It follows that our existential-ontological Interpretation makes no ontical assertion about the ‘corruption of human Nature’, not because the necessary evidence is lacking, but because the problematic of this Interpretation is prior to any assertion about corruption or incorruption. Falling is conceived ontologically as a kind of motion. Ontically, we have not decided whether man is ‘drunk with sin’ and in the status corruptionis, whether he walks in the status integritatis, or whether he finds himself in an intermediate stage, the status gratiae. But in so far as any faith or ‘world view’, makes any such assertions, and if it asserts anything about Dasein as Being-in-the-world, it must come back to the existential structures which we have set forth, provided that its assertions are to make a claim to conceptual understanding.

Falling is not only existentially determinative for Being-in-the-world. At the same time turbulence makes manifest that the thrownness which can obtrude itself upon Dasein in its state-of-mind, has the character of throwing and of movement. Thrownness is neither a ‘fact that is finished’ nor a Fact that is settled.83 Dasein’s facticity is such that as long as it is what it is, Dasein remains in the throw, and is sucked into the turbulence of the “they’s” inauthenticity. Thrownness, in which facticity lets itself be seen phenomenally, belongs to Dasein, for which, in its Being, that very Being is an issue. Dasein exists factically.

The alienation of falling—at once tempting and tranquillizing—leads by its own movement, to Dasein’s getting entangled [verfängt] in itself.

However, this tranquillity in inauthentic Being does not seduce one into stagnation and inactivity, but drives one into uninhibited ‘hustle’ [“Betriebs”]. Being-fallen into the ‘world’ does not now somehow come to rest. The tempting tranquillization aggravates the falling. With special regard to the interpretation of Dasein, the opinion may now arise that understanding the most alien cultures and ‘synthesizing’ them with one’s own may lead to Dasein’s becoming for the first time thoroughly and genuinely enlightened about itself. Versatile curiosity and restlessly “knowing it all” masquerade as a universal understanding of Dasein. But at bottom it remains indefinite what is really to be understood, and the question has not even been asked. Nor has it been understood that understanding itself is a potentiality-for-Being which must be made free in one’s ownmost Dasein alone. When Dasein, tranquillized, and ‘understanding’ everything, thus compares itself with everything, it drifts along towards an alienation [Entfremdung] in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it. Falling Being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquillizing; it is at the same time alienating.

Idle talk discloses to Dasein a Being towards its world, towards Others, and towards itself—a Being in which these are understood, but in a mode of groundless floating. Curiosity discloses everything and anything, yet in such a way that Being-in is everywhere and nowhere. Ambiguity hides nothing from Dasein’s understanding, but only in order that Being-in-the-world should be suppressed in this uprooted “everywhere and nowhere”.

In falling, Dasein itself as factical Being-in-the-world, is something from which it has already fallen away. And it has not fallen into some entity which it comes upon for the first time in the course of its Being, or even one which it has not come upon at all; it has fallen into the world, which itself belongs to its Being. Falling is a definite existential characteristic of Dasein itself. It makes no assertion about Dasein as something present-at-hand, or about present-at-hand relations to entities from which Dasein ‘is descended’ or with which Dasein has subsequently wound up in some sort of commercium.

This ambiguity is always tossing to curiosity that which it seeks; and it gives idle talk the semblance of having everything decided in it. H. 175 But this kind of Being of the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world dominates also Being-with-one-another as such. The Other is proximally ‘there’ in terms of what “they” have heard about him, what “they” say in their talk about him, and what “they” know about him. Into primordial Being-with-one-another, idle talk first slips itself in between. Everyone keeps his eye on the Other first and next, watching how he will comport himself and what he will say in reply. Being-with-one-another in the “they” is by no means an indifferent side-by-side-ness in which everything has been settled, but rather an intent, ambiguous watching of one another, a secret and reciprocal listening-in. Under the mask of “for-one-another”, an “against-one-another” is in play.

In this connection, we must notice that ambiguity does not first arise from aiming explicitly at disguise or distortion, and that it is not something which the individual Dasein first conjures up. It is already implied in Being with one another, as thrown Being-with-one-another in a world. Publicly, however, it is quite hidden; and “they” will always defend themselves against this Interpretation of the kind of Being which belongs to the way things have been interpreted by the “they”, lest it should prove correct. It would be a misunderstanding if we were to seek to have the explication of these phenomena confirmed by looking to the “they” for agreement.

In the end, idle talk is even indignant that what it has surmised and constantly demanded now actually happens. In that case, indeed, the opportunity to keep on surmising has been snatched away.

Idle talk controls even the ways in which one may be curious. It says what one “must” have read and seen. In being everywhere and nowhere, curiosity is delivered over to idle talk. These two everyday modes of Being for discourse and sight are not just present-at-hand side by side in their tendency to uproot, but either of these ways-to-be drags the other one with it. Curiosity, for which nothing is closed off, and idle talk, for which there is nothing that is not understood, provide themselves (that is, the Dasein which is in this manner [dem so seienden Dasein]) with the guarantee of a ‘life’ which, supposedly, is genuinely ‘lively’. But with this supposition a third phenomenon now shows itself, by which the disclosedness of everyday Dasein is characterized.

When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but just in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty.

When we take a rest, care subsides into circumspection which has been set free. In the world of work, circumspective discovering has de-severing as the character of its Being. When circumspection has been set free, there is no longer anything ready-to-hand which we must concern ourselves with bringing close. But, as essentially de-severant, this circumspection provides itself with new possibilities of de-severing. This means that it tends away from what is most closely ready-to-hand, and into a far and alien world. Care becomes concern with the possibilities of seeing the ‘world’ merely as it looks while one tarries and takes a rest.

Yet the obviousness and self-assurance of the average ways in which things have been interpreted, are such that while the particular Dasein drifts along towards an ever-increasing groundlessness as it floats, the uncanniness of this floating remains hidden from it under their protecting shelter.

The fact that something has been said groundlessly, and then gets passed along in further retelling, amounts to perverting the act of disclosing [Erschliessen] into an act of closing off [Verschliessen]. For what is said is always understood proximally as ‘saying’ something—that is, an uncovering something. Thus, by its very nature, idle talk is a closing-off, since to go back to the ground of what is talked about is something which it leaves undone.

A doctrine of signification will not emerge automatically even if we make a comprehensive comparison of as many languages as possible, and those which are most exotic. To accept, let us say, the philosophical horizon within which W. von Humboldt made language a problem, would be no less inadequate. The doctrine of signification is rooted in the ontology of Dasein. Whether it prospers or decays depends on the fate of this ontology.x

Because discourse is constitutive for the Being of the “there” (that is, for states-of-mind and understanding), while “Dasein” means Being-in-the-world, Dasein as discursive Being-in, has already expressed itself. Dasein has language. Among the Greeks, their everyday existing was largely diverted into talking with one another, but at the same time they ‘had eyes’ to see. Is it an accident that in both their pre-philosophical and their philosophical ways of interpreting Dasein, they defined the essence of man as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον? The later way of interpreting this definition of man in the sense of the animal rationale, ‘something living which has reason’, is not indeed ‘false’, but it covers up the phenomenal basis for this definition of “Dasein”. Man shows himself as the entity which talks. This does not signify that the possibility of vocal utterance is peculiar to him, but rather that he is the entity which is such as to discover the world and Dasein itself. The Greeks had no word for “language”; they understood this phenomenon ‘in the first instance’ as discourse. But because the λόγος came into their philosophical ken primarily as assertion, this was the kind of logos which they took as their clue for working out the basic structures of the forms of discourse and its components. Grammar sought its foundations in the ‘logic’ of this logos. But this logic was based upon the ontology of the present-at-hand. The basic stock of ‘categories of signification’, which passed over into the subsequent science of language, and which in principle is still accepted as the standard today, is oriented towards discourse as assertion. But if on the contrary we take this phenomenon to have in principle the primordiality and breadth of an existentiale, then there emerges the necessity of re-establishing the science of language on foundations which are ontologically more primordial. The task of liberating grammar from logic requires beforehand a positive understanding of the basic a priori structure of discourse in general as an existentiale.

In ‘poetical’ discourse, the communication of the existential possibilities of one’s state-of-mind can become an aim in itself, and this amounts to a disclosing of existence.

As we have already indicated in our analysis of assertion,57the phenomenon of communication must be understood in a sense which is ontologically broad. ‘Communication’ in which one makes assertions—giving information, for instance—is a special case of that communication which is grasped in principle existentially. In this more general kind of communication, the Articulation of Being with one another understandingly is constituted. Through it a co-state-of-mind [Mitbefindlichkeit] gets ‘shared’, and so does the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared; that is to say, it is already, but it is unshared as something that has not been taken hold of and appropriated.58

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding. The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. That which can be Articulated in interpretation, and thus even more primordially in discourse, is what we have called “meaning”. That which gets articulated as such in discursive Articulation, we call the “totality-of-significations” [Bedeutungsganze]. This can be dissolved or broken up into significations. Significations, as what has been Articulated from that which can be Articulated, always carry meaning […sind… sinnhaft]. If discourse, as the Articulation of the intelligibility of the “there”, is a primordial existentiale of disclosedness, and if disclosedness is primarily constituted by Being-in-the-world, then discourse too must have essentially a kind of Being which is specifically worldly. The intelligibility of Being-in-the-world—an intelligibility which goes with a state-of-mind—expresses itself as discourse. The totality-of-significations of intelligibility is put into words. To significations, words accrue. But word-Things do not get supplied with significations. The way in which discourse gets expressed is languge.55 Language is a totality of words—a totality in which discourse has a ‘worldly’ Being of its own; and as an entity within-the-world, this totality thus becomes something which we may come across as ready-to-hand. Language can be broken up into word-Things which are present-at-hand. Discourse is existentially language, because that entity whose disclosedness it Articulates according to significations, has, as its kind of Being, Being-in-the-world—a Being which has been thrown and submitted to the ‘world’.

When considered philosophically, the λόγος itself is an entity, and, according to the orientation of ancient ontology, it is something present-at-hand. Words are proximally present-at-hand; that is to say, we come across them just as we come across Things; and this holds for any sequence of words, as that in which the λόγος expresses itself. In this first search for the structure of the λόγος as thus present-at-hand, what was found was the Being-present-at-hand-together of several words. What establishes the unity of this “together”? As Plato knew, this unity lies in the fact that the λόγος is always λόγος τινός. In the λόγος an entity is manifest, and with a view to this entity, the words are put together in one verbal whole. Aristotle saw this more radically: every λόγος is both σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις, not just the one (call it ‘affirmative judgment’) or the other (call it ‘negative judgment’). Rather, every assertion, whether it affirms or denies, whether it is true or false, is σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις equiprimordially. To exhibit anything is to take it together and take it apart. It is true, of course, that Aristotle did not pursue the analytical question as far as the problem of which phenomenon within the structure of the λόγος is the one that permits and indeed obliges us to characterize every statement as synthesis and diaeresis.

The entity which is held in our fore-having—for instance, the hammer—is proximally ready-to-hand as equipment. If this entity becomes the ‘object’ of an assertion, then as soon as we begin this assertion, there is already a change-over in the fore-having. Something ready-to-hand with which we have to do or perform something, turns into something ‘about which’ the assertion that points it out is made. Our fore-sight is aimed at something present-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand. Both by and for this way of looking at it [Hin-sicht], the ready-to-hand becomes veiled as ready-to-hand. Within this discovering of presence-at-hand, which is at the same time a covering-up of readiness-to-hand, something present-at-hand which we encounter is given a definite character in its Being-present-at-hand-in-such-and-such-a-manner. Only now are we given any access to properties or the like. When an assertion has given a definite character to something present-at-hand, it says something about it as a “what”; and this “what” is drawn from that which is present-at-hand as such. The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. In its function of appropriating what is understood, the ‘as’ no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements. As regards its possibilities for Articulating reference-relations, it has been cut off from that significance which, as such, constitutes environmentality. The ‘as’ gets pushed back into the uniform plane of that which is merely present-at-hand. It dwindles to the structure of just letting one see what is present-at-hand, and letting one see it in a definite way. This levelling of the primordial ‘as’ of circumspective interpretation to the “as” with which presence-at-hand is given a definite character is the specialty of assertion. Only so does it obtain the possibility of exhibiting something in such a way that we just look at it. Thus assertion cannot disown its ontological origin from an interpretation which understands. The primordial ‘as’ of an interpretation (ἑρμηνεία) which understands circumspectively we call the “existential-hermeneutical ‘as’ ” in distinction from the “apophantical ‘as’ ” of the assertion.

To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our interpretation, we have understood that our first, last, and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves.

What was posited dogmatically at an earlier stage(viii) now gets exhibited in terms of the Constitution of the Being in which Dasein as understanding is its “there”.

By showing how all sight is grounded primarily in understanding (the circumspection of concern is understanding as common sense [Verständigkeit]), we have deprived pure intuition [Anschauen] of its priority, which corresponds noetically to the priority of the present-at-hand in traditional ontology.

In its projective character, understanding goes to make up existentially what we call Dasein’s “sight” [Sicht]. With the disclosedness of the “there”, this sight is existentially [existenzial seiende]; and Dasein is this sight equiprimordially in each of those basic ways of its Being which we have already noted

Because of the kind of Being which is constituted by the existentiale of projection, Dasein is constantly ‘more’ than it factually is, supposing that one might want to make an inventory of it as something-at-hand and list the contents of its Being, and supposing that one were able to do so. But Dasein is never more than it factically is, for to its facticity its potentiality-for-Being belongs essentially. Yet as Being-possible, moreover, Dasein is never anything less; that is to say, it is existentially that which, in its potentiality-for-Being, it is not yet. Only because the Being of the “there” receives its Constitution through understanding and through the character of understanding as projection, only because it is what it becomes (or alternatively, does not become), can it say to itself ‘Become what you are’, and say this with understanding.

The totality of involvements is revealed as the categorical whole of a possible interconnection of the ready-to-hand. But even the ‘unity’ of the manifold present-at-hand, of Nature, can be discovered only if a possibility of it has been disclosed. Is it accidental that the question about the Being of Nature aims at the ‘conditions of its possibility’?

Understanding is the existential Being of Dasein’s own potentiality-for-Being; and it is so in such a way that this Being discloses in itself what its Being is capable of.29 We must grasp the structure of this existenliale more precisely.

That in the face of which we fear, the ‘fearsome’,17 is in every case something which we encounter within-the-world and which may have either readiness-to-hand, presence-at-hand, or Dasein-with as its kind of Being. We are not going to make an ontical report on those entities which can often and for the most part be ‘fearsome’: we are to define the fearsome phenomenally in its fearsomeness. What do we encounter in fearing that belongs to the fearsome as such? That in the face of which we fear can be characterized as threatening. Here several points must be considered. 1. What we encounter has detrimentality as its kind of involvement. It shows itself within a context of involvements. 2. The target of this detrimentality is a definite range of what can be affected by it; thus the detrimentality is itself made definite, and comes from a definite region. 3. The region itself is well known as such, and so is that which is coming from it; but that which is coming from it has something ‘queer’ about it.18 4. That which is detrimental, as something that threatens us, is not yet within striking distance [in beherrschbarer Nähe], but it is coming close. In such a drawing-close, the detrimentality radiates out, and therein lies its threatening character. 5. This drawing-close is within what is close by. Indeed, something may be detrimental in the highest degree and may even be coming constantly closer; but if it is still far off, its fearsomeness remains veiled. If, however, that which is detrimental draws close and is close by, then it is threatening: it can reach us, and yet it may not. As it draws close, this ‘it can, and yet in the end it may not’ becomes aggravated. We say, “It is fearsome”. 6. This implies that what is detrimental as coming-close close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away and pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it.

Letting something be encountered is primarily circumspective; it is not just sensing something, or staring at it.

A mood assails us. It comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being.

we are never free of moods

The way in which the mood discloses is not one in which we look at thrownness, but one in which we turn towards or turn away [An- und Abkehr].

When irrationalism, as the counterplay of rationalism, talks about the things to which rationalism is blind, it does so only with a squint.

This characteristic of Dasein’s Being—this ‘that it is’—is veiled in its “whence” and “whither”, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we call it the “thrownness“8 of this entity into its “there”; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the “there”. The expression “thrownness” is meant to suggest the facticity of its being delivered over.9 The ‘that it is and has to be’ which is disclosed in Dasein’s state-of-mind is not the same ‘that-it-as’ which expresses ontologico-categorially the factuality belonging to presence-at-hand. This factuality becomes accessible only if we ascertain it by looking at it. The “that-it-is” which is disclosed in Dasein’s state-of-mind must rather be conceived as an existential attribute of the entity which has Being-in-the-world as its way of Being. Facticity is not the factuality of the factum brutum of something present-at-hand, but a characteristic of Dasein’s Being—one which has been taken up into existence, even if proximally it has been thrust aside. The “that-it-is” of facticity never becomes something that we can come across by beholding it.

Higher than actuality stands possibility. We can understand phenomenology only by seizing upon it as a possibility.v

Dasein is inclined to fall back upon its world (the world in which it is) and to interpret itself in terms of that world by its reflected light

The “yonder” belongs definitely to something encountered within-the-world. ‘Here’ and ‘yonder’ are possible only in a ‘there’—that is to say, only if there is an entity which has made a disclosure of spatiality as the Being of the ‘there’.

Being-in is distinct from the present-at-hand insideness of something present-at-hand ‘in’ something else that is present-at-hand; Being-in is not a characteristic that is effected, or even just elicited, in a present-at-hand subject by the ‘world’s’ Being-present-at-hand; Being-in is rather an essential kind of Being of this entity itself. But in that case, what else is presented with this phenomenon than the commercium which is present-at-hand between a subject present-at-hand and an Object present-at-hand? Such an interpretation would come closer to the phenomenal content if we were to say that Dasein is the Being of this ‘between’.

Proximally, factical Dasein is in the with-world, which is discovered in an average way. Proximally, it is not ‘I’, in the sense of my own Self; that ‘am’, but rather the Others, whose way is that of the “they”.3 In terms of the “they”, and as the “they”, I am ‘given’ proximally to ‘myself’ [mir “selbst”]. Proximally Dasein is “they”, and for the most part it remains so. If Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the ‘world’ and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of the disguises with which Dasein bars its own way.

Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The “they“, which supplies the answer to the question of the “who” of everyday Dasein, is the “nobody” to whom every Dasein has already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-other [Untereinandersein]. In these characters of Being which we have exhibited—everyday Being-among-one-another, distantiality, averageness, levelling down, publicness, the disburdening of one’s Being, and accommodation—lies that ‘constancy’ of Dasein which is closest to us. This “constancy” pertains not to the enduring Being-present-at-hand of something, but rather to Dasein’s kind of Being as Being-with. Neither the Self of one’s own Dasein nor the Self of the Other has as yet found itself or lost itself as long as it is [seiend] in the modes we have mentioned. In these modes one’s way of Being is that of inauthenticity and failure to stand by one’s Self.33 To be in this way signifies no lessening of Dasein’s facticity, just as the “they”, as the “nobody”, is by no means nothing at all. On the contrary, in this kind of Being, Dasein is an ens realissimum, if by ‘Reality’ we understand a Being that has the character of Dasein.

But this distantiality which belongs to Being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection [Botmässigkeit] to Others. It itself is not;31 its Being has been taken away by the Others. Dasein’s everyday possibilities of Being are for the Others to dispose of as they please. These Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent them. What is decisive is just that inconspicuous domination by Others which has already been taken over unawares from Dasein as Being-with. One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their power. ‘The Others’ whom one thus designates in order to cover up the fact of one’s belonging to them essentially oneself, are those who proximally and for the most part ‘are there’ in everyday Being-with-one-another. The “who” is not this one, not that one, not oneself [man selbst], not some people [einige], and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the “they” [das Man]. H. 127 We have shown earlier how in the environment which lies closest to us, the public ‘environment’ already is ready-to-hand and is also a matter of concern [mitbesorgt]. In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of ‘the Others’, in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the “they” is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. The “they”, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness. The “they” has its own ways in which to be. That tendency of Being-with which we have called “distantiality” is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the “they”. The “they”, in its Being, essentially makes an issue of this. Thus the “they” maintains itself factically in the averageness of that which belongs to it, of that which it regards as valid and that which it does not, and of that to which it grants success and that to which it denies it. In this averageness with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, it keeps watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force. This care of averageness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the “levelling down” [Einebnung] of all possibilities of Being.

In that with which we concern ourselves environmentally the Others are encountered as what they are; they are what they do [sie sind das, was sie betreiben].

The structure of the world’s worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world. H. 124 Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others belongs to it; this means that because Dasein’s Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of Being, which, more than anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible.23 Knowing oneself [Sichkennen] is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It operates proximally in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us—Being-in-the-world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with the Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with—an acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed.

In this context of an existential analytic of factical Dasein, the question arises whether giving the “I” in the way we have mentioned discloses Dasein in its everydayness, if it discloses Dasein at all. Is it then obvious a priori that access to Dasein must be gained only by mere reflective awareness of the “I” of actions? What if this kind of ‘giving-itself’ on the part of Dasein should lead our existential analytic astray and do so, indeed, in a manner grounded in the Being of Dasein itself? Perhaps when Dasein addresses itself in the way which is closest to itself; it always says “I am this entity”, and in the long run says this loudest when it is ‘not’ this entity. Dasein is in each case mine, and this is its constitution; but what if this should be the very reason why, proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself? What if the aforementioned approach, starting with the givenness of the “I” to Dasein itself; and with a rather patent self-interpretation of Dasein, should lead the existential analytic, as it were, into a pitfall? If that which is accessible by mere “giving” can be determined, there is presumably an ontological horizon for determining it; but what if this horizon should remain in principle undetermined? It may well be that it is always ontically correct to say of this entity that ‘I’ am it. Yet the ontological analytic which makes use of such assertions must make certain reservations about them in principle. The word ‘I’ is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator, indicating something which may perhaps reveal itself as its ‘opposite’ in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the ‘not-I’ is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks ‘I-hood’ [“Ichheit”], but is rather a definite kind of Being which the ‘I’ itself possesses, such as having lost itself [Selbstverlorenheit].

As Being-in-the-world, Dasein maintains itself essentially in a de-severing. This de-severance—the farness of the ready-to-hand from Dasein itself—is something that Dasein can never cross over. Of course the remoteness of something ready-to-hand from Dasein can show up as a distance from it,72 if this remoteness is determined by a relation to some Thing which gets thought of as present-at-hand at the place Dasein has formerly occupied. Dasein can subsequently traverse the “between” of this distance, but only in such a way that the distance itself becomes one which has been desevered*. So little has Dasein crossed over its de-severance that it has rather taken it along with it and keeps doing so constantly; for Dasein is essentially de-severance—that is, it is spatial. It cannot wander about within the current range of its de-severances; it can never do more than change them. Dasein is spatial in that it discovers space circumspectively, so that indeed it constantly comports itself de-severantly* towards the entities thus spatially encountered.

The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the ‘true world’—of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside.71 H. 107 When one is primarily and even exclusively oriented towards remotenesses as measured distances, the primordial spatiality of Being-in is concealed. That which is presumably ‘closest’ is by no means that which is at the smallest distance ‘from us’. It lies in that which is desevered to an average extent when we reach for it, grasp it, or look at it. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the way of de-severance, its dealings always keep within an ‘environment’ which is desevered from it with a certain leeway [Spielraum]; accordingly our seeing and hearing always go proximally beyond what is distantially ‘closest’. Seeing and hearing are distance-senses [Fernsinne] not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that Dasein as deseverant mainly dwells. When, for instance, a man wears a pair of spectacles which are so close to him distantially that they are ‘sitting on his nose’, they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall. Such equipment has so little closeness that often it is proximally quite impossible to find. Equipment for seeing—and likewise for hearing, such as the telephone receiver—has what we have designated as the inconspicuousness of the proximally ready-to-hand. So too, for instance, does the street, as equipment for walking. One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the closest and Realest of all that is ready-to-hand, and it slides itself; as it were, along certain portions of one’s body—the soles of one’s feet. And yet it is farther remote than the acquaintance whom one encounters ‘on the street’ at a ‘remoteness’ [“Entfernung”] of twenty paces when one is taking such a walk. Circumspective concern decides as to the closeness and farness of what is proximally ready-to-hand environmentally. Whatever this concern dwells alongside beforehand is what is closest, and this is what regulates our de-severances.

Yet only in thus ‘coming before us’70 is the current world authentically ready-to-hand. The Objective distances of Things present-at-hand do not coincide with the remoteness and closeness of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world.

“De-severing”* amounts to making the farness vanish—that is, making the remoteness of something disappear, bringing it close.68 Dasein is essentially de-severant: it lets any entity be encountered close by as the entity which it is.

A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand, which functions both as this definite equipment and as something indicative of [was… anzeigt] the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, of referential totalities, and of worldhood. Here is rooted the special status of the sign as something ready-to-hand in that environment with which we concern ourselves circumspectively. Thus the reference or the assignment itself cannot be conceived as a sign if it is to serve ontologically as the foundation upon which signs are based. Reference is not an ontical characteristic of something ready-to-hand, when it is rather that by which readiness-to-hand itself is constituted.

Being-in-the-world, according to our Interpretation hitherto, amounts to a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assignments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment. Any concern is already as it is, because of some familiarity with the world. In this familiarity Dasein can lose itself in what it encounters within-the-world and be fascinated with it.

The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ [“Handlichkeit”] of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call “readiness-to-hand” [Zuhandenheit].

The Greeks had an appropriate term for ‘Things’: πράγματα—that is to say, that which one has to do with in one’s concernful dealings (πρᾶξις). But ontologically, the specifically ‘pragmatic’ character of the πράγματα is just what the Greeks left in obscurity; they thought of these ‘proximally’ as ‘mere Things’. We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern “equipment“.7 In our dealings we come across equipment for writing, sewing, working, transportation, measurement. The kind of Being which equipment possesses must be exhibited. The clue for doing this lies in our first defining what makes an item of equipment—namely, its equipmentality.

This is the way in which everyday Dasein always is: when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch. The achieving of phenomenological access to the entities which we encounter, consists rather in thrusting aside our interpretative tendencies, which keep thrusting themselves upon us and running along with us, and which conceal not only the phenomenon of such ‘concern’, but even more those entities themselves as encountered of their own accord in our concern with them. These entangling errors become plain if in the course of our investigation we now ask which entities shall be taken as our preliminary theme and established as the pre-phenomenal basis for our study.

1. “World” is used as an ontical concept, and signifies the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world.

When two entities are present-at-hand within the world, and furthermore are worldless in themselves, they can never ‘touch’ each other, nor can either of them ‘be’ ‘alongside’ the other. The clause ‘furthermore are worldless’ must not be left out; for even entities which are not worldless—Dasein itself, for example—are present-at-hand ‘in’ the world, or, more exactly, can with some right and within certain limits be taken as merely present-at-hand.

With regard to its subject-matter, phenomenology is the science of the Being of entities—ontology.

The way in which Being and its structures are encountered in the mode of phenomenon is one which must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenology. Thus the very point of departure [Ausgang] for our analysis requires that it be secured by the proper method, just as much as does our access [Zugang] to the phenomenon, or our passage [Durchgang] through whatever is prevalently covering it up. The idea of grasping and explicating phenomena in a way which is ‘original’ and ‘intuitive’ [“originären” und “intuitiven”] is directly opposed to the naïveté of a haphazard, ‘immediate’, and unreflective ‘beholding’. [“Schauen”].

‘Behind’ the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else; on the other hand, what is to become a phenomenon can be hidden. And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology. Covered-up-ness is the counter-concept to ‘phenomenon’.

Phenomenology is our way of access to what is to be the theme of ontology, and it is our way of giving it demonstrative precision. Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible. In the phenomenological conception of “phenomenon” what one has in mind as that which shows itself is the Being of entities, its meaning, its modifications and derivatives.1 And this showing-itself is not just any showing-itself, nor is it some such thing as appearing. Least of all can the Being of entities ever be anything such that ‘behind it’ stands something else ‘which does not appear’.

Λόγος as “discourse” means rather the same as δηλοῦν: to make manifest what one is ‘talking about’ in one’s discourse.30 Aristotle has explicated this function of discourse more precisely as ἀποφαίνεσθαι.iv The λόγος lets something be seen (φαίνεσθαι), namely, what the discourse is about; and it does so either for the one who is doing the talking (the medium) or for persons who are talking with one another, as the case may be. Discourse ‘lets something be seen’ ἀπο…: that is, it lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about.31 In discourse (ἀποφανσις), so far as it is genuine, what is said [was geredet ist] is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in what it says [in ihrem Gesagten], makes manifest what it is talking about, and thus makes this accessible to the other party. This is the structure of the λόγος as ἀποφανσις. This mode of making manifest in the sense of letting something be seen by pointing it out, does not go with all kinds of ‘discourse’. Requesting (εὐχή), for instance, also makes manifest, but in a different way.

But what thus shows itself (the “phenomenon” in the genuine primordial sense) is at the same time an ‘appearance’ as an emanation of something which hides itself in that appearance—an emanation which announces.

Instead we shall give an interpretation of Aristotle’s essay on time,ii which may be chosen as providing a way of discriminating the basis and the limitations of the ancient science of Being.

Only because it is ‘historical’ can an era be unhistoriological.

Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us—even that which is closest: we are it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest.

Sciences are ways of Being in which Dasein comports itself towards entities which it need not be itself. But to Dasein, Being in a world is something that belongs essentially.

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it.

Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.

Laying the foundations for the sciences in this way is different in principle from the kind of ‘logic’ which limps along after, investigating the status of some science as it chances to find it, in order to discover its ‘method’. Laying the foundations, as we have described it, is rather a productive logic—in the sense that it leaps ahead, as it were, into some area of Being, discloses it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry.

Does it simply remain—or is it at all—a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?

This guiding activity of taking a look at Being arises from the average understanding of Being in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution14 of Dasein itself.

Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his own Being.

Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the ‘there is’.10

Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei…]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]. In investigative questions—that is, in questions which are specifically theoretical—what is asked about is determined and conceptualized. Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the asking [das Erfragte]; this is what is really intended:8 with this the inquiry reaches its goal.

This reversal of the figural order, itself the figure of chiasmus that crosses the attributes of inside and outside and leads to the annihilation of the conscious subject, bends the themes and the rhetoric from their apparently traditional mode towards a specifically Rilkean one. It is difficult to comprehend this reversal on the level of the themes. The notion of objects as containers of a subjectivity which is not that of the self that considers them is incomprehensible as long as one tries to understand it from the perspective of the subject. Instead of conceiving of the poem’s rhetoric as the instrument of the subject, of the object, or of the relationship between them, it is preferable to reverse the perspective and to conceive of these categories as standing in the service of the language that has produced them. The metaphor of the violin fits the dramatic action of the text so perfectly and the image seems so flawlessly right because its external structure (box, string, cleft that produces and liberates the sound) triggers and orders the entire figural play that articulates the poem. The metaphorical entity is not selected because it corresponds analogically to the inner experience of a subject but because its structure corresponds to that of a linguistic figure: the violin is like a metaphor because it transforms an interior content into an outward5 sonorous “thing.” The openings in the box (so fittingly shaped like the algorithm of the integral calculus of totalization) correspond precisely to the outside-directed turn that occurs in all metaphorical representations. The musical instrument does not represent the subjectivity of a consciousness but a potential inherent in language; it is the metaphor of a metaphor. What appears to be the inwardness of things, the hollow inside of the box, is not a substantial analogy between the self and world of things but a formal and structural analogy between these* things and the figural resources of words. The coming into being of metaphor corresponds point by point to the apparent description of the object. But it is not surprising that, in evoking the details of the metaphorical instrument or vehicle (the perfect fit of the string to the box, the openings in the sounding-board, etc.), the metaphor comes into being before our eyes, since the object has been chosen exactly for this purpose. The correspondence does not confirm a hidden unity that exists in the nature of things and of entities; it is rather like the seamless encasement of the pieces in a puzzle. Perfect adjustment can take place only because the totality was established beforehand and in an entirely formal manner. The poem “Am Rande der Nacht” still disguises this strategy by simulating the birth of metaphor as the confirmation and the proof of the unity apodictically announced at the beginning of the text. But a careful reading can reveal the stratagem without having recourse to outside information. The poem, which first appeared to be a confrontation between man and nature, is in fact the simulacrum of a description in which the structure of the described object is that of a figural potential of language. Moreover, one should not forget that the metaphor of the metaphor is represented as an acoustical process: the metaphorical object is, literally, a musical instrument. The perfect encasing of the figures makes language sing like a violin. The priority of the phonic element that was stressed with regard to The Book of Monastic Life has not been abandoned. Not only is it audible in the parallel between the symbolic action and the euphony of the assonances, but it extends to the play of figuration. The Book of Images is not less “phonocentric” than The Book of Hours—far from it, since now the imperatives of euphony govern not only the choice of words but the choice of figures as well.

The present time is caught up in a whirlwind in which decision making (krisis) has become increasingly numb, the mechanisms and tendencies of which remain obscure, and which must be made intelligible at the cost of a considerable effort of anamnesis as much as of meticulous attention to the complexity of what is taking place.

The object of this work is technics, apprehended as the horizon of all possibility to come and of all possibility of a future. This question still seemed secondary when, ten years ago, I was setting down its first delineations. Today, it informs all types of research, and the enormousness of the question summons us all. This calls for a work whose urgency is still hardly grasped despite the high stakes of the issue and the disquiet it arouses— a long and exacting task, as exciting as it will be difficult, stirring a necessary but deaf and dangerous impatience. Here I would like to warn the reader of this difficulty and of its necessity: at its very origin and up until now, philosophy has repressed technics as an object of thought. Technics is the unthought.

agnosed as GBS but subseq

good appreciation of common GBS

shortcuts

Folder Tree

collaboration in human and machine intelligence

concentricity

Themes

Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology.

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The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology,and Philosophy of the Human Future, First Edition. Edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More.© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Performance Enhancement and Legal Theor

For one, in terms of scholarship, the invisible discipline is not really just something out there for objective critical analysis, but rather is the very mode in which the university and humanities have lived and moved and had their very being:

 I gained a better appreciation for how the final paper, was in essence a stitching and weaving together of text to make its narration and logical argument appear to unfold linearly, when in fact the chronological production of the text had to be radically rearranged to effect this appearance (see image above and the draft on Etherpad here: http://tiny.cc/etherdraft). I became very curious about visualizing the temporalities of production of the work of my colleagues, and thinking more about how different temporal processes, conscious or not, have relationship to other features in final product.

cyborg social-reflection

“programming”

to a large degree engendered by the cyborg university itself, and specifically mothered by it

cyborg oppressor’s

And yet, it will be precisely this non-automatable labor of building dialogue, shared understanding, and mutual goals, across the sharply divided cultures of the cyborg world—through humility, experimentation, and a near inhuman persistence, in spaces where social, professional, and practical gratification is not guaranteed—on which the reprogramming of the cyborg world depends.  Or at least I will argue below.

A truly (re)visionary workflow

Paradoxically, it is not the edition that scholars commonly work from or cite.

93.1 percent

93.1 percent