This page intentionally left blank

HEIDEGGER’S B E I N G A N D T I M E

In Being and Time Heidegger gives an account of the distinctive

features of human existence, in an attempt to answer the question of
the meaning of being. He finds that underlying all of these features
is what he calls ‘original time’. In this clear and straightforward
introduction to the text, Paul Gorner takes the reader through the
work, examining its detail and explaining the sometimes difficult
language which Heidegger uses. The topics which he covers include
being-in-the-world, being-with, thrownness and projection, truth,
authenticity, time and being, and historicity. His book makes Being
and Time accessible in a way that conveys the essence of Heidegger’s
project and remains true to what is distinctive about his thinking.

Pau l G o r n e r is Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of

Aberdeen. He is author of Twentieth Century German Philosophy
(2000) and numerous articles.
 c a m b r i d g e i n t ro d u c t i on s to k e y
p h i lo s o p h i c a l t e xts

This new series offers introductory textbooks on what are considered

to be the most important texts of Western philosophy. Each book
guides the reader through the main themes and arguments of the work
in question, while also paying attention to its historical context and
its philosophical legacy. No philosophical background knowledge is
assumed, and the books will be well suited to introductory university-
level courses.

Titles published in the series:

d e s c a rt e s ’ s m e d i tat i on s by Catherine Wilson
w i t tg e n s t e i n ’ s p h i lo s o p h i c a l i n v e s t i gat i on s by
David G. Stern
w i t tg e n s t e i n ’ s t r ac tat u s by Alfred Nordmann
a r i s tot l e ’ s n i c o m ac h e an et h i c s by Michael Pakaluk
s pi n o za ’ s et h i c s by Steven Nadler
kan t ’ s c r i t i q u e o f p u r e r e as on by Jill Vance Buroker
h e i d e gg e r ’ s b e i n g an d t i m e by Paul Gorner
HEIDEGGER’S B E I N G
AND TIME
An Introduction

PAUL GORNER
University of Aberdeen
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521833226

© Paul Gorner 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of

relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2007

ISBN-13 978-0-511-28478-6 eBook (EBL)

ISBN-10 0-511-28478-0 eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13 978-0-521-83322-6 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-83322-1 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-54072-8 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-54072-0 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

Preface page vi
A note on the translations viii

1 Introduction 1
2 The question of being 13
3 Being-in-the-world 34
4 Being-with 56
5 Being-in 70
6 Truth 94
7 Authenticity 105
8 Time and being 153
9 Beyond phenomenology 171

Bibliography 180
Index 182

v
 Preface

My aim in writing this book is indicated by its title. I have tried

to produce an introduction to Being and Time, rather than a
page-by-page commentary. As well as being a very difficult
book, Being and Time is also a very long book (though only
half the length Heidegger originally intended). So it would
have been counter-productive to produce an introduction of
similar dimensions. What I have attempted to do is to con-
vey the essence of the work, while at the same time attending
to its detail. Inevitably I have had to be selective. It has not
been my intention to present a particular interpretation of Hei-
degger (though by its very nature writing about philosophy is
interpretive). There are, however, a number of considerations
which have guided my approach. At this stage in his philosoph-
ical career Heidegger described himself as a phenomenologist.
I have found it illuminating to keep in mind the relationship
between Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology and that
of its founder, Husserl (though the main emphasis is on the
differences between Husserl’s reflective phenomenology of
consciousness and Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology
of what he calls Dasein). I have also been concerned to correct
the widespread view that Heidegger is simply an existentialist.
While there is no denying the pervasive presence of typically
existentialist themes in Heidegger it seems to me that to treat
him as simply an existentialist is essentially to trivialise his
vi
 Preface vii
thought and to fail to recognise its significance in the his-
tory of western philosophy. My own expertise is largely in the
area of German philosophy and I think it is important to see
Heidegger in the context of German philosophy (while not
of course denying the crucial significance of non-German,
in particular Greek, influences). Above all my aim has been
clarity. It is up to others to say how successful I have been.
 A note on the translations

There are two translations of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit),
one by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (first published
in 1962) and one by Joan Stambaugh (first published in 1996).
Both have their merits (the more recent translation is certainly
the more readable of the two). For the most part, I have used
the older translation (though I have frequently made what
I regard as improvements). The Macquarrie and Robinson
translation of key terms has become so entrenched in English-
language discussions of Heidegger that it seemed best to stick
with it.

viii
 1

Introduction

b i o g r a p h i c a l n ot e
Martin Heidegger was born on 26 September 1889 in
Messkirch, a small town in south-west Germany, about 20
miles north of Lake Constance. From 1903 to 1906 he attended
the Gymnasium in Konstanz, having secured a scholarship
through Conrad Gröber, the Archbishop of Freiburg, who
was also from Messkirch. Although he attended classes at the
Gymnasium he lived in a hostel reserved for boys destined for
the priesthood. In 1906 he transferred to the Gymnasium and
seminary in Freiburg and in 1909 briefly entered the novitiate
of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). However he left after
only two weeks, ostensibly on health grounds. Still with the
intention of becoming a priest he enrolled in the theology
faculty at the University of Freiburg. Although theology was
his main subject he was also required to do some philosophy,
though in a form approved by the ecclesiastical authorities.
However he had already developed an interest in philosophy
independently, specifically in the question which was to dom-
inate his thinking throughout his career – the question of the
meaning of being. The first stimulus to this came from the
study of a book given to him by Conrad Gröber while he was
still attending the Gymasium in Freiburg – Brentano’s On the

1
2 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Several Senses of Being in Aristotle.1 And in his final year at
school he came across a work by the Freiburg theologian Carl
Braig On Being: A Sketch of Ontology.2 From the first semester
of his theological studies he immersed himself in Husserl’s
Logical Investigations (having heard that Husserl was deeply
influenced by Brentano).
In 1911 he gave up the idea of training for the priesthood and
switched to philosophy. In 1913 he wrote his doctoral disserta-
tion on the theory of judgment in psychologism and in 1915 his
habilitation thesis on the theory of categories and meaning in
Duns Scotus.3 Both of these works show the strong influence
of Husserl’s Logical Investigations – the first the influence of
Husserl’s critique of psychologism, the second the influence
of Investigation 4, ‘On the distinction between independent
and dependent meanings and the idea of pure grammar’. From
1918 to 1923 he was a Privatdozent in Freiburg and also Assis-
tant to Husserl, who had come to Freiburg in 1916 as successor
to Heinrich Rickert. In 1923 he became an associate professor
in Marburg and also began work on Being and Time, which
was eventually published in 1927.4
1
Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden bei Aristoteles (Freiburg:
Herder, 1862). English translation: On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle,
trans. Rolf George (Berkeley: University of Calfornia Press, 1975).
2
Vom Sein: Abriss der Ontologie (Freiburg, 1896).
3
The text which formed the basis of his study was at that time attributed to
Duns Scotus (1266–1308) himself though it has since been shown to be the
work of a member of the school of Duns Scotus, Thomas of Erfurt.
4
As a result of the success of Being and Time and on the recommendation
of Husserl he secured the chair at Freiburg in 1928. In 1929 he gave his
inaugural lecture ‘What is Metaphysics?’. In the same year he had his famous
debate with Ernst Cassirer on the interpretation of Kant at Davos. Having
originally been apolitical, Heidegger was attracted by Hitler and like many
others saw in National Socialism a means to national renewal. This led him
to accept the Rectorship of of the University of Freiburg in May 1933. He
resigned in April 1934. It seems that his romantic and rather idiosyncratic
 Introduction 3
b e i n g an d t i m e : an ov e rvi e w
For purposes of orientation and to avoid getting lost in the
detail of Heidegger’s study I will start by giving an overview
in which I hope to capture the essence of Heidegger’s thought.
Being and Time is concerned with the question of the mean-
ing (Sinn) of being, not in the sense of what’s it all about, why
are we here, or even why is there something rather than noth-
ing, but in the sense of what we should understand by being,
what being ‘is’ (‘is’ in scare quotes because one of Heidegger’s
main contentions is that being is not a being, not even the
highest being). Ultimately it is concerned with the meaning
of being as such – rather than with the meaning of this or that
being. But for the most part Being and Time is not explicitly
about being as such but about the being of that being which
I myself am. For reasons which will be explained later, he
will call this being or entity ‘Dasein’. To ask and attempt to
answer the question of the meaning of being is to engage in
ontology. Because reaching clarity about the being of Dasein
is regarded as a necessary prerequisite of tackling the question
of the meaning of being as such the analysis of the being of
Dasein is called fundamental ontology.
The first half of Being and Time (Division One) is taken
up with the attempt to give an account of the basic structures
version of National Socialism and his efforts to implement it resulted in
friction with party officials. In his Nietzsche lectures between 1936 and
1940 Heidegger was critical of so-called Nazi philosophy and seems to have
attracted the interest of the Gestapo. After the war Heidegger went before
a Denazification Commission and was issued with a Lehrverbot (teaching
ban). He began to lecture again in 1951. In 1966 he was interviewed by the
German magazine Der Spiegel and gave an account of his Rectorship and
the events leading up to it in which he seeks to play down his involvement
with the regime. On his own instructions this was not published until after
his death. He died on 26 May 1976 and was buried in his home town of
Messkirch.
4 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of the being of Dasein. It is a phenomenological account in the
sense that it is not a matter of inference or argument but of
‘seeing’. Essential to Heidegger’s notion of phenomenology is
that there can be a seeing, not just of entities and their proper-
ties, but of being and structures of being. Whereas for Husserl
the subject-matter of phenomenology is consciousness, for
Heidegger the subject-matter of phenomenology is being.
The term he will use to designate the being of the entity he
calls Dasein is existence. The important thing about existence,
in contrast to other modes of being, is the understanding of
being. To say that Dasein exists is to say that Dasein is in such
a way that it understands being – its own being but also the
being of things other than itself to which, as Heidegger will
put it, it comports itself.
The basic structures of the being of Dasein he will call
existentials. These are contrasted with categories, which refer
to the basic structures of the being of entities other than Dasein.
The most basic of the structures of the being of Dasein is what
he will call being-in-the-world. Dasein is in the world not in
the sense of one thing being spatially contained in another
thing but rather in the sense of being engaged with things.
Dasein is not a subject for which the world is an object over
against it. It is possible for Dasein simply to behold things,
but such mere beholding is only possible as a modification of
engaged having-to-do-with things. The things with which are
engaged are in a broad sense used or employed. Such entities
are what he will call ‘equipment’ (Zeug). He speaks of such
entities as being ‘ready-to-hand’ or ‘available’ (zuhanden) and
of their mode of being as ‘readiness-to-hand’ or ‘availableness’
(Zuhandenheit or Zuhandensein). This is contrasted with the
being of things and their properties which simply occur, which
he calls presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit or Vorhandensein).
Dasein is in the world in the sense of being engaged with
 Introduction 5
things, but what Heidegger means by world is not itself an
entity, not even the totality of entities (of what is), but the web
of significance which makes it possible for entities to show
themselves or be encountered. World has to do, not so much
with what is, but with the openness of what is. He will speak of
different modes of comportment to entities. Understanding
of world is not itself a mode of comportment to entities but
rather what makes comportment to entities possible.
The being of Dasein is always someone’s being, or as
Heidegger puts it, is always mine. This character of being
a self, this selfness, is not to be understood in terms of a per-
sisting non-material something which through its persistence
and self-sameness unites the multiplicity of my mental states
and makes them my mental states. The sense in which Dasein
is a self is one which involves the possibility of choosing ways
of existing. But that the being of Dasein is always mine does
not mean that Dasein is something essentially private and
isolated. The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world, but the
world is not my private possession but a shared world. Being-
in-the-world is being-with-others-in-the-world. Relationship
to others is not just a contingent fact about Dasein, the fact
that I am not the only one of my kind. Being alone is a possi-
bility but it is only possible on the basis of being-with. Being-
with does not depend on inference from bodily appearance
and behaviour. But nor does it depend on something non-
inferential like empathy. Empathy is not the bridge between
one private subject and another private subject but is itself
made possible by being-with.
Heidegger will speak of the being of Dasein being disclosed
in Dasein (though he will also make it clear that this is insep-
arable from the disclosing of the being of entities other than
Dasein and of being as such). The ‘Da’ (or ‘there’) in Dasein
refers to such disclosedness rather than to spatial location.
6 Heidegger’s Being and Time
There are two basic modes of disclosedness – affectedness
(Befindlichkeit) or mood (Stimmung) and understanding (Ver-
stehen). In the first of these Dasein is disclosed in its thrownness
(Geworfenheit), its sheer thatness. In the second it is disclosed
in its possibility, its ability to be. In understanding how to be
Dasein is projecting itself onto possibilities of existence. So he
will say that the being of Dasein is thrown projection.
Dasein is thrown into the world (is always already in the
world) and is always ‘ahead of itself’ in the sense of projecting
itself onto possibilities. It is also engaged with entities within
the world (given Heidegger’s terminology chairs and tables,
sticks and stones are within the world but not in the world.
Only Dasein is in the world). These three basic features of
existence – thrownness, projection and engagement, or what
he will call ‘concern’ (Besorgen) – in their essential intercon-
nection are what he will call ‘care’ (Sorge). Heidegger’s answer
to the question ‘What is the being of Dasein?’ is the being of
Dasein is care – in this sense of ‘care’.
In the various modes of comportment to entities entities are
allowed to manifest themselves as entities. They are brought
out of concealment or as he will put it, they are uncovered or
dis-covered (entdeckt). What makes the uncovering of entities
possible is the understanding or disclosedness of being. This
has implications for the understanding of truth. Traditionally
this has been understood as a relationship of agreement or
correspondence between a statement and a state of affairs.
For Heidegger truth is essentially unconcealedness (Unver-
borgenheit). Statements are not true by virtue of agreeing with
something or corresponding to something but by virtue of
uncovering something. But the uncovering accomplished by
(true) statements, he maintains, is parasitic on the uncovering
accomplished by engaged having-to-do-with things, which
in turn is dependent on the disclosedness of being. So the
 Introduction 7
statement is not the basic location of truth, and the most pri-
mordial truth is not the uncoveredness of entities but the dis-
closedness of being.
The structures of being which Heidegger’s phenomenology
of Dasein lays bare are structures of Dasein in what Heidegger
calls its everydayness. Everyday existence is what he calls inau-
thentic existence. But it is also possible for existence to be
authentic. To exist authentically is to choose and own my pos-
sibilities of existence and in this sense to be myself. To exist
inauthentically is to have my possibilities of existence deter-
mined by something he calls das Man (the One or They). I
do, feel, judge, think as one does, feels, judges, thinks. The
relationship to others – being-with – is essential to existence
(in Heidegger’s sense of the term) but there is also a sense in
which others – in the shape of the One or They – take away
my being. Another aspect of inauthenticity is what he calls
falling (Verfallen). This is absorption with – or lostness in –
entities within-the-world. Dasein is disclosed to itself in its
fallenness in a ‘distinguished’ mood or mode of affectedness
he calls Angst (anxiety). This is unlike fear in that, whereas
fear has as its object some entity within the world and is fear
for some particular possibility of being, Angst has as its object
not an entity within the world but the world as such. And what
it is anxious for is not some particular possibility of being but
being-in-the-world as such. In Angst the nothing (das Nichts)
is disclosed. This disclosure of the nothing involves the enti-
ties, in which one is absorbed or lost in falling, ‘slipping away’
in their totality in such a way that they lose all relevance and
no longer offer any support.
Authenticity involves a certain mode of comportment
towards death, the end of Dasein, the possibility of the impos-
sibility of Dasein. Death is not something which happens to
Dasein. The being of Dasein is being towards death. Death
8 Heidegger’s Being and Time
is the possibility which is most my own, the possibility with
regard to which there can be no deputising. Because it involves
the severing of all relations to others Heidegger calls that
possibility of being that is death non-relational (unbezüglich).
It is also the most extreme possibility in the sense that it is
the possibility of the impossibility of any comportment to
anything and in this sense cannot be surpassed (outstripped,
overtaken). Death also has its own kind of certainty but is
indeterminate with respect to its when. Existing inauthenti-
cally, Dasein covers up and disguises these features of death.
Existing authentically, Dasein faces up to death as the end of
Dasein.
The notion of conscience also plays an important role in
Heidegger’s account of authenticity. It is interpreted by him
as the call to authenticity. As ordinarily understood conscience
declares me guilty – for what I have done and for what I have
failed to do. It warns me of possible guilt for what I may
or may not do in the future. And when my conscience is
clear it declares the absence of guilt. But Heidegger wishes to
maintain that there is a sense in which Dasein as such is guilty.
Conscience discloses my guilt but it is ontological guilt. Guilt in
the ontological sense is: the null being-the-ground of a nullity
(das nichtige Grund-sein einer Nichtigkeit). What this means is
that with respect to both thrownness and projection the being
of Dasein is determined by a not. As thrown, Dasein has not
brought itself into existence. It is its disclosedness but this is
not something it has brought about. It belongs to itself but
has not given itself to itself. It projects itself onto possibilities,
but possibilities into which it has been thrown, in the sense
that it does not create the world which defines the possibilities
of existence open to it. It is the ground of its projecting but
as thrown it is a null (nichtig) ground. The other aspect of
Dasein’s being, its projecting, is also null, determined by a
 Introduction 9
not – but not just because it is thrown projection. Simply as
projection it is also essentially null. In projecting Dasein is
choosing possibilities of being. To the extent that it does this
Dasein is free. But freedom as the choosing of one possibility
necessarily involves not having chosen the others.
In recognising my ontological guilt and facing up to death I
am also ready to decide how to act in the concrete situations in
which I find myself. So Heidegger will also say that authentic
existence is resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). The German word
is also chosen for its connection with the German word for
disclosedness (Erschlossenheit). Recalling that for Heidegger
truth is essentially unconcealednes, we can say that resolute
disclosedness is pre-eminently true.
The being of Dasein is care. Care can be authentic or inau-
thentic. But what is the sense or meaning (Sinn) of care?
Heidegger’s answer is that it is time. But time in what sense?
It is not time in what Heidegger calls the ordinary or common
sense. This is time understood as a uniform sequence of nows.
On this understanding of time the not-yet-now becomes the
now and the now becomes the no-longer-now in a beginning-
less and endless and irreversible sequence. In interpreting the
being of Dasein in terms of time Heidegger is not making
the obvious point that we are essentially temporal beings in
the sense that we are in time understood as the sequence of
nows. Dasein is not simply in time, its temporality is not what
he calls ‘within-time-ness’ (Innerzeitigkeit). Nor does Dasein’s
temporality consist in within-time-ness combined with aware-
ness of within-time-ness. The temporality that is distinctive
of Dasein, and in terms of which its being is to be understood,
is what he calls ecstatic temporality.
In the technical, ontological, sense Heidegger gives to it,
‘care’ designates the three principal structures of Dasein’s
being in their essential unity – projection, thrownness and
10 Heidegger’s Being and Time
concern. In projecting itself onto possibilities of being-in-
the-world Dasein is ‘ahead of itself’. As thrown, Dasein is
already in-the-world. As already in-the-world it is bei entities
within-the-world, in the sense that it is involved with them,
dwells with them, is absorbed by them. Underlying each of the
three essential components of care is what Heidegger calls a
temporal ecstasis. The three temporal ecstases in their essential
unity are what constitutes the ecstatic temporality (or original
time) in terms of which Dasein’s being is to be understood.
They correspond to the past, present and future of time as
commonly understood but cannot be identified with them.
That is to say, they cannot be identified with the no-longer-
now, the now and the not-yet-now.
In its projection Dasein is coming-towards-itself in its pos-
sibility. In its thrownness it is coming-back-to-itself in its
having-been (Gewesen). In letting entities within-the-world
manifest themselves Dasein is making entities present or
enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen) them. Ecstatic temporality is
this unity of coming-towards-itself, coming-back-to-itself
and enpresenting. Each of them is an ecstasis in the sense
that in each of them Dasein is outside itself – though not in the
sense that it is initially encapsulated within a private sphere of
pure interiority from which it somehow manages to escape.
By virtue of my ecstatic temporality I am already outside
myself.
Ecstatic temporality is the sense or meaning of the being
of Dasein. Heidegger thinks that if this claim is to be sub-
stantiated it must be possible to give a temporal interpretation
of all those structures of Dasein’s being uncovered in Divi-
sion One. In other words, for each of the existentials it must
be possible to show that it is grounded in a specific mode of
ecstatic temporality. All three ecstases must underlie each of
 Introduction 11
the existentials, but individual existentials differ with respect
to which of the ecstases has primacy.
Heidegger also reflects on time as we actually encounter it,
time as we reckon with it. Time as reckoned with is not an
abstract series of pure nows but has the features of datability
(every now is ‘now, when such and such’, for example, ‘now,
when the door slams’), spannedness (every now refers not to an
indivisible point, but is always ‘now, during’ or ‘now, while’ –
for example, ‘now, during the break’, ‘now, while climbing the
mountain’), publicness (although each one of us utters his or her
own now, it is nevertheless the now for everyone; it is accessible
to everyone and thus belongs to no one) and significance (time
is always time to; it is appropriate or inappropriate time, right
or wrong time).
Time as a uniform sequence of nows is an abstraction from
time with these structures. But there is something more basic
than this concrete time of ‘everyday’ experience, something
which makes it possible. This is ecstatic temporality. The
covering up of the structures of time as reckoned with, of
their origin in ecstatic temporality, and of ecstatic temporality
itself, has its origin in the tendency of Dasein to understand
its own being and that of everything else as presence-at-hand
(Vorhandenheit). Time itself is interpreted as something some-
how present-at-hand. The succession of nows is interpreted
as a present-at-hand sequence. The nows come and go like
entities. Like present-at-hand entities they perish, becoming
no longer present-at-hand.
The being of Dasein is care, and the sense or meaning of
care is ecstatic temporality. But this clearly does not amount to
an answer to the question about the meaning of being as such.
It merely prepares the ground for such an answer. Dasein is
in such a way that it understands being. What needs to be
12 Heidegger’s Being and Time
shown is that that in terms of which Dasein understands and
interprets being is time. Time must be brought to light as the
horizon for all understanding and interpretation of being.
If being is to be conceived in terms of time then being
itself must be shown to have an essentially temporal character.
This was to have been the task of Division Three (‘Time and
Being’). Although Heidegger wrote this section he appears to
have found it unsatisfactory.
 2

The question of being

The Introduction1 to Being and Time is preceded by a short

piece of text, later referred to by Heidegger as the Foreword,2
which starts with a quotation from Plato’s Sophist. The Eleatic
Stranger, a follower of Parmenides and Zeno, is depicted as
saying: ‘For manifestly you have long been aware of what
you mean when you use the expression “being”. We, how-
ever, who used to think we understood it, have now become
perplexed.’ Heidegger asks whether we today (he was writ-
ing in the 1920s) have an answer to the question of what we
mean by the word ‘being’ (seiend) and is emphatic that we do
not. And it is not just a matter of being perplexed about the
meaning. We lack the understanding for the significance of
the question. The task of the Introduction is to reawaken this
understanding.

1
My understanding of Heidegger’s Introduction – and of Being and Time
as a whole – has benefited considerably from the first volume of Friedrich-
Wilhelm von Herrmann’s commentary, Hermeneutische Phänomenologie des
Daseins (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987). Von Herrmann, who was
Heidegger’s assistant in the last years of the philosopher’s life, was taught by
Eugen Fink, who had a uniquely close relationship with both Husserl and
Heidegger. The second volume of his commentary (which covers Division
One of Being and Time) appeared too late to be used in this introduction.
2
In the Introduction to his ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ (originally given as his
inaugural lecture in Freiburg in 1929. The Introduction was written twenty
years later).

13
14 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Once this has been done the preliminary3 aim of Being
and Time is the ‘interpretation of time as the possible horizon
of any understanding of being’. This already gives us some
indication of how we should understand the title of the work.
The relationship between being and time is not one of oppo-
sition.4 Rather their relationship is such that the latter is the
key to the meaning of the former. However, it will emerge
that by ‘time’ Heidegger does not mean what we ordinarily
understand by the term. According to what he will call the
ordinary or common (vulgär) conception of time, time is a
beginningless, endless and irreversible sequence of nows. We
think of things, including ourselves, as being in time as thus
conceived. From the outset we must be clear that it is not time
in this sense which determines the meaning of being. It would
be to get Heidegger completely wrong if we were to suppose
that he was replacing the traditional view that what truly is –
the really real – is the timeless with the view that everything
that is, is in time. The ordinary conception of time is derivative
from something he will call ecstatic-horizonal temporality. It
is time in this sense, not time as a sequence of nows, that is the
key to the meaning of being.
By any standards Heidegger’s text is difficult. And unlike
other philosophical texts it is not made accessible by our
becoming familiar with the traditional technical terms of phi-
losophy. To a significant extent he forges his own philosophical
vocabulary, often making use of peculiarly German features

3
The significance of ‘preliminary’ here is that the ‘interpretation of time as
the possible horizon of any understanding of being’ in Part 1 was to have
been followed in Part 2 by what he calls the ‘phenomenological destruction
of the history of ontology’. We will examine the notion of such a history in
chapter 7.
4
So the relationship between being and time is not like that between, for
example, being and becoming.
 The question of being 15
of language. So we need to find a way of easing ourselves into
what he is about. So let us start with the simple fact that we
have to do with all manner of things, or, as Heidegger would
put it, that we comport ourselves to entities, to things which
are.
I open the door and enter the room. I sit at my desk and
begin to write. Occasionally I look out of the window and
appreciate the beauty of the landscape. I perceive the things
in the room, but I also use them. People come into my room
and I talk to them or ignore them. But I can also be said
to comport myself to myself. This need not mean that I am
engaged in introspection, that I am consciously attending to
my own mental states. I am engaged in a task and am either
satisfied or dissatisfied with my performance. In all of these
cases there is something to which I comport myself: the door,
the room, my computer, the beauty of the landscape, other
people, myself. I comport myself to them as something that
is, as entities.
For Heidegger an entity or a being (ein Seiendes) is any-
thing that in any sense is. An entity is something that is, but
what is it for something to be? We are all familiar with entities.
But what it is for something to be is not itself an entity. The
being of entities is not itself an entity. There is, then, a funda-
mental difference between anything that is and being (Sein).
Although Heidegger highlights this difference between being
and entities (Sein and Seiendes) in Being and Time he does
not give it a name. Subsequently (in lectures in Marburg in
the summer semester of 1927, for example) he will speak of
the ontological difference. Although there will be much talk of
entities in Being and Time, the ultimate theme of the work is
being or, more precisely, what he calls the meaning or sense
(Sinn) of being. Whatever else is discussed is subordinate to
the question of being.
16 Heidegger’s Being and Time
But the question of the meaning of being, he thinks, has
come to be neglected, even forgotten (2).5 We have lost the
understanding for the significance of the question. In Heideg-
ger’s view we have to go back to the ancient Greeks to find
a real engagement with the question. In another reference to
Plato’s Sophist he speaks of a ‘battle of the giants’, concerning
being, the dispute between those who maintained that true
being pertained only to the objects of sense perception and
those who maintained that true being pertained only to the
objects of pure thought, the ideas.
The question concerning the meaning of being must be
revived. But this does not mean that we have simply to raise
the question as it was raised by Plato and Aristotle. Essen-
tially they were asking about what Heidegger would later
call ‘beingness’ (Seiendheit), which is what all things which
are have in common, what belongs to beings as beings. The
more radical question that Heidegger wants to ask concerns
not beingness, beings as beings, but being as being, being as
such.6
The question of being has come to be neglected, but this
neglect is felt to be justified by the fact that being is the most
general concept. Because it is the most general concept it is also
empty and indefinable. And whatever meaning it has is in any
case obvious or self-evident (selbstverständlich). Heidegger
grants that being is the most general concept in the sense
that any kind of comportment to anything presupposes an

5
Unless otherwise specified all page references are to Being and Time. All
such references are to the page numbers of the German original (Sein
und Zeit) as both translations (Macquarrie and Robinson and Stambaugh)
include these page numbers in the margin of their text.
6
Though it must be said this is clearer in the marginal comments written
by Heidegger in his own copy of Being and Time than in the text itself, in
which he repeatedly speaks of the being of entities (Sein des Seienden).
 The question of being 17
understanding of being. However, he denies that it is the most
general, or universal, concept in the sense of being the highest
genus of entities. We can illustrate the notion of species and
genus in the following way. A spaniel is a species of the genus
dog. A dog is a species of the genus mammal. A mammal is a
species of the genus animal. An animal is a species of the genus
living thing. A living thing is a species of the genus physical
thing. To say that being is not the highest genus is to say that it
is not what this process culminates in. It is not what we come
to when we have completed this progression from species to
genus. Being is neither an entity nor a class of entities.
If the generality or universality of being were that of a
genus, and if being were the highest genus, then it would
indeed follow that the concept of being is indefinable – at least
if definition is understood as definition by genus and specific
difference. For example, ‘man’ can be defined by saying what
differentiates this species of the genus ‘animal’ from all other
species of this genus. If, as has traditionally been thought, this
differentiating feature is rationality then man can be defined as
a rational animal. If being is the highest genus then it cannot
be a species of a yet higher genus and hence cannot be defined.
But the generality of being is not that of a genus. So therefore
the question of definition, in this sense, simply does not arise.
But surely we already know the meaning of being. It is
something obvious, self-evident. We all know what we mean
when we say ‘there is a chair in this room’, ‘the sky is blue’,
‘I am glad’, so why make a mystery out of it? And it is not
just that we understand these words. In all our comportment
to entities, whether to oneself or to what is not oneself, we
have an understanding of being, regardless of whether we
give verbal expression to our comportment. Without such an
understanding of being we could not comport ourselves to
entities as entities. Prior to the explicit raising of the question
18 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of the meaning of being we already have an understanding of
being. Indeed understanding of being belongs to the being
of the entity which we ourselves are. It is this understanding
of being (that of myself and that of what is not myself ) which
in Heidegger’s view distinguishes us from all other beings. But
having such an understanding is not the same as being able to
give an account of the meaning of being. Understanding of
being and being able to give a conceptual articulation of this
understanding are not the same.
In any case appeals to what is self-evident or obvious are
in Heidegger’s view deeply unphilosophical. Heidegger refers
approvingly to Kant’s insistence that it is precisely such ‘covert
judgments of common reason’7 which stand in need of analysis
before they can properly be understood.
It might seem an objection to Heidegger’s claim that the
question of being had fallen into oblivion that there is a branch
of philosophy called ontology which in his day at least was
widely practised. Think of Nicolai Hartmann and phenome-
nologists like Max Scheler and Roman Ingarden, who did not
follow Husserl in the direction of transcendental idealism.
And even Husserl himself has a place for ontology, albeit as
a discipline which ultimately must be grounded in transcen-
dental phenomenology. However, Heidegger would say that
such ontologists, although concerned with the being of this or
that kind of entity, fail to raise the question of the meaning of
being as such.8
What is the relationship between ontologies and the ques-
tion of being? Being is always the being of an entity. The
7
See Immanuel Kant, ‘Reflexionen zur Anthropologie ’, Kants gesammelte
Schriften, Akademie-Ausgabe (Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1923),
vol. XV, p. 180, Reflexion 436.
8
At most they raise the question of being in the sense of beingness
(Seiendheit), not that of the meaning of being as being, being as such.
 The question of being 19
totality of entities can be divided up into different regions
of entity. Examples of such regions would be history, nature,
space, life, language. The entities of such regions can become
the objects of the various sciences. The basic concepts which
define a region of entities constitute the subject-matter of
regional ontologies. They determine the way in which the
objects of science are understood in advance. The positive
sciences presuppose regional ontology. But in Heidegger’s
view such ontology remains ‘naive and opaque’ if pursued in
isolation from the question of the meaning of being as such.
Regional ontology establishes the a priori conditions of the
possibility of the positive sciences which uncover entities as
entities of such and such a type. But inquiry into the meaning
of being as such aims to provide the a priori conditions of
the possibility of regional ontology. Regional ontology can
provide a rich system of categories but in the absence of the
clarification of the meaning of being as such it remains blind.
But if the question of the meaning of being as such is to
be properly posed it must first be made transparent. To do
this Heidegger first analyses the structure of a question.9 All
questioning is a searching. All searching is guided in a pre-
liminary way by what is sought. With regard to the question
of being the what-is-sought is the meaning of being. So we
must already have a preliminary understanding of the mean-
ing of being. The explicit question about the meaning of being
and the attempt to conceptualise it arise from this preliminary
understanding. We do not know what being means. But sim-
ply in asking ‘what is “being”’? we show that we have some
understanding of ‘is’, even though we are not able conceptu-
ally to articulate this understanding. Such ‘average and vague’
understanding of being, as Heidegger calls it, is a fact. He also
9
In § 2.
20 Heidegger’s Being and Time
points out that this understanding can be permeated with tra-
ditional theories and beliefs about being. He does not give
examples here, but we can find some in ‘The Origin of the
Work of Art’: the conception of an entity as the bearer of
properties, or as the unity of a manifold of sensations, or as
formed stuff or matter.10
In regard to any question we can distinguish between das
Gefragte (what is asked about), das Befragte (what is interro-
gated or questioned) and das Erfragte (that which is to be found
out or ascertained by the asking). In the case of the question
of being, das Gefragte is being – that which determines enti-
ties as entities, that on the basis of which entities are always
already understood (6). Heidegger reiterates the ontological
difference. The being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity. We
cannot determine entities as entities by tracing them back in
their origin to other entities, not even to the supreme being.
Looking ahead to phenomenology as the method of inquiry
into the meaning of being Heidegger says of being that it has its
own way of being exhibited (eine eigene Aufweisungsart) which
is essentially different from the un-covering (Entdeckung) of
entities (6).
Das Erfragte, what is aimed at in the questioning, is the
meaning of being. Interpreting this meaning will require its
own peculiar concepts, concepts essentially different from
those used to characterise entities.
Although not itself an entity being is always the being of
entities. So answering, or preparing to answer, the question of
being will require the questioning or interrogation of entities.
But there are all manner of entities. There are chairs and
tables, sticks and stones, thoughts, sensations, persons, plants,

10
See Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London:
Routledge, 1993), pp. 148–56.
 The question of being 21
animals, numbers, words, sentences, states of affairs, events,
works of art, institutions. Which if any of these are to be
interrogated in the question of being? What is das Befragte in
the question of being?
As the comportment of an entity, the questioner, question-
ing has its own character of being. If the question about being
is to be explicitly posed in a way which is fully transparent to
itself then it must be made clear how being is to be looked at,
how its meaning is to be understood and conceptually grasped.
The right choice of the entity to be interrogated must be made.
Different kinds of entity require different modes of access. For
whichever entity is chosen we must work out the proper mode
of access to it. Looking at something, understanding and con-
ceiving it, choosing it, securing access to it – these are all
modes of comportment and hence modes of being of a spe-
cific entity, that entity which we ourselves are. So the working
out of the question of being means the making transparent
of an entity, the inquirer, in its being. So the answer to the
question: which entity is the entity to be interrogated in the
question of being? is: ourselves, i.e. the entity which each of
us is. For reasons to be explained later he will call this entity
Dasein.
Heidegger points to the apparent circularity of his proce-
dure. It is being claimed that the question about the meaning
of being can only be properly posed if we first determine an
entity in its being. But it would seem that we can only do
this if we have first established the meaning of being. In other
words the working out of the question of the meaning of being
presupposes that we already have an answer to this question.
Heidegger dismisses this objection as purely formal but adds
that in fact there is no circularity in his procedure. It is possible
to determine an entity in its being without being in possession
of an explicit concept of the meaning of being. Had this not
22 Heidegger’s Being and Time
been the case then there could not have been any ontological
knowledge. But there clearly has been such knowledge. This
is made possible by what he calls ‘taking a preliminary look
at being’ (vorgängige Hinblicknahme auf Sein) which arises
from the ‘average understanding of being in which we always
already move and which in the end belongs to the essential
constitution of Dasein itself’ (8). We can call this vorgängige
Hinblicknahme a ‘presupposition’ but it is not a presupposition
in the sense of an unproven principle (Grundsatz) from which
other propositions are to be derived. He is not in the business of
establishing something by argument but of ‘letting something
be seen’, something he will go on to call ‘phenomenology’. It
should be noted that, although Heidegger rejects the charge
of circularity, there is also a sense in which his procedure is
necessarily circular. This has to do with what he will call the
‘hermeneutic circle’. This is not simply a feature of the pro-
cedure adopted but an essential feature of the being of Dasein
as such.
There is, it must be confessed, something slightly artificial
about Heidegger’s choice of the entity to be questioned. We
must avoid any suggestion that the being of human beings is
to serve as the model for the being of all other entities.11 The
real ground for his choice is that what distinguishes our being
from that of other entities is that it includes an understanding
of being. Dasein is not an entity from which the meaning of
being is to be abstracted; it is what he calls the ‘place (Stätte)
of the understanding of being’.12 To be in the way we are
is to understand being, that of ourselves and that of entities
other than ourselves. This entity Heidegger calls Dasein. This

11
In a marginal comment on p. 7 of his own copy of Being and Time Heidegger
says: ‘But the meaning of being is not read off [abgelesen] from this entity.’
12
See his marginal comment on p. 8.
 The question of being 23
word (the literal meaning of which is being-there or being-
here or, more strictly, something between the two), which he
uses as an ontological term of art, is both a word of ordi-
nary language (meaning human existence) and a traditional
philosophical word (used to translate the Latin word for exis-
tence, existentia). It would not be false to say that Heidegger
is talking about human beings when he uses the term ‘Dasein’.
But ‘human being’ or ‘man’ (not Mann but Mensch) is not an
ontological term, whereas ‘Dasein’ is. What it is about human
beings that the term Dasein focuses on is the understanding
of being. He also speaks of the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit)
of being. The ‘Da’ in ‘Dasein’ refers to this disclosedness of
being. So it makes sense for Heidegger to speak of the Dasein
in human beings.13 For these reasons it is best to leave the term
untranslated.
It is the understanding of being which distinguishes this
entity, Dasein, from other entities. ‘Dasein is an entity which
does not just occur among other entities’ (12). Unlike all other
entities Dasein is such that in its being this being itself is an
issue for it.14 This clearly has nothing to do with the instinct
for self-preservation, something which is common to all living
things. Dasein is concerned with its being in the sense that it
must choose the way it is. Its being is such that it must choose
the way it is, not that it is but how it is. In its being it has a
relationship of being to this being. This means that Dasein

13
As he does in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, for example. See Kant and
the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington: University
of Indiana Press, 1990).
14
‘Es ist . . . dadurch ausgezeichnet, dass es diesem Seienden in seinem
Sein um dieses Sein selbst geht.’ The German idiom ‘es geht um’ means
something like ‘it is a matter of’, ‘it concerns’. For example a savings bank
in its advertising uses the phrase ‘wenn es ums Geld geht’ (when it’s a
matter of money).
24 Heidegger’s Being and Time
understands itself in its being. With and through its being this
being is disclosed to it.15
For the being of Dasein – the way it is – Heidegger reserves
the term ‘existence’ (Existenz). Given this terminology, