name for a universal form that is outside of time but omnitemporal. The differentiation (principle 7) between transcendental instantiation [English trn., 'dissemination'] and factical existential dispersion and division {see the entry "Dasein"} speaks strongly for this reading.

Another interpretation would be that no entity is biregional and that existing Dasein is supertemporal — insofar as it must make itself be in time and in the world through projecting, choosing, etc. — while neutral Dasein is outside of time as above.

On either interpretation, existing Dasein is, I think, sexual insofar and only insofar as she understands herself to be so. And whether or not existing Dasein so understands herself is by no means simply a matter of how she interprets herself. She understands her bodiliness in ways that are independent of the sway They holds over her self-interpretation. Dasein's bodiliness shows itself to her pre-interpretative understanding, however, only in an obscure and confused, distracted [zerstreute (see below)] way.

So understood, Heidegger's explication of Dasein would be radically differentiated from any idealistic interpretation that seeks to identify existing Dasein in time as a phenomenal appearance of universal or neutral Dasein. Heidegger's way of conceiving retains a sharp and nichtaufzuhebender Unterschied between neutral Dasein and existent Dasein.

That is a position that I should fully agree with. I think that reservations about this alleged sexual neutrality can be overcome along these lines. No eidos is sexed.

showing itself, relation to assertion and semblance [Schein]. See perceiving, perception.

Heidegger probably does not allow that anything at all can show itself falsely. This is, I think, a way in which what he calls "understanding" is analogous to the what Descartes by the same name. However, in Descartes' terminology whatever the understanding does is called "perception".

Pure νοεϊν — intuiting that straightforwardly beholds [das schlicht hinsehende Vernehmen] the simplest traits belonging to something that is and beholds these as such — is "true" in the purest and most original sense, is true in the sense that it can only discover [entdecken] in such a way that it cannot ever cover up [verdecken]. Such νοεϊν can never cover up, never be false; it can at most remain non-intuitive, αγνοεϊν, i.e., not adequate for simple appropriate access.

{SZ (G2) 45 (m33 f.)} What no longer operates in the form of simple letting be seen but always comes back to something else and so always lets something be seen as something, takes on synthesis structure and with it the possibility of covering up. "Truth of judgment [Urteilswahrheit]" is, however, just the opposite of such covering up, i.e., is a manifoldly founded phenomenon of truth. With equal thoroughness, realism and idealism pass over the meaning of the Greek concept of truth, that concept without which comprehending even of the possibility of anything like a "theory of ideas" as philosophical cognition cannot occur.

Although §7 C. of BT goes on to say that when what is intuited in this way is interpreted straightforwardly then its being remains concealed, that such interpretation covers up the being of the discovered beings, Heidegger does not retract the claim that αἴσθησις, the simple sensuous perceiving of something does occur.

<And letting what shows itself reveal itself is probably what "the Da- of Dasein" is largely all about. The position is really much closer to Enlightenment philosophy than the Hermeneuts will ever admit.>

{BT 51} The phenomenon as what shows itself is the ground for semblance. 'Semblance' seems to refer to 'what has been understood as it is interpreted.' When interpretation is true (and only assertive interpretation seems to have the possibility of being true or being untrue) then semblance is one with what shows itself; to the extent that they are not one, semblance would be dissemblance, disguise.

striving [Streben] and strivingly-to-be [Erstreben], striving-to-be [Erstrebnis]. See Nothing (the) and anxiety; Dasein; sexuality, Dasein's.

{G34 214–28 (§§31, 32)} Heidegger on "Inauthentic and authentic striving.  ̔̀̀̀̀̀̀̀̀̀Ερος  as striving-to-be [Seinserstrebnis]" What follows is explication of §31 which Heidegger calls an attempt to make explicit what the word "Seinserstrebnis"[52] designates by contrasting Er-streben with "striving", taken in its essential structure [Wesensverfassung].

Quite like possessing, striving can occur as inauthentic comporting. Striving can become some mere pursuit that is intent upon what is striven toward [Angestrebte]. Striving that actually does occur this way is bound fixedly to this one intent upon what it is striving-to-be [Erstrebte]. Thus striving, it exhausts itself in striving and mere surrender [giving in to, Nachhängen]. When striving is exclusive in this way it becomes destruction of the own self.[53] A striving such as is implicit whenever greed [Gier] overcomes us is not less inauthentic than is inauthentic possession. In this sort of striving, what is striven for [Bestrebte], what is affected by[54] the striving is not had, instead, the reverse occurs: when the one who strives surrenders herself in this way then what is striven for [Bestrebte] has the one who is striving. She is had in such a way that she is captivated by her own striving and loses regard for [aus dem Blick verliert] her very self. This sort of striving is the more captivating [verfänglicher] for its giving the appearance of ultimate vigor, vitality, and versatility.

It may be said incidentally that the fascination [Verfänglichkeit] that can be seen in striving of this sort is not limited just to the striving; it belongs still more originally to the existence of the striving person[55], and it prevails in various ways in the most diverse of the Dasein's comportments.

Now it is certainly true of every striving that it is seized by what it strives for [seinem Bestrebten]. This does not mean, however, that every striving loses itself necessarily in what it strives for. Each striving for something is indeed a from-toward (what it strives for) [Hin-zu (dem Bestrebten)]. It is, however, not necessarily the case that this from-to is an away-from-self [Weg-von-sich-selbst]. Prima facie, a striving can be conceived that grasps—entailed in the from-toward of what it strives for—this striven-for precisely as striven for; a striving is conceivable that, in its grasping, holds to itself in order to find itself in this striven-for's extending toward the very striving that is (would be) toward it: in order, that is, to find that striving itself not as some point or some thing or some object but instead to find that striving in the sense that it is the being [Wesen] of the very soul that essentially is comportment toward the striven for (and thus to find the striving itself precisely as this striving-comportment <of this soul>. This striving, that is conceived now only as possible [möglich], we call striving-to-be [Er-streben]. <Heidegger's emphasis indicates that the Erstrebte is conceived to be possible in the sense that the occurrence of what is possible is problematic in contrast to events conceived to be possible merely in the sense in which whatever is neither formally nor materially absurd is possible. It is probable that to be conscious that something is possible in this sense is to be attracted by it. (The German word möglich is related etymologically to mögen ("to like", but when used as an auxiliary "may", "to be allowed to", to be able to".) This agrees with Husserl's way of speaking of being conscious that something is possible in this sense as being conscious of an appealing (attractive) [anmutende] possibility, such possibilities Husserl also calls problematic in that there occurs a consciousness that they may or may not eventuate {Jordan, PPV 83 ff.}.> Striving of this sort does not strive to possess what is striven for but strives instead that the striving keep (retain) the striven for as what it strive for. <What Heidegger refers to here seems closely related to what in BT he terms "resoluteness".> This sort of striving would be, as strivingly-to-be [Erstreben], an authentic striving, one through which the self who strives strives not away from but back to herself in order, by so striving, strivingly to be [um so strebend sich zu er-streben], i.e., in order to attain herself through striving. The striven for and what is being striven for do not coincide but do certainly go together in the essence of this striving;[56] indeed this striving constitutes their unity. <An anticipated a striving is not yet the anticipated. When the striving for is as yet projected without being striven for then it is a kind or type of striving rather than a striving. What would be striven for is the potential striving's "the in order to motive" in the terms of Alfred Schutz. It is a "universal" rather than being a comportment of the Dasein. As universal it belongs to the heavenly rather to the mortal region. It is in Schutz's terms an act not yet an action.[57] The act is, however, a universal such as ranges over existents and comportments by existents; such universals are existential or existentiell and range over what belongs to the region of mortals. They are misunderstood, misinterpreted, misrepresented when what they range over is mistaken as if it were within-the-world. When Dasein chooses to strive for this potential event it has become striving- in-favor-of; it is being striven for [Erstrebte].>

{G34 215-216} This is striving in the sense, strivingly-to-be. What is it that is here striven for? Whatever else it may be, it is such that the striving person's Dasein, in coming back from there, comes actually to herself as to an existent. To exist means, we learned: self-existently to comport to what-is as such. What-is is [seiend ist] for us only if we understand Being, i.e., when we come back to what-is from Being, albeit from Being that is understood antecedaneously with neither concept nor context. Plato said of this no more than: Being belongs among what stands there <what is given> through being strivingly [im Erstrebnis]. So understood, would striving-to-be [Seinserstrebnis] be a particular species [Art] of striving-to-be, since Being would be exactly what is striven for by striving-to-be?. No, not at all! It is rather that striving existence wherein we let prevail what, from the ground up, makes possible and sustains Dasein as such. <Though what-is-to-be-striven-for be shown antecedaneously through the type of occurrence being projected, it is not the occurrence-type. Neither is that whose occurrence is being preferred to its non-occurrence an occurrence-type, even though what can be antecedaneously given is not the occurrence but the occurrence-type. Similarly, the comportments that Dasein might undertake in order to affect the for-the-sake-of's chances for occurrence can appear antecedaneously only through comportment types to whose range they would belong. Schutz's Act-action distinction will not be quite adequate here unless one keeps in mind that it is a distinction drawn by objectivating and explicating the for-the-sake-of, the in-order-to, the comportments as they show themselves antecedaneously to Dasein while keeping in mind as well that Dasein understands the distinction regardless of whether or not it ever objectivates these states of affairs. A deterministic preconception concerning these states of affairs might well predispose the interpreter erroneously, idealistically, and intellectualistically to identify the occurrences with the occurrence-types. Did erroneous identification of the Good with the Idea of the Good arise in this manner? Commitment to its occurrence initiates the action so that the projected (hence emptily intended) instantiation of the intuitively intended occurrence-type is now being-striven-for by an action that is not a type of action but an action of the type and is a striving through which Dasein now is existing, now is making herself be in the world, is engaged in making the world to include an entity who exists through the striving it projected and projects and who is able to do so because of how it has been thrown, and who Falls by being striving as it now is, and who projects continuing to fall—as what-is-striven-for requires of it—but who does so not for the sake of the striven for (which is an occurrence-type, not an occurrence) but rather for the sake of what is now occurring through Dasein's comportment, the comportment's occurring in order to further the for-the-sake-of. The comportment itself must be carried out Resolutely if it is to have "intrinsic moral worth". In any case, it ceases genuinely (authentically) to be the projected comportment if Dasein should cease being Resolved to be in- order-to affect the chances that the comportment's for-the-sake-of will eventuate. The comportment does not culminate independently of its for-the-sake-of, not even when the action has "intrinsic moral worth". The moral sense of the action will, if it should fail, differ from the moral significance it would have should it succeed. Failed actions can nonetheless be actions that ought to have been done, that are of positive moral value. It happens often and easily that an action through which Dasein ought to exist fails and that the world for whose sake Dasein ought so to exist never does exist.> Plato, too, calls this, Being's striving-to-be, ἔρως. Today the significance of this word has long since been completely lost (the more emphatically so in more recent times—among the other factors, through psychoanalysis.

That German designates both ἔρως and ἀγάπη  by the one name 'Liebe' is among the language's direst shortcomings. Here the importance of words is clear. (Heidegger cites Erwin Rohde on this point.) We are not to apply what today is termed "the erotic" when we would think on the Platonic and Greek ἔρως, yet we must also not think that the Greek έρως is something that elderly bigoted aunties would find decorous.

As striving-to-be, as έρως, understanding Being is not just the most authentic striving (in the sense striving-to-be), the one whereby the Dasein of any human being is sustained; in being that, it is authentic Having [Haben] as well since:

1. through striving-to-be what is striven-for is never taken possession of, never grasped [genommen], never taken as if it were a thing or the like; instead the striven-for as such is ungrasped [ungenommen]; it is instead as it has been originally given, viz., without being taken as what-is-striven-for. <There seems a twofold reason for this. In the first place, striving does not objectivate anything at all, not even when it occurs actively or voluntarily; to-be-striving transforms what was to be striven-for into an end proper, into what is being-striven-for. To-be-striving-for "constitutes" the potential state of affairs (one that was an end only potentially, a state of affairs that is, in Hartmann's sense, an "exigent ought to be") to be an end that is striven for. Thus, that the state of affairs is a goal or end is given, is "there" for consciousness originally through being-striving-for. No comportment can objectivate what it constitutes. A goal or an end can, therefore, be constituted through an involuntary, passive striving; its status as a goal can be objectivated, however, only through a further voluntary and doxic act. Its being objectivated would require, in Heidegger's terms, that the striven-for be explicated apophantically. In the second place, what is to be striven for is an event-type or thing-type rather than an event or a thing, a difference that neither the affective nor the conative consciousness of the projected for-the-sake-of can objectivate, hence a difference that can be given through them only obscurely.>

2. This being retained holds what-is-striven-for back to the striving self so that it becomes standard and law for her comporting toward what-is and so that — out from the ground of the totality of what-is — it thus makes possible that Dasein exist <makes it possible, for existence to be exemplified, for Existence to be dispersed {cf. "Dasein"} to Dasein through Dasein's existing>, <All moments belonging to this striving-to-be are essentially characterized as ways of striving for-the-sake-of this one for-the-sake-of, in contrast to the "striven for", which is necessarily an entity-type — or else is an "an entity" simply as being of a certain type <simply as an emptily intended example for a certain type (simply as an open possibility?)>.

{G34 217} Through such being-striving, the person keeps herself in the midst of entities—interested in entities—as an Existent: in this way she has the being [Seiende] that is being striven for and, through having that, has herself as well—in the only way she can, as person, have anything whatsoever.  Existing authentically, the person basically [im Grunde] strives not in order to have and to possess but rather the other way round: that she "has" and possesses implies that her way to be in such that what-is is hers and she has care of what-is [d.h. Seiendes ist ihm mit seinem Dasein zu-gewiesen und er darauf an-gewiesen]) (See Dasein) so that she herself strive to be through Being's striving-to-be. In this, her striving thus to be, and in this alone, it occurs that what-is comes to be and comes not to be. <I take this to mean that Being strives—insofar as Dasein is to be there—to b e in such a way that "what-is comes to be and comes not to be" and that occurring of this kind is possible only through Dasein. It seems further to entail that being-there makes it possible that there be courses of events so related to one another that either genuinely can happen and that the happening of the one would make the other impossible. Insofar as what-is occurs in this way: Dasein exists; what-is occurs as worldly; world exists.>

subject, <the>. See ideas, theory of, and the representational theory of perception.

{ZWB in HW (G5) 88 (m81)} This word subiectum, is the translation of the Greek hypokeimenon. Thus, it names that-which-lies-in-the-fore [Vor-Liegende], that which as ground gathers all to itself. This metaphysical meaning of the subject concept has no emphatic relation to the human and none at all to the ego [Ich]. But when the human self becomes the first and authentic subjectum then this signifies: the human self becomes that entity on which all being-an-entity is — through its <the latter's> kind or type of being and its truth. The human becomes the midpoint for what is as such.

subjectivity [Subjektivität]. See appearance.

sublime. See bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen]; gigantic (the) [Riesenhafte; better 'the Great'?].

Max Dessoir (1867-1947) {Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1906) cited in Encyclopedia of Philosophy v. 2, p. 355} differentiated the sublime from other aesthetic forms in a manner closely related to the one suggested by Kant in the "third critique". {See the references and cross references in the index to Bosanquet's History of Aesthetic. Compare what is said about Dessoir's concept of the sublime in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy {355 f.} with the differentiation between Angst and fear in Being and Time. See also the last paragraphs of my essay on "The Transcendental Ego as Being in the World" {TIIS (German) or TEBW (English)}. <Dessoir was, as Heidegger had once been, a neo-Kantian; he got a chair of philosophy at Berlin in 1926. Shortly thereafter Heidegger (then in an intermediate rank at Marburg) was in competition for a chair at Berlin. He had this iron in the fire along with competing at the same time for chairs at Marburg and Freiburg. There is almost no chance that he was not familiar with Dessoir's work.> It seems likely that Heidegger has in mind a differentiation between art of the sublime and art of the beautiful when he says that "high arts [hohe Kunste]" as well as "arts of the beautiful" are, like crafts, called τεχὲνη. It is probably an error when "hohe Kunste" is translated as "arts of the mind" {QCT 13}.

suicide.

Projecting, falling, and thrownness are aspects of care and are not separable from care. Thrownness is Dasein's thrownness and cannot occur without projecting and falling. Authentically to choose not to choose would be to choose not to exist and not to be-in-the-world. But if Dasein has chosen authentically not to be in the world then Dasein is attempting no longer to be in the world.

To choose death will entail choice to do something in order to end life, and ending life does not assure that your ownmost potentiality eventuates. It might be[58] that authentically you can prefer annihilation to existence and can hope to achieve annihilation by ending life, but there is no guarantee in that direction either.

τέχνη. See technology [Technik]; bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen].

technology [Technik]. See bringing to the fore [ποίησις, Her-vor-bringen]; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; setting-up [Ge-stell].

{FNT in TK ¶¶24-26, p. 12} Both τέχνη and technology are ways of revealing. Both involve end and means, the instrumental, which belongs to the realm of causality. Τέχνη, however, reveals by bringing to the fore which gathers the four ways of letting occur and permeates them. On the other hand, if we attend to technology's status as a way of revealing instead of considering it only as a means then there opens for us a quite different realm to which technology belongs in its essence, viz., the realm of revealing, i.e., the realm of truth. <Are 'realm of truth' and 'realm of revealing' coordinate or is the realm of truth opened because that of revealing is a subrealm of it?> The revealing that permeates modern technology is not a bringing to the fore in the sense of ποίησις. It is instead a way of revealing that entails issuing a requirement that trusts <relies upon {see the entry "servicability"}> nature to supply energy such that it can be extracted [heraus gefördert] and stored. In contrast to a hydroelectric works or to more recent windmills for generating electricity, windmills of the older sort do not disclose air current energies in order to store them in such a way as to have them available and controllable at will. {ibid. ¶¶32 f., p. 14-15; QCT 14-15; BW 296 f.} Insofar as it is modern, technology is governed throughout by revealing which has the character of setting-up in the sense of placing such requirements. This occurs in that energy concealed in nature is discovered, what is thus disclosed is transformed, what has been transformed is stored, what has been stored is redistributed, and what is distributed is switched about in novel ways. All of these are ways of revealing.

The essence of technology is shown by what we call setting-up [Ge-stell]. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is the gathering of that positing that posits human being to consist in revealing what is actual in the manner we call resources [Bestand]. There are available resources everywhere: that to be is to be at the ready is ordained: to be and to stand in place so as to be available for further readying. Whatever is readied in this way has its own standing, and this standing is what we call Bestand. This word means here more than and something more essential than just an available supply. It designates nothing less than the manner in which everything that is involved in the challenging sort of revealing comes to presence [anwest].

What has being-available as its standing no longer is encountered as object [Gegenstand]. An airplane on a runway is undoubtedly an object in that it can be objectivated that way. But considered that way, what and how the airplane is is concealed. < Heidegger seems here to be implying that objectivating [vorstellen] always occurs straightforwardly so that it is always Objectivating and would always disregard the ways in which what is objectivated can be revealed {VA 24}.>

{TK 25} That challenging setting-up whereby what is called "actual" gets revealed as resources is obviously something that humanity effects. A human being can indeed objectivate or represent this or that thus and so, arbitrarily so to speak. That unconcealedness whereby what is actual shows itself or withdraws is nevertheless not at her disposal. It is not Plato's doing that what is actual has shown itself ever since he wrote in the light of Ideas. The thinker only responded to what appealed to him.

{TK 23 f.} Revealing that sets up in the manner under discussion is able to occur only in so far as is challenged on its part to challenge the energies of Nature. Posited in this way as both challenging and challenged, human being stands in the essential realm of setting-up [Ge-stell]. Human being cannot first be and then enter into relation to setting-up [Ge-stell] voluntarily. Thus, the question as to how we might get in touch with the essence of technology is always too late when put in this form. However, a question that never comes too late is whether we experience ourselves authentically as the one whose doing and leaving-be are always challenged by setting-up [Ge-stell], sometimes openly, sometimes not. Above all, the question whether we let ourselves authentically into that wherein setting-up [Ge-stell] itself essentiates [west].

{ID 26-28} If we do not merely represent technology technologically, i.e., from the point of view of humanity and its machines then we may attend to the claim characteristic of our epoch concerning the being of not only humanity but all that is, nature and history. What claim is meant? That our existence is in every respect — whether playing or driven or harried or pressed — challenged to take up planning and calculating above all. What is it that speaks through this challenging? Does it come simply from a spontaneous whim of human being? Or do beings themselves concern us through it and do so in such a way that they themselves speak to us of their planability and calculability? In that case wouldn't it be true that even being [Sein] would be challenged to allow beings to appear calculable <i.e., as having primary qualities as their basic components [Bestand]>? Yes, indeed! And more: that human being is challenged, i.e., set up, to the same degree as being is to secure whatever beings concern it as the content of its planning and calculating and to arrange things this way without foreseeable limit. The name for the gathering characteristic of that challenging which would so set up being and human being that they would mutually set one another up is called setting-up [Ge-stell]. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is the way this claim is made [spricht an] by that in which and from which being and human being in the age of technology thus concern one another <in the way alleged by the claim>. We hear this claim, which conditions the constellation of our epoch, through the mutual setting themselves up on the part of being and human being. Setting-up [Ge-stell] concerns us immediately and in everything. It no longer concerns us as something present because we no longer meet up with it <since setting-up [Ge-stell] is not something Objective?> within the representing's limits (which limitations allow us to think of presence [Anwesen] as the being of beings). At first, that is why setting-up [Ge-stell] seems strange. It goes on being astonishing principally insofar as it is not anything ultimate, instead it is setting-up [Ge-stell] itself that first secretly intimates to us what authentically governs the constellation of being and human being.

{ibid.} That being and human being should belong together [Zusammengehören] in the manner of the <alleged?> mutual challenging brings amazingly close to us that and how human being makes being its own whereas being is dedicated [appropriated, zugeeignet] to the essence of humanity. Setting-up [Ge-stell] is governed by a peculiar appropriating and dedicating [ein seltsames Vereignen und Zueignen]. This belonging [Eignen] wherein being and human being belong mutually to one another [einander ge-eignet sind] is to be simply experienced, i.e., what we call the eventuating [Ereignis] is to be dwelt upon. Er-eignen originally means er-äugen, i.e., to find by looking for [erblicken], to call something to the seeker by looking, looking at [im Blicken zu sich rufen, an-eignen].

{ZWB?} The essence of modern technology is identical with the essence of modern metaphysics.

technology [Technik] and setting-up [Gestell]. See setting-up [Ge-stell]; circumspecting, circumspection [Umsicht]; circumspection [Umsicht], as the pure mode of inauthentic understanding.

Both circumspection and Objective assertion can reveal something about the Rhine, insofar as they do so, they reveal quite different things about it, and neither of them is a concrete attitude toward the Rhine. These two ways of interpreting explicate what is (φύσις) under different descriptions but neither explicates what is concretely, as it shows itself in itself. The difference between circumspection when it occurs as τέχνη and circumspection then it occurs under the aegis of Gestell must, I think, involve more than the latter's just being circumspection, assuming that circumspection is an existential. The something more has to do with ordaining [Geschick, =QCT destining], and Geschick seems to involve ways of preconceiving and of prejudging that prevail in a given epoch and may be able wholly to condition straightforward ways of interpreting. Being committed to certain prejudices — whether as a matter of explicit choice or as matter of being under the sway of a particular historical and cultural "they" amongst whom one has been thrown — will dominate how Dasein does its circumspecting.

{Heidegger, BTMR 189 (m148)} Heidegger does say  that circumspecting is inauthentic understanding in its pure mode, and from this we can, safely I think, infer that no explication of the being of what is within-the-world (much less of being-in-the-world) can give the needed <a genuine? appropriate? authentic?> account of it by straightforwardly explicating what is encountered in "Being-alongside." The MR translation here covers up quite a bit, as MR note {Heidegger, BTMR BT 80 fn4} If we equate being true with unveiledness, with άληθεύειν (equated with δηλο̃υν) then, since unveiling is related not accidentally but essentially to something to be unveiled, there belongs to the concept of truth the moment of unveiling as well as unveiledness, that to which unveiling is related according to its <essential?> structure. <Emphasis has been added: it is essential to unveiling not that the intentum be intended as it is (truly, authentically) but that the unveiling refer to the possibility that the unveiled be unveiled authentically, i.e., as it is or truly). Wouldn't this mean - as the continuation suggests - that for something to be unveiled in the relevant sense the potentiality that it be authentically unveiled must be projected so that unveiledness requires Dasein's projecting some way of being, i.e., existing? And wouldn't it also mean that projecting the potentiality implies that partial fulfillment of what is projected must occur if any frustration (negative fulfillment) of the project occurs and that unveiling is, therefore, always at least partially true?> {GP (G24) 310:14} However, there is unveiledness only insofar there is unveiling, i.e., insofar as Dasein exists. Truth and being true, as unveiledness and unveiling have Dasein's type of being. Truth <unveiledness> exists by its nature; it is never extant like a thing. Thus, understood properly in this way, the negative part of Aristotle's thesis is re-instated. Being true, says Aristotle, is not something extant among things. Nonetheless, the Aristotelian thesis needs to be supplemented and made more precise. For <a> truth is indeed not anything extant but is, as unveiledness of that to which assertion is related, some possible determination of the being of what is extant precisely because there is <a>truth only insofar as that> truth <unveiledness> exists, i.e., insofar as <that> truth has Dasein's type of being[59] and because there belongs to <that> truth by the same token [zugleich] unveiledness of that to which <this> truth is related. <A> truth is a determination of the being of something extant insofar as that extant entity is unveiled, e.g., through a unveiling assertion.

When we say that being true does not mean [meint nichts, does not intend] anything that is extant among things, this expression suffers from an ambiguity. For being true means, as unveiling of something, just this respective entity to which it relates, means <in this case? {See GP (G24) 307:1-8 and above in this entry}> this extant entity through its unveiledness. Unveiledness is indeed not any extant determination belonging to the extant entity, not some property of it; instead it belongs to the existence as to what unveils. Yet unveiledness is a determination of what is asserted about, a determination of the being of the extant entity [eine Bestimmung des Seins des Vorhandenen] {GP (G24) 310 (m in BP). See the entry "truth as unveiledness and being-true".}

temporality, Dasein's, continuity of. See temporal ecstases, authentic and inauthentic; anxiety [Angst]; Dasein.

If the term 'continuous' applies properly to Dasein then that x is continuous means that x has no separable parts but has only what Husserl had termed "abstract parts"; it has "moments" but no "fragments" or "pieces"; it is simple. Its being continuous in this sense does not imply that Dasein can have no end. It may imply that Dasein has no end point however — depending upon how much one chooses to read into the word 'point'. If having temporal points would entail that Dasein cannot terminate then Dasein has no end point. That would be so however simply because Dasein can in that case have no constituent points at all. In that case, there are, I think, some temporal moments that are not and cannot be points, even if it be true that all points are moments. It may be that there are no points outside either the field of some purely formal science such as geometry or outside whatever fields, if any, that such a science is correctly thought to range over. Dasein's existence is continuous in a manner that excludes its either being or being part of a continuum. There may be reasons to conceive Objective time to be a continuum and to think that the time of the Objective world is bound to be itself Objective. But then an Objective world, a world to which Dasein does not necessarily belong, is a material absurdity. To use Heidegger's parlance, any authentic concept of how Dasein is continuous must derive from continuity as that is given to Dasein's understanding. In a different vernacular, it must be faithful to the impressional consciousness of the continuous. Kant and his followers deny that there is any such impressional consciousness, do they not?  It might be better to adopt here the nomenclature that Aron Gurwitsch proposed and stop talking about an Objective world, using instead 'Universe' as something like a proper name for a non-existent and impossible albeit fairly definite individual. Then identifying Dasein's life to be an occurrence belonging to the Universe would mean taking it to be, in Heidegger's terms, an entity within the world. Any such identification would be decidedly synthetic, not an explication of Dasein's being in the world or, better, not an authentic explication of her being in the world. It would be a groundless narrative about tail that wags dog or about the superior efficacy of carts ahead of horses, a baseless fiction though it be full of sound and fury.

Angst discloses (if it occurs) a state of affairs that shipwrecks a traditional argument (used by many from ancient to contemporary and post modern) for the immortality of mind, soul, self, etc. This state of affairs includes that Dasein has the potentiality to be unable to project further potentialities and so to be unable to be in the world at all and unable to be at all. This would entail Dasein's termination. It is possible consistently to maintain both that Dasein can terminate and that she can have no end. The traditional view was that the mind, soul, etc. cannot perish. That this tradition was very mistaken is, however, no sound reason for denying that there is a soul, mind, or self.

The relevant argument for immortality depended upon a notion of destruction that was derived from conceptions, prevailing in that tradition, about material things. Destruction, it was claimed, requires dissolution, resolution into parts (pieces, fragments). The soul is then thought to be indestructible since it has no separable parts. The argument ignored its own differentiation of the soul as something altogether different from material things. It should have occurred to the proponents of her immortality that destruction would mean something quite different in her case from what it would supposedly mean in the case of material things. Instead of separation into fragments, destruction of a soul might mean total annihilation, leaving no fragments behind, no garbage disposal problem: Would it okay to put that sort of stuff into the landfill? What might it do to the groundwater?

temporal ecstases, authentic and inauthentic. See Da-; realm of all realms [region of all regions, Bereich alle Beriche]; turning [Kehre].

{G24 412} Dasein's self-understanding is equiprimordially future, having-been, and making-present. The inauthentic understanding that prevails in circumspection conditions Dasein's making-present. Negatively speaking, the present of inauthentic understanding does not have the character of the moment because the temporalization characteristic of this mode of the present is conditioned via the inauthentic future. Inauthentic understanding has accordingly the characteristic of inuring, which makes present forgettingly. <NOTE: 'Inuring' here translates Heidegger's 'Gewärtigen'. The published English translation by A. Hofstadter uses 'expecting', this would seem, however, to be a mistranslation. What is being referred to is — as the context proceeds to show — a phenomenon on which all expectation, indeed all anticipation or protending, would seem to depend, namely, Dasein's habits or habitus. These condition everything that Dasein has an interest in. 'Gewärtigen' would, therefore, be a necessary condition for projecting possibilities, necessary to the awareness of possibilities as attractive, in Husserl's sense, rather than merely as open.>

{G24 410, BP 209.8} In this mode of temporalizing, Dasein understands her possibilities by way of things. This is her everyday way of understanding herself; Dasein projects her own potentialities by way of the feasible, the urgent, the unavoidable, the advisable, the expedient. Dasein's own potentialities are thus present to her as those of an entity that relies upon what things allow or what they prevent: the things project the potentiality to be, that is, Dasein's commerce with things does the projecting as if the things dealt with did the projecting. They are not projected primarily by Dasein via her own-most self, which always exists as dealing with things, even as her own-most self. This is how Dasein understands herself inauthentically via things, and even this inauthentic self-understanding has the character of coming toward itself, of the future. But here this coming toward, this future, is inauthentic coming-toward, inauthentic future. We call this inauthentic future inurement [Gewärtigen]. Only because Dasein has in this sense become inured through <dealing with?> the things it takes care of and is concerned with is Dasein able — on the ground of this inurement —to have expectations of things or to await how they will turn out. {G24 411} For these to happen, inurement must already have unveiled a province from which something is to be expected. Inurement is, therefore, not a derivative of expecting; on the contrary, all expecting is grounded in some inurement or other.

When we lose ourselves to things and among them through intercourse with them then we are inured to our being potentiality as it is conditioned by the feasibility and infeasibility of the things we are concerned with. We then do not properly (genuinely, authentically) come back to <recover, explicate> ourselves through an authentic project upon our ownmost being potentiality. This entails that we do not bring back [repeat, wiederholen] the being that we have been; we do not appropriate ourselves in our facticity. What we are — and that entails what we have been — lies somehow behind us, forgotten. <Insofar as providing is a self-understanding it tends to explicate the way fulfillment or frustration of potentialities depends on the things rather than the ways these frustrations and fulfillments depend upon our own having projected and our own having chosen.> Thus, being inured to the prospect that our own being potentiality "comes from" things, we have forgotten <that is, we have not recovered> the factual Dasein in what she has been. This forgetting is not absence or omission of memory as if there were absence of memory rather than remembering; it is instead a positive mode of temporality. As ecstasis, forgetting has the character of turning away from [ausrucken vor] <forgetting x is understanding x but adverting to something other than x so that x remains implicit, the understanding of x remains obscure> the ownmost having been and doing so in such a way that what is turned away from comes to be closed off. What is distinctive of this ecstasis is that by closing off what has been it closes itself off for itself. This sort of forgetting therefore also forgets itself. That it is not just forgetting of something but forgetting the forgetting itself is essential to forgetting as an ecstasis. So far as vulgar pre-phenomenological thinking is concerned, forgetting is not anything at all — is not something that genuinely happens; for it, the forgotten is simply gone; the vulgar concept of time tells us that what is past is that which is no longer. Having-been, however, is a mode of being, and forgetfulness is the elementary mode of temporality, through which we are our own having-been in the first place and for the most part.

In Heidegger, as in middle to late Husserl, the true is more inclusive than (is the more absolute or concrete unity compared to) the unity <the world?> of "what is". So what is revealed includes but is not restricted to what-is, that is, what is revealed is not restricted to the subregion comprising what belongs to the world. The Da- of Dasein is not this unity but is the locus (the realm) in the world where the absolutely concrete unity shows itself and where whatever belongs to this unity, including what belongs to it but not to the world, is able to show itself. (What belongs to the unity of the true but not to that of the world <of what-is?> would include the possible worlds related to Dasein's choices as future worlds or as worlds that have become impossible. In this sense Dasein transcends not only itself but the world. <Is this realization what "the turning" is mostly about?> If "coming to presence" refers to the eventuating of what pertains to the world then more can be revealed than what comes to presence. Possible courses of action and so possible worlds would be included in what can be revealed even if they never come to presence.

tendency [Tendenz].

{SZ (G 3) m261 and in BT} To be toward a possibility, that is, toward some possible, can mean being out for something possible in the sense of providing [Besorgen] its realization. Possibilities of this kind are encountered constantly within the field of what is extant and what is handy: the achievable, the attainable, what can be dominated, the accessible, etc. To be <projected> providentially out for something possible has the tendency to annihilate [vernichten] the possibility of the possible by availing itself of its possibilities.

thrownness [Geworfenheit]. See Da-; Dasein; humanity [Mensch], essence of; existence [Existenz]; Nothing (the) and the turning; uncanniness.

{SZ (G2) m135 and in BT} "That Dasein is and has to be" we call "thrownness" of Dasein into its There. This character of Dasein's being is all the more unveiled for its being veiled in its Whence and Wither. The expression 'thrownness' is meant to indicate the Facticity of being at once both delivered over [Überlieferung] and called upon, obligated [Überantwortung], and this trait must be conceived as an existential character of that entity who is in the manner of being-in-the-world.[59A] The "That the There is and cannot not be" of facticity is never to be found through any intuition. <The wording in quotation marks refers to the state of affairs that the factual occurrence of Dasein's There, not being a universal state of affairs, is both apodictic and other than a priori, i.e., is apodictic while being neither universal nor necessary. The fact that thrownness is an existential trait and so is exemplified by any Dasein whatsoever has often been misinterpreted as if it would be incompatible with such factuality and contingency> It is not factuality of that sort which extantness expresses ontologically-categorially.[61] Any entity that is in the manner of Dasein is its There in such a way that it finds [befindet, feels] itself — whether explicitly or not — through feeling its thrownness. Dasein is ever brought before itself only through affectivity; when it finds itself in any other way, it finds itself to have found itself already, not as some antecedaneous finding of itself perceptually but rather as finding itself that is felt, that is affected by itself [als gestimmtes Sichbefinden]. Affects do not disclose thrownness in the manner of looking at it but rather as addressing or shunning, advertence or abvertance. <Heidegger's formulation here is perhaps too voluntaristic since it sort of includes advertence or avertance in the feeling, which should rather be just positive (liking, loving), negative (disliking, hating) or neutral. It will be true, however, that positive feeling usually will be involved with a tendency to further or to promote, negative with a tendency to suppress or avoid, etc. It seems often as if Heidegger did not in BT consider striving to be a distinct and basic way of being-in. It might be that he thought that all strivings are to be described adequately as ways of interpreting. This would, it seems to me, have been an error.> Usually the affect does not turn toward that burdensome character which becomes manifest through it, least of all when the affect is sublime and occurs as exhilaration. Turning away of this sort always occurs in the manner of affectivity, whatever particular form it takes.

What an affect discloses and how it does so would be utterly misconstrued were one to take what affects to be the totality of what the Dasein who is so affected is familiar with, knows, and accepts on faith — even if that Dasein's faith in her "whereto" is "certain" or when, rationally enlightened, she thinks she knows "wherefrom". None of all that forestalls the phenomenal fact that a mood confronts Dasein with the That of her There, confronting her starkly with a relentless enigma. There is not the slightest justification existentially-ontologically for suppressing the "evidence" of affectivity by measuring it against the apodictic certainty of some theoretical cognition concerning something purely extant. The phenomena are no less falsified by that falsification whereby they are swept away into the refuge of the Irrational <as in vitalism or in the Existenzphilosophie of Jaspers>. Irrationalism — as the counterpart of Rationalism just talks in a cross eyed way about what Rationalism discourses of blindly.

That there are situations wherein a Dasein can, should, and must master affects, with knowledge and will, may indicate a preëminence that willing and cognizing have regarding certain possibilities of existence. That must not mislead us in ontology into denying that affects are an original way for Dasein to be, a way through which she is disclosed to herself prior to all cognizing and willing and beyond the range of what they disclose. Moreover, we never master any set of affects except through some set of affects; an affect is mastered through some counter-affect. Ontologically, the primary essential trait of affectivity is: Affectivity disclosed Dasein in her thrownness and discloses thrownness initially and for the most part in the mode of evasive turning away.

<In case it were necessary, this account of what is disclosed through affects refutes definitively the once quite widely proclaimed assertion that for Heidegger all disclosing is interpretation {see the entry " hermeneutical circle, misinterpretations of"}. Much more importantly, it shows very significant features of what he calls "disclosing" and of what he refers to by the word 'intuition'. He is quite emphatic in denying that intuition ever discloses what it is that affects disclose about thrownness, facticity, and the That-of-the-There. Something differentiates affects as ways of disclosing from intuitions, but what that difference is is not made clear. Feelings or affects are acknowledged, despite the scare quotes, to be noncognitive evidence for something. This is a feature that they would have in common with the sort of intuition through which the That of extant entities is given. "That Dasein is and cannot not be" (the use of 'to be' here is tensed) is disclosed (given, shows itself) through a different sort of being-in from that through which the factuality of something extant is given (disclosed, shows itself). That something be given or show itself through them is a way that these two different ways of being in are alike. So, Heidegger does not use 'intuition' in such a way that its denotation would include all of those ways-to-be-in-the-world through which something is itself given; in his use it seems to refer exclusively to ways of being-in that would be, in Husserl's terms, both active and doxic (active and cognitive). Heidegger's descriptions seem here to be inadequate; he well may have fallen into the error mentioned two paragraphs above whereby he would consider all volitions to be either circumspective or apophantic ways of interpreting. Then the preceding paragraph would entail an acknowledgment that there are voluntary affects, a possibility that would not be excluded so long as the circumspective and the apophantic do not dichotomize the ways of interpreting.>

transcendence. See  true (the).

{MFL 168 f., MAL (G26) 213 ff.)} It is even misleading to say that Dasein is always out there among beings; the "always out there" supposes that Dasein would sometime be inside. Even when I say, "Its intentional behavior is always already liberated to beings and for beings," even then there is included: it was sometime not so. What is meant by this transcendence does not admit of being combined with previous assessments, and the previous, deadlocked distortions of the problem make the phenomenon difficult to see. Neither Bergson — and he least of all — nor Dilthey and not even Husserl sees the problem and the phenomenon. As recently as two years ago <so 1926>, Husserl completely and vehemently opposed doing any such thing.

Transcendence, being-in-the-world, <in BT> is never equated and identified with intentionality. Those who do so, as often happens, show thereby that they are far from understanding this phenomenon, which shows in turn that the phenomenon is not easily grasped. That a still more radical interpretation of the phenomenon than my previous ones is possible will be shown by the second part. <This seems to refer to the unpublished Part Two of BT 33 (SZ 39 f.).> The fact that even Scheler did not see what is meant by 'transcendence' shows that a more radical interpretation is needed. {cf. Scheler, "Idealism-Realism" 293 top (Gesammelte Werke 9 215 bottom)}.

{MFL 166, MAL (G26) 211 ff.)} Above all, transcendence is not simply a title for what is enrapturing and what is inaccessible to finite cognition. Instead:

1. Transcendence is the primordial constitution of the subjectivity of the subject. The subject as such transcends; what does not do so is no subject at all. To be subject means to transcend. That is to say: Dasein doesn't exist and occasionally do some overstepping. Dasein itself is overstepping. This entails: transcendence is not some way among other possible ways for Dasein to behave toward other entities; instead, transcendence is the basic constitution of Dasein's being, the constitution that is the only ground on which Dasein can at all behave toward what-is. Dasein can learn to behave in this or in that sort of way toward what-is and to come to grips with what-is only because Dasein exists in a world. But it is not by learning such lessons that Dasein comes to be in the first place. <However, Heidegger probably does not mean to deny that Dasein becomes human through acquiring traits of particular ontic sorts (existentielle) traits.>
2. Transcendence does not mean crossing any sort of barrier that confines the subject within something like an inner space. Instead, what is transcended is that very being which can come to be manifest to the subject precisely on the ground of the subject's transcendence. Because the stepping over exists with Dasein, and because, with the stepping over, entities that are not Dasein come to be manifest [zum Vorschein] as such, i.e., in themselves. This very transcendence — which has leapt over entities (and not over anything other than entities) — makes it possible that what has been leapt over stands opposite ontically as some entity (has for Dasein the meaning that it is an object, a 'this'. And this transcendence also makes possible that what has been leapt over is now graspable in itself to be something standing opposite. <Note that the passage implies that the entities' which Dasein is enabled to grasp are the very entities that have antecedaneously been surpassed or transcended: hence what their being grasped explicates is the very same entities that have antecedaneously been surpassed. What Dasein transcends in order to grasp entities other than itself is not some ungraspable substance such as an Absolute Spirit, a will-to-live, a will-to-power or Duration or Process or a booming, buzzing confusion.> What Dasein oversteps is precisely the beings among which it is as factual Dasein. The Objects are what is thus antecedaneously overstepped; more precisely: what is antecedaneously overstepped is the entities which then can become Objects. Dasein is a thrown, factual being that through its corporeality is in the midst of Nature. Its transcendence consists precisely in its overstepping this being [Seiende] in whose midst it is and to which it belongs. In other words: Dasein, as transcending is beyond Nature even though it remains, insofar as it is factical, embraced by Nature. As transcending, i.e., as free, Dasein is something alien to Nature.
3. That "whereto" <Stambaugh's translation; MR use 'wither'; HM uses 'toward which'.> the subject as subject transcends is no Object, is not at all this or that entity, be it a definite thing or a being that is the subject's like or some other living being. Any Object (more precisely, any being) that can have the character "to be encountered" is that which is overstepped and is not the "whereto". We designate as 'world' that whereto the subject transcends.
4. Since transcendence is the basic constitution of Dasein, is not some sort of behavior that accrues to Dasein's being but belongs instead to its being in a primary way, and because this original being of Dasein oversteps to a world--that is why we designate this basic phenomenon of transcendence being-in-the-world.

true, (the). See transcendence; choice, existence, and world; Da-; truth [Wahrheit].

{See WDS 164f. in UZS.} In Heidegger, as in middle to late Husserl, the true is more inclusive than (is the more absolute or concrete unity compared to) the unity of "what is" =the world?). So what is revealed includes but is not restricted to what is, i.e., what belongs to the world. The Da- of Dasein is not this unity but is the locus (the realm) in the world where the absolutely concrete unity shows itself and where whatever belongs to this unity, including what belongs to it but not to the world, is able to show itself. In this sense Dasein transcends not only itself but the world. Is this realization what "the turn" is mostly about? If "coming to presence" refers to the eventuating of what pertains to the world then more can be revealed than what comes to presence. Possible courses of action and so possible worlds would be included in what can be revealed even if they never come to presence.

truth [Wahrheit]. See unveiling [Enthüllen]; assertion, allegation; assertion, relation to unveiling; revealing; bringing to the fore.

{DT 79 ff.} Truth is not an action, not a deed; by making deeds happen, Dasein makes it be the case that they belong to the world, brings them to the fore, and makes possible that it be truly said of them that they are in the world (have happened). But assertion itself is never an activity which makes it true that what is asserted is the case. <So, assertion is never performative?>

Assertion need not be conceived in such a way that every assertion must be true or false. That each be one or the other is not implied by the truth that asserting makes there be a truth about the assertion (syntactically formed state of affairs). Some assertions can be made in such a way that the truth about them includes that they are neither true nor false. This may be the case with respect to ontic allegations about what Dasein will do if she lives to retirement, for example. But ontological statements about Dasein (such as that if she lives to retirement then she will project potentialities circumspectively and be in some way aware that they are possible and non-necessary occurrences) well may be a priori assertions necessarily true or necessarily false. Such variations in the way of conceiving "truth value" seem to be implied by Heidegger's claim that differences in the way entities are require variability in the copula of assertions about them, depending on what is asserted (not just on what the assertion is about but also on what is said or predicated of it). But whether an assertion is true, false, or neither depends not on Dasein but on what the assertion is about. For passages which show that Heidegger really does hold the identity concept of truth see BP 214:5-9,25-29; 217:27-34; 218:8-11; 218::37-219:1; 219:6-7, 22-25; 220:34-221:3.

Truth is not a property of some extant entity <e.g., of a proposition or judgment in the traditional sense in which a judgment is understood, for example, as a complex idea extant in the judging mind> apart from the state of affairs about which the assertion is made. The truth about a given entity x is not some further entity which would be extant in x. <The attempt to conceive the truth of a proposition to be a property or quality extant in the proposition or even to be a relation between the proposition and something else leads to an infinite regress since the truth about the truth will have to be another property whether "intrinsic" or relational {BP 214 ff.}: "But this means that, while truth belongs in a certain way to Things, it is not present among Things themselves as another extant entity like them. And on the opposite side, truth is not in the understanding if understanding is thought of as a process within an extant psychical subject." In traditional terms, existing through being true is a necessary feature of any Dasein whatsoever, hence the judgment that this is the case is an a priori judgment.> But none of this implies either 1) that some universal, timeless idea is a component of Dasein or 2) that Dasein necessarily has an awareness — acquired in some state of being prior to its existing in the world — of whatever truths she now recognizes.

{BP 216} Insofar as being-true is unveiling, it is a way in which Dasein exists: Dasein exists only through truth, through the unveiledness (disclosedness) of herself and <since her being is characterized by intentionality> of the world in which she exists. Existing through truth in this way "belongs to the essential nature of Dasein."

In Heidegger, what is so is more inclusive than (is more absolute or concrete unity compared to) "what is". So what is revealed includes but is not restricted to what-is or what belongs to the world. The Da- of Dasein is not this unity but is the locus (the realm) in the world for what pertains to the absolutely concrete unity but does not belong to the world to show itself. In this sense Dasein transcends not only itself but the world. <Is this realization what "the turn" is mostly about? Perhaps not quite; the turn is more likely to refer to being open to the region of regions as a whole, as holy.> If coming to presence refers to the eventuating of what pertains to world then more can be revealed than what comes to presence. Possible courses of action and so possible worlds would be included in what can be revealed even if they never co-presence. The same would also be true for things that are not possible at all.

{G24 306} To find out what it means that an assertion is true consider first the definition of assertion: that it is communicative-determinative declaration [mitteilend-bestimmende Aufzeigung (H exhibition)]. That it is declaring is primary here. It means that an assertion lets that which is talked about in it be seen in the way of deteminative predication; assertion makes that which is talked about accessible. This predicative declaring of a being has the universal character of unveiling letting-be-encountered. In understanding the communicated assertion, the hearer is not directed toward words or meanings or the psychical processes of the communicator. Instead, the hearer is from the outset directed toward the entity spoken of as such, which should come to meet him in its specific thusness [spezifischen So-sein] insofar as the assertion is for its part in keeping with its subject [sachangemessen]. Declaration has the character of unveiling, and it can be determination and communication only because it unveils. This unveiling is the basic function of asserting and constitutes that character which is traditionally called being true [Wahrsein].

{BP (G24) 307:1-8} The way of unveiling correlative to the object about which an assertion is made varies according to the material content [Sachhaltigkeit] of the entity about which the assertion is made and the type of being of the object of the assertion:

…The unveiling [H, =MR. revealing, enthüllen] of something extant [Vorhandenem], e.g., nature in the broadest sense, we shall call uncovering [R, MR. (also 'discover'), H=Entdecken]. The unveiling of the being that we ourselves are, Dasein, and that has existence as its mode of being, we shall call not uncovering but disclosure, opening up [Erschließen, Aufschließen]. Within certain limits, terminology is always a matter of choice. The definition of being true as unveiling, making manifest [Offenbarmachumg], is no arbitrary, private invention of mine; it merely expresses the understanding of the phenomenon of truth as the Greeks had understood it even in pre-scientific as well as in philosophical understanding, albeit not in every respect originally understood. Plato says expressly that the function of λὸγος, i.e., of asserting, δηλου*ν, is making manifest, or, as Aristotle says more precisely so far as the Greek expression for truth goes: *α*ληθεύειν. λανθάνειν means to be concealed; α- is the privative, so that α*-ληθεύειν is equivalent to bringing something forth out of its concealedness, to make manifest. For the Greeks, truth means taking out of concealment, uncovering, unveiling. The Greeks did not succeed to be sure in interpreting every aspect of this phenomenon. Thus, the essential essays involved in this understanding of truth could not succeed but instead lapsed into misunderstanding - for reasons that we shall not further discuss here - so that in the tradition today the original meaning of the Greek understanding of truth is completely hidden.

…Being true means unveiling, including the modes of uncovering and disclosing: the unveiling of the being whose being is not Dasein and that of the being that we ourselves are. We take being true in this wholly formal sense as unveiling: taken in this formal way it is not yet tailored to a particular entity and its type of being.

…Being true as unveiling turns out to be a way of being of Dasein herself, of Dasein's existence. Insofar Dasein exists, and that means insofar as an entity is in such a way that she is in a world, that entity is true, i.e., there is unveiled, disclosed, uncovered to her entities together with the unveiled world. Uncovering anything extant is grounded in that Dasein as existent already comports herself to some world that is disclosed [erschloßen]. Existing, she understands something like her world, and with the disclosedness of her world she is herself unveiled for herself at the same time. Self-understanding, this disclosedness of Dasein to herself is attained in fact to begin with by way of the self-understanding taken over from things with which Dasein dwells and which she uncovers in whatever way. Because this disclosedness and at one with it the uncoveredness of entities within the world belongs to the essence of Dasein, we can say: Dasein exists through [in] truth, i.e., through the unveiledness of herself and of the beings toward which she comports herself. Only because, existing, she essentially is through truth can Dasein as such err and only so is there concealment, dissemblance, obfuscation of what is. {ibid. 308} Truth is unveiling; unveiling is behavior of the ego; therefore, being true is said to be something subjective. We reply: "subjective" to be sure, but only where the "subject" is understood properly in the sense of existing Dasein, i.e., Dasein being-in-the-world. Henceforth we understand in how far the Aristotlean thesis, that being true is not to be found among things but ε*ν διανοί́ᾳ, in the understanding, is justified. We also see, however, in how far the thesis is not justified. If one takes the understanding and thinking as psychic understanding in an extant soul then it is unintelligible what it would mean to say that truth takes place in the sphere of the subject. If instead one takes διανοίᾳ as this phenomenon must be taken, in its apophantic structure, i.e., as unveiling declaring of something then one sees that the understanding in its own structure as unveiling declaring of something is defined in itself by being true. As free human behavior, thinking stands — insofar as it is unveiling — within the possibility suitably to hit upon [angemessen zu treffen, to declare] or to miss the entity that is given to her antecedaneously. Being true is implicit in asserting's structure because in itself asserting is behavior of Dasein and because Dasein is, as existing, defined by being true.

{G24 §18b, 309 (m in E)} Insofar as Dasein exists as being-in-the-world, she is always dwelling with some entity. 'With some entity [bei Seiendem]' means that this entity is in some sense or other unveiled. <So, it seems that 'to unveil something' means something like 'to be busied with something' as contrasted with 'to know something' since there can apparently be for a single object under a single description different ways of being unveiled but only one way of being known authentically, only one way in which emptily intended mements belong to the object's sense can be fulfilled. But this isn't clearly so. 'To be with some entity' is still ambiguous: does it mean 'to intend in some way' or 'to be busied with in some way' or 'to be busied with doxically in some way'? Does Heidegger believe that the second of these entails the third? It is likely that he means the first of these if he means any of them. In that case, there is at least one entity with which Dasein would be always busied, viz., itself. But this would not imply that Dasein is always preoccupied with, always busied with, always concerned with herself; it would mean only that Dasein always has some understanding, however obscure, of herself, and is something Heidegger does say quite explicitly.> To Dasein as unveiling there belongs something unveiled in its unveiledness, some entity to which the unveiling, in accordance with its intentional structure relates. To unveiling there belongs, as there belongs to every intentional behavior, an understanding of the being of that toward which this behaving as such is related. Through unveiling asserting, Dasein is directed toward an entity which she understands antecedaneously through that entity's unveiledness. The intentum of the unveiling asserting's intentio has the character of unveiledness. <This seems to confirm the reading above: unveiledness of the asserting's intentum entails having been unveiled to an antecedaneous understanding that need not have been an asserting. Note, however, that unveiling is implicitly distinguished from other classes of intentional behaving so that unveiling is not identified with, is not synonymous with, being conscious of or intending. This indicates that 'unveiling' is most likely to be coordinate with 'doxic intending'.>

{G24 309 (E 217)} …If we equate being true with unveiledness, with α*ληθεύειν (equated with δηλου*ν) then, since unveiling is related not accidentally but essentially to something to be unveiled, there belongs to the concept of truth the moment of unveiling as well as unveiledness, that which unveiling is related according to its <essential?> structure. <Emphasis has been added: it is essential to unveiling not that the intentum be intended as it is (truly, authentically) but that the unveiling refer to the possibility that the unveiled be unveiled authentically, i.e., as it is or truly). Wouldn't this mean - as the continuation suggests - that for something to be unveiled in the relevant sense the potentiality that it be authentically unveiled must be projected so that unveiledness requires Dasein's projecting way of being, i.e., existing? And wouldn't it also mean that projecting the potentiality implies that partial fulfillment of what is projected must occur if any frustration (negative fulfillment) of the project occurs and that unveiling is, therefore, always at least partially true?> {G24 310:14} However, there is unveiledness only insofar there is unveiling, i.e., insofar as Dasein exists. Truth and being true, as unveiledness and unveiling have Dasein's type of being. Truth <unveiledness> exists by its nature; it is never extant like a thing. Thus, understood properly in this way, the negative part of Aristotle's thesis is re-instated. Being true, says Aristotle, is not something extant among things. Nonetheless, the Aristotlean thesis needs to be supplemented and made more precise. For <a> truth is indeed not anything extant but is, as unveiledness of that to which assertion is related, some possible determination of the being of what is extant precisely because there is <a> truth only insofar as that> truth <unveiledness> exists, i.e., insofar as <that> truth has Dasein's type of being and because there belongs to <that> truth by the same token [zugleich] unveiledness of that to which <this> truth is related. <A> truth is a determination of the being of something extant insofar as that extant entity is unveiled, e.g., through a unveiling assertion.

{G24 310:24} When we say that being true does not mean [meint nichts, does not intend] anything that is extant among things, this expression suffers from an ambiguity. For being true means, as unveiling of something, just this respective entity to which it relates, means <in this case? (see G24 307:1-8 and above in this entry)> this extant entity through its unveiledness. Unveiledness is indeed not any extant determination belonging to the extant entity, not some property of it; instead it belongs to the existence as to what unveils. Yet unveiledness is a determination of what is asserted about, <in this case? (see G24 307:1-8 and above in this entry)>a determination of the being of the extant entity [eine Bestimmung des Seins des Vorhandenen].

truth, unconcealing and concealing, world and earth. See art works; earth [Erde]; truth, works, and the sense in which they ought to be (i.e., merit being tended).

{UDK in HW (G5) 37 (E 48f.)} Nothing of any work-stuff <"material cause"> essentiates in the work. <Doesn't this mean that color, e.g., in the work is not matter or pigment or light waves?> {ibid. 36} In the work, color illumines and will do nothing else; when we analyze it into wave frequency, measuring it cognitively, color has vanished. Color shows itself in a painting only when it remains undis-covered and unexplained. Earth of itself makes all penetrating into it shatter. It converts every merely calculative importunity into a destruction…The earth appears as itself openly lightened only where it is attested and tended as itself, as the essentially undisclosable [Unerschlieβbar] that draws back from every disclosing [Erschlieβung] {see entry disclosing, disclosedness}, it keeps itself ever closed up.[62]

{ibid.} World and earth are essentially different yet never separate from one another. World is grounded on earth; earth permeates upward through the world.

Whatever is earthly has ways of being revealed, unconcealed. The earthly cannot ever be fully unconcealed. It is hardly unconcealed at all if it is not understood to be concealed. It can be unconcealed at all only as concealed: whatever is unconcealed of it is to be unconcealed only in reference to the still concealed, and this reference is essential to what of earth is unconcealed; the reference is not to be overcome. However, Heidegger attempts to ward off threatening ways of misunderstanding this conception.

{ibid 36 (E 47)} 1. All earthly things and earth itself flow together into mutual harmony. Their harmonious simplicity is, however, no confused muddle; it is no blurring of distinction: it is instead the self-moved [in sich beruhte] flux of delimiting [Ausgrenzens] that limits whatever is present in its being present.

2. The relation of world and earth is not to be conceived as if restrictions ought to be put on the trend of world to supplant earth — as if even genuine unconcealing might go too far. Heidegger does not hold that there is something concealed that ought not to be unconcealed.

{ibid. 41 (E 52 f.} When we take truth here and elsewhere to be unconcealedness, we are not fleeing to some more literal translation of some Greek word. We are thinking of what — as something unexperienced [Unerfahrenes] and unthought of — lies at the base of that essence of truth in the sense of correctness to which we are accustomed and which we therefore take for granted. It is convenient occasionally to acknowledge that, in order to establish and to grasp the correctness (truth) of any assertion, we would naturally have to go back to something that is already obvious [open, offen]. This presupposition is indeed unavoidable. So long as we talk this way and are so convinced, we always understand truth only as correctness, correctness that requires that presupposition of us, which we indeed do make as required — Heaven knows how and why.

{ibid. 42} However, it is very far from being we who give precedence to [setzen…voraus] unconcealedness; the truth is that it is the unconcealedness of what-is (it is, that is to say, Being[63]) that places us into our being of such a nature [Wesen] that we always stay, whenever we objectivate, set into unconcealedness and stay set into it in such a way that it has precedence over us and we are in pursuit of it [in die Unverborgenheit ein- und ihr nachgesetzt bleiben]. What must be somehow or other unconcealed is not just that whereby any cognizing must orient itself: instead, that entire region [Bereich] wherein such "self-orienting by something" moves and so, too, that for which a measuring of the proposition by what it is about comes to be open [offenbar] has to play itself out in unconcealedness and has even to do so as a whole. If unconcealedness of what-is had not already set us out into[64] that lightened [Gelichtete] <lightened region? probably (possibly, but improbably: entity)> into which whatever-is [alles Seiende] stands and from which it withdraws then we, along with all our correct objectivating, would be not at all [nichts]: we couldn't even presuppose unless there were something obvious <offenbar: in the open, lightened>.

But how does that happen? How does truth happen as this sort of unconcealedness? What such unconcealedness is must be stated more distinctly before pursuing these issues.

Things are and people are, gifts and offerings are, equipment and work are. What-is stands in Being. A veiled destiny goes through Being, a veiled destiny [Verhängnis] that is hung between the godly [Gotthafte] and the ungodly [Widergöttliche]. There is much about what-is that we humans are unable to control. Only a little is known. The known remains a more or less known, the mastered remains unstable. What-is is not ever — as it may all too easily sometimes seem to be — of our making, much less only our idea. When we think of this whole complex in one then it seems that we grasp all of what-is, even though the grasping of it is crude enough.

And yet: above and beyond (albeit not separate from what-is but rather prior to it) something else happens. <Notation in the third edition (1957): Ereignis.> In the midst of what-is in totality there essentiates [west] an open place. A lightening is. Thought of from the viewpoint of beings, the lightening is more beënt than what-is. So, this open Midst <not 'center', as in the English translation> is not a center enveloped by what-is; instead, the lightening Midst circles about [umkreist] whatever is [alles Seiende] like the nothing [Nichts] that we scarcely know.

{ibid. 41 (m42)}What-is can only be as what-is when it stands into and so stands out within that which is lightened by this lightening [Lichtung]. This lightening alone gives and warrants to us humans an access to beings that we ourselves are not. Thanks to this lightening what-is is in some and in varying measures unconcealed. Yet what-is cannot even be concealed except within the range [limits, Spielraum] of what is lightened. Every entity whatsoever that either is encountered or that encounters us keeps to this curious opposition of presencing [coming to essentiate, Anwesen] in that it always withholds itself at the same time into a concealedness. The lightening where the entity stands herein is, of itself, at the same time concealment. However, concealment prevails in the midst of what-is in a twofold way.

What-is withholds itself from us down even to (and including) that one (and seemingly the least one) that we are most likely to meet when we can say of what-is only that it is. As withholding-itself-from, concealment is not just and not primarily the cognitive limit entailed in each case; it is instead the beginning [Anfang] for the lightening of what is lightened. At the same time, however, there is also concealment, albeit of a different type, to be sure, within <the limits of?> what-is-lightened. One entity moves in front of another one, the first one veils the second, the former obscures the latter, a few block off many, some isolate themselves and are not at home to anyone. In such cases, concealing is not the previous simple withholding-itself, for the entity does appear but it is given other than it is.

Concealment such as this is dissembling. If no entity were to dissemble another then we would be unable to be mistaken about entities or to make the wrong moves in dealing with them; we could neither go wrong nor do wrong <"do something we didn't mean to do" is probably all that's meant here>, and we could certainly never measure wrongly. That, as semblance, an entity can be able to deceive is a necessary condition for our being able to deceive ourselves; the relation is not the other way round. <Is this a criticism of the notion — in Descartes, for example — that we can only deceive ourselves because sensations on the one hand and propositions on the other, being intrinsically nothing other than sets of clearly perceived ideas,  cannot deceive anyone?>

Concealing can be a withholding or just a dissembling. We never have certainty as to whether it is the one or the other. Concealing conceals and dissembles itself. That is to say: The open place in the midst of entities — the lightening — is never a fixed stage with curtain constantly drawn whereon the drama of what-is is plays out. Instead, lightening only happens as this twofold concealing. Unconcealedness of what-is is never static, never a merely extant state; it is rather a happening [Geschehnis][65]. Unconcealedness (truth) is not a property of propositions, nor is it a property of what they are about, i.e., of the entities they are about.

We believe ourselves to be at home among the beings of our nearest surroundings. What-is is familiar, reliable, benign. The clearing is nonetheless pervaded by a constant concealing in the double form of withholding and dissembling. At its ground, the benign is not benign; it is non-benign [un-geheuer, the word translated elsewhere in these notes by 'awesome']. The essence of truth, i.e., unconcealedness, is dominated throughout by an opposition [Verweigerung]. This withholding is not any lack or error, as if truth were empty unconcealedness purged of whatever is concealed. This withholding in the manner of the twofold concealing belongs to the essence of truth as unconcealedness. In its essence, truth is non-truth [Un-wahrheit]. So let it be said, so as to indicate (in a way that may be offensive) that withholding in the manner of concealing belongs to unconcealedness as lightening. The proposition: the essence of truth is non-truth is not meant to say, truth is basically falsity. Just as little does it mean: truth is to be taken dialectically so that it is never itself but is always also its opposite.

Truth essentiates as itself insofar as the concealing opposition [Verweigerung], provides first – insofar as it happens as withholding – a constant source [Herkunft] for all lightening. Its constant source [Herkunft] – while happening as dissemblance, opposition [Verweigerung] – metes out the unceasing poignancy of <the threat of> errancy to all lightening. A phrase such as 'opposition [Verweigerung] that conceals' is meant to refer to that in the essence of truth which opposes the lightening which it involves to the concealing it involves. This is the against-one-another of the original conflict. In itself, the essence of truth is the primal conflict[66] wherein is contested that open Midst into which whatever-is stands and from which it places itself back into itself.

Such an Open happens in the midst of what-is. It shows an essential trait that we have already named. A world and the earth belong to the Open. The world is not simply the Open that corresponds to lightening; the earth is not the closed that would correspond to concealing. The world is rather the lightening of the paths indicated by the essential prescriptions [Verweisungen] into which all deciding fits <itself>. However, every decision grounds <itself> upon something that is not governed, something concealed, something that leads toward errancy. Otherwise, it would not be a decision at all. Earth is not simply the Closed; it is rather that which comes into the Open as that which closes itself. World and earth are each essentially in conflict and contestable. Only in this way do they enter into the conflict of lightening and concealing.

Earth permeates upward through the world, and world grounds <itself> upon the earth only insofar as truth happens as the primal conflict of lightening and concealing. We answer [67]: truth happens in a few essential ways. One of these ways wherein truth occurs is the work's being-work. Instituting a world and putting forth the earth, the work is the contesting of that conflict in which the unconcealedness of the whole of what-is, the truth, is fought through.

truth and being [Sein]. See disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; Da-; perceiving, perception; uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit]; unveiling [Enthüllen]; presence [Praesenz]; assertion, relation to unveiling [(H) Enthüllen, revealing (MR)]; within the world [MR, innerweltlich; intraworldly H].

{SZ (G2) 299 [m226]} Heidegger writes:

Das Dasein ist als konstituiert durch die Erscholssenheit wesenhaft in der Wahrheit. Die Erschlossenheit ist eine wesenhafte Seinsart des Dasein's. Wahrheit »gibt es« nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist. Seiendes ist nur dann und nur solange erschlossen, als überhaupt Dasein ist….
<For Dasein, to-be is essentially to be constitutionally in truth through disclosedness. Disclosedness is one of Dasein's essential ways of being. Truth "is given" only in so far as and so long as there is Dasein. Any entity is discovered and any entity is disclosed only when and so long as there is any Dasein at all…>

And a few pages later {ibid. 304 (m230)}:

Sein — nicht Seiendes — »gibt es« nur, sofern Wahrheit ist. Und sie ist nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist. Sein und Wahrheit »sind« gleichursprünglich. Was es bedeutet: Sein »ist«, wo es doch von allem Seienden unterschieden sein soll, kann erst konkret gefragt werden, wenn der Sinn von Sein und die Tragweite vom Seinsverständnis überhaupt aufgeklärt sind…
<Being — as distinct from entity — "is given" only in so far as there is truth. And truth is only in so far as and for as long as there is Dasein. Being and truth "are" each neither more nor less originally than the other. What it means to say that being "is" when being is also said to be different from any entity whatsoever can be inquired concretely only when both the meaning of being and the scope of the understanding of being have been fully clarified…>

The English translations of BT both render Heidegger's use of es gibt within scare quotes by 'there is' (Stambaugh uses double scare quotes, MR use single). This is not inaccurate given that what 'truth' refers to — as Heidegger is using it here — is a way in which uncovering occurs and uncovering occurs only insofar as there is Dasein and insofar as what shows itself to Dasein is something within-the-world. My preferred translation for »gibt es« as used here, however, (and especially with the scare quotes) is 'is given'. That something "is given" would entail that it show itself. I find that the advisability of this rendering is emphasized by the m230 passage, which seemingly elaborates on the "original connection" of the being of truth with the facts that Dasein is constituted through disclosedness and that there can be no understanding whatsoever of being without the disclosedness that is an essential feature of all understanding. In Husserl's terms neither being nor truth can be genuinely understood without being given — however obscurely or confusedly.

Heidegger is right to insist that truth, when so understood, requires that there be Dasein (and so in this sense "is relative to" Dasein) and he is also right, given this way of using 'truth', to insist that understanding truth this way would (if workable) not be equivalent to understanding it to be subjective or arbitrary or conventional. On the other hand, the reader should not forget that a decision is made here as to how the word will be used and that decision is a convention. Moreover, Heidegger is correct in pointing out that belief in "eternal truths" — and it is likely that the truths being referred to here are in Kant's terms both synthetic and a priori[69] — has historically been linked to acceptance of a supermind; Heidegger does not, however, assert that this link is necessary. He is well aware that including eidetic entities among transcendencies is a principal innovation of the sort of phenomenology that originates with Husserl. Unless I am seriously mistaken, Heidegger would also have held that insistence on the link is a form of subjectivism — Husserl might have called it "transcendental psychologism" — just as surely as cultural relativism is. Yet, for no good reason that I can ascertain he writes as if all those who believe as Husserl surely did that true statements need not be known true by anyone are transcendental subjectivists.

<Some of the alternative conventions to Heidegger's about how to use 'truth' might be quite sensible and appropriate. Someone might decide quite sensibly to restrict the denotation for 'truth' just to a class of propositions, where propositions would be entities in so far as they are interpreted apophantically. However, she should, on my view, then emphasize that many propositions are not eidetic entities, do not have extantness as their way of being, and are mental only in so far as they are about some Dasein. I recommend this decision rather than Heidegger's. So, I propose that truth is indeed essential to every state of affairs. Truth is essential to whatever there is and to being as well as to what there is not and to what there could not possibly be. Moreover, both being and truth refer to the potentiality of an actual assertion that would explicate the relevant state of affairs and make it communicable. A state of affairs that is true (one that is the case) is manifest in that it essentially has a way of showing itself, a way of 'letting be seen how the state of affairs belongs to the world'. Truth about a state of affairs refers essentially to the possibility that the state of affairs be disclosed and the further possibility that it be disclosed apophantically as it shows itself to be. The state of affairs that so shows itself is identical with the explicated state of affairs as well as with the state of affairs that referred to these potentialities but was neither disclosed in fact nor explicated. {See the entries "assertion, relation to unveiling [(H) Enthüllen, revealing (MR)] and circumspecting [Umsicht]" in these Notes.} Moreover, that a state of affairs shows itself does not require that it show itself in fact to anyone at all; its being manifest requires only that it have essentially ways in which it would (or probably would) show itself under appropriate factual conditions (Husserl: that ways of being given belong to its essence, regardless of whether it ever is so given). This feature of BT was decidedly in need of Turning. Were there an omniscience she would need to know and so to have whatever shows itself. The concept of something's showing itself does not yield the concept of omniscience by any analysis.

Strangely, he seems to believe that whether there can be evidence that truth ought to be is relevant to the question he emphasizes {ibid.}, "Has Dasein ever had the potentiality, acting as itself, freely to decide whether it will or will not come into 'existence [Dasein]', and will it ever be able to decide about that?" Here, he seems to be rejecting with Nietzsche the Fichtean sort of voluntarism and its way of answering, "Why is there anything at all rather than not anything at all?" And along with it he seems to be rejecting the necessitarian way of conceiving a necessary connection between what is and what ought to be.

Heidegger is thoroughly unconvincing when he suggests that once upon a time there were entities to which the laws of identity and contradiction were not applicable, when these laws were neither true nor false.>

Now my view of propositions (and Heidegger's in case he got this straight as he well may have done given the way I read his writings) is that the proposition or assertion or statement is identical with what is indicated as Dasein predicates about it. Now then, the way of being of the proposition will in that case be the way of being of what it is about in case the proposition is true or genuine. Its way of being will be to be in the world or to exist when the proposition is about some Dasein or some trait of some Dasein. Otherwise, its way of being will presumably be one of the ways to be within the world. In the case of an item of equipment, it will be readiness (to hand). In the case of a property belonging to an item of equipment, it will be extantness (presence-at-hand). And it will also be extantness when the proposition is about something ideal, including (I think) cases where the proposition is about universals instantiated by Dasein such as existentials and "neutral Dasein" {Heidegger, G2 (BT)  §10}.[70]

Most commentators and both English translations have been misled about this. Heidegger did not write that making statements or assertions implicitly or necessarily intends what the statement is about as if it were an entity extant or present-at-hand. What the indicative function of statement is to disclose — (what is essentially indicated in its horizons of meaning {see entry "saying, projective"} — is not that the subject of the assertion be something within the world. The indicative function of statement is just to disclose the sense or meaning of what the statement is about in such a way that no set of members is privileged and commands Dasein's attention as what the entity is to be used for. Statement is quite capable authentically to explicate what is being interpreted the way that it shows itself to Dasein.

Now, since the example actually used by Heidegger in BT §32 is making statements about a hammer, an entity ready to hand, the constituents of its meaning or sense are present-at-hand in it. So here what is being explicated are traits present-at-hand or extant in the hammer. This does not by any means imply that whatever is judged about must be intended as if it were present at hand. {See "Multiple Heideggers?" pp. 16ff.}

The phenomenon of truth is veritas transcendentalis. {SZ (G2) m38}

truth as unconcealment. See disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschlossenheit]; logic.

{SZ (G2) m33, m219 and BT} In Being and Time, the terms 'concealment' and 'unconcealment' are introduced misleadingly in connection with ancient Greek ways of thinking about truth, especially Aristotle's. So conceived, Heidegger says, the "being true" of logos as άληθεύειν means: to take that entity that is being spoken of through λ́εγέιν as ̉αποφαθ́ινεσθαί out of its concealment; to let it be seen as something unconcealed (̉αληθ́ες); to discover it. <Once again, both of the English translations substitute a generalized plural for Heidegger's singular das Seiende, and in doing so they compound the illusion, making it seem as if what is here being said of the unconcealed as conceived by Aristotle were to be extended to everything that is unconcealed through any assertion whatsoever.> Similarly "being false" (ψέυδεσθαι) means to deceive in the sense of to cover up: to set something up (by letting it be seen) in front of something else [etwas vor etwas stellen] so that this something else pretends to be something that it is not. {ibid. m33}

{ibid. m219} 'Concealment' and 'unconcealment' are introduced in exactly the same way in the later passage, and the same thing happens again in both English translations. Both passages emphasize (the first more strongly than the second) that precisely when understood in this way, the λ́ογος is not to be approached as the primary "locus" of truth. It is said that this is so because "truth" in the senses uncovering and discoveredness are so conceived that the λ́ογος is a certain mode of letting something be seen, viz., letting it be seen to be extant. However, the translations make it seem as if this meant that assertions are always bound to imply that the state of affairs about which the assertion is being alleged is something extant.

What Heidegger said was only that, in this Greek context, it was held that αἴσθησις (simple sensuous perceiving of something with vision as the paradigm case) is "true" more originally than what is called λ́ογος: perceiving is conceived to be always true insofar as αἴσθησις intends only that entity which is its ἴδια {ibid. m33}, i.e., that <sort of> entity that is genuinely [genuin] accessable only through this sensing and for this sensing, as colors are genuinely accessible only through and for seeing, for example, i.e., seeing uncovers colors.

By extension, for Aristotle, that which is "true" in the purest and most original sense is that which only discovers and does so in such a way that it can never cover up, that which is [νοεῖν] in the purest and most original sense, and this is intuiting [Vernehmen] that simply looks at [schlicht hinsehende Verhenmen][68] the simplest determinations of being [Sein] belonging to what-is as such.

truth as unveiledness and being-true. See logic; truth as unconcealment; earth [Erde]; revealing, revelation [Entbergen, Entbergung]; self-understanding [Selbstverständnis]; transcendence.

{GP (G24) 308; BP 216} That being-true is, insofar as it is unveiling, one of Dasein's ways of being entails that Dasein itself is true through its existing. This means that, along with the unveiled world, entities always have been unveiled, opened up [aufgeschloβen], discovered for Dasein. The uncovering of an extant entity, for example, is grounded in that Dasein's existing is always related to some world, which is disclosed <and so is disclosed as it is> through Dasein's existing. <What follows shows that this does not by itself imply that the phrase "world as unveiled" refers to the world or to the true world, even if it be necessarily true that any unveiled world is an appearance of the world. 'True' is predicated here of Dasein, so that Dasein's own being is what shows itself as it is: Dasein itself is a phenomenon, and so that world [world-appearance], so-to-speak is also a phenomenon; it shows itself and shows itself to refer in its own essence to what is still concealed about what is unconcealed in the showing. In as much as it is understood to be indeterminate in this sense [to be an Idee in Husserl's sense {see PIGA 55 n1}], the world phenomenon is grounded, is understood in its essential reference to earth [Erde].>[60] By existing, Dasein understands "its" world so to speak; and, along with the disclosedness of "its" world, Dasein is unveiled to itself, for itself. This self-disclosedness is Dasein's self-understanding. We've already seen {see the entry "selfhood"} that this self-disclosedness of Dasein is attributed to that self-understanding, which is achieved in the first place factually [faktisch] when Dasein understands itself by way of things that it discovers in whatever way and among which it dwells.

{ibid.}…Disclosing is the mode of revealing of the entity that we ourselves are, of the entity that exists [daseiend ist]. Being-true [Wahrsein] means revealing [Enthüllen]. We conceive being-true in this entirely formal sense to be revealing. However, revealing is not thereby tailored as yet to any certain entity and its being-type [Seinsart]. As revealing, being-true turns out to be a certain way of being of Dasein itself, its existence.

{ibid. 306 ff., BP m306 ff.} Dasein's projecting and the unity of existence, facticity, and falling which it entails is at the same time unveiling, being in the open, being in the world of exposed entities. Projecting, unveiling, being in the open, and clearing seem to be inseparable from one another. Dasein's way of being makes there be a truth about Dasein. The truth about Dasein refers to the truth about being and about world and about whatever there is in the world.

To say that a statement is true means that it discovers in themselves whatever beings the statement is about . It asserts, it shows, it lets beings "be seen" (apophansis) in their discoveredness. The being true (truth) of the statement must be understood as discovering.

So far as the Aristotelian thesis that truth is not in the understanding (when understanding is taken as an extant subject) is concerned, it turns out: truth is in the things insofar as these are taken as uncovered, as uncovered objects of some assertion that may be made about them [die über sie ergeht]. The being-true is extant neither among the things nor in some soul. On the other hand, the truth is — as unveiling — through Dasein [im Dasein] as a determination of Dasein's intentional behaving as well as being a determination of the entity, extant in this case, to the extent that its being is that of an unveiled <object> {ibid. 307 and above in this entry}. From this it turns out that being-true is something which lies between the subject and the Object, when one takes these two terms in the usual superficial signification. The phenomenon of truth is interconnected with the basic structure of Dasein, its transcendence.

truth, works, and the sense in which they ought to be (i.e., merit being tended). See art works; truth, unconcealing and concealing, world and earth.

{HW (G5) 50 f. (PLT 62)} It is implicit in the nature of truth that it turn itself into that which is. Only by doing so does it become truth. <I find this a very difficult passage; my best shot follows.> Only so does truth become, i.e., come to be exigent so that it can affect actual events, come to be instituted, become historical. A state of affairs doesn't become truth unless it be explicated. Utility in the sense of what can be used in a certain way is only implicit — as serviceability — in the sharp stone until it is used to cut, only then does the stone come to the fore as a tool. Perhaps more precisely: the stone becomes tool when, perhaps in relation to some need or other interest on the part of some Dasein, its serviceability for cutting becomes exigent, comes to stand out so that its being used for cutting comes to be projected, when that potentiality becomes exigent. {For a closely related account of the origins of action see my PEA §§ 3-7.} Analogously, a state of affairs can become a truth only if it be asserted, even though the self-same state of affairs, if it does come into the open as true will also be in the open as having come to the fore (having been so) even before it came into the open as true (became a truth). The tendency to turn itself into works, to elicit <syntactically> formed understanding of itself is implicit in the essence of truth as one of truth's distinctive possibilities, viz., its possibility to be in the midst of beings. <Assume here that what's meant is that every state of affairs can become a member of a syntactically formed state of affairs and so can become a member of a true interpretation that is incorporated into a work. This general formulation will hold for all explicated states of affairs though I am conceiving it using declarative sentences as a model: so that, here, the linguistic utterance is the work and the syntactically formed state of affairs is the meaning (the "proposition" or assertion) that it signifies. The state of affairs as referring essentially to this potentiality to be syntactically formed as true tends (needs) to turn itself into works that incorporate it: the state-of-affairs elicits its being established in the work as the work's truth). That this is a tendency implicit in the essence of truth seems to be a Heidegger analog to saying – as Brentano and Husserl had – that truth is "good in itself". When the state of affairs is syntactically formed it belongs to mortals and their history, no matter which region of being it belongs to most originally, even when what is syntactically formed is something earthly.>

{HW (G5) 50 f. (PLT 62)} To provide a work with truth[60A] is to bring forth an entity such as never was before and will never come to be again. <It seems most likely that the being referred to is something like the (action of) providing the work with truth, but the action taken as intentional and so as a noetic-noematic complex (ego-cogito-cogitatum-qua-cogitatum).> This bringing forth places [stellt] Dasein's explicating into the Open in such a way that what-is-to-be-brought is what first lightens the openness of the Open (into which what-is-to-be-brought comes-to-the-fore). Wherever, of itself, bringing to the fore brings openness of what-is, the truth about something, there what is brought to the fore is a work. To bring to the fore in this way is to create [Schaffen]. As this bringing, creating is more a receiving and picking-from [Entnehmen] within the tendency toward unconcealedness. If that's how it is then in what does being created consist? Let's try to clarify what that means through two essential considerations.

I. The first essential consideration is that truth turns itself into the art work. Truth happens <more accurately 'essentiates', west> in unconcealment only as strife and struggle between lightening and concealing in that opposition [Gegenwendigkeit] of world and earth. Truth seeks [wills, will] to be turned into the work, turned into it as this strife of world and earth. The strife is to be opened up through an entity such that the strife itself is to bring to the fore, the strife must open up from this entity herself. Otherwise, the work is not accomplished. This entity must have in herself the essential traits of the strife. Through the strife, the unity of earth and world is contested. By opening itself, a world places [stellt] victory and defeat, blessing and curse, sovereignty [Herrschaft] or servitude before an historical humanity for decision. By arising from the work, the world brings to light [Vorschein] what is still indeterminate and incongruous. In so doing the world opens up the concealed necessity <need?> for congruence and determinateness, However, by a world's opening up, the earth comes to loom up. The earth is shown to be what bears everything, to be that which constantly closes itself up and whose law is sheltered <hidden, das in sein Gesetz Geborgene>. World demands its determinateness and its congruence and lets what-is achieve [gelangen] that openness that characterizes its paths <Bahnen, its ways of being experienced [Erfahren, or disclosed]>. Earth tends to keep itself closed up, towering and grounding [tragend-aufragend], and to entrust everything to its <earth's> doom [Gesetz, ordaining, weird; earth would stay the same, repeat the same pattern(s) as with negative infinity in Hegel]. The strife is the intimacy whereby the parties belong to one another in struggle. The rendering [Riβ, e: rift]] <that differentiates them> renders [reiβt…zusammen] the opponents together into the genesis [Herkunft] of their union from the one ground. The rendering is ground-rendering [Grundriβ]. It is rendering open [Auf-riβ] that delineates [zeichnet] the basic traits of the rise of the lightening of what-is. This rendering does not let the opposites burst apart; on the contrary, it brings into the unitary change-about [Umriβ] wt is the opposite of order and limit.{HW (G5) 51 (e PLT 63)} The truth turns itself as strife into an entity <the art work> that is to be brought to the fore only in such a way that the strife opens up through this entity. This means that this entity itself is brought into the rendering. The rendering is this unitary drawing together of rendering-open [Auf-riβ] and ground-rendering [Grundriβ], ripping-through and change-about [Umriβ]. Within this entity, {G5 51 (m52), e PLT 63 f.} the truth directs itself in such a way that the entity itself possesses the openness of truth. However, the entity's possessing the openness of truth can only happen in such a manner that that which is to be brought to the fore and now juts within the open entrusts itself to the rendering, to what closes itself off. The rendering must place itself back into the heavy weight of the stone, into the dumb hardness of the wood, the obscure glow of the colors. Only by being received back into earth, is the rendering set up [hergestellt] into the open and so is set up, i.e., placed [in das gestellt, d.h. gesetzt], into what – as both concealing and sustaining itself – juts into the open. {ibid.} Heidegger calls the strife between earth and world the figure [Gestalt] insofar as that strife is brought into the rendering and is set back into the earth. That the work is created [Geschaffensien des Werkes] means: truth's being established in the figure. The rendering figures into an overall form [Gefüge] which the figure [Gestalt] is. <The verb 'to figure' is used here with such idioms in mind as that a character figures into a drama or a narrative or as the way a metaphor figures into a poem or as a sacrament or a ritual figures into a religion.> The rendering that is so formed is how truth's appearing [Scheinen] figures in. What is called "figure" here is to be thought of throughout by dwelling on the work as that which essentiates through the placing and setting up [Stellen und Ge-stell] in so far as the work sets up and generates itself. {ibid. 52} In creating the work the strife must, as rendering, be returned into the earth; the earth itself must be brought to the fore and used. This sort of using does not, however, consume and abuse the earth as if it were some stuff; instead the earth is freed to itself. To use the earth thus is to work with her, a working that does indeed resemble the use of material in crafting. That is how it comes to seem as if creating the work were at the same time the practice of a craft. It never is that however. It is always rather a using of the earth to establish truth in the figure. In contrast, to produce equipment is never immediately to effect the occurring of truth. Equipment's being ready is the having been formed of some stuff, and that as having been made ready for use. For equipment to be ready means being dismissed in spite of itself so as to pass over into serviceability.
II. {ibid 52 (PLT 64)} The second trait to be elaborated on here brings out how an art work's being created differs from equipment's way of being made, being formed out of material. Equipment's being ready and the work's having been created are alike in that each of them constitutes a being brought to the fore. But what distinguishes the work's having been created from every other being brought to the fore is that the work's having been created is itself built into the created work. True enough, having been brought to the fore is co-given with whatever has been brought to the fore. However, this work's having been created has been figured into the work itself so that it stands out in its own right within what has been brought to the fore in this special manner. If this be so then there must be some manner in which this work's having been created is to be experienced in its belonging to the work itself. For the work's having been created to come thus into relief does not mean that its having been made by a great artist should be noticed. What is created is not, in so far as it is a work of fine art, t0 evince that it is the product of mastery and thereby to raise public esteem for the artist. What is to stand out into the open about the work is not the state of affairs, "made by so and so", but is rather the simple "it is thus": that unconcealedness of something-that-is has happened here, that such a work is instead of not being. The stature of the work, its self-subsistence is constituted by the impact of the fact that the work is, by the fact that what there is does not lack this special impact. This impact, this "that" of having been created, stands out most purely where the work's artist and the process and circumstances whereby it came to be are unknown. Entities within the world lack this impact that is characteristic of works of art. The less one needs to know about a hammer and how it came to be, the handier it is, the more its being disappears into its use. For whatever is extant we can remark that it is; this state of affairs is noticed, however, only so as to stay forgotten as with whatever is taken for granted. What is more taken for granted, more obvious, more self-understood than the state of affairs that what-is is? In contrast, what is not to be taken for granted about the work is the state of affairs that it is. The homologation that is its creation does not follow the work timidly trembling, something shakily recalled or imagined. That the work is as this work %% is its homologation and projects the work ahead of itself and has ever done so. The more essentially the work opens itself, the more manifest [leuchtender] the uniqueness becomes of the state of affairs that it is rather than is not. The more essentially this impact comes into the open, the stranger and more sequestered the work becomes. To bring the work to the fore includes exposing the state of affairs "that it is".

The issue about the createdness of the work was to bring out the distinctive character of works as such and so to bring out the exigency [Wirklichkeit, customarily "reality" or 'actuality'] of the work. {For a related account of what 'exigence' means as used here see PEA.} "Having been created" showed itself to be instituting the conflict of earth and world into the figure through the rendering. That instituting includes that the work's having been created is itself created into the work so that the having been created stands into the open as the calm impact [Stoβ] of what we called the "that". However, even having been thus created does not exhaust the exigency of the work.

{ibid. 54} Nonetheless, this glimpse of the essence of the work's having-been-created places us in position to take the step to which all this has been preparatory.The awe [Stoβ] that such a work, having been instituted into the figure, is comes all the more simply into the open the more the work stands sequestered on its own, the more it appears to dissolve all relation to human beings. And the awesome [Ungeheure] is opened up all the more essentially, and what has long seemed certain and secure [das bislang geheuer Scheinende] is the more thoroughly overthrown. <E uses 'extraordinary' to translate 'Ungeheure'; 'awesome' is preferred here as conveying a feeling akin to dread, exaltation, and reverence. I am tempted to use 'sublime' but this is the word that was translated into German aesthetic writings as 'erhaben', and although 'das Ungeheure' is certainly akin to 'das Erhabene', Heidegger deliberately chose an alternative term.> This manifold impact has about it, however, nothing violent, for the more purely the work itself vanishes from notice into that openness of what-is which the work itself has opened up, and so the more purely does the work jar us into this same openness and so jar us out of what is usual. To go along with this shift means to transform the usual relation to the world and to the earth and to go on holding in suspense all current activity and valuation, understanding and noticing so as to dwell with that truth occurring in the work. Only the suspense of dwelling in this way lets what has been created be the work that it is. To let the work be a work we call tending the work, conserving it [Bewahrung]. Only in being tended is the work given in its having been so created as to be exigent, i.e., created so that it comes efficaciously to presence. A work can no more come to be without those who tend it than it can without being created; requires those who tend it no less essentially than it requires its creators. There is no work without those who tend it; it is ever related to them even when there are none there to respond to that truth which occurs in the work. It always refers to those who tend it. Indeed it requires them the more emphatically when it is only awaiting them, anticipating and meriting that they visit its truth. A work can be forgotten, but its forgottenness is fed by the work.

To tend the work is to be urgent abut the openness of entities as it happens in the work. Tending's urgency is, however, a knowing. Knowing does not consist in merely cognizing and attending cognitively to something however. whoever truly knows something that is [das Seiende] knows what it is that she wills to do in the midst of what-is. The sort of willing that is relevant here is conceived from what is fundamentally to be learned [aus der Grunderfahrung] through the thinking in Sein und Zeit. Knowing that is nonetheless a willing and willing that is nonetheless a knowing is an existing person's being admitted ekstatically into the unconcealedness of being. That resolution which was conceived in Sein und Zeit is not the decisive action of a subject but is rather the opening up of Dasein toward being out of being captivated by what-is. By existing, the person does not however go from some inside over to some outside. Instead, the essence of existing is standing urgently out in the essential separateness that the clearing of what-is includes. Neither the so-called "creating" that we have been discussing nor what we now are calling "willing" is to be conceived in terms of realization and action on the part of some sort of subject who would posit and strive toward herself as goal.

Willing is sober resoluteness of existent going-out-beyond-itself insofar as such transcendence exposes itself to the openness of what-is as that openness is posited in whatever work is being willed. Law, for example, thus acquires competence, authority, sanction. <So bringt sich die Inständigkeit in das Gesetz. If this reading is correct then Heidegger has packed an enormously important assertion about laws and acts of legislation into an appallingly compact and enigmatic sentence. Legislated rules would be genuine (would be laws) only if they embody truth about what ought to be or ought to be done, in Heidegger's idiom, laws about "what is to be" or about "what is to be done". This reading is nevertheless the only one that I find plausible. E uses 'standing-within' for 'Instandigkeit' and translates the sentence, "In this way, standing-within is brought under law." But E's sentence would be somewhat more plausible had Heidegger used a dative rather than an accusative object with the preposition in. Moreover, E's extremely literal rendering of Inständigkeit here and in the paragraphs that follow in the text is probably a mistake. I shall be using 'urgency' instead; this is in line with my use in the paragraphs above of 'exigent' and 'impact' and 'shock'.> In so far as tending the work of art is knowing, it is sober urgency through the awesomeness of the truth that occurs through the work. In so far as it is willing, knowing of this sort comes to dwell on the work's truth, and only in so far as it does so can it be knowing. <Because it is going-out-beyond-itself to the work> such knowing doesn't deprive the work of its self-sustaining status, doesn't wrench the work into the region of mere living [des bloβen Erlebens, of lived experiencing] and does not degrade it to the status of a stimulus for lived experiences. Tending the work doesn't isolate people among their lived experiences, instead it interpolates them into belonging to that truth which is occurring in the work; it thus grounds being for and with one another as Dasein's standing out historically from the common relationship to unconcealedness…In so far as to know is to have seen it is to be definite [Entschiedensein], is urgency in the strife which the work has united into the rendering.

The work itself and it alone first co-creates and predelineates the proper way for the work to be tended. Tending happens in various levels of knowing, each with a different scope, steadfastness, and clarity…
…The most genuine exigence of the work is only carried out where the work is tended in the truth that occurs through the work itself

turning [Kehre]. See truth and being [Sein].

uncanniness [Unheimlichkeit]. See understanding of being [Seinsverständnis]; affectivity; affectivity and understanding; thrownness [Geworfenheit].

{SZ (G2) m277 (BT m277)} Uncanniness, even though it is covered up in everyday being-in, is the fundamental way [Grundart] of being in the world.

{ibid. m276} Uncanniness is unveiled genuinely through the fundamental affect of anguish [Angst, dread, anxiety]. As the most primary [elementarste] disclosedness of thrown Dasein, uncanniness brings Dasein's being-in-the-world into confrontation with the Non-being of the world; this is that with which Dasein is anguished in anguish over the ownmost potentiality to be. What if, in conscience, the Caller were Dasein in so far as she finds herself in the grounds of her uncanniness. Nothing speaks against this; all of the phenomena characterizing the caller and her Calling speak for it. The Caller in her Who cannot be determined in any mundane manner at all. <What belongs to the sense 'world' is that my being in it ought to be unnecessary to its future existing. Nothing else in the world is to be canceled by my ownmost potentiality the way (apodictically) my being-in-the-world would be.> Dasein in her uncanniness is the original, thrown being-in-the-world as Not-at-home, the naked "that" in the Nothing of the world.

One necessary feature which any Dasein whatsoever must have is an understanding of world insofar as Dasein's being-in-the-world is disclosed to Dasein through a feeling of uncanniness. This "mood" involves Dasein's sensing of the fact that, although there is given to its understanding how it exists in the world (e.g., through projecting, choosing, etc.), how this manner of existing came about is not given to its understanding. The that-clause in the preceding sentence states an alleged truth arrived at by explicating (interpreting) something disclosed by Dasein through its ways of being-in, specifically through a certain affect <e: "mood">. The interpretation is ontological in that it alleges (asserts) that what this affect discloses is something disclosed to any Dasein whatsoever rather than just to some Dasein. That none of Dasein's ways of being-in discloses how Dasein's manner of existing came about in the first place, so that Dasein has no authentic understanding of having existed without already having been in the world is part of what the word 'facticity' refers to, viz., to the fact that, so far as the truth about its way of being is given to its understanding, it always has already been in the world. What the particular facts are about Dasein's own past is a question of fact, the truth about which past it has is an ontical and an existentielle truth. That it have a past is an existential truth about how any Dasein whatsoever must exist.

Without already having a past, Dasein would not be able to be ahead of itself by projecting possibilities. As noted above, Dasein cannot exist first and then have been. On the other hand, whenever Dasein has been, it has existed by projecting potentialities. Existing by projecting belongs just as much as facticity to the existential structure of any Dasein whatsoever. How Dasein is able to project its potentialities is conditioned by what sort of past it has, by the particular situation into which it finds itself to have been thrown. But Dasein does not and cannot exist — find itself thrown into a situation which conditions its ways of projecting and choosing — to begin with without its ways of projecting and choosing having been already conditioned by 'the they' — i.e., by the particular factually accepted ways of doing things which are current in its community, by the way it has been socialized or enculturated. <It is a very serious error when Kaelin writes {Kaelin 58} as if "authentic" choosing were usual and that adopting choices proposed by others were eo ipso inauthentic choice and somehow abnormal or non-normal {Kaelin 129}. Worse still is the implication that to adopt potentialities or choices afforded by the world is eo ipso inauthentic. Since Dasein has no way to be other than being-in-the-world, this would make all of its potentialities potentialities for inauthentic existence! A wild animal could first exist and then be trapped and trained into participation in human social or cultural existence. But use of the metaphor of entrapment here is seriously misleading since Dasein cannot exist first apart from all conventions in order subsequently to be trapped into social roles {Kaelin 167}. Sadly, that sort of precious drivel occurs frequently among Continental Philophosers, where it frequently is not only tolerated but encouraged. It has however nothing whatever to do with Heidegger, who surely understood that there is no such thing as human existence that would be acultural much less asocial. Even Rousseau's noble savage would exist only through having been socialized and enculturated.>

uncovering, uncoveredness [Entdecken, Entdecktheit]. See perceiving, perception.

{BP 72} We shall call the unveiling of an extant being — for example, nature in the broadest sense — uncovering. We distinguish not only terminologically but also for reasons of intrinsic content between the uncoveredness of a being and the disclosedness of its being. {BP 71} Uncoverability, i.e., the perceivability of what is extant, presupposes the disclosedness of extantness.

understanding [verstehen, Verstand]. See affectivity and understanding; for-the-sake-of_[Umwillen]; disclosing, disclosedness; Da-; experience [Erfahrung]; understanding inauthentic and authentic; E_hermeneutical_circle,_misinterpretations_of.

{SZ (G2) m123 and BT} When understanding is interpreted existentially as something fundamental, it is shown that this phenomenon is conceived to be one of Dasein's basic modes of being. In contrast, "understanding" in the sense of one possible type of cognition among others, differentiated perhaps from "explaining," must be interpreted along with the latter as an existential derivative of the primary understanding which (together with affectivity [Befindlichkeit]) is co-constitutive for the being of any There [Da] at all. {ibid. m142 f.} Affectivity always has its understanding even when having it only by suppressing it. Understanding is always affected [gestimmtes].

{ibid.  m148} As understanding, Dasein projects its being upon possibilities. In so far as it projects its being in this way, Dasein is understanding-being-toward-possibilities; this being toward possibilities is itself a potentiality to be because the possibilities in question recoil – in so far as they are disclosed, into Dasein.

{ibid. m146} Dasein in fact means each of her potentialities for being to be a possibility of understanding. Through its character as project, understanding constitutes existentially what we call Dasein's sight. Co-originally, Dasein is this sight — which is existentially included with the disclosedness of the There — as circumspection in providing [Besorgen], as looking-after in taking caring of someone, as sight of being as such, for the sake of which Dasein is as it is in every instance. This sight, which we call "seeing-through [Durchsichtigkeit, transparency]", refers totally and primally to existence. This is the designation that we choose for "self-knowledge" proper so as to make clear that what is referred to is no perceptual espying and envisioning of some punctual self but is instead an integrating understanding of the full disclosedness of being-in-the-world throughout each and all of her genuine constituents. The existing entity Sights "herself" only in so far as she is co-originally seeing herself through her being in the midst of the world and being so with others. The expression "sight" must be defended against a misunderstanding. The expression speaks of that lightendness that we spoke of in characterizing the There. Here, the "seeing" does not mean perceiving with the bodily eyes, but it also does not mean pure non-sensuous intuiting of something extant in its extantness. To the existential meaning of Sight, what is relevant about vision is only that entities are accessible to vision and that vision allows them to be encountered as they themselves are. This is something that every sense does within the range of what the sense genuinely uncovers. Traditional philosophy is oriented from its beginning primarily toward "seeing" as mode of access to entities and to being. To preserve the connection to the tradition, sight and seeing can be formalized so extensively that a term is attained for characterizing every access whatsoever to entities and to being.

{GP (G24) 390 (m in BP)} Understanding is not taken here in the sense of Descartes, where what the understanding does is to perceive and only that. Understanding is not primarily a sort of cognition in the usual sense, where to understand is to observe [Betrachten] ; understanding is instead a basic trait of existence itself. <Descartes did not consider all understanding to be clear; Heidegger is here permitting himself a philophosical lie, making his view out to be more novel than it is; his position in this regard is barely distinguishable, if at all, from that of Descartes.>The basic condition for cognition of beings as well as for the understanding of being is: to stand in an illuminating light or, to speak without an image: something or other upon which we have projected the understanding of what is to be understood. Understanding must itself in some way see as unveiled that upon which it projects. If there is an understanding that is inherent in the understanding of being and if that understanding of being is constitutive for the structure of Dasein's very being the understanding…To exist is essentially albeit not exclusively to understand. That Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world means that this being-in-the-world cares about this being itself [es diesem In-der-Welt-sein um dieses Sein selbst geht]. That is, this being-in-the-world, this entity, Dasein, has her own being in hand in a certain manner insofar as she comports thus or otherwise toward her agency [Seinkönnen], has decided for or decided against. <I am here departing from the usage of published translations of Heidegger's works. (For example, BTMR uses 'potentiality-for-Being' and BTS uses 'potentiality of being' while BP uses 'can-be'.) I do so to emphasize that Heidegger's concept of Dasein and her ways of being includes as an essential constituent that such potentialities as these are other than necessary. It is not just that they are spontaneous and unique. Even Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Kant and Christian theology insist on that much. However,; freedom and responsibility require that Dasein exert initiative, and this requires that her decisions render impossible alternatives that were genuinely possible beforehand. The view is utterly alien to any notion that how Dasein will act is something whereof omniscience could have prior knowledge. The widespread drive to assimilate Heidegger's work to Christianity, including that of Kierkegaard, is grossly wide of the mark. An agent in the relevant sense exists by making choices among potentialities whereof some are both genuinely possible and genuinely related as alternatives. Otherwise responsibility would be nonexistent and belief or faith in it would not just absurd but a gross error. Dasein does not exist if any sort of necessitarianism be true, including its predestinationist variants. It seems clear as well that this view is in complete disagreement with Bergson's insistence that possibilities which do not become actual are fictitious inventions of the intellect. {See the entry "possibility, open [die öffene Möglichkeit]" in Husserl Notes, my TFA 64 f.; PEA 87}>

 'Dasein cares about her own being,' means more precisely that she cares about her own agency. She is her ownmost agency [eigenstes Seinkönnen]. Being existent, Dasein is free for certain possibilities that are her own. Being her own, these are not empty logical possibilities such as would be external to her own, such as she might entertain or might close herself off from; they are rather ways for her to exist. When Dasein is free for certain of her possibilities, for her agency, she is through this being-for; she herself is these possibilities. They are possible only as this existent Dasein's possibilities no matter how she may comport toward them. <Here Heidegger has gendered the existent Dasein in a way worth noting; instead of the usual neuter 'es' the passage reads, "mag er sich zu ihnen wie immer verhalten."> Such possibility is always possibility for her ownmost being. A possibility is as it is only so far as Dasein comes to exist through it. Here then is the original existential concept of understanding: to be ones ownmost agency, to take it upon oneself and to keep to its possibility, to understand oneself through ones factual freedom; this means: to understand oneself through ones ownmost agency is the original existential concept of understanding. {See my PEA §6 and PEA.}

{GP (G24) 392-393 (m in BP)} Quite universally, understanding is not any cognizance [Kenntnis] acquired through cognizing [Erkennen] but is rather a primordially [ursprünglich] existential kind of being, one which makes cognition and cognizance possible <is a necessary condition for them> in the first place.  To understand means, more precisely, to project oneself upon a possibility, in this projection to keep oneself at all times in a possibility. A can-be, a possibility as possibility, is there only in projection, in projecting oneself upon that can-be. If in contrast I merely reflect on some empty possibility into which I could enter and, as it were, just gab about it, then this possibility is not there, precisely as possibility; instead for me it is, as we might say, actual [wirklich]. The character of possibility becomes manifest and is manifest only in projection. The phenomenon of projection contains two things. First, that upon which Dasein projects itself is a can-be of her own self. <Heidegger seems here to operate with a concept of possibility which is very different from that of Husserl. What Heidegger terms possibilities would be, in Husserl 's terms, objects that are (intended as, understood to be) problematic (attractive) possibilities {see PPV}. Heidegger seems as well to imply that whatever is projected is a possibility rather than just something understood and perhaps misunderstood to be possible. In this he would seem to be denying that there are possibilities other than those that are in fact projected by some Dasein while implying as well that there could easily be possibilities which would be essentially impossible either formally or materially. No doubt what Dasein does in fact achieve was possible. Very likely Heidegger is assuming it to be genuinely problematic whether what she projects to be her possibilities are achievable, but if this be so, he should have said so. Dasein is after all acquainted precognitively, with failure to achieve its projects, and there is no reason to suppose that failure is always from want of effort. That Dasein can be whatever she chooses to be is an absurd bit of pro-plutocratic ideology whereby it comes to be maintained that indolence is all that really stands between the disadvantaged and a better life. Heidegger had, in my opinion, hardly any insight into and very little intelligence concerning moral or ethical matters.{See moral law (Kant), Heidegger's error about.}> Agency is unveiled primarily in and through projecting, but in such a way that the possibility upon which Dasein projects herself is not itself apprehended objectively. Secondly, this projection upon something is always a projecting of… If Dasein projects herself upon a possibility, she is projecting herself in the sense that she is, through this specific being, unveiling herself as this agent. If Dasein projects herself upon a possibility and understands herself [through] that possibility then this understanding, this becoming manifest of the self, is not a self-contemplation in the sense that the ego would become the object of some cognition or other; rather, the projection is the way in which I am the possibility; it is the way in which I exist freely. The essential core of understanding as projection is Dasein's understanding of herself existentielly through it. Since projection unveils, albeit without making what is unveiled as such into an object of contemplation, there is present in all understanding an insight of Dasein into herself. However, this insight is not a free-floating knowing <freischwebendes Wissen – Heidegger does not make clear whether he considers this phrase redundant; what he has against the sort of knowledge referred to is left free-floating> about herself. Only if the knowing involved in insight has the primary character of self-understanding does it have genuine truth character, i.e., only then does it unveil appropriately that existence of Dasein which she is to unveil. Insofar as understanding occurs as Dasein's self-projecting, understanding is the basic way that Dasein happens. It is the authentic meaning of action. Such understanding is characteristic of Dasein's happening, in its historicality. Understanding is not a type of cognizing [Erkennens] but is rather the basic characteristic of existing. We also designate it as the existentielle understanding inasmuch as, through it, existence temporalizes itself as the happening of Dasein through her history.

{SZ (G2) and BT m151-153} As a potentiality for Being <as agency>, understanding is utterly saturated by possibility. Strictly speaking, what is understood is not the sense but the being, or more precisely Being. As the disclosedness of the There, understanding relates to the whole of being-in-the-world. In every understanding of world {see the entry "understanding,_inauthentic_and_authentic"}, existence is co-understood and vice versa. All explication moves within the pre-structure. All explication that leads to concord [Verständnis] must have understood already what is to be understood. Explication must move within the understood and from there must approximate itself [sich nähren]. However, this circle of understanding is not some cycle through which any type of cognition chosen at random must move; it is rather the expression of the existential pre-structure of Dasein herself. It would even would be better to avoid the term 'circle' altogether in characterizing anything like Dasein since 'circle' belongs ontologically to a kind of being characterized by a type of extantness, viz., resources [Bestand]. What is inappropriately derided as "circular" in understanding pertains to the structure of sense), a phenomenon rooted in the existential constituents of Dasein – more precisely, in explicative understanding. Any entity that, as being-in-the-world, is concerned about its Being has a circular ontological structure, i.e., has a pre-structure [Vor-Struktur]. To understand means projectingly to be toward a potentiality to be for the sake of which Dasein exists in each case. Understanding discloses Dasein's own potentiality to be in such a way that she understandingly "knows" in each case what this potentiality-to-be has to do with Dasein herself; what is involved in this understanding is simply that Dasein holds herself within an existentiell possibility. "Not knowing" does not mean an absence of understanding but must be considered as a deficient mode of projectedness of agency <the potentiality-to-be>. Existence can be dubious, but to be dubious there must be some disclosedness. <Seemingly, therefore, all understanding includes disclosing, and it is to be assumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary that understanding includes the state of affairs that both the disclosing and the disclosed "show themselves" to Dasein (are phenomena) but are said to be "known" only when explicated>.

{SZ, BT m341} Such understanding, disclosing, and showing that is nonetheless not knowing is the ground for conceiving emotions and moods to be affects. Through it, fear, for example, is fear of… or is fearing for the sake of…

{SZ, BT m315} To avoid the "circle" of understanding would be to set aside the fundamental structure of care through which Dasein is constituted as being in every instance ahead of herself beforehand. {See the entry "hermeneutical circle".}

{SZ, BT m147} By showing how all sight is primally grounded in understanding – the circumspecting of providing is understanding in the form of perspicacity [Verständlichkeit] – pure intuition has been deprived of its preeminence which, noetically speaking, corresponds to the preeminence of the extant in traditional ontology. "Intuition" and "thinking" are remote derivatives of understanding. Phenomenological "intuition of essence" is also grounded in existential understanding. <Heidegger shows that he quite comprehends the importance for phenomenology of beginning each investigation from examples reflectively given ("sighted") and only then treating them as imaginatively variable possibilities.> This sort of seeing may be judged properly only once the explicit concepts of being and being-structure have been attained, for only such explicit concepts can become phenomena in the phenomenological sense. <Heidegger seems pretty clearly to be using 'intuition' here not as a name for any way whatsoever in which something shows itself to Dasein but rather for ways of explicating through which the meaning of something that shows itself comes to be elaborated, made explicit. In that case, he will be unwilling to speak of affects as intuitions of the state of affairs that something "is to be" or "ought to be"; he will not say that even if he agrees with Husserl, Hartmann, and Scheler — as it seems clear to me that he does — that such states of affairs do show themselves (are disclosed) through affects.> That the There [Da-] be disclosed through understanding is itself a potentiality of Dasein for being. In union with disclosedness of significance (world), disclosedness of being as a universal [überhaupt] is implicit in the projectedness of Dasein's being upon the for-the-sake-of. <A marginal note of Heidegger's here {G2 196b reads, "How is it 'implicit', and what does being [Seyn] mean here?"> The anticipating that is included in understanding being is included antecedaneously in projecting upon possibilities. In projecting being is understood but is not conceived ontologically. < A marginal note by Heidegger reads here {G2 196c} reads, "Does not mean, however: being 'would be' owning to the project." Nicolai Hartmann, for example, misrepresented Heidegger's doctrine in that way {Hartmann 150 and fn.; PEA 187 and note 12}.> Entities whose kind of being it is to project being-in-the-world have understanding of being among the constituents of their being. Only on the basis of the temporal interpretation of being can there be achieved a clarification that will treat in a satisfactory way the limits of this whole investigation into the state of affairs that Dasein is its There as understanding.

{SZ (G2) and BT m146} Since understanding is a potentiality-to-be, it is altogether a matter of possibility. Projecting always involves the full disclosedness of being-in-the-world; understanding has, as agency <potentiality-to-be>, its own possibilities, which are predelineated by the extent [Umkreis, horizon] of what essentially can be disclosed by it.

 That understanding is logically prior to experience [Erfahrung]
{BP 11} "We must be able to understand actuality before all experience [Erfahrung] of actual beings" {BP 11}. <Heidegger has an unfortunate way of emphasizing the before here. This is an affectation which too strongly and repeatedly suggests priority in time. The same paragraph goes on to say that the required understanding need involve no explicit concept of being. The priority is that of a necessary condition. In that case, it would not seem to require priority in time at all, not even priority of an implicit awareness of being "as such". This sort of priority seems to entail only that the conditioned cannot precede in time that whereby it is conditioned, on which it depends; it does not entail that the conditioning must come before the conditioned.>

understanding, inauthentic and authentic. See understanding [Verstehen, Verstand].

{SZ (G2) and BT m146} Understanding is either authentic or inauthentic.
Inauthentic understanding is understanding that limits the possibilities that it primally projects for itself to what is included in the disclosedness of the world. That is to say, since understanding can mean itself primally through the disclosedness of the world, Dasein can understand herself mainly and for the most part in terms of her world <Would such a self-understanding be "straightforward" in Husserl sense of the word? — meaning here that the way she understands herself is not direct but is received from her surroundings>. Inauthentic understanding is not that of a Dasein that cuts herself off from herself and understands "only" the world, for world belongs essentially to Dasein's selfness as being-in-the-world. {ibid. m148} Inauthentic understanding in its mode of purity is pure understanding of world.
Or else understanding is authentic and projects itself primally [primär] into that 'for-the-sake-of-which'; Dasein that understands in this way is Dasein that exists as herself. In a marginal note, Heidegger cautions, "But not qua subject and individual or qua person [Person] {G2 194a}."

Both authentic understanding and inauthentic understanding can be either pure or impure [echt oder unecht]. Entering into one of these fundamental possibilities of understanding does not set the other aside. Since understanding has to do with the full disclosedness of Dasein as being-in-the-world, "understanding's" 'entering into' is an existential modification of the project as a whole.

understanding and explication. See truth-and-being [Sein]; understanding [verstehen, Verstand]; my MH?; value [Wert].

{SZ (G2) and BT m148-149} The projecting that is inherent in understanding has the possibility of forming itself [sich auszubilden]. The forming of understanding Heidegger calls explication. Through explication, understanding appropriates [zueignet] in an understanding what it understands. In explication, understanding does not become something else; it becomes itself. Explication is existentially grounded through understanding; the latter does not arise through the former. explication is the working out of the possibilities projected by understanding. The discovering inherent in circumspection is a way of explicating the antecedaneously understood 'world'. What is thus analyzed, resolved into its 'in order to' has — as so resolved (i.e., what is expressly understood) — the structure of something as something. <This seems to mean that explication or express understanding, by being express, confers "syntactical form", but not necessarily categorial form, on what it expressly understands .>

{ibid. m149} What is disclosed or understood through understanding is always antecedaneously accessible in such a way that its 'as what' can be brought expressly into relief. The 'as' makes up the structure of the expressness of something understood; it is constitutive of explication. However, circumspection, explicative dealing with what is ready in the surrounding world — "seeing" this as a door, a table, a bridge, etc. — need not of itself analyze that which it circumspectively explicates by means of a determinative statement. Any pre-predicative, simple seeing of something ready is of itself an understanding and explicating and harbors the expressness of the referential relations belonging to the purposive whole. The articulation of something understood is prior to making assertions about it thematically. When something understood draws attention [Näherung], attention to that entity follows the indicator "something as something". Its "as" does not come about only when something is asserted about the entity; the asserting just gives it expression; that is possible only in as much as the entity in question is there <is intended> beforehand as something that can be expressed. <Thus, disclosure of concepts occurs prior to predication and would seem to occur prior to any categorial forming whatsoever.> That simply seeing something handy need include no being-expressed by any asserting at all does not justify excluding from it every sort of articulate explication and thus denying it any sort or as-structure. Just simply to see familiar things in dealing with them has implicit explication-structure in so original a way that anything like an as-free grasping of something requires a certain shift of attitude. Just to entertain, just to contemplate something occurs in pure staring at it as not understanding it any longer. As-free grasping is a privation of understanding that sees, that just sees simply.

<From this passage it seems that seeing something to be "as-free" can occur and would be rather like having a set of "sense data" be given, as such objects are understood by someone like Mach, Russell, Moore, Ayer, or Schlick: a unique indefinable object such as mere yellow, something asserted only by "protocol" or "observation" statements. The hyletic data as Husserl conceives them in Ideas would seemingly be objects of this sort. However, it seems clear to me that the term refers, like 'sense data' to an ideal limit for a an extensive process of abstraction and that there is no reason at all to suppose that such objects can actually be given through sensing rather than through some fantasied variation whose outcome would no longer qualify even as possibly actual. A treatment that is rather less enigmatic than Heidegger's for this conception of sensation and perception is presented by Ortega y Gasset {Ortega y Gasset, Phenomenology and Art 79–115}

Especially important here is that "as-structure" is not generated by explication; instead it is implicit in whatever is understood, whether explicated or not. Explication is able to elaborate as-structure that has been given, has become manifest, beforehand.>

Every perceiving of handy equipment is of itself both understanding and explication [verstehend-auslegend] it makes possible that the equipment be encountered circumspectly. <the expression 'verstehend-auslegend' would be redundant if Heidegger held that all understanding is essentially interpretation.> This does not at all mean, however, that something purely extant is experienced [erfahren] first which is then conceived to be equipment (conceived as door, as house, etc). To think that would be to misunderstand the specific function of explication as disclosure. As disclosive, explication does not throw, as it were, some "signification" over what is nakedly extant and doesn't plaster it with some value. <Heidegger's criticism of value theory here is probably directed primarily at neo-Kantian views and at Scheler. The thesis being rejected plays a lesser role in the axiology of Nicolai Hartmann, but is to be found there, too. That it would apply to Husserl's way of conceiving affects and strivings to require what he called "doxic" phenomena — as quite a number of figures including Heidegger {G20 157–172} have alleged it would — is a fairly grotesque calumny, especially on Heidegger's part, who surely knew better {see my UKBDP (English )or UAJWP (German) pp. 287-290; SCHU gives a detailed reply to this sort tact where Husserl is concerned}.> Rather, in every instance, explication makes explicit some involvement that it has with what is being encountered within the world, an involvement disclosed through understanding world. What is handy has always been understood beforehand through disclosure of the nexus of involvements. That nexus can be understood without being grasped through any thematic explication.

{SZ (G2) and BT m149} What is disclosed through understanding is always so very accessible that the "as what" which is intrinsic to it can itself become exigent, can come to stand out expressly. When it does become exigent then the "as" is what makes up the structure of the understood in so far as it is explicated; it constitutes the explication. Explicating circumspectly in dealings with what is ready in the surrounding world "sees" this as table, this as door, this as automobile, as bridge, etc., and need not at all thereby analyze what is circumspectly explicated through any definite assertion; it merely makes use of what is circumspectly explicated. The seeing in this sight is not some pure perceiving; it harbors in itself the expressness of the referential relations (of the in-order-to) within which what is simply encountered is understood. {ibid. m150} Whatever is 'ready' has been understood already on the basis of the purposive whole in relation to which it is ready; this understanding need not be explicitly grasped by means of thematic explication, and even when it is so grasped, it returns into unrelieved understoodness. Within this unrelieved understoodness, the purposive whole is the foundation for everyday circumspect explication.

{ibid. m151} Since understanding and explication <co-originally with affectivity> are existential constituents of the being of the There, sense must be conceived as the formal-existential frame of the disclosedness belonging to understanding. Sense is, therefore, an existential of Dasein. Hence, Dasein alone can be senseful or senseless. <That is, sense is a constituent of understanding whereas its correlate in what is understood — when understanding is grounded — is its inherent as-structure. Heidegger's wording in these last two sentences seems obscure and deliberately misleading.> All explication is grounded in understanding. What explication articulates is the sense of the entity being explicated. The sense is predelineated by understanding as such to be articulable.

understanding of being [Seinsverständnis].See understanding and explication; Da-.

{KPM (G3) m206} The understanding of being is not general in the harmless manner of some property that frequently occurs along with the others belonging to human beings. Its "universality" is the originality of the innermost ground for the finitude_of_Dasein. To Understand being can make the so-called "creative" abilities of finite human being possible only because it is what is most finite about the Finite [das Endlichste in Endlichen]. And understanding of being has its extent and its constancy — but also its hiddenness — only because it occurs through the ground of finitude.

{ibid. 207} Any human being is There [Da- q.v.] on the ground of understanding being; with the being of the There, there occurs the break into what-is, a breaking into that open up. This occurring makes it possible for entities to manifest themselves as such for a self…
…We need not inquire into what the relation might be between the understanding of being and the finitude in human beings: understanding of being is the innermost essence of finitude. <A human being does not exist first and then understand being and become finite. Heidegger probably is rejecting, among other things, Kant's interpretation {Kant, "Conjectural Beginning of Human History" 53–68} of the biblical story of The Fall along with the biblical Fall itself and the notion that any personal entity, such as The Son, could exist first and then come to be in the world. Whatever may be true concerning the psychogenesis of individuals in the species Homo sapiens, Dasein cannot exist first in some care free state without an understanding of being and of death.>

Having an understanding of Being or of world does not have to entail having thoughts about Being — where 'thoughts' would refer to ways of explicating or interpreting. Nor does it entail being able to use some symbol (such as 'Being') to refer to entities as such by way of a concept. The understanding of Being which is a necessary feature  of any Dasein whatsoever (is (an existential) is a feature without which Dasein could have no thoughts about Being and would be unable to speak about (or otherwise to symbolize) Being.

On the other hand, Dasein's understanding of Being is a constituent of Dasein and so is unique to Dasein. Whatever is true about this understanding insofar as it is unique to Dasein (or to Daseins of a certain sort) is an ontical truth <probably means that it is what is otherwise called a psychological truth, but this way of talking omits the fact that being understood by Dasein may be as "ontically true" of other entities as of Dasein.> Similarly, whatever may be unique to Being as understood by Dasein alone (or by Daseins of a certain sort — such as seventeenth century empiricist Daseins) would be a psychological, historical, sociological, anthropological, etc. fact. True statements of such facts would also be ontical truths.

Heidegger's ontology is the effort to explicate the meaning of Being the way any possible Dasein must understand Being just insofar as Being is disclosed to (or "given" to) Dasein through its ways of being-in. But what would be so explicated is not an idea of Being but is rather Being as such (World as such).

unveiling [Enthüllen]. See projects; Da-; disclosing, disclosedness, disclosure [erschlieβen, Erschloβenheit]; truth [Wahrheit]

Dasein's projecting and the unity (care) of existence, facticity, and falling which it entails is at the same time unveiling, being in the open, being in the world of exposed entities. Projecting, unveiling, being in the open, and clearing seem to be inseparable from one another. Dasein's way of being includes disclosure of Dasein itself. There is always disclosed to Dasein the potentiality apophantically to explicate any of its traits or constituents and to do so truly. Since Dasein's ways of being-in-the-world are essentially intentional, this potentiality includes reference to the potentiality truly to explicate being and world and whatever there is in the world.

value [Wert]. See form-matter distinction (in aesthetics) _Heidegger's critique of

{HW (G5) appendix 6 pp. 93-94} The idea [Vorstellung] of value is just as essential to the modern explication of beings as System is. Only where beings have become object of objectivating is being lost in a certain way to beings. The loss is sensed, obscurely and uncertainly enough and accordingly a substitute is quickly found in that one attributes to the object and to beings, so explicated, some value and measures all beings universally by values and makes the values themselves to the goal of all acting and doing. Since doing and making come to be understood as culture, the values become cultural values and then they become the expression of the highest purposes of creativity in the service of the self-certification of human being as subject. There is but one further step needed in order to make the values themselves into objects in themselves. Value is the objectification [Vergegenständlichung] of the goals of needs insofar as objectivating these  sets itself up within the world as picture. Value seems to express the alleged state of affairs that what is most valuable consists precisely in the very position that is taken with regard to values, and this even though value itself is understood as if it were the powerless and threadbare disguise for beings insofar as they have become objects unrelieved with no background. <The sort of value theory that Heidegger is here rejecting is illustrated in the following paragraph.> None die for mere values. To illuminate the Nineteenth Century consider the peculiar mediating position of Hermann Lotze, who reinterpreted Plato's ideas into values [under the title "Microcosm, an "Essay at an Anthropology" (1856)] which approximated in the spirit of German idealism what was simple and noble in its way of thinking but also exposed them to positivism. What is most essential in Nietzsche, he had to put in a backward looking form as transvaluation of all values because his thinking remains imprisoned in the objectivation of value. Only if Nietzsche's thinking is conceived independently of the objectivation of value do we come to a position from which the work of the last metaphysical thinker becomes a task for questioning and only then does his enmity toward Wagner become conceivable as the necessity of our history.

{N. Hartmann, ZGO 307} …When moral feeling is outraged by witnessing a case of injustice, the injustice is actual and current, but what is grasped by moral feeling is not merely the actual or the current; these would in themselves have no value predicates. <This is a highly objectionable claim; it implies that goodness and badness are not real predicates, that what-there-is is not worth caring about at all insofar as it is real. It certainly seems to imply that moral feeling does not explicate something that was already implicit in the real thing. This sort of view Hartmann may have assimilated from Scheler. It seems to be the very sort of claim that Heidegger rejects when he writes that this way of thinking in terms of values is the greatest conceivable blasphemy against being {PLWBUH 179ff.; G9 349ff.; PM 265ff.}. The same passage may indicate that when Heidegger rejects thinking in terms of Objectivity and subjectivity, he has in mind a Kantian view (which survives in Hartmann) that identifies the Objective with the correlate of cognition. As universal essences, values must be conceived to be or to entail laws to the effect that whatever exemplifies a certain set of ontic universals ought to be and so is to be cared for whether it be real or not. What ought to be does not exclude the relevant real traits.> The feeling or sentiment grasps that some state of affairs accords with or is contrary to some value. In doing so, it also grasps the value itself — and characteristically the value itself is most often grasped where some real case is contrary to the value. <In such cases an exigent-ought-to-be is given to the emotional sensing of value.> The value itself is what condemns the real case. The value-response by consciousness arises as spontaneous affective reaction to the vividly experienced real case, which itself is so far from presenting the value that it is altogether contrary to it. Thus, the internal intuition — the intuition of value in this case — can grasp the value itself through immediate connexion with the affective value response.

within the world [MR, innerweltlich; intraworldly H].

{Ihde, Don. Technics and Praxis. Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1979 123} Ihde seems to claim that the present-at-hand is derivative from and founded upon the ready-to-hand. But this is, it seems to me, a wildly unlikely reading of Heidegger, and it borders upon foolishness in view of the passage Ihde himself quotes from BT to the effect that presence-at-hand shows itself to be "the Being of that which still lies before us and calls for our attending to it." There is no clear justification for Ihde's claim so far as I can see. Moreover, the claim seems to entail that the being of entities within the world is derivative from their readiness to hand and so is subsequent to their references to Dasein. All that Heidegger's statements justify is that cognition of the being of entities within the world is derivative and should be founded upon a phenomenology of the world, starting out — just as Heidegger does — from a description of circumspecting and its correlate(s). Ihde's way of understanding presence-at-hand and readiness-to-hand pretty much requires that they be thought of as if they were somehow mutually exclusive. But nothing Heidegger says excludes the possibility that something ready-to-hand can have constituents that are present-at-hand in it no matter what attitude Dasein may take toward the ready-to-hand entity.

world. See world-picture; selfhood; for-the-sake-of_[Umwillen]; freedom; world, existence of, and Dasein; world and nature; within the world [MR, innerweltlich; intraworldly H].

{SZ (G2) m64 and BT; MGL (G26) 231 f. (MFL 180)} It seems clear that every world, region, etc. must be a world or region of entities. There are four ways in which the term 'world' is used.

1. One ontical concept that is expressed by 'world' refers to any totality of entities, viz., those present-at-hand within the world, the world of nature. When used this way it designates the extant in its interconnections, so that one may call this pre-philosophical concept of world "ontic-natural".
2. It is used ontologically to refer to the <way of?> Being of entities or to the region which encompasses any definite manifold of entities, e.g. 'the world of the mathematician,' which refers to the region of possible objects of mathematics. <Otherwise sometimes referred to in English as a domain or a "universe of discourse," as the universe of discourse for mathematical symbols, for example.> Or the region "nature", the totality of what would belong to any nature in sense 1.
3. In another ontical use, the world is that wherein Dasein lives, The reference in this usage is not the same as in 1. This usage occurs independently of ontology and occurs, for example, in talking about the 'public world' at large, where public entities may refer to any Dasein-like entity whatsoever or in talking about Dasein's own most intimate (domestic) environment. Here 'world' refers to existing persons as existing. This may be called the ontically-existentielle (also the human) concept of the world. <Illustrations for 'world' in this sense that are more important to phenomenology are to be found in Husserl's use of such 'primordial world' and 'solipsistic world'. {See NLPW.}>
4. The existential-ontological concept of worldhood. Used this way 'world' would refer either to the a priori (universal) 'worldhood  or to the worldhood peculiar to any individual structural totality of the sorts mentioned in 2. and 3. above. Here human society is not taken ontically; instead it refers ontologically to the metaphysical essence of Dasein universally {see discussion of "neutral Dasein"} in respect of transcendence, which is its metaphysically basic constitution.

ad 4 —{GP (G24) 419} We use the term 'significance' for the whole of those relations that belong to the structure of totality if Dasein is able to understand anything at all, i.e., if Dasein's potentiality to be can be interpreted [sich zu bedeuten geben kann]. This totality is the structure of that which we designate as world in the strictly ontological sense…

{SZ (G2) m64 f. and BT; also MGL (G26) 231f. (MFL 180)} When we inquire about the "world" which world do we mean? We do not then mean 'world' to be taken to refer to some one world in senses 1 or 2. We refer instead to the ontological-existential concept worldhood. Each world, domain, or region consists of entities, and each of these particular "worlds" has its own structural totality <has its own worldhood>. Yet each incorporates <includes [beschlieβt]> of itself the a priori entailed by universal worldhood [Weltlichkeit überhaupt], but neither its peculiar worldhood nor worldhood taken universally is an entity present-at-hand within any world. Worldhood is not a component of worlds, regions, etc. In our terminology, 'world' is to be taken with the signification that 2 elaborates. When used with either of the first two senses it will be used with quotation marks. Any interpretation of Dasein's worldhood and of the possible ways she is made worldly will need to show why the phenomenon of worldhood is skipped over, both ontically and ontologically when Dasein engages in the manner of being that is world-cognition [Welterkennens]. {SZ 65, G2, BT m65} 'Worldly' connotes the kind of being that belongs to Dasein and never to entities that are extant <present-at-hand MR> within the world. <In Husserl's terms, that each world has its own worldhood would mean that each has "its individual world-form". Here what 'individual' refers to is some formal structural trait or else a formal universal whereof such a trait is an example insofar as it is structural or formal. 'Individual' is preferable here to MR's 'special' for 'besonderer'; S uses 'particular'. 'Individual ' refers to in this case is either a formal, structural trait incorporating a formal universal; such a universal is neither a genus nor a species. Husserl's way of conceiving such forms is not at all alien to the points that Heidegger is making here. The individual form of a world would be no less changeable than are the members of that world; each change in any of them is a change in the world whereof it is an member. Such an individual world-form would not be in any sense an eidetic object. {Concerning such individual forms see my TFA §§ 3b-4}>

{SZ (G2) m180 and BT} As a concept of the Being of beings, "world" designates the wholeness of beings in the totality of their possibilities.

{OWA in PLT 44f; UDK in HW (G5) m33 f.}  World is not the mere collection of extant familiar and unfamiliar things, whether they be numerable or innumerable. However, world is also not some merely imagined frame that is objectivated over and above the sum of what is extant. World worlds and is more beingly [seiend] than the perceivable [Vernehmbare] and graspable entities among which we believe ourselves to be at home. World is never an object such as stands before us and can be intuited. World is the ever non-objective [das immer Ungegenständliche] to which we are subject [dem wir unterstehen] and by which we are sheltered as long as the paths of birth and death, blessing and bane, hold us enraptured [entrückt] into being.  <Heidegger here uses 'Gegenstand' in much the way it has been traditionally used in German language philosophy from Kant to the present. So used, it refers to any phenomenon in the sense of that tradition, phenomena being essentially intended to be observable through experience [Erfahrung]. He says in effect that world is not observable. He does not add, as Husserl would require, that it is not observable and not to be intuited through straightforward (opposite: reflective) experience. The generalization asserting that world is not to be intuited at all would certainly seem to entail that world is not given in any way whatsoever: Welt 'gibt es' nicht. This seems quite contrary to the position he took in earlier work (Basic Problems…, Being and Time) where it is said that world 'is given' (exists) so long as and only so long as Dasein 'is given'. What manner of open might it be wherein the decisions of our history are taken and world worlds but is in no way given? Heidegger is siding here with the tradition which holds the unity of all there is to be given through the feeling that is included in what came to be termed Erleben (sometimes translated as 'lived experience'). A phenomenology closer to Husserl's and to my own would insist instead that the unity referred to is indeed given through straightforward experience and is explicable descriptively by starting out from reflective experience. Thus, phenomenology proper would not be committed to any such conceits as that what shows itself through that obscure intuition which is included in all of Dasein's doings is

• her identity with all there is through her being identical with some variant of The Thing In Itself (Absolute Spirit, Will to Live, Will to Power, Duration, Vital Impetus, Pure Experience, her brain, her stomach, her gut, her breath, etc.)

• or is her creaturely dependence upon a creator divinity

• or is some set of coexisting elements revealing no necessary connection with one another much less with anything else

• or is her having been constructed by la Langue.

There would then be little or no obstacle to admitting that self-observation, introspection – otherwise interdicted – is quite possible and is indeed not especially difficult. In something akin to Heidegger's earlier thinking, the world's worlding — through being disclosed [erschloβen] to Dasein in her ways to be in the world —  is to be explicated not straightforwardly (not, that is, regardless of how it is given to Dasein) but just as it shows itself.> Where the essential decisions of our history are reached [fallen, taken], where we take them on or neglect them, mistake them and rediscover them: there <and in the open> is where the world worlds. In contrast to the plant and the brute, who are worldless, the peasant woman has a world because she dwells in the open of what is. Equipment, through its reliability, gives this world a necessity and nearness of its own. Insofar as a world opens, all things come to have their whiling and their urgency, their near and far, their breadth and narrowness. Through worlding there is gathered that spaciousness [Geräumigkeit], being open and wide, openly extensive] from which the preserving [bewahrende] beneficence of the gods presents or withholds itself. <Comparing these last two sentences with the image presented on the home page of the Web site Ereignis (http://www.webcom.com/paf/ereignis.html) affords insight into the prevailing biases of recent Heidegger scholarship.> Even this obscuring of the divine absence is a way in which world worlds… {ibid m34} Insofar as any work is work, it furnishes [einräumen] that spaciousness. Here especially, to furnish it means: freeing what is free about the open and introducing [einräumen, to admit into] what is thus freed into the traits of the work… {PLT 48} "…The world is the self-disclosing openness of the broad paths of the simple and essential decisions in the destiny of an historical people." {See the entry understanding_[verstehen,_Verstand]}

{MAL (G26) 238 (MFL 185)} The basic characteristic of world whereby the totality attains its specifically transcendental form of organization is the for-the-sake-of-which. {See TEBW, TIIS 204} World, as that to which Dasein transcends, is primarily defined by the for-the-sake-of-which. World is that toward which Dasein transcends, and as that it is distinguished primarily by being that for the sake of which… But any for-the-sake-of-which can possibly occur <be given> only where willing occurs. Insofar as transcendence, being-in-the-world, constitutes the basic structure of Dasein, being-in-the-world must also be primordially bound up with or derived from the basic feature of Dasein's existence, namely, freedom. Only where freedom <is given> is for-the-sake-of <given>, and world <is given> only there. In short: Dasein's transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom's inner possibility it gives itself. {See the entry freedom.}

{SZ (G2) and BT m87} That wherein Dasein antecedaneously understands herself – in the mode of referring herself to – is that toward which [woraufhin] she antecedaneously lets what-is be met. It is the phenomenon of world wherein Dasein lets what is (in the sense of taking an end [in der Seinsart der Bewandnis]) be met. The structure of that toward which Dasein refers herself is that which makes up the worldhood of the world. Understanding maintains the relationships involved in the 'toward which' and the 'wherein' within an antecedaneous disclosedness. By keeping to the antecedaneous disclosedness of these relationships Dasein keeps them, as that wherein her self-referring moves, before herself. We conceive the relational character of this self-referring under the heading signifying [bedeuten]. Through Dasein's familiarity with these relationships, she "signifies" herself, i.e., this is how she originally presents to herself her being and being an agent <what she potentially is [Seinkönnen]>.

{GP (G24) 418 f.} Everything with which and for which equipment has functionality is what it is within some in-order-to. The relational traits of the in-order-to (including even those of the purposeless and the purpose-free) are ultimately grounded primarily [erstlich] in the for-the-sake-of. These are understood only when Dasein understands something like its own for the sake of [Umwillen]. As existing, Dasein understands something like a 'for its own sake' because its own being is characterized by the fact that Dasein is about <cares about> its being. As existing, it has potentiality to be <has agency>[dadurch bestimmt ist, daβ es dem Dasein als existierendem in seinem Sein um sein Seinkönnen geht]. Anything like an in-order-to (functionality trait) can be unveiled only insofar as some being-potentiality's for the sake of… is understood. That all functionality traits are ontologically grounded by some for-the-sake-of does not at all decide whether all being [alles Seinde] is ontically for the sake of human Dasein. The ontological radicalization of the being structures of beings and the possibility of understanding them is extrinsic to the ontic assertion that nature is made or is extant for the purpose of human Dasein. So little does this ontological radicalization posit the ontic assertion about the purposefulness of the actual world that the radicalization is worked out primarily to show that the being of any entity such as is or might be without Dasein's existing can be understood only on the grounds of the ontological radicalization of functionality traits by the for-the-sake-of. That the ontological structure of the in-order-to is grounded in a for-the-sake-of says nothing about whether the ontic relation between what is, nature, and Dasein is a purposive nexus.

world, existence of, and Dasein. See being, history of; truth and being [Sein]; world; world-picture; selfhood; for-the-sake-of_[Umwillen]; freedom;  world and nature; world and openness of being; self-understanding [Selbstverständnis].

{BP 166} Dasein's choices <ways of assigning herself to possibilities> enable her to be in a world which is not the world she would be in had she, as she genuinely could have, made different choices. Given Heidegger's way of conceiving the intentionality of consciousness, the world exists as Dasein exists. By making herself be in the world, Dasein makes the world exist. <Keeping in mind, however, that — although world exists only insofar as Dasein exists by fore-casting a world {ibid. 168:13-15} — nature can be without there being a world or Dasein {ibid. 175}. Consider carefully the difference between these two sentences:

a. The choices Dasein makes are "comportments" through which she makes be in the world one of the persons she could have been while making impossible that other persons who she could otherwise have been be in the world.
b. The choices Dasein makes are "comportments" through which Dasein makes it possible for (enables) certain of the persons who Dasein could have been to be in the world while making impossible for other persons who she could otherwise have been to be in the world; thereby, her choices enable Dasein to exist as one of these persons while making it impossible that she exist as any of the other persons who she genuinely could otherwise have been.

{BP 296} The world belongs to Dasein's existential constitution. World is not extant, but world exists. Only so long as Dasein is, is existent, is world given [gibt es Welt]. The passage on the following page explicates what was meant by saying that the world exists using now the verb 'to be' rather than 'es gibt'. It does not, for the time being, seem as if we would need to consider this an alteration of what was said before. The point is still that to understand the world is to understand Dasein and vice versa. It is also implied as before that were no Dasein to exist then the world would not exist, but this still does not imply that were there no Dasein then there would be no entity at all. The mutual dependence of Dasein and the world does not entail that there would be no entities at all if and when no Dasein exists. <While Heidegger pretty clearly conceives what he designates as "the world" to be Dasein-dependent, he allows that there could be natural entities if there were no Dasein at all.>

{GP (G24) 422 (E m422)} World exists, i.e., world is <and is given>, only insofar as Dasein is there. Only when Dasein exists as being-in-the-world is there understanding of being, and only when understanding of being exists is being-within-the-world revealed as extant or as handy. World-understanding is, as Dasein-understanding, self-understanding. Through the single entity, Dasein, self and world belong together. Self and world are not two entities as subject and Object would be, not even as I and You, rather self and world are the basic determination of Dasein herself through the unity of that structure which is being-in-the-world. Only insofar as the 'subject' is determined by being-in-the-world can she, as this self, become a You for another. Only because I am an existing self am I a possible you for another as self. The basic determination for the self's possibility to be a possible you through being-with with others is grounded in that Dasein, as the self that she is, so is the state of affairs that she exists as being-in-the-world. For 'you' means: you who are with me in a single world. If the I-you relationship is an exceptional relationship of existence, this relationship cannot be acknowledged existentially, i.e., philosophically, as long as it is not asked, "What is meant by existence?" However, being-in-the-world belongs to existence. The being who thus exists is <cares> about its being-potentiality. Such selfness is the ontological presupposition for the selflessness whereby each Dasein comports herself toward the other through the existing I-you relationship. Self and world belong together through the basic constitution of Dasein, of being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is at once the condition for the possibility of understanding the other Dasein as well as that of being-within-the-world. To be able to understand the being of what is within the world as well as to be able to understand the being of Dasein herself is possible only on the ground of being-in-the-world. <This implies that being-in-the-world is not a trait Dasein acquires. Still, what is invariable is worldhood at large, not the worldhood through which a world, domain, or region exemplifies this universal worldhood. The entity who is Dasein may once have existed without any understanding of others. But even so her existence will then have been determined by being-in-the-world in its basic constitution, even though she would not then have understood anything at all as Objective. Dasein cannot exist without an understanding of entities, herself included, and she cannot understand any entity at all without understanding world and worldhood. {See meanings 2 and 4 under the entry world above.}>

{ibid. 424} What is must stand in the light of understood involvement if equipment ready-to-hand is to be encountered. Equipment and the ready-to-hand are encountered in the horizon of some understood world; they are always encountered as intraworldly beings. Whenever we encounter Objects, world has already been understood. that is why we have said that world is farther out than all Objects; world is more Objective than all Objects and nonetheless does not have the sort of being that Objects have. The world's type of being is not the extantness of Objects; instead, the world exists. Within the orientation of the vulgar concept of transcendence <the Beyond>, the world is the authentically transcendent; it is what is still more Beyond than Objects are. Yet the world as Beyond is a basic determination of the being-in-the-world, of Dasein. If the world is what is transcendent then the authentically transcendent is Dasein. Only thus do we attain the pure ontological meaning of 'transcendence', which also attaches to the vulgar basic meaning of the word. 'To transcend' means stepping beyond; the transcending, what transcends, the transcendent is what steps beyond as such [das Überschreitende als solche] and is not that toward which I step beyond. The world is the transcendent <not because it is something outside toward which I move but> because it constitutes the stepping-over-toward since it belongs to the structure of being-in-the-world. Dasein herself is stepping-beyond through its being and is, therefore precisely not the immanent: transcendence is precisely what essentially characterizes the being <of Dasein>. {ibid. 425 (m in BP} …Precisely that which epistemology calls "immanence", the sphere of the subject, is in itself primarily and solely the transcendent. Yet this is a necessary fact concerning whatever world exists or will exist so long as Dasein is given, that is, so long as there is Dasein in the world. So there are states of affairs that are necessarily so concerning any world that is or can be given. These concern worldhood.

<Except as an abstraction, the external world is an absurdity. That whatever there is has a way of being disclosed to Dasein and that its way of being disclosed, the manner or manners in which it is or would be there for Dasein, belongs to what-is as essentially as any of its other constituents is indeed in many ways the main point of The Basic Problems… This topic is introduced with painstaking care through the early treatment of the perceivedness of what is perceived. It is what the "openness" of Dasein seems to be all about. In a very important sense, Dasein cannot be excluded from any world at all, and not even from nature.  One can conceive, of course, a class that includes everything but Dasein, the set "everything that there is other than Dasein". But doing so shows that what is so conceived has its ways of being given (Husserl's phraseology, Heidegger's is more like, "way of being revealed" to Dasein "the How of its being disclosed"). This is a point that was included in but more concealed than unconcealed in Berkeley's "esse est percipi.>

Openness is totally misrepresented when (as has often happened) it is taken to refer to the many ways a self may have of being dependent on or susceptible to environmental influences: biologically through sensory stimulus, emotions, etc. (on the interpretation that makes Heidegger out to be a sort of pragmatist) or historio-culturally through habituation, enculturation, education, language, etc. (on the interpretations that make him out to be some sort of historicist, as most of the readings by hermeneutically inclined interpreters do).>

world, understanding of. See uncanniness; world-picture; world, in the strictly ontological sense; worldhood.

Having an understanding of Being or of world does not entail having thoughts about Being. Nor does it entail being able to use some symbol (such as 'Being') to refer to entities as such by way of a concept. The understanding of Being which is a necessary feature (an existential) of any Dasein whatsoever is a feature without which Dasein could have no thoughts about Being and would be unable to speak about (or otherwise to symbolize) Being.
On the other hand, Dasein's understanding of Being is a constituent of Dasein and so is unique to Dasein. Whatever is true about this understanding insofar as it is unique to Dasein (or to Daseins of a certain sort) is an ontical truth.
Similarly, whatever may be unique to Being as understood by Dasein alone (or by Daseins of a certain sort — such as seventeenth century empiricist Daseins) would be a psychological, historical, sociological, anthropological, etc. fact. True statements of such facts would also be ontical truths.

Heidegger's ontology is the effort to explicate the meaning of Being the way any possible Dasein must understand Being just insofar as Being is disclosed to (or "given" to?) Dasein through its ways of being-in. But what would be so explicated is not an idea of Being but is rather Being as such (World as such).
 

world and nature. See world; world-picture; selfhood; freedom; world, existence of, and Dasein.

{BP 170} …Clearly 'world' is being used in such a way that it would be something like a category error to speak of an 'external world' even though a totality from which Dasein would be excluded could be spoken of correctly. But it seems that such a collection could be only if there were no Dasein at all. What Heidegger calls "nature" can be such a totality. But even what would belong to nature in this sense would still essentially have ways in which it could be intended and ways in which it could be given) if some Dasein did exist.

{BP 219} Essentially, every thing that there is (and, for that matter, everything that is not or everything that cannot be) is something about which there could be truth, assertable truth, that would be uncovered in assertion(s). This much is true regardless of whether any Dasein ever asserts that truth with evidence, knows it to be so, appropriates "what is uncovered as uncovered".

In contrast to nature, world only exists if Dasein exists. Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world. Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world. In a very important sense, Dasein cannot be excluded from any world at all, and not even from nature so long as there is <some> Dasein and so for so long as <some> Dasein is given. An external world is an absurdity. One can conceive, of course, a class that includes everything but Dasein, and even the class "everything that there is other than Dasein." But doing so shows that the class so conceived has its way of being given (Husserl's phraseology, Heidegger's is more like, "way of being revealed" to Dasein). This is a point that was included in but more concealed than unconcealed in Berkeley's 'esse est percipi.

world and openness of Being. See world; world-picture; selfhood; for-the-sake-of_[Umwillen]; freedom; world, existence of, and Dasein; Da-.

{SZ (G2) m132-133} World signifies the openness of Being. By their essences persons are ex-sistent <in, through> the openness of Being. This "open" alone is what clears the "between" within which there can "be" a relation of the subject to the Object. <Through Dasein's way of being-in-the-world, Dasein can and some Dasein does make herself exist as human. But if Dasein is a human subject, her status as human subject has come about in and through her ways of existing (understanding, affectivity, speech). By existing in certain ways, Dasein would, for example, make herself be: a research technician who furthers research to further corporate profits to further her career.>

Openness is totally misrepresented when (as has often happened) it is taken to refer to the many ways of being dependent on or susceptible to environmental influences: biologically through sensory stimulus, emotions, etc. (on the interpretation that makes Heidegger out to be a sort of pragmatist) or historico-culturally through habituation, enculturation, education, language, etc. (on the interpretations that make him out to be some sort of historicist, as most of the readings by hermeneutically inclined interpreters do).

world, in the strictly ontological sense. See world-picture; world, understanding of; worldhood; selfhood.

{G24 419 (m in BP)} We use the term 'significance' for the whole of those relations that belong to the structure of totality if Dasein is able to understand anything at all, i.e., if Dasein's potentiality to be can be interpreted [sich zu bedeuten geben kann]. This totality is the structure of that which we designate as world in the strictly ontological sense…

The basic constitution of Dasein is to be in the world. More precisely: Dasein is concerned, in its existing, for the Potentiality-to-be-in-the-world [das In-der-Welt-seinkönnen]. The latter is that upon which Dasein has already projected itself every time [je schon]. There is, therefore, something like an antecedaneous understanding of world implicit in the existence of Dasein; this is what is here termed significance. The world is not extant and is not handy (ready-to-hand), is not the sum of existent entities and not the universe of natural things. The concept of the world is not a determination of what is within-the-world as the being that is extant in itself, rather world is a determination of the being of Dasein itself. <The sentence is grammatically peculiar in that the subject of each clause is quite different. That world is a determination of Dasein may mean that access to world is possible not by way of any extant entities but only by way of Dasein, but that need not mean that world is something subjective. Compare the outcome of the analysis of perceivedness, that perceivedness does not belong as a constituent either to the subject or to the object. Use of the phrase 'concept of world' is almost surely meant to ward off views that would have significance be an obscurely given concept.> This is expressed as soon as we say: Dasein exists as being-in-the-world. World belongs to the existence-constitution of Dasein. World is not extant but rather exists. Only as long as Dasein is, i.e., is existent, is world given [gibt es Welt]. {G24 420 (m in BP} World-understanding is essentially self-understanding insofar as the relations of in-order-to, of functionality, and of for-the-sake-of are understood through it, and self-understanding is Dasein understanding. {ibid. 421} Self-understanding includes understanding of co-being with others and understanding being potentiality and dwelling among [Sichaufhaltens bei] what is extant.

world-picture. See setting-up_[Ge-stell]; object_[Gegenstand]; world; humanity_[Mensch],_essence_of.

{ZWB in HW (G5) m83 (¶¶ 32 ff. in QCT} Wherever beings are not explicated in such a way that the being of what-is is sought and found in their being represented, there, too, the world cannot be drawn into the picture and no world-picture can be given. That what-is come to be through being represented makes the epoch in which it comes to that into a new one compared to what went before. What happens in the modern epoch is not that some prior medieval world-picture is changed over into a modern one but rather that the world becomes picture at all distinguishes the essence of the modern epoch. When the world was regarded as created by a personal god as its primal cause then to-be meant to belong within a certain order of creatures and, as such a creature, to correspond (analogia entis) to the cause of creation. Here, however, the being of beings never consists in being brought, as what is objective, before humanity, in being only by being set up within the sphere on assessment and at human disposal. <When predestination belonged only to the creator, the being of beings could not be conceived to depend upon human doings, except in the sense that they belonged to the creation as parts present at hand within it even if as one of the more important orders of creation.> {ibid. m88}

Modern objectivating [Vorstellen] — whose meaning is best rendered by the word 'repraesentatio' — is altogether different from the Greek {ibid ¶33} intuiting [Vernehmen]. In this modern sense, to objectivate is to set up before [Vor-stellen]: to bring something present-at-hand before oneself as something opposite, to relate it to oneself (the setter-up) and to constrain it back into this relation to oneself as the source of measure. Where this happens, humanity translates itself into the picture. Insofar as humanity thus puts itself into the picture, however, it sets itself into the scenario, i.e., into the open environs of what is generally and publicly represented. Thereby humanity sets itself as the scene wherein what-is must from then on be picture: present itself, set itself up on show [sich vor-stellen]. Humans become representatives of beings in the sense of objects. {ibid. m84 ¶34}

It is decisive that humanity thereby appropriates this position as self-appointed, maintains this position voluntarily as the one it has itself taken up, and secures for it the foundation for a possible unfolding of humanity. Only now is there given such a thing as a Place of Humanity <in the Cosmos?>. Humanity imposes upon itself <sets itself up in> the manner in which it must set itself up in relation to what is as if to what is objective. There now begins that type of human being who takes over the realm of the human estate [Vermögen] as the place for measuring and for achieving dominance over the whole of what-is. {ibid. ¶35}

The epoch that thus defines itself is not just different from what went before. It posits itself to be what is new. To be Novel belongs to that world that has become picture.

worldhood [Weltlichkeit; S worldliness]. See world.

{G2, BT m64-65; G26 231 f.; MFL 180} Worldhood is the ontological-existential concept designated by the word 'world' in one of its senses {see world}. Worldhood can be modified into the respective structural wholes of individual <preferable to MR's 'special' for 'besonderer' or to S's use of 'particular' - what is being referred to would be a formal trait incorporating a formal (structural) universal; such a universal is neither a genus nor a species> worlds. Worldhood entails, however, the a priori of universal worldhood [Weltlichkeit überhaupt].

{G2, BT m87} That wherein Dasein antecedaneously understands herself – in the mode of referring herself to – is that toward which [woraufhin] she antecedaneously lets what-is be met. It is the phenomenon of world is wherein Dasein lets what is (in the sense of taking an end [in der Seinsart der Bewandnis]) be met. The structure of that toward which Dasein refers herself is that which makes up the worldhood of the world. Understanding maintains the relationships involved in the 'toward which' and the 'wherein' within an antecedaneous disclosedness (q.v.). By keeping to the antecedaneous disclosedness of these relationships Dasein keeps them, as that wherein her self-referring moves, before herself. We conceive the relational character of this self-referring under the heading signifying [bedeuten]. Through Dasein's familiarity with these relationships, she "signifies" herself, i.e., this is how she originally presents to herself her being and being an agent [her what she potentially is [Seinkönnen].

Each world, domain, or region has its peculiar worldhood through which it embodies worldhood in general, but neither its peculiar worldhood nor worldhood in general is an entity present-at-hand within it. Worldhood is not a component of worlds, regions, etc.

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Notes

[1] Compare Robert Welsh Jordan, "Das transzendentale Ich als Seiendes in der Welt," Perspektiven der Philosophie, 5. Band (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1979) 201-205.

[2] Although the distinction between ontic and axiotic states of affairs might prove useful for some purposes, the word 'axiotic' could be omitted here and in section e. without any radical change in the meaing of this very complex sentence. In that case, the entire presentation would be quite free of the dread word 'value'.

[3] Adopting a critical attitude, one might say instead, "Its being feared is not understood to show the alleged state of affairs that these potentialities ought not to happen."

[4] So, Schutz' distinction between in-order-to motives and because motives becomes relevant here.

[5] cf. F.W.J. Schelling, Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling III/8 13 and W. Schulz, "Das Problem der Angst in der neurern Philosophie" in H. von Ditfurth, ed. Aspekte der Angst. Starnberger Gespräche 1964 (1965) 2 1-23.

[6] Der Begriff der Angst, tr. and ed. by L. Richter in Rowolts klassiker 71 (1960).

[7] Heidegger is remarkably vague about the three regions that are differentiated by reference to time. They are: 1. what is within time [das Innerzeitige] (nature and history); 2. what is outside of time; and 3. what is above time [das Überzeitige]. The reader is left to guess to which of the three she is to assign either existent Dasein on the one hand or neutral Dasein on the other hand.

[8] Reading es instead of sie.

[9] The English translation's 'potency' is somewhat off here, Mächtigkeit is no mere potency (δ́uνᾰμις) but is Macht zu haben (über) to have sway over, as also ενέργεια would be.

[10] As used here 'cognizance' and 'cognizing' and 'cognition' all refer to ways of understanding that are apophantic ways of interpreting (Husserl: doxic and active or voluntary) and that, therefore, would objectivate that which is being understood. Thus, they would disclose to Dasein that what is being understood has some definite categorial form, minimally disclosed to be at least potentially the "about which" for some statement or judgment.

[11] The translation by David Krell in Basic Writings says here, "Being held out into the nothing — as Dasein is — on the ground of concealed anxiety makes man a lieutenant of the nothing." The earlier translation by R. Hull and A. Crick in Existence and Being (1949) says, "Because our Da-sein projects into Nothing on this basis of hidden dread, man becomes the "stand-in" (Platzhalter) for Nothing." Both these translations suggest a reading whereby there would come, through "man," to be a representation of the Nothing extant within the world. An extant representation of the nothing would arise, however, only insofar as what is disclosed through anxiety is misinterpreted. It seems likely that both of these translations are linked to a conception of language whereby its discursive use is thought essentially to misrepresent not just what is given through anxiety but everything about Dasein's own way of being. That conception of language was not Heidegger's. It is a conception that would make a mockery of virtually all of Heidegger's writings. See my MH? ¶¶13-15.

[12] The German adjective is 'hellen' and bright seems to be a better translation than 'clear,' which is used in both published English translations. 'Clear' is, however, not very far off in as much as a clear night will be one in which the heavenly bodies stand out most prominently and brightly. Still, in traditional terms, the clarity of what is perceived is partly a matter of the attentiveness of the perceiver whereas the brightness of what is perceived is independent of attention. Heidegger is emphasizing that the nothing is given through anxiety pre-categorially, hence in such a way that what is so given is not objectivated through the way it is understood.

[13] For Dasein will, if things don't go "neurotically" for her, identify the Dasein—who was and who, modalized, belongs to the world and to the situation into which Dasein is thrown — with herself; she will come to terms with that aspect of her facticity.

[14] Important point for reading German texts and texts translated from German: very often, the German preposition 'in' is better rendered by the English 'through' than by English 'in'.

[15] Heidegger seems to regard this reference to a yet-to-come originary emergence as essential to both poesy and thinking: essential to them at least in a "needy time" such as our own. So, the sort of "saying [Sagen]" that occurs in each of these quite different ways of explicating will be called "projective saying" so as to convey this reference to the future. It is most likely that the reference is not really limited to our "needy time". It may be that every way of interpreting to which any Dasein whatsoever could be "called" through something like an "exigentl ought-to-be" must be characterized by some such reference.

[16] Keeping in mind, however, that when genuine knowledge of the Good rules a soul then she does good in Plato's view. For "soul, considered collectively [ψυχ̀η παντ̀ος], has the care of all that is without soul and it traverses the whole heaven, appearing sometimes in one form and sometimes in another; now when it is perfect and fully winged, it mounts upward and governs the whole world…" {Phaedrus 246B}

[17] In this sentence, Heidegger emphasized only the word 'as'. The emphasis placed here is meant to show that the passage allows a reading whereby an entity could be manifest to a member of our species before being revealed to her as an entity. Heidegger had no reason to oppose Husserl's view that every human person is an animal who has undergone a transition from being a brute animal to being a human and personal animal. In her prehuman phase there will have been manifest to her colors, odors, sounds, textures, etc. that she would later come to identify as manifestations of entities that are "ready" and manifestations of traits "extant" in such entities. The transition out of prehuman being will have entailed coming to understand certain "manifestations" to involve doings other than her own. {See my HPHS and NLPW}.

[18] {From an eemessage of 14 May 2003 to Tina Frichtel and Christopher Hamilton at the conclusion of a study project} I've been telling my classes for years that 'determinism' was introduced by William Hamilton to differentiate naturalistic from teleological Necessitarianism. That's something Cairns used to tell us, and I've been repeating it. After looking off and on for some years, I recently found that Hamilton does indeed use the word in his notes to The Works of Thomas Reid (vol. 1 p. 87, 2nd note and vol. 2 p.601, 1st note), and it seems likely that he was the first to use it. However, the positions he differentiates are not named as above (naturalistic' and 'teleological') but are (respectively) 'fatalism' and 'rational Determinism'.

 The note to page 87 and the passage it annotates show clearly Heidegger's source for the term 'for the sake of which [Worumwillen]' and that Heidegger's term is indeed used as a synonym for τέλος. Hamilton's note reads:

This is Aristotle's definition of τ̀ο έ̉νεκα οΰ end or final cause; and, as a synonym for end or final cause, the term motive had been long exclusively employed. There are two schemes of Necessity—the Necessitation by efficient—the Necessitation by final causes. The former is brute or blind Fate; the latter rational Determinism. Though their practical results be the same, they ought to be carefully distinguished in theory.

The passage in Reid that it annotates reads:

… I understood a motive, when applied to a human being, to be that for the sake of which he acts, and, therefore, that what he never was conscious of, can no more be a motive to determine his will, than it can be an argument to convince his judgment.

The fourteenth paragraph of Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning Technology" is devoted to the concept expressed by 'τέλος ' in Aristotle's account of τέχνη. There he emphasizes that the τέλος  is that for whose sake a thing is to be transformed so that the τέλος  restricts the range of shapes or forms the materials may take on. It thereby delineates what the thing may be like in order, when the transformation is completed, to be as the τέλος  requires. The paragraph never uses the expression "for the sake of", however, and the passages in BT that do use the expression never mention its Aristotelian origin.

I'm not sure that making this connection more secure will be a help to either of you. It is a significant relief to me. To see just how screwed up important interpretations of 'for the sake of' have often been see Wm. Richardson's famous and massive Heidegger {Richardson 56}. There the whole doctrine of Original Sin and psychological egoism seems to have got read in.

[19] Bindung, MH translates this as "commitment". I'll be switching between 'constraint' and 'commitment' as seems appropriate for the context.

[20] The text reads, "Sie [Besinnung] versetzt den künftigen Menschen in jenes Zwischen, darin er dem Sein zugehört und doch in Seienden ein Fremdling Bleibt." 'Zugehören' here seems to carry in part the same meaning as 'gebühren'. The revant sort of reflection would entail, it seems, the person's being responible and responsive to being. She will be differentiated thereby from every other entity while being essentially in their midst, being interested in them.

[21] This will be true (pace Dilthey et al.) whether the subsequent interpretation be undertaken by the original agent or by someone else whether contemporaneously or subsequently or for that matter antecedaneously.

[22] From the point of view of the moral sciences this unique, determinate event is a regulative "ideal". Being a regulative ideal is entirely compatible with being temporal in such a way as to be unrepeatable in any literal sense. Literally to repeat or to re-perform historical events would be an impossibility and no such repetition can occur in the efforts of moral scientists however much they may succeed in carrying out their vocation.

[23] It is spontaneous, I think, even when it occurs passively. Husserl noticed only gradually, in my opinion, that the proper opposite of 'spontaneous' is 'receptive' rather than 'passive'. The active/passive distinction cuts across the spontaneous/receptive distinction so that there are (a) passive mental processes that are spontaneous and (b) active mental processes that are receptive.

ad (a) The passive or automatic consciousness of lasting or ongoing objects would not be possible without the automatic remembering of what was recently given together with the automatic anticipation that what occurred then and what is soon to be given will be identical with what has been anticipated. This identity is not simply given. There occurs a synthetic unification (which Heidegger sometimes calls "simplification") of the remembered, the anticipated, and the now given without which the consciousness of identity over time could not be achieved. It is not achieved simply by analyzing what is now given. What such synthetic consciousness achieves is not simply received passively, but neither is it generated actively or voluntarily. It occurs spontaneously but automatically (passively).

ad (b) Examples of experiences that are both active and receptive include:

• judging with evidence (doxic mental processes through which there is consciousness of categorially formed states of affairs where those states of affairs are also themselves given);

• active love through which value traits are given,through which the person is open to value traits;

• active striving through which the person is open to the status of entities as ends or as means.

[24] The work of Heidegger's that will be referred below is the lecture "What Is Metaphysics?" It is available in several English translations now. In the citations below the pagination of Heidegger's collected works {WM (G9); E = PM} will be given along with the page numbers (given in the margins of G9) of the earlier German publications. The page numbers of the English translation in the 1979 edition of Basic Writings will be indicated as E (1979).

[25] Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre. Merleau-Ponty…

[26] This will be true (pace Dilthey et al.) whether the subsequent interpretation be undertaken by the original agent or by someone else whether contemporaneously or subsequently or for that matter antecedaneously.

[27] See note 21 above.

[28] Whether he would also be willing to extend it to include what is thematized by active strivings is not said in the lecture though there are hints that he would not do so.

[29] Following a marginal note in Heidegger's working copy of the fifth (1949) edition.

[30] In Heidegger's working copy of the fifth edition (1949) there a marginal note: the entity <as such, entities as such> no longer appeals [das Seiende spricht nicht mehr an].

[31] To be ordained, prescribed, required absolutely is essential to Kant's categorical imperative insofar as it is disclosed to imperfectly rational entities; it entails then a maxim requiring the person to fulfill a requirement that is unconditional and that is to be fulfilled regardless of the agent's inclinations.

{Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, second edition, 15 (tr. T.K. Abbott)} Now an action done from duty must wholly exclude the influence of inclination…so that nothing remains which can determine the will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for this practical law, and consequently the maxim that I should follow this law even to the thwarting <Better: restraint, obstruction: Abbruch> of all my inclinations. <Note that behavior that is "categorically" required by the moral law might sometimes also agree with the agent's inclinations. The, not uncommon, reading according to which Kant excludes such possibilities attests the reader's own absurdity more than it does Kant's view.>

If Heidegger agreed with Brentano that there is a distinction to be drawn between, on the one hand, passions that are impressions that the states of affairs they are directed toward are worthy of that passion and, on the other hand, blind passions that entail no such impression then he would identify the latter emotions but not the former with what Kant called "inclinations". Kant did not conceive any inclinations to be "intrinsically correct" indications concerning what ought to be or ought not to be. On this reading, pure respect for the moral law, while an affect, is not an inclination {GP (G24) 185–93; BP 131–36}. Anxiety entails the maxim that Dasein restrain her blind, ungrounded attitudes whether emotional or cognitive and that she be open to what-ought-to-be as well as to what-is as these show themselves — in case and insofar as they show themselves.

The attitudes to be restrained would include any that have been simply assimilated from Dasein's social environment or any that have resulted simply by elaboration and conditioning from "instinctive" attitudes, if there be any of these.

Note also Heidegger's characterization of the sort of anxiety through which this requirement arises as "quiet". Whether or not Heidegger was acquainted directly with David Hume's conception of quiet or calm passions, he is quite likely to have been aware of the view advocated by Brentano's followers that, for Hume, the calm or quiet love of pleasure is an impressional consciousness of the axiotic state of affairs that pleasure is a primary or "intrinsic" good. This interpretation is well summarized by Oskar Kraus in his Die Werttheorien, Geschichte und Kritik, Veröffentlichungen der Brentanogesellschaft II, aus Anlass des 100. Beburtstages von Franz Brentano (16.I. 1938) (Brünn, Vienna, Leipzig: Verlag Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1937) 103-105.

[32] Since the English word 'interpretation' is very frequently employed as a translation for Heidegger's 'Auslegung' in the literature, I have capitalized it here in order to differentiate the sort of explication being referred to when he employs 'Interpretation' in German. Otherwise, his use would seem redundant, which it is not.

[33] In the terms of Husserl's eidetic method, this would mean to be guided by what determines the range of possible entities of the relevant type.

[34] Is Aufdecken used as interchangeable with Entdecken?

[35] <DELETE THIS NOTE.>

[36] A detailed discussion of the this concept of persons and acts is given in Scheler's Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, tr. Manfred Frings (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973) Chapter 6, Part A, pp. 370ff. A discussion and critique of Scheler's position may be found in Nicolai Hartmann's Ethics, (vol. 1) Moral Phenomena, tr. Stanton Coit (London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.; New York, Humanities Press: 1967 [c. 1932]) chapters 24-25.

[37] See Logical Investigations, Investigation III, The Theory of Wholes and Parts.

[38] U. Dierse and R Kuhlen, "Anschauung, intellektuelle" in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Joachim Ritter, ed., vol. 1, 349 ff.

[39] Bearing in mind that 'thing' is being used in such a way that it ranges over whatever is in anyway whatsoever {UZS 164 (WL 61–62)}. Its range is at least as inclusive as the Scholastic use of res and perhaps as inclusive as Husserl's use of 'Gegenstand'.

[40] The translator of Heidegger's essay (Peter D. Hertz) uses here Michael Hamburger's Hölderlin translation, which renders Hölderlin's 'das Gut' with 'the wealth'. Hertz doesn't mention that the word used by Hölderlin means literally "the good" in at least one of its important significations. For my reading, that fact is very relevant indeed and needs to be mentioned.

[41] In the vocabulary of UZS {164, cf. also 168 (E 62, 65-66)}, 'a thing'.

[42] The form referred to is the most universal of forms. That to which being simple in this sense would be alien is quite inconcievable and the assertion that what is alien to simplicity in this sense is an absurd assertion. However much some absurd philosophy might protest, whatever is grasped monothetically having beforehand been intended in a nonmonothetic, non-objectivating way will be identified with itself as earlier intended. There is not, in any case whatsoever, the slightest ground to regard this identification as other than an explication of the state of affairs as earlier intended. In this sense of the word 'object' it simply does not and cannot happen that some state of affairs show itself not to be an object. That x is an object in this sense implies that there is some truth about x.

[43] For relevant meanings of 'absolute' see "Absolute" in Oxford Universal Dictionary 7, meanings I and II but not III or IV. In the relevant meaning, the opposite of the absolute would be the abstract. So taken, 'concrete' would be a synonym for 'absolute'. Being independent is to be strictly excluded from the word's connotation.

[44] The English gives 'possession' as translation for Heidegger's 'Gut' and does so without drawing the slightest attention to the fact that the German word is a cognate with English 'good'; the translation affords a stunning example of metaethical bigotry. A person's Gut can indeed be all of that person's goods, and it is also a term for the lands held by a farmer, a squire, etc. Heidegger, however, is almost certainly not asserting that language is something the poet possesses. The meaning is rather that power is delegated to the poet in a manner analogous to that in which, in Rousseau's political theory, for example, power is delegated to legislators on the condition that they fulfill their calling; the delegated power does not become the legislator's property. Indeed, a legislator would fail her calling if she were to treat the delegated power as her property.

[45] The German term being rendered here is 'Begrundungszusammenhang', and the rendition here significantly improves on BTS, where the translation makes a science out to be "'a context of causal relations of true, that is, valid propositions'". BTMR translates the definition given for 'science' as "'something established on an interconnection of true propositions—that is, propositions counted as valid'". Here BTMR is extremely awkward but preferable to BTS, which is thoroughly wrong and misleading.

[46] H's use of 'deliberately' to translate 'eigens' is probably ill advised. I strongly suspect that the word is used much more with the meaning: of itself, for its own sake. This seems clear from the following considerations given in the next paragraph below.

[47] In that case, it seems that what is understood is not equivalent to what shows itself. And is Heidegger then willing to allow that Dasein's self-disclosure [sich erschlieβen] does entail Dasein's showing itself adequately?

[48] There are here issues which need pursuing. Are we not confronted here with several different meanings of "possibility" and at risk of equivocating on them? If there are several different meanings involved, am I correct in my inclination to approach the difference by way of the Husserlian differentiation between open and attractive possibilities?

[49] On my reading the relevant world region is the one that Heidegger would later refer to sometimesas "the heavens".

[50] See Chapter 2, Two Dogmas of Empiricism in Quine's From a Logical Point of View, "Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from essence and wedded to the word…Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step to recognizing as the primary business of the theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities may well be abandoned." Heidegger's obfuscations do little to dispel the conviction of such writers that essences are obscure entities.

[51] 'Literary monism' is Iris Murdoch's quite fitting expression {Murdoch 250}. for the doctrine that there are only symbols

[52] Here the same English phrase, "striving to be" is used to translate both Erstrebnis and Seinserstrebnis. I am taking for granted, as the text seems to show, that both phrases refer to effort to be and that to be means to belong to the world. The text also shows that Dasein's effort to promote any end whatsoever must entail effort by Dasein to be in the world in some definite way that is understood to be appropriate to furthering that end. Thus all effort by Dasein entails her effort to be, effort to belong to the world existingly, effort to be in the world. Thus what is referred to in both cases is effort to be in the world, but every effort by Dasein is effort to be in the world in some definite way or other; this neither asserts nor implies that there is some underlying vague effort to survive, i.e., effort simply to go on living. Moreover, effort never objectivates what is being striven for as its in-order-to, its for-the-sake-of, and so never explicates what it strives for as Being.

[53] What is meant here seems not to be destruction of the Dasein; the Dasein continues to strive but is doing so inauthentically.

[54] An anticipated event would be understood to be potentially striven for insofar as it entails an exigent ought-to-be {see notes on Hartmann}. The commitment whereby the potential striving comes to exist would affect the anticipated event in as much as it would acquire a significance that it previously did not have, namely, that it is now being striven for by Dasein.

[55] Note that the word used here is Mensch rather than Dasein.

[56] I.e, in the essence of authentic striving which is Er-leben and so is the fulfilling of striving (

[57] Alfred Schutz's descriptions of action seem to be fairly close, albeit with some reservations, to Heidegger's, especially to what Heidegger wrote here {Schutz, PSW 57 ff.}. {For a summary of Schutz's position that highlights similarities to Heidegger's see my PPV 88 ff.}

[58] Though I am inclined — as I think Heidegger was — to agree with Nietzsche that this sort of nihilism regarding life cannot be authentic, except perhaps for the nihilist who is engaged in striving to terminate her life. So avoid, please, the preference for annihilation.

[59] Truth refers to possible assertion and so to possible authentic, i.e., fulfilled assertion so that even extantness is not concretely, authentically thinkable apart from existence. Truth has Dasein's way of being in somewhat the way God has necessary being: if there is a God then God is absolutely, is absolutely independent and similarly, if there is revealedness then there can be a Dasein for whom the relevant assertions would be fulfilled. For there to be truths about extant or ready entities or existential truths about "neutral" Dasein or about possible Dasein, no Dasein need in fact be in the world. What the position excludes is the notion that any truth can be substantial, a standard test for substantiality being that the alleged substance can be thought about distinctly, i.e., concretely, without having to think of anything else.

[59A] I emphasize here an aspect of Heidegger's presentation that he left rather too vague, judging from the literature on it and the way it has been presented in both English translations. Both translations employ variations on "to be delivered over", an expression that is rather too passive. Heidegger had available and elsewhere employs the words 'überliefern' and 'Überlieferung'; here, however, he emphasizes the responsibility of that being who has to be her There for the situation into which she has been thrown: "As the entity who has been assigned responsibility for her being, what she is responsible for includes that she must have found herself antecedaneously through a finding that has arisen less from a seeking than from a fleeing. {loc. cit.} The action that 'überantworten' would refer to is indeed to transfer something or deliver it over to someone but the word emphasizes more than does 'überliefern' that it also makes the recipient responsible for what she thus receives.

[60] See in this connection the paper, "Holding Open: An Explication of Heidegger's Aesthetics," presented by Molly K. Sturdevant in the conference "Heidegger 2000" in Denton, Texas on 31 April 2000. The paper also appeared in the now seemingly defunct Web journal Current Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Volume 1, Winter 2000.

[60A] or to provide a work's truth [die Einrichtung der Wahrheit ins Werk]; 'provide' is chosen here since it may capture a bit more of the meaning that Heidegger is likely to have had in mind. Pekrun {Das deutsche Wort 230} gives for einrichten — as something like a root meaning — "seinem Zweck gemäβ gestalten". The meaning here might be more like, "seiner Würde nach gestalten". E {PLT 62} reads: to establish truth in the work.

[61] Remarkably, passages such as this one have often been read as if they implied agreement with vitalists — and with such "Existenzphilosophen" as Jaspers and Kierkegaard and the sillier of mystics such as William Barrett — that the factuality of existence is something unsayable, ineffable, something that cannot be described through propositions or discursively. But what Heidegger says here is clearly only that the facticity of Dasein is of a different form or structure from the factiuality of extant entities, even if there were to be cases in which the factuality of the latter is also both apodictic and other than a priori. There is here absolutely no implication that existence cannot be genuinely explicated through assertions.

[62] Note that the German for which disclosing is the fairly standard translation refers to the way in which the being of a being shows itself to Dasein. So, the passage seems to say that earth does not show itself through revealing through which the Being of the art work originally shows itself. How then does something earthly such as colors which show themselves in a painting come to be shown as earthly if earth always and essentially closes itself up and withholds itself from all interpretation? Doesn't the meaning have to be that the earthly in the work shows itself only either through creating or through preserving? And doesn't this have to mean that the form of interpretation through which Heidegger is able to explicate this state of affairs is reflective, is something like phenomenology of creating or of preserving?

[63] Note in the Reclam edition of 1960: i.e., the e-vent [Ereignis].

[64] In the Reclam edition of 1960: if lightening, i.e., e-venting, did not happen [wenn nicht Lichtung geschähe, d.h. Er-eignen]. There is a rather rare English word 'homologate', 'homologation' that carries such meanings as: to affirm, to reaffirm, to assent, and to identify something with something. I suggest that 'Er-eignen' is fairly close to 'to homologate' in meaning, in any event, probably as close as to any other English word. Er-eignen would then refer to temporalization through which in BP (166) both Dasein and world are said to exist. Considered with emphasis on Dasein's existence and in Husserl's vocabulary, homologating would be the continuous identifying synthesis through which Dasein's being is disclosed to her.

[65] In the first edition (1950): an event [Ereignis].

[66] 1960 Reclam edition: event [Ereignis].

[67] 1960 Reclam edition: No answer, for the question remains: What is this which happens in ways?

[68] BTS translates this as "straightforward observant apprehension". I like this rendering; it fits perfectly the interpretation I would want to give to this passage, where 'straightforward' means nonreflective so that an assertion about what is so intuited would be a statement about something innerworldly as such, in contrast to a statement about what is intuited as it is intuited. The latter sort of statement would be in Heidegger's terms a statement about the intuited as disclosed to the self. This latter sort of statement could take what is intuited or given with its explicable intended horizons of meaning rather than being interested only in discovering what is presumed to be extant in the entity as a set "simplest determinations". For Aristotleanism (and phenomenalism) these would be pure forms, ideas, present in the changeable thing or else emanating from it, something like sense data. Such data are thus presumed to be untimate constituents of the changeable thing, the primary ousia (substance).

[69] It was a serious mistake, I think, for Heidegger to treat {SZ (G2) 299–300 (m226–27)} laws of Newtonian physics as if they were known truths and to maintain that they became true through Newton. He ought, in my opinion, to be rejecting the modern view that spatial entities have entirely mathematical properties along with that notion of truth as correspondence, a notion that has strongly reinforced the error that truth is either formal or else it is a relation of correspondence between numerically different relata — one of them immanent fact and the other (usually) transcendent.

The correspondence version of truth has been particularly appropriate to the modern period when whatever it is that is conceived to "cause" sensations has come to be so conceived that it cannot possibly be given in case it does exist, and the central issue is whether correspondence is between this cause and propositions in mathematical physics or whether the correspondence is between such propositions and propositions in the mind that is conceived to generate or to create the physical.

Nevertheless, I hold (and do not find that Heidegger would have any reason to disagree) that there are two principal criteria for acceptablity of propositions: first, being related by implication to other propositions in the body of theory (formal or analytic truth) as implicit in the concept of physical science as axiomatizable) and, second, that symbols in the science be useful for making accurate predictions concerning observations. The latter is a pragmatic criterion but is not a criterion for factual (synthetic) truth; here I reject the move made by pragmatists, as I think that Heidegger would as well. The only sort of truth that is relevant to mathematical physical science is formal, analytic truth. It is otherwise a crucial instrument for modern technology but us not factual (synthetic) science; properly speaking it is not empirical science at all. All empirical sciences are about observable entities, entities that have ways of being genuinely themselves given. Entities all of whose properties would be comprehensible only by mathematical reasoning could not be given at all. There are none; they do not belong to the world although scientific and lay conceptions of them do belong to the world, can be and are in fact given. The belong to the subject matter of the moral sciences. There are empirical sciences, but they are all of them moral sciences.

On the view that I am pushing and that I (seemingly alone) find in both Husserl and Heidegger, there is no numerical difference between the state of affairs judged about and the state of affairs itself when (in so far as) the statement is true. There is difference between the two only when (in so far as) the statement is untrue. Then (to that extent) the alleged state of affairs is not the true state of affairs, the state of affairs as it is

[70] Interpretation, even of the circumspective sort reveals and makes understood (but does not explicate or interpret ) the state of affairs that what is being interpreted instantiates a set of universal ideas (such as a use-value or a class whose examples can be relied on to be usable in a certain way). In that case "truth" would, as a way of discovering, always entail (implicitly, without explicating this state of affairs) the disclosing of an eidos.

[71] Heidegger identifies the Riβ with the Ontological Difference in UZS (p. 29), "The Difference gathers the two <world and thing; perhaps, coordinate with "world and object (Husserl's sense)"> together out of itself by calling them into the rift, which is the Difference itself." What Heidegger seems to be wrestling with in these passages seems to be something analogous to the problem in holistic conceptions of natural kinds (such as those of Herder, Goethe, Hegel, Feuerbach): How does the class-member belong to or "participate in" the kind? An analogous problem in Husserl would be: How, if at all, can we further explicate what it means to call an object a "formal unity" of objective sense (with horizons of meaning), ways of being given, and thetic qualities?

[72] Note the shift that has occurred here from using the preposition in with accusative (rendered by 'into') to using it with the dative (rendered by either 'within' or 'in' or, occasionally, 'through'). I think that the difference reflects a shift from considering what is to be incorporated into the work to be created to referring now either to what is being incorporated or has been incorporated into the work.