phenomena

For the task of a psychology this means that, prior to all theories about the connection of the psychic with the bodily or of sense life with the sense organs, what really matters first is to accept the actual elements of psychic life as they are immediately accessible. The first and foremost task is a ‘classification of psychic PHENOMENA,’ a division of psychic PHENOMENA not on the basis of an arbitrary principle imposed from without, but a division and order which follows the nature of the psychic, an order—which would include the formation of basic concepts—drawn from the essence of the matters being considered here, from the essence of the psychic itself. GA20EN §4

Brentano thus tried to provide the foundations for the science of consciousness, of lived experiences, of the psychic in the broadest sense, by accepting the actual elements just as they are given in this field. He did not begin with theories about the psychic, about the soul itself, about the connection of the psychic with the physiological and biological. Instead, he first clarified what it is that is given when one speaks of the psychic, of lived experiences. His major work, Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint (1874), is divided into two books. The first book discusses psychology as a science and the second addresses psychic PHENOMENA in general. ‘Empirical’ here does not mean inductive in the sense given to it by the natural sciences, but rather drawn from the subject matter, without constructions. The first thing, therefore, is to characterize the psychic PHENOMENA themselves, to order their multiplicity according to basic structures; hence the task of a ‘classification.’ ‘Classification’ means dividing and ordering actual elements which are already given. Ordering is always done from a point of view, as everyone says. Point of view is that toward which I look, with regard to which I make certain distinctions in a domain of subject matter. This regard or point of view can vary in kind. I can order a given manifold of objects with regard to a devised scheme; I can imagine that there are very general processes which run from within to without and others which proceed from without to within, and order the psychic PHENOMENA from this point of view. Second, the point of view can be taken from the objective context which bears a connection with that which is itself to be ordered, in the manner that I order psychic processes with regard to physiological relationships. The attempt was accordingly made to define even thinking and willing in terms of PHENOMENA of neural kinetics. Third, the point of view can itself be drawn from the actual elements to be ordered. No principle is superimposed upon them; it is rather drawn from the actual elements themselves. This is the real maxim which Brentano follows in his classification: “The order of lived experiences must be natural.” An experience must be assigned to a class to which it belongs in accordance with its nature. ‘Nature’ here means that which is what it is, as seen from itself. When it is genuine, a classification can be made only “from a prior familiarity with the objects,” “from the study of the objects.” I must have prior familiarity with the objects, their basic structures, if I am to order them properly, in accord with the subject matter or object. The question therefore arises, what is the nature of psychic PHENOMENA compared with the physical? This is the question posed by Brentano in the first book on psychology. He says that psychic PHENOMENA differ from all physical PHENOMENA by nothing so much as by the indwelling in them of something objective. Accordingly, if there are to be distinctions within the field of psychic PHENOMENA, they must be distinctions with respect to the basic structure of this indwelling, distinctions in the way in which something is objective in these lived experiences. These differences in how something is objective in the various lived experiences, the represented in representing, the judged in judging, the willed in willing, accordingly form the principal distinctions of classes among the psychic PHENOMENA. This basic structure of the psychic, whereby something objective inheres in each lived experience, is called intentional inexistence by Brentano. GA20EN §4

Intentio is a Scholastic expression which means directing itself toward. Brentano speaks of the intentional inexistence of the object. Each lived experience directs itself toward something in a way which varies according to the distinctive character of the experience. To represent something after the manner of representing is a different self-directing than to judge something after the manner of judging. Brentano expressly emphasizes that Aristotle already made this point of view the basis for his treatment of psychic PHENOMENA, and that the Scholastics took over this phenomenon of intentionality. GA20EN §4

Regarding this basic structure of psychic PHENOMENA, Brentano divides the various ways of self-directedness toward their particular objects into three basic classes of psychic comportment: representation, judgment, and interest. “We speak of a representing wherever something appears,” wherever something is simply given and the simply given is perceived. Representing in the broadest sense is the simple having of something. Brentano interprets judging as “an accepting as true or a rejecting as false.” In contrast to merely having something, judging is taking a definite position toward the represented as represented. Brentano designates the third class with different titles: interest, love, emotion. “This class for us shall include all psychic appearances which are not contained in the first two classes.” He emphasizes that a proper expression for these acts of taking an interest in something is lacking. It was later also called ‘valuing,’ or better yet, ‘worth-taking.’ GA20EN §4

Using this basic division of psychic experiences as a guide, Brentano seeks to exhibit the basic structure of representing, judging, and emotions. Regarding the relationship of these PHENOMENA, Brentano laid down the following basic thesis: Every psychic phenomenon is itself either a representation or is based upon representations. “This representing forms the basis of judging just as it does of desiring and every other psychic act. Nothing can be judged, but also nothing can be desired, nothing can be hoped or feared, if it is not represented.” Hence the simple having of something assumes the function of a basic comportment. Judging and taking an interest are possible only if something is represented, which gets judged, in which an interest is taken. Brentano operates not only in mere description but tries to set off this division from the traditional one in a critical examination which we will not pursue any further. GA20EN §4

We want to consider intentionality first, precisely because contemporary philosophy then and even now actually finds this phenomenon offensive, because intentionality is precisely what prevents an immediate and unprejudiced reception of what phenomenology wants to do. Intentionality was already alluded to in our account of how Brentano sought to classify the totality of psychic PHENOMENA in strict accord with it. Brentano discerned in intentionality the structure which constitutes the true nature of a psychic phenomenon. Intentionality thus became for him the criterion for the distinction of psychic from physical PHENOMENA. But at the same time this structure is the criterion and principle of a natural division among psychic PHENOMENA themselves, inasmuch as it is already found in the essence which appears in these PHENOMENA. Brentano expressly emphasizes that he is only taking up what Aristotle and the Scholastics were already acquainted with. It was through Brentano that Husserl learned to see intentionality. GA20EN §5

What makes us blind to intentionality is the presumption that what we have here is a theory of the relation between physical and psychic, whereas what is really exhibited is simply a structure of the psychic itself. Whether that toward which representing directs itself is a real material thing or merely something fancied, whether acknowledging acknowledges a value or whether judging directs itself toward something else which is not real, the first thing to see is this directing-itself-toward as such. The structure of comportments, we might say, is to be made secure without any epistemological dogma. It is only when we have rightly seen this that we can, by means of it, come to a sharper formulation and perhaps a critique of intentionality as it has been interpreted up to now. We shall learn that in fact even in phenomenology there are still unclarified assumptions associated with intentionality which admittedly make it truly difficult for a philosophy so burdened with dogmas as Neo-Kantianism to see plainly what has been exhibited here. As long as we think in dogmas and directions, we first tend to assume something along the same lines. And we hold to what we assume all the more so as the PHENOMENA are not in fact exhaustively brought out into the open. GA20EN §5

These structural continuities and levels of fulfillment, demonstration, and verification are relatively easy to see in the field of intuitive representation. But they are to be found without exception in all acts, for example, in the domain of pure theoretical comportment, determination, and speech. Without the possibility here of following the structures of every pertinent intention to its intended as such, the scientific elaboration of a genuine phenomenology (drawn from the PHENOMENA themselves) of concept formation—the genesis of the concept from raw meaning—cannot even be considered. But without this foundation every logic remains a matter for dilettantes or a construction. GA20EN §5

It has already been noted that the fundamental sense of intuition is not necessarily limited to the originary apprehension of the sensory. In addition, the concept does not imply even the slightest assumption as to whether the intuition is realized in a flash and yields isolated pointlike objects. At the same time we have, with the closer examination of the intentional connection of intention and fulfillment and the elaboration of evidence as an identifying act, tacitly introduced PHENOMENA without clarifying them. The determination of truth as a truth-relation, say, of a state of affairs, was accomplished by going back to propositions and assertions in which it was suggested that we consummate these assertions in perceiving the chair as a thing. GA20EN §6

The name ‘phenomenology’ has two components, ‘phenomenon’ and ‘-logy.’ The latter phrase is familiar from such usages as theology, biology, physiology, sociology, and is commonly translated as ‘science of’: theology, science of God; biology, science of life, of organic nature; sociology, science of the community. Accordingly, phenomenology is the science of PHENOMENA. ‘Logy,’ science of, varies in its character according to the thematic matter, which is logically and formally undefined. In our case, it is defined by what phenomenon stands for. So, to begin with, the first part of the name must be clarified (in order to see what this particular —logy stands for). GA20EN §9

The objects of philosophical research have the character of the phenomenon. In brief, such research deals with PHENOMENA and only with PHENOMENA. Phenomenology in its original and initial meaning, which is captured in the expression ‘phenomenology’, signifies a way of encountering something. It is in fact the outstanding way: showing itself in itself. The expression phenomenology names the way something has to be there through and for legein, for conceptual exposition and interpretation. As our preceding discussion has shown, phenomenology deals with intentionality in its apriori. The structures of intentionality in its apriori are the PHENOMENA. In other words, the structures of intentionality in its apriori circumscribe the objects which are to be made present in themselves in this research and explicated in this presence. The term ‘phenomenon’ however says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but refers only to the way they are encountered. The phenomenal is accordingly everything which becomes visible in this kind of encounter and belongs in this structural context of intentionality. We therefore speak of ‘phenomenal structures’ as of what is seen, specified and examined in this kind of research. Phenomenological signifies everything that belongs to such a way of exhibiting PHENOMENA and phenomenal structures, everything that becomes thematic in this kind of research. The unphenomenological would be everything that does not satisfy this kind of research, its conceptuality and its methods of demonstration. GA20EN §9

Phenomenology as the science of the apriori PHENOMENA of intentionality thus never has anything to do with appearances and even less with mere appearances. It is phenomenologically absurd to speak of the phenomenon as if it were something behind which there would be something else of which it would be a phenomenon in the sense of the appearance which represents and expresses (this something else). A phenomenon is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something behind the phenomenon at all, since what the phenomenon gives is precisely that something in itself. Admittedly, what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. What is in itself visible and in its very sense is accessible only as a phenomenon does not necessarily need to be so already in fact. What a phenomenon is as a possibility is not directly given as a phenomenon but must first be given. As research work, phenomenology is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments. GA20EN §9

Being-covered-up is the counterconcept to phenomenon, and such concealments are really the immediate theme of phenomenological reflection. What can be a phenomenon is first and foremost covered up, or known in a tentative form. The concealment can assume various guises. First, a phenomenon can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered, so that there is no knowledge or clue to its existence. Second, a phenomenon can be buried. This means that it was discovered before but once again got covered up. This is not a total concealment. What was discovered before is still visible, though only as a semblance. But so much semblance—so much being; this concealment understood as disguise is the most frequent and most dangerous kind, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially great. The originally seen PHENOMENA are uprooted, torn from their ground, and are no longer understood in their origins, in their “extraction” from their roots in a particular subject matter. GA20EN §9

The reason why genuinely phenomenological work is difficult is that it must be especially critical of itself in a positive way. The sort of encounter involved in the mode of phenomenon must first of all be wrested from the objects of phenomenological research. This means that the characteristic mode of apprehending PHENOMENA—originarily apprehending interpreting—implies not one iota of an immediate apprehension in the sense in which it can be said that phenomenology is a straightforward seeing which requires absolutely no methodological preparation. Precisely the opposite is the case, which is also why the expressness of the maxim is so essential. Because the phenomenon must first be won, scrutinizing the point of departure for access to the phenomenon and clearing the passage through the concealments already demand a high degree of methodological preparation so that we may be guided and determined by what the phenomenal givenness of intentionality in each instance implies. The demand for an ultimate direct givenness of the PHENOMENA carries no implication of the comfort of an immediate beholding. There can be no disclosure or deduction of essence from essence, apriori from apriori, one from the other. Rather, each and every one of these must come to demonstrative vision. Accordingly, the way to go in each instance begins with the individual phenomenal correlations and varies according to the degree to which the apriori has been uncovered and the tradition has buried it, as well as the kind of obfuscation involved. Since every structure must ultimately be exhibited in itself, phenomenology’s way of research at first assumes the character or the aspect of what is called a picture-book phenomenology. It gives greater prominence to the exhibition of individual structures which are perhaps very useful for a systematic philosophy, even though the exhibition can only be provisional. As a result, there is a tendency to give philosophical sanction to the prominent displays of particular phenomenological considerations by finding a place for them in some sort of dialectic or the like. Against this tendency, it must be stated that at first nothing at all is to be made of the interconnections of the structures of intentionality. Rather, the interconnection of the apriori is always determined only from the subject matter which is to be explored in its phenomenal structure. Furthermore, at first we need not concern ourselves with these considerations, since they will always remain fruitless as long as the concrete aspect of PHENOMENA is not clear. GA20EN §9

In its initial breakthrough, the phenomenological endeavor concentrated on determining the basic PHENOMENA by which the objects of logic and epistemology are given. In short, it concentrated on the intentional comportments which are essentially theoretical in character, in particular on cognitive comportments which are specifically scientific. Of course, these considerations already included aspects of the description of other comportments which are specifically emotional, especially in connection with the question of how acts as such can be expressed in concepts. The thematic goal of the first investigations was to lay open a particular portion of the field. The primary aim of the initial attempt was not to mark off and bring out the whole field itself in a basic way, even though considerations of this sort are not lacking. Moreover, intentionality, the character of objectifying acts, was naturally expounded in the two main directions of intentio and intentum, but these two essential structural moments of the basic constitution of intentionality were as such not yet brought to full clarity. GA20EN §10

The best way to make this clear is to ask: How is the sense of the phenomenological theme, of pure consciousness, defined here? In contrast to the transcendent, the physical in nature, the psychic is the immanently given. It is, as Husserl says here, “the counterthrust of nature.” In view of this immanent psychic character we must now ask, what in it do we investigate as its being? This question, what do we investigate in consciousness as its being, is also formulated by Husserl in this way: what in it can we grasp and define, and fix as objective unities? Being for Husserl means nothing other than true being, objectivity, true for a theoretical scientific knowing. The question of the specific being of consciousness, of lived experiences, is not raised here. What is raised is the question of a distinctive way of being an object for an objective science of consciousness. How must I take the experiential context so that universally valid assertions can be made about it, in order to define the being of consciousness in them? The answer is: if the PHENOMENA are psychic, and so not of nature, then they have an essence which can be grasped, and adequately grasped, in immediate beholding. By going from the individual description of the psychic to a contemplation of its essence, I arrive at a being of consciousness which is objectively definable. What is primary in the characterization of consciousness in its being is the sense of a possible scientific objectivity and not its specifically inherent being, which precedes any possible scientific treatment and has its own sense. It is in this horizon that we should understand what Husserl now says which points in the direction of a personal determination of consciousness: GA20EN §13

Not without misgivings, it is true, does one consider psychology, the science of the ‘psychical,’ merely as a science of ‘psychical PHENOMENA’ and of their connections with the body. But in fact psychology is everywhere governed by those inborn and inevitable objectivations whose correlates are the empirical unities man and animal, and, on the other hand, soul, personality, or character, i.e., disposition of personality. Still, for our purposes it is not necessary to pursue the analysis of the essence of these unity formations nor the problem of how they by themselves determine the task of psychology. After all, it immediately becomes sufficiently clear that these unities are of a kind that is in principle different from the things of nature, realities which according to their essence are such as to be given through adumbrating appearances, whereas this in no way applies to the unities in question. Only the founding substrate ‘human body,’ and not man himself, is a unity of real thinglike appearance; and above all, personality, character, etc. are not such unities. With all such unities we are evidently referred back to the immanent vital unity of the respective ‘consciousness flow’ and to morphological peculiarities that distinguish the various immanent unities of this sort. Consequently, all psychological knowledge, too, even where it is related primarily to human individualities, characters, and dispositions, finds itself referred back to those unities of consciousness, and thereby to the study of the PHENOMENA themselves and of their interconnections. GA20EN §13

(3.) But even if the being of acts and the unity of the experiential stream were determined in their being, the question of the being of the full concrete man would still remain. Can this being be, so to speak, assembled from the being of the material substrate, of the body, and from the soul and the spirit? Is the being of the person the product of the kinds of being of these layers of being? Or is it just here where it becomes evident that this way of a prior division and a subsequent composition does not get at the PHENOMENA? Is it not just so, with any approach to the personal, that the person is taken as a multilayered thing of the world whose being is never reached by way of a determination of the reality of its self-directedness, no matter how extensively it is pursued? What is retained then is always only the being of an already given objective datum, of a real object. This means that it always only comes down to being as objectivity, in the sense of being an object of a reflection. GA20EN §13

As superior as his analyses in the particular certainly are, Husserl does not advance beyond Dilthey. However, at least as I see it, my guess is that even though Dilthey did not raise the question of being and did not even have the means to do so, the tendency to do so was alive in him. Since Dilthey’s formulations are very indefinite precisely in the dimension of the fundamental PHENOMENA, it is impossible to document the presence of this tendency objectively. GA20EN §13

The critical reflection revealed the phenomenologically fundamental question of beinbeing as such without also bringing out the ground of this question. But this ground, and with it the presupposition of the question, can be made clear only after the question is first raised. Pronouncing and uttering the interrogative sentence does not yet raise the question itself. After the manner of the statements of idle chatter, there are also questions which are merely asserted. The critical reflection at this point showed us that phenomenological questioning can begin in the most obvious of matters. But this “matter of course” means that the PHENOMENA are not really exposed to the light of day, that the ways to the matters are not without further ado ready-made, and that there is the constant danger of being misled and forced off the trail. This in general is precisely what constitutes the sense of phenomenology as expository research. GA20EN §14

Just as the PHENOMENA cannot be given without effort—it is rather incumbent upon research to arrive at the PHENOMENA—so likewise is the concept of phenomenology not something which can be definitively determined in a single stroke. Our critical reflection has led us to question whether the thematic field of phenomenology is adequately determined. But this at the same time suggests that the scientific way of handling the theme is modified in its sense in accordance with the more radical conception of the thematic field. The critical reflection likewise gives us reason to doubt the previously given definition of phenomenology as ‘analytic description of intentionality in its apriori.’ Perhaps the phenomenologically original definition of intentionality and in particular the fundamental conception of its being entail a modification of the method of ‘analytic description in the apriori.’ In the end, there is also a modification of the customary division in phenomenology of the different groups of investigations into the phenomenologies of act, subject matter, and relation. Intentionality is indeed the doublet of intentio and intentum. In these two directions, one distinguished the elaboration of the intentio, the act, of the intentum, that to which the act is directed, and finally the elaboration of the relation between these two. A more refined conception of the entity having the character of the intentional will permit us to see and so supersede the threefold basis of this distinction. The closer determination of being will further lead to a more refined conception of the sense of the apriori. Heretofore, the apriori was specified as that which is always already there, that is, it was characterized on the basis of a particular concept of being, the Greek concept. GA20EN §14

It must basically be stressed that the following considerations will not try to present the thematic analysis of Dasein as such; but several essential basic structures are first located in what we have in advance in order to permit us to ask even more basic questions from them. Dasein is to be laid out in its basic constitution, in its average understanding, so that we may articulate the question of being lucidly. In the initial explication only a few PHENOMENA are to be made manifest. But these are the very PHENOMENA which we are to understand as fundamental structures of Dasein. The first aim of this analysis is therefore not so much a fully realized apprehension of all specific structures. Its first aim is rather to lay out the basic constitution of this entity as a whole. This does not require the unbroken fullness of the structures included in this totality along with the adequate and full research horizon which accompanies these structures in their entirety. This is why it is so important first of all to gain the security of the line of sight and to have the theme of the investigation clearly before us. This theme is not a strange and unfamiliar matter but on the contrary the nearest, which is perhaps precisely why it leads us astray into mistakes. What constantly conceals the phenomenal context to be laid open in this entity is the mistaking and misinterpreting indigenous to our intimate familiarity with the entity. But just to the extent that this entity is in one respect especially close to the investigator, it is that much easier to pass over. The obvious is not even a possible theme at the outset. Since the securing of the direction of vision and the setting aside of misleading lines of questioning remains the immediate requirement, it is urgent at the outset to bring an immediately phenomenal and basically coherent set of structures into view. GA20EN §18

But the provisional indication of this character at the same time contains specific directions for us relating to the subsequent analysis. The specification ‘to be’ the being directs us to understand all PHENOMENA of Dasein primarily as ways of its ‘to-be.’ This prohibits us from experiencing and interrogating this entity, Dasein, on its ‘outward appearance,’ on what it is composed of, on parts and layers which a particular kind of consideration can find in it. Outward appearance, be it ever so broadly defined, in principle never gives the answer to the question of the way ‘to be.’ Body, soul, spirit may in a certain respect designate what this entity is composed of, but with this composite and its composition the way of being of this entity is from the beginning left undetermined; the least of all the possibilities is to extract it afterwards from this composite, since this determination of the entity which characterizes it as body, soul, and spirit has placed me in a completely different dimension of being really extraneous to Dasein. Whether this entity ‘is composed of’ the physical, psychic, and spiritual and how these realities are to be determined is here left completely unquestioned. We place ourselves in principle outside of this experiential and interrogative horizon outlined by the definition of the most customary name for this entity, man: homo animal rationale. What is to be determined is not an outward appearance of this entity but from the outset and throughout solely its way to be, not the what of that of which it is composed but the how of its being and the characters of this how. GA20EN §18

This task of conceiving Dasein in its everydayness does not mean describing the Dasein at a primitive stage of its being. Everydayness is in no way identical with primitiveness. Everydayness is rather a distinctive how of the being of Dasein, even when and precisely when this Dasein has an inherently highly developed and differentiated culture at its disposal. On the other hand, even primitive Dasein in its way has possibilities of exceptional, non-everyday, and unusual being, which means that it also has in its turn a specific way of everydayness. But often the consideration of primitive forms of Dasein can more readily provide directions in seeing and verifying certain PHENOMENA of Dasein, inasmuch as here the danger of concealment through theory, which Dasein itself characteristically supplies rather than something else outside of Dasein, is not yet so powerful. But it is just here that an especially critical attitude is needed, for what we know from primitive stages of Dasein is at first purely historically, geographically, and in world view furthest from us and alien to our culture. What is thus imparted to us about ‘primitive life’ is already pervaded by a particular interpretation. Indeed, it is an interpretation which cannot be based on an actual fundamental analysis of Dasein itself but which works with categories of man and human relationships taken from some sort of psychology. The fundamental analysis of Dasein is just the right presupposition for an understanding of the primitive, and not the reverse: there is no reason to believe that the sense of this entity can in some way be assembled by putting together bits of information about primitive Dasein. This point is being made because of the fact that we shall on occasion, but only sparingly, resort to primitive Dasein to exemplify certain PHENOMENA. The exemplification must of course remain subject to this critical consideration, it is no more than an exemplification. The contents and the structures being evoked here are drawn from the matters and from envisaging the entity itself which we are. GA20EN §18

In these preliminary considerations it is becoming clear to us that even if we are not falsely educated by philosophical prejudices and theories about the subject and consciousness, even if we approach these PHENOMENA to some extent without encumbrances, there are still difficulties in actually seeing what must be seen. The natural approach, even though it is not philosophically reflected and conceptually defined, does not really move in the direction of seeing the Dasein as such. Instead, inasmuch as it is a mode of being of this very Dasein, it tends to live away from itself. Even the way in which it knows itself is determined by this peculiarity of Dasein to live away from itself. In order to have a preliminary orientation at all on the sense in which all the characters of this being are to be taken, we offer the pointer that this entity is the very entity which we ourselves are. GA20EN §18

All of these genuine PHENOMENA can be investigated and correctly understood from the outset only if it is made clear that knowing, according to its sense, is already a mode of the in-being of Dasein; that knowing is not something by which Dasein, not yet in the world at first, upon knowing would produce a relation to the world. How should this initially worldless being of the subject even be understood? There can never be a problem, for example, on how the opposition of the two entities, subject and object, is possible. Knowing understood as apprehending has sense only on the basis of an already-being-involved-with. This already-being-involved-with, in which knowing as such can first ‘live,’ is not first ‘produced’ directly by a cognitive performance; Dasein, whether it ever knows it or not, is as Dasein already involved with a world. The priority which has always been granted to cognitive comportment from ancient times is at the same time associated with the peculiar tendency to define the being of the world in which Dasein is primarily in terms of how it shows itself for a cognitive comportment. In other words, the manner of being of the world was characterized by referring to its specific objectivity for world cognition. Regarded in this way, there is accordingly an inner connection between the manner of being defining the world and the basic characterization of Dasein itself with respect to its primary relation to the world as knowing. GA20EN §20

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

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

It thus becomes clear that the references are precisely the involvements (Wobei) in which the concernful occupation dwells; it does not dwell among isolated things of the environing world and certainly not among thematically or theoretically perceived objects. Rather things constantly step back into the referential totality or, more properly stated, in the immediacy of everyday occupation they never even first step out of it. That they do not step out of the referential totality, which itself is encountered primarily in the form of familiarity: this phenomenon characterizes the obviousness and unobtrusiveness of the reality of the environing world. Things recede into relations, they do not obtrude themselves, in order thus to be there for concern. These primary PHENOMENA of encounter: reference, referential totality, the closed character of the referential context, familiarity of the referential whole, things not stepping out of referential relations, are of course seen only if the original phenomenological direction of vision is assumed and above all seen to its conclusion, which means letting the world be encountered in concern. This phenomenon is really passed over when the world is from the start approached as given for observation or, as is by and large the case even in phenomenology, when the world is approached just as it shows itself in an isolated, so-called sense perception of a thing, and this isolated free-floating perception of a thing is now interrogated on the specific kind of givenness belonging to its object. There is here a basic deception for phenomenology which is peculiarly frequent and persistent. It consists in having the theme determined by the way it is phenomenologically investigated. For inasmuch as phenomenological investigation is itself theoretical, the investigator is easily motivated to make a specifically theoretical comportment to the world his theme. Thus a specifically theoretical apprehension of the thing is put forward as an exemplary mode of being-in-the-world, instead of phenomenologically placing oneself directly in the current and the continuity of access of the everyday preoccupation with things, which is inconspicuous enough, and phenomenally recording what is encountered in it. It is precisely this inconspicuousness of comportment and of its corresponding way of having the world which must be secured in order to see in it the specific presence of the world. GA20EN §23

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

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

The term reference points formally to a structure which finds its expression in various PHENOMENA. A sign is a kind of reference, and so is a symbol, symptom, trace, document, testimony, expression, relic. These PHENOMENA of reference cannot be pursued in detail here, not only because they require comprehensive analyses but because we still do not have the basis for such an analysis, if it is to maintain a unified orientation. We want to arrive at this basis precisely with the interpretation of world and Dasein’s in-being. GA20EN §23

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

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

The interconnection of the PHENOMENA of meaningfulness, sign, reference, relation may first be formally indicated in the following propositions, which say something only if they have themselves arisen from the clarification of the PHENOMENA themselves, and are understood in this way rather than as mere formulas. Thereupon it can be said: every reference is a relation but not every relation is a reference. Every sign, or better, ‘indication,’ is an ontic reference, but not every reference is a sign. This at the same time implies that every sign is a relation, but not every relation is a sign. Moreover, every sign means, which here signifies that it has the mode of being of meaningfulness. Meaning, however, is never a sign. Relation is the most universal formal character of these PHENOMENA. Sign, reference, meaning are all relations. But just because the phenomenon of relation is the most universal, it is not the origin of these PHENOMENA, that out of which the relationships which organize their particular structures can in turn be understood. GA20EN §23

Thus all taking, using, and instituting of signs are only a particular development of the specific concern in the environing world, insofar as it is to be made available. At this point, I cannot enter into a more detailed classification of the PHENOMENA of signs like omen, vestige, symptom, mark, and distinguishing mark. I can at least say that they retain the two-fold distinction in the kind of institution, while at the same time providing insight into the character of a superior presence which is constitutive for being a sign. GA20EN §23

With regard to the phenomenon of relation and its relationship of being to reference, sign and meaningfulness, it must be said that, as the formal structural element, relation is accessible at all times in references and signs. It is accessible specifically by way of a disregard, not only of the concretion and material content of these PHENOMENA, but also that it is itself an indicating and referring of the relational kind, in order to let us see only the empty in-order-to. The apprehension of pure relations as such is a supreme way, but at the same time also the emptiest way of objectifying entities. It is a making present which does not go along with references and sign-taking in a primary way; rather, it only looks at and thus takes in the whole as a whole of relations. GA20EN §23

The second question of the reality of the real, the question of the being of the worldhood of the world, cannot mean an investigation into how the world now actually manages to be. To begin with, such a question, if it is to be scientifically useful, presupposes that we understand what is meant by ‘being’ if we wish to explain how the entity brings it about, that it is. But this understanding of ‘being,’ to be acquired in advance, then no longer even lets us get to the point of asking in this way. For this question involves taking being as its own entity, it tries to explain being in terms of an entity. When it becomes clear how absurd it is to expect, so to speak, a trick from being which it uses in order to be, and when a question of being thus understood is then referred back to the entity, this in no way means that nothing can be made of ‘being-in-itself’ but always only of the entity insofar as it is something apprehended, something objective in a consciousness. This would bring us to the familiar proposition that an entity always is only for a consciousness. This proposition is known as the ‘principle of immanence,’ which keeps all epistemologies busy over its pros and cons. It has led directly to the problem of knowledge, without benefit of asking what might be meant by ‘immanence,’ what findings from the PHENOMENA themselves are taken up in it, if it says anything at all, and what is basically meant by the proposition “An entity always is only for a consciousness.” GA20EN §24

Scheler here has a special need to note the time when he first presented this theory. In this regard I want to stress that I also have proposed this theory already for seven years. As I have already said, however, this agreement obviously comes from the common root of Dilthey’s initiative and the phenomenological way of putting questions. I want to emphasize expressly that Scheler’s theory, especially insofar as it takes into account the specific function of corporeality in the structure of the reality of the world, will lead us to discover some essential PHENOMENA. This is because Scheler has worked out these PHENOMENA of the biological in an essential way and has probably gone the farthest of all today in the exploration of these PHENOMENA and their structure. We can therefore expect his anthropology to be an essential advance in the exploration of these PHENOMENA. GA20EN §24

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

In order to make headway in what follows, I will deal only very sketchily with the last two points. Of primary importance for me is the elaboration of the structure of aroundness. The structure of the aroundness of the world, this specific environmentality, is defined by three interconnected PHENOMENA: remotion, region, orientation (directionality, directedness). GA20EN §25

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

The character of the indicated constellation into which a particular environmental thing can move, for example, a car in taking the way to . . . , includes the original form of ‘where to,’ that is, ‘to’ a location, more precisely put, to a place, and this implies a particular region. Region is nothing but the ‘where of a whereto.’ Region is essentially oriented to the ‘to’ of a whereto, to direction. These PHENOMENA—nearness, distance, direction—give the first basic structure of the aroundness. If we take these PHENOMENA in their unity and uniformity, we can say that the aroundness in the world is the regional nearness and distance of the intimate with-which of concern. That with which I dwell in everyday concern is defined by the near and far, specifically by regional, oriented, directed nearness and distance. But both structural moments—region, near and far—imply being oriented to the concerned Dasein itself. Near and far as well as region have this characteristic reference back to concerned preoccupation. Only with this back reference seen from the vantage of environmental things, with this orientation of the near and far and of what is defined in the character of the region, is the full structure of the ‘around’ of aroundness secured. GA20EN §25

Kant sees neither the authentic founding context of orientation nor the right phenomenal composition. His intention from the beginning was of course not so much to clarify the phenomenon of orientation as to show that all orientation contains a ‘subjective principle,’ by which he meant the feeling for right and left. Since we are here suspending the concept of subject in the Kantian sense, which goes back to Descartes, and are taking the PHENOMENA from Dasein itself in its full constitution of being, it would be premature and inappropriate to call right and left ‘subjective principles.’ If we wanted to call right and left ‘subjective principles’ in this context, then the basic constitutive state, whereby a world is always already present for Dasein, would also have to be called a ‘subjective principle.’ But surely it is not admissible to characterize the presence of a world as a ‘subjective principle.’ To do so shows just how little the traditional concept of the subject really does justice to what constitutes the authentic structure of Dasein, which is the structure of what the concept of the subject naturally always means de facto. But the way in which we appropriate orientation, the condition that makes it possible for us to orient ourselves, already shows that orientation belongs to Dasein itself. GA20EN §25

Let us further recall that this entity which we call Dasein, thus designating it more appropriately by a pure expression of being, is the entity which I myself am in any given time. Belonging to this being, called Dasein, is the temporal particularity of an I which is this being. When we ask about this entity, the Dasein, we must at least ask, Who is this entity?, and not, What is this entity? It is therefore a matter of defining the who of this being. With this formulation, we have first of all at least terminologically avoided the danger of understanding it as a thing which is on hand. The word ‘I,’ in the meaning in which we first immediately understand it in an average way, is thereby left undefined. The more open we leave this word, not relating it directly to a ‘subject’ and the like, the less burdened the term remains and the more opportunity we then have to fix it more rigorously by way of the PHENOMENA themselves. The answer to the question of the who of this entity, which we ourselves in each instance are, is Dasein. GA20EN §26

In the preceding analysis of the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world, we have thematized the world as the wherein of Dasein in its specific sense of in-being. But also in this analysis of the world we have not brought into relief all the PHENOMENA which showed themselves there. In explicating the environing world of the craftsman, the phenomenon of the public world appeared. In the work under concern as well as in the material being employed and the hand tool being used, there are others, for whom the work is, by whom the tool in its turn is produced, there with (the craftsman). In the world of concern, others are encountered; and the encountering is a being-there-with, not a being-on-hand. We did not consider these others any further with respect to their mode of being. And so far, we have not considered the manner of their encounter at all. GA20EN §26

It is important for this basic phenomenal composition of being-with-one-another to be made perfectly clear. In spite of all the former prejudices of philosophy and all the usual attempts to explain and deduce such PHENOMENA, this phenomenon must be brought to an unadulterated givenness. And this is possible, since from the start the basic constitution of Dasein as being-in-the-world already stands before us. In order to understand not only this character of being-with but also the following characters, it must be kept in mind from the start that all these PHENOMENA, which we naturally can discuss here only in a sequential treatment, are not derived from one another in accordance, say, with their structure of being, but are co-original with each other. It is true that all other characters can be made understandable only in terms of the basic constitution of in-being, but they do not first turn up in the course of being Dasein or in any other development of Dasein. GA20EN §26

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

There is an existential interrelation among the PHENOMENA of apartness, averageness, and levelling. The Anyone as that which forms everyday being-with-one-another in these ways of its being constitutes what we call the public in the strict sense of the word. It implies that the world is always already primarily given as the common world. It is not the case that on the one hand there are first individual subjects which at any given time have their own world; and that the task would then arise of putting together, by virtue of some sort of an arrangement, the various particular worlds of the individuals and of agreeing how one would have a common world. This is how philosophers imagine these things when they ask about the constitution of the intersubjective world. We say instead that the first thing that is given is the common world—the Anyone—, the world in which Dasein is absorbed such that it has not yet come to itself, just as it can constantly be this way without having to come to itself. GA20EN §26

Even when we ask about the who, the drift of ordinary language already brings with it the ready implication that we are asking about an entity on hand as a setting, so to speak, in which Dasein takes place. This makes it all the more urgent to revert to phenomenological research: Before words, before expressions, always the PHENOMENA first, and then the concepts! On the basis of the phenomenological finding of the Anyone, we must now maintain our orientation toward the authenticity of Dasein, toward the self which Dasein can be, such that it does not really extricate itself from this being-with-one-another but, while this remains constitutive in it as being-with, it is still itself. GA20EN §26

Wilhelm von Humboldt was the first to point out that certain languages, when they want to say ‘I,’ formulate this ‘I’ which is to be expressed—the Dasein itself—by the word ‘here,’ so that ‘I’ means as much as ‘here.’ The ‘thou’—the other—is the ‘there,’ and the ‘he’—the one who first of all is not directly and expressly present—is the ‘yonder.’ In grammatical terms, the personal pronouns—I, thou, he—are expressed by locative adverbs. But perhaps this formulation is already inverted. There is a long-standing dispute over what the original meaning of these expressions ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ really is, whether it is adverbial or pronominal. But in the end, the dispute is without foundation, once it is seen that these locative adverbs in their sense relate to the ‘I’ qua Dasein itself. They have within themselves what we earlier designated as the orientation to Dasein itself. ‘Here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ are not real determinations of place as characters of world-things, but are rather determinations of Dasein. In other words, these determinations of Dasein ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder’ as ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ ‘he’ are not locative adverbs at all. They are also not expressions for ‘I,’ ‘Thou,’ ‘He’ in a pointed sense such that they would refer to certain special things that are. They are rather adverbs of Dasein and as such pronouns at the same time. This shows that grammar simply fails in the face of such PHENOMENA. Grammatical categories are not tailored to such PHENOMENA and are not at all derived by regarding the PHENOMENA themselves but rather with regard to a particular form of assertion, the theoretical proposition. All grammatical categories are derived from a particular theory of language, from the theory of logos as proposition, that is, from ‘logic.’ There are thus difficulties from the start if one tries to clarify such linguistic PHENOMENA as we have discussed by means of these grammatical categories. The proper approach is to get behind the grammatical categories and forms and to try to determine the sense from the PHENOMENA themselves. The source of this phenomenon, which Humboldt exhibited without understanding it in its ultimate ontological consequences, lies in this, that Dasein, to which we have attributed an original spatiality, when it speaks of itself, speaks in terms of that in which it finds itself. In everyday self-articulation, Dasein considers itself in terms of spatiality, to be taken in the sense described earlier of the remotive orientation of in-being. It must be noted that the sense of ‘here,’ ‘there,’ and ‘yonder’ are just as problematic and difficult as that of ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ and ‘he.’ We shall succeed in exhibiting the actual phenomenon only when Dasein itself is defined by in-being, so that we see how the average way of being-with-one-another, and at the same time the way which defines being-in-the-world, expresses itself in this manner in terms of spatiality. It would be basically wrong to think that such modes of expression are signs of a backward language, still oriented to space and matrix instead of to the spiritual ‘I.’ But are ‘here,’ ‘there,’ and ‘yonder’ less ‘spiritual’ and puzzling than the ‘I’? Is it not rather a more appropriate expression of Dasein itself if one does not cut oneself off from understanding it only because spatiality is oriented toward the distinctive space of natural science? GA20EN §26

With this explication of in-being as such, we come to the third stage of the analysis of the basic phenomenon of being-in-the-world as a whole. Through the analysis of in-being, we must now also be in a position to clarify the PHENOMENA which already necessarily had to be drawn into the earlier analyses: concern, of which we constantly spoke in its function of primary appresenting, and which we also defined as understanding; then knowing, which we characterized as a specific way of cultivating understanding. The investigation of this basic character of Dasein (in-being) is therefore divided into four parts. It will highlight 1) the phenomenon of discoveredness, 2) falling as a basic movement of Dasein, 3) the structure of uncanniness (away from home—familiarity), and 4) care. GA20EN §27

The course of the explication thus leads through the phenomenal structures to the phenomenon which allows us to come upon the being of Dasein, even though not explicitly and in sufficient scope. These PHENOMENA are connected among themselves; and the order in which they are advanced here at the same time serves to manifest a certain founding correlation among them. GA20EN §27

These two PHENOMENA, the disclosedness of the world itself along with the fact that being-in-the-world is in turn co-discovered, define the unified phenomenon which we call discoveredness. This expression seeks to note above all that here it is still not and for the most part never a matter of a special thematic knowledge of the world or even a definite knowledge of itself; what alone is at stake here is the structure of the being of Dasein itself which first and foremost founds such a knowledge and so makes it possible, so that the world as disclosed can be encountered in a ‘there.’ ‘There’ is the very being which we call Dasein (there-being). In thus being co-discovered, this Dasein is not expressly thematically had or known. This structure of discoveredness is to be taken rather as a structure of being, as a way to be. The adverbs of Dasein with their pronominal sense of ‘I’ and ‘thou’ make my own in-being as Dasein and the other as co-Dasein evident only as a ‘here’ and a ‘yonder.’ ‘Here’ and ‘yonder’ are possible only insofar as there is something like a ‘there’ at all. This ‘there’ is our being toward being-with-one-another insofar as the possibility of a stanced totality (Bewandtnisganzheit) for orientation subsists at all. A material thing occurring in the world is itself never a ‘there’ but is instead encountered in such a ‘there.’ We accordingly designate the entity which we also call man as the entity which is itself its ‘there.’ With this, we first come to the strict formulation of the meaning of the term ‘Dasein.’ GA20EN §28

In our terminological usage in accord with the PHENOMENA, ‘Dasein’ means not so much occurring like a ‘there’ and ‘yonder’ but being the ‘there’ itself. The ‘there’ character resides in the mode of being of an entity which has the structure of the discoveredness of world and with this the discoveredness of being-in-the-world itself. The being of Dasein as being-in-the-world, as a remoting being which brings forward, is the there itself. An entity such as Dasein brings its there with it from the very beginning, so that a world can first be discovered. Dasein brings its there with it from the very beginning not in the sense of a dead property but as that to be which, namely, to be its there, is just the authentic sense of the being of Dasein. According to what was said about the Anyone, this ‘there’ is first of all always being-there-with others, which is the publicly oriented there in which every Dasein constantly remains, even when it withdraws completely into itself. GA20EN §28

These characters of indifference: undisturbed preoccupation, the soothing uniformity of everyday action, the indifference in handling matters can (and even will) at any time be replaced by restlessness and uneasiness, or in turn by the sense of being unencumbered and letting oneself go to the point of soaring frenzy. The PHENOMENA of indifference and its interruptions by solicitation are in general possible only because concerned being-in-the-world can be addressed originally by the threatening and the non-threatening, in short, by the world as meaningfulness. It is only because Dasein itself is in itself care that the world is experienced in its threatening character, in its meaningfulness. This does not mean that the caring Dasein thus construes the world ‘subjectively.’ That would be a complete inversion of the elements involved. Rather, the caring in-being discovers the world in its meaningfulness. GA20EN §28

The phenomenon of mood, of being attuned, which up to now has been left totally in the dark in our elucidation of the structure of Dasein, is an exponent of disposition. All these essential PHENOMENA of mood and attunement can be explicated only on the basis of those structures of Dasein which we have already exposed. What are otherwise called ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ and treated as a special class of lived experiences remain unclarified in their primary structure of being as long as one does not take up the task of exposing the basic constitution of Dasein and here in particular its discoveredness, so as to draw these PHENOMENA back into this constitutive structure. These PHENOMENA of feeling and emotion can of course always be described up to a certain point, but this always gives us a ‘popular concept,’ to speak with Kant, especially if we also demand that these PHENOMENA must be defined in their phenomenal structure before we begin to describe them in detail. Even the most extensive psychology will never unravel the authentic structure of these PHENOMENA, because psychology in principle does not enter into the dimension of the structure of Dasein as such, since this problematic is in principle closed to it. To put it very generally without regard to the analysis of Dasein, the neglect of these PHENOMENA of feelings and emotions is connected with the fact that anthropology generally is primarily oriented to knowing and willing, in short, to reason. Feelings are then just what accompanies knowing and willing, as hail accompanies a storm. Kant puts forward the idea that the feelings are something which hamper or impair rationality and so must be classed with sensibility, with the me on in man. One has thus cut oneself off in advance from understanding the sense which these PHENOMENA have for the structure of being itself. In analyzing these structures in greater detail, we shall have to avoid classifying them in some sort of table of emotions or feelings. They are to be understood only in conjunction with the basic movement of Dasein itself. GA20EN §28

Also, in coordinating the PHENOMENA of feelings and emotions to the structure of disposition, nothing is said about the cognitive character of these structures. But it has been pointed out that such emotions and ways of feeling in fact have the possibility of uncovering Dasein itself in its being. But at the same time these same PHENOMENA, by virtue of a peculiar correlation of being in Dasein which we shall soon come to know, can also have the tendency and possibility of covering up Dasein itself and the world. Thus, together with discoveredness, there arises the possibility of covering up, deception. Deception does not arise from a mistaken inference but always from a primary not-understanding, that is, from a covering up, which again must be understood from Dasein’s kind of being. GA20EN §28

Understanding is a kind of being of the entity of the character of in-being. It is the being-involved-with of disclosed concernability, specifically a disposed involvement such that it always co-discovers itself. Understanding as disposed disclosure and having disclosed the world is as such a disclosive self-finding. As discoveredness makes up the structure of being of the full constitution of Dasein, since it applies to the world, in-being, and every way to be, so also the enactment of being belonging to it, understanding, always extends to the full understandability, which means to world, co-Dasein, and one’s own Dasein. It can thus be the case that the enactment of understanding at the time thematically refers in particular to the world, for example, or to the co-Dasein of others or to my own Dasein. But in each case the PHENOMENA which belong to the scope of discoveredness, that is, to the full understandability of Dasein itself, are always co-understood. This is an apriori principle for understanding, without which we would constantly go astray in defining this phenomenon. It is a deception, which is connected with ignorance of the genuine structure of Dasein, to think that there is a separate understanding of a bare world or of an alien Dasein. This structure of understanding, which is grounded in Dasein itself and which defines understanding as the enactment of the being of discoveredness, provides crucial orientation points for all problems of hermeneutics. Such a hermeneutics is possible only on the basis of the explication of Dasein itself, the kind of being to which understanding belongs. The possibility that there is something which cannot be understood is first given with the orbit of understandability marked out by discoveredness, an orbit which encompasses the world, in-being, and the co-Dasein of others. Every ‘not-there’ and everything understood in the there is but a modification of the there. It is only on the basis of understandability that there is a possible access to something which is in principle incomprehensible, that is, to nature. Something like nature can be discovered only because there is history, because Dasein is itself the primarily historical being. And only because of this are there natural sciences. GA20EN §28

But there is something essential for us in what has just been said: There is verbal expression—language—only insofar as there is considering, and such a consideration of something as something is possible only insofar as there is interpreting; interpretation in turn is only insofar as there is understanding, and understanding is only insofar as Dasein has the structure-of-being of discoveredness, which means that Dasein itself is defined as being-in-the-world. This continuity which founds the several PHENOMENA—considering, interpreting, understanding, being discovered, in-being, Dasein—at the same time serves to define language, or gives the horizon from which the essence of language can first and foremost be seen and defined. Language is nothing but a distinctive possibility of the very being of Dasein, where Dasein is to be taken in the previously explicated structure. GA20EN §28

Just as hearing is constitutive of discourse, so also is silence. Only an entity whose being is defined by the ability to discourse can also be silent. But this carries the phenomenal implication that silence as a mode of being of discourse is a particular way of articulating oneself about something to others. He who is silent in being with one another can more authentically manifest and ‘give to understand,’ that is, discourse in the original sense of its being, than the man of many words. Talking a lot does not in the least guarantee that the about-which of discourse becomes manifest sooner and more fully. On the contrary, talking a lot not only can uncover nothing but can actually cover things up and reduce everything to incomprehensibility, to babble. But silence still does not merely mean being mute. For the mute person has the propensity for discourse and expression. He would speak if he could. A mute person still has not proven without further ado that he can be silent. But the silent person could speak if he wanted to. No more than the mute person does the one who tends to say little need to prove that he is and can be silent. Rather, one can be silent precisely in speaking, and only in speaking can one be silent in a genuine way. If one never says anything, he can never be silent. Because the possibility of manifesting lies in silence, but silence as a mode of enactment of discourse cultivates understanding, brings the discoveredness of Dasein to fruition (zeitigt) with understanding, silence in being with one another can summon and call Dasein back to its ownmost being. And it can do this just when Dasein in the everydayness of its being has allowed itself to be taken in by the world being talked over and by the discourse about it. Because discursive talk in the beginning is always manifest in talking to one another in public—in communication—, the summoning of Dasein to itself and to its original and genuine disposition must in the end have the mode of discourse and interpretation that is silence. To be able to be silent, one must at the same time have something to say. In other words, it is precisely when discoveredness is a genuine and rich disclosedness of the world that it can then evoke a response in a disposition of Dasein which has the mode of discoveredness of reticence. Reticence is a way of being disposed which does not so much conceal and only conceal. Rather it gives precedence to being, prior to all talk about it and counseling over it, and this precisely in concerned preoccupation and being with one another. Genuine ability to hear comes from such reticence, and genuine being-with-one-another constitutes itself in this ability. Thus, discourse becomes visible as a mode of being of Dasein in the two PHENOMENA of hearing and silence. GA20EN §28

Nowadays, one decides about metaphysics or even higher matters at congresses. For everything which must be done nowadays, there is first a conference. One meets and meets, and everyone waits for someone else to tell him, and it doesn’t really matter if it isn’t said, for one has now indeed spoken one’s mind. Even if all the speakers who thus speak their minds have understood little of the matter, one is of the opinion that the cumulation of this lack of understanding will nevertheless eventually generate an understanding. There are people nowadays who travel from one conference to another and are convinced in doing so that something is really happening and that they have accomplished something; whereas in reality they have shirked the labor and now seek refuge in idle talk for their helplessness, which they of course do not understand. The characterization of these PHENOMENA should not be interpreted as a moral sermon or the like, which has no place here. Our sole concern here is to draw attention to a phenomenon, to a possibility which is constitutive of the structure of Dasein. It is not as if we today have the prerogative of this phenomenon. Ancient sophistry was nothing but this in its essential structure, although it was perhaps shrewder in certain ways. This would-be attendance is particularly dangerous because one is in good faith, since one believes that it is all to the good and that one is obliged to attend the congresses. This peculiar kind of idle talk, which governs Dasein in being-with-one-another, is a function of uncovering, but now in the remarkable mode of covering up. GA20EN §29

The mode of being of falling becomes apparent in the phenomenon of curiosity, just as it did in idle talk. Curiosity and idle talk are constitutive ways of the being of being-in-the-world. The Anyone, which in idle talk defines the public way of having been interpreted, at the same time controls and prescribes the ways of curiosity. It says what one must have seen and read. Conversely, what curiosity discovers enters into idle talk. Not that these two PHENOMENA exist side by side; rather, one tendency to uproot drags the other along with it. Curiosity’s way of being everywhere and nowhere is relegated to idle talk, which is for no one and everyone. GA20EN §29

The important thing is to regard all of these PHENOMENA always as characteristic and primary modes of the being of everyday Dasein. It is not my intention to use what I have just said for moral applications or anything of that sort. My intention is only and can only be to display these PHENOMENA as structures of Dasein, in order then, by starting from them—this is in fact the drift of all of my considerations—to see Dasein not in terms of any sort of theory of man, but to see the basic determination of its being directly in terms of the everydayness closest to it, and to proceed from there back to the fundamental structures themselves. Now none of these PHENOMENA—this is characteristic precisely of the Anyone—is in any way conscious or intentional. The obviousness, the matter-of-course way in which this movement of Dasein comes to pass also belongs to the manner of being of the Anyone. Because the movements of being which Dasein so to speak makes in the Anyone are a matter of course and are not conscious and intentional, this means simply that the Anyone does not discover them, since the discoveredness which the Anyone cultivates is in fact a covering up. GA20EN §29

Also, I cannot embark here on a more detailed interpretation of Aristotle’s analysis in his Rhetoric. That would be possible only on the basis of an actual understanding of the main structures of Dasein itself. We only begin to see what Aristotle saw when we first bring the PHENOMENA home to ourselves. Characteristic of the basic conception of fear in Aristotle is its consideration in connection with the task of rhetoric. Among other things, the orator, in order to put across his plan and his proposals or to get someone to consider them, can appeal to the instincts and passions of the crowd (public meeting). In order to make the assembly more tractable, he can, for example, work for the passage of war credits by instilling fear in his listeners. He strikes fear in them by theatening them with the destruction of the state. The fear thus aroused makes them ready to take counsel, and brings them to support and to accept his proposals much more readily. This being afraid of something as a constitutive moment of oratory is analyzed by Aristotle. GA20EN §30

Conversely, something worldly encountered as threatening can also be insignificant, but can nonetheless modify other moments constitutive of being afraid. For the way of being-in-the-world in concern can have the character of insecurity. A concern can be unsure of its own subject matter, and so can at bottom be unfamiliar with it. In this case, encountering an insignificant threat can arouse a fear which has the peculiar character of being suspicious, what we call anxiousness. We cannot go any further here into these other PHENOMENA which belong in this context. They include the further modifications of timidity, shyness, misgiving, and becoming startled. We only want to maintain that these PHENOMENA can themselves be understood only by starting from the primary analysis of being afraid of something, and perhaps not solely here, but first from that in which every form of being afraid of something is grounded, from dread. GA20EN §30

For this peculiar and wholly original phenomenon there now are, as for all such PHENOMENA, characteristic delusions, delusions of dread which, for example, can be induced purely physiologically. But this physiological possibility itself exists only because this entity, which is corporeally determined, can by virtue of its being be in dread at all, and not because some physiological occurrence could produce something like dread. It is for this reason that we speak of inducing a dread which is always possible and to some extent latent. GA20EN §30

The definition of the structure of care already shows that this phenomenon, which thus authentically comprehends being, exhibits a multiple structure. And if Dasein in its being is generally defined by care, then these PHENOMENA must have already been in our sights in the foregoing analyses of Dasein. In fact we dealt with the phenomenon of care in a certain way right from the start, when we spoke of concern as the authentic mode of being-in-the-world. Concern itself is but a mode of being of care, specifically because care is the character of being of an entity which is essentially defined by being-in-the-world. To put it better, care qua structure of Dasein is in-being as concern. Caring as it is in the world is eo ipso concern. The expression which we use in the definition of the formal structure of care, ‘being is at issue,’ must now be more accurately defined. GA20EN §31

‘Its own being is the issue for Dasein’: This first presupposes that in this Dasein there is something like a being out for something. Dasein is out for its own being; it is out for its very being in order ‘to be’ its being. As such a being-about care is this being out for the being which this very being-out is. This must be understood in such a way that Dasein as it were anticipates itself there. If the being of Dasein is what is at issue for care, then Dasein has always already held its own being ahead of itself, even if not in the sense of a thematic consciousness of it. The innermost structure of Dasein’s caring about its being can be conceived formally as Dasein’s being-ahead-of-itself. But we must understand this being-ahead-of-itself of Dasein in the context of the structures which have hitherto already been exhibited. This being-ahead is not a kind of psychological process or a property of a subject, but rather an element of the entity which, in accord with its sense is in the world, that is, in accord with its original character of being, insofar as it is at all, is always already intimately involved in something, namely, in the world. We thus arrive at the overall structure of care in the formal sense: Dasein’s being-ahead-of-itself in its always already being involved in something. This formal structure of care applies to every comportment. There are only different modalities of the individual structural moments of care, such that they can assume the kinds of being which urge and propensity have. We shall have to envisage these two PHENOMENA in still greater detail in order to come to understand how the specific wholeness of the phenomenon of Dasein is now first of all integrated from this primal structure of the being of Dasein as care. The wholeness of Dasein cannot be combined from various ways of being and the coupling which then comes into play. On the contrary, with care we now find the phenomenon from which we can then understand the various ways of being as ways of being, that is, as care. GA20EN §31

In the two structural moments of being-ahead-of-itself and already-being-involved-in, there is a puzzling character which is peculiar to care and, as we shall see, is nothing other than time. This peculiar character of the ‘before,’ of the ‘ahead,’ this ‘fore-character,’ namely, that Dasein is always ahead of itself and always already involved in something—which displays a double phenomenon—now determines the concrete ways of being which we have already come to know. Before we proceed toward the understanding of one of these ways of being, namely, the interpretation of this character of the “before,” we shall clarify the two PHENOMENA which are closely associated with care—urge and propensity. GA20EN §31

In the structure identified as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in something, care is first and foremost the condition of possibility for urge and propensity, and not the other way around, where care would be pieced together from these two PHENOMENA. Urge has the character of ‘towards’ something. In particular, this ‘towards something’ points to an element of compulsion which comes from the ‘towards’ itself. Urge is a ‘towards’ something which brings the drive into play from itself. When we view it against the background of care, urge brings out both the character of compulsion and being out for something. Care is modified in order to predominate in these two structural moments of care. Care as urge suppresses. The suppression here applies to the remaining structural moments also given in care. These do not fall away or fall out but are there in the urge as suppressed moments, where suppressed always means covered up, inasmuch as Dasein is defined by discoveredness. Insofar as the urge takes over the primary kind of being of Dasein, it suppresses the already-being-involved-in something along with that something, but it also suppresses the explicit being-ahead-of-itself. For in urge, care is now merely a concern for a ‘towards and nothing else.’ Urge as such blinds, it makes us blind. We are in the habit of saying that ‘love is blind.’ Here, love is regarded as an urge and so is replaced by an entirely different phenomenon. For love really gives us sight. Urge is a mode of the being of care, specifically care which has not yet become free, but care is not an urge. That care has not yet become free means that in urge the full structure of care does not yet come to its authentic being. For urge only cares about the ‘towards,’ and this at any price, in blind disregard of everything else. This blind state of only being. ‘towards and nothing else’ is a modification of caring. GA20EN §31

The moments of ‘toward something,’ of ‘already being involved in,’ and of ‘being ahead’ are all PHENOMENA having the character of discoveredness. They are not sighted in the sense that they themselves could be the theme of seeing. Rather, they have a sight in themselves. As far as I can see, this peculiar constitution of Dasein provides the basis for understanding an old idea and interpretation of Dasein, whereby it is said that the lumen naturale, the “natural light,” is inherent in human Dasein. Dasein by itself, by its nature, in what it is, has a light. It is intrinsically defined by a light. To take an example, this means that a mere thing, a stone, has no light within itself, which means that what it is and how it is toward its environs, if we can speak at all of an environment for the stone, is without sight. We cannot even say that it is dark, since darkness is in fact the negation of light. There is darkness only where there can be light. The manner of being of a mere thing stands beyond or before light and dark. By contrast, the idea that the lumen naturale belongs to the Dasein of man means that it is lighted within itself, that it is involved in something, has and sees this something and together with it is this very involvement. With the phenomenon of discoveredness, we have arrived at nothing other than the concept, as it were, the category of this structure of being, the phenomenon which was already manifestly seen in the old interpretation of Dasein as the lumen naturale. GA20EN §31

Care has the character of discoveredness, which means that understanding is always sighted understanding. Here we must note that understanding as we defined it earlier can at the same time gain a new meaning in view of care itself. For in ordinary language, we also use ‘understanding’ in another sense when we say ‘He understands how to handle men,’ ‘He knows how to talk.’ Understanding here means ‘knowing how’ (können), ‘being capable of.’ And ‘being capable of’ means having the possibility for something in oneself; more accurately put, since we are dealing here with Dasein, it means nothing but being the very possibility for something. As care, as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in, Dasein not only has possibilities for something which it could take up on occasion and cast aside again, so that it could also be without them. Dasein itself, insofar as it is, is nothing but being-possible. The Dasein which I myself am in each instance is defined in its being by my being able to say of it, I am, that is, I can. Only because this entity as Dasein is defined by the ‘I can,’ can it procure possibilities in the sense of opportunities, means, and the like, and be concerned about them. Every concern and every entity which is defined by care implies a priori the mode of being of the ‘I can.’ Specifically, this ‘I can’ as a constitutive state of the being of Dasein is always an understanding ‘I can.’ In concern, I can do the one and the other, which means I can do the one as well as the other, and furthermore, I can do either the one or the other. It should thus be noted that the PHENOMENA of ‘either-or,’ ‘as well as,’ ‘the-one-and-the-other-and-the-other’ show a definite structural buildup, and that the ‘and,’ the one ‘and’ the other ‘and’ the other, is not primary, certainly not the ‘and’ in the sense of the purely theoretical enumerative ‘and.’ For example, when I say, ‘I love my father and my mother,’ the ‘and’ here in no sense has the meaning of counting them together, as when I say, ‘the chair and the table.’ Rather the ‘and’ here is a specific ‘and’—the ‘and’ of loving. The ‘and’ thus first has an absolutely primary sense which is oriented towards care, towards the ‘I can.’ To put it more precisely, however, what is primary here is not the ‘and’ but the ‘either-or.’ It is only because there is an ‘either-or’ that there is an ‘as well as’ and an ‘and’ of concern. Unfortunately, I cannot deal with the more precise structures of these correlations here. Dasein is intrinsically being possible. It will now have to be shown in what way Dasein is itself its own possibility and its possibilities. GA20EN §31

The three structural moments—prepossession, pre-view, preconception—belong essentially to every interpretation, including scientific interpretation, specifically because interpretation is the mode of being of understanding, understanding has the mode of being of care, and care is intrinsically being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in something. Interpretation is consequently founded in the structure of Dasein. All hermeneutics, all elucidation of the various possibilities of interpreting must refer back to this basic structure and so to the constitution of the being of Dasein. Not only every hermeneutics in the sense of a theory of interpretation but every concrete historical interpretation requires, if it claims to be relevant to the subject matter, constant reflection on whether that which it has taken into prepossession, pre-view, and preconception at any given time as an interpretation is expressly suited for the purpose or is merely thrown together by chance. These PHENOMENA, which accompany every interpretation as prepossession, pre-view, and preconception, are the well-known and familiar, but equally inconvenient, self-evident elements in every interpretation, which we think we can ignore for the time being. But it is precisely on this “self-evident” basis that the degree and kind of scientificity of each interpretation are decided, and not on whether and how much material is brought to bear on the proof of an interpretation. GA20EN §31

It has thus become clear in connection with a phenomenon, that of interpretation, how the structure of care, especially the character of the ‘before,’ extends to the individual forms of enactment of these kinds of being of Dasein itself. With the phenomenon of care, we have thus brought out the basic structure from which the hitherto explicated PHENOMENA are now to be seen. The ‘pre’-structure of care, particularly of understanding, has become visible, but it will be illuminated only when we answer this question: In this being-ahead-of-itself and in the being-already-involved-in, what is actually meant by being? GA20EN §31

When Dasein reaches the mode of being in which nothing more in it is outstanding, that is, when it is finished as Dasein, then in its being-finished it no longer is what it is. Being-finished, when asserted about Dasein, means no-longer-being. By contrast, an entity encountered in concern can totally fulfill its function as something used or produced (table, book, equipment of every kind) only when it is finished, on hand. Being-finished, asserted about a world-thing on hand, means precisely first being on hand and becoming available. We have thus arrived at two different PHENOMENA of reaching wholeness and of being whole. The difference refers to the bearing that reaching wholeness has on the being of what has in each case become whole. ‘Finished’ has a different sense in accordance with the fundamentally different kind of being of the entity—world-thing versus Dasein. GA20EN §33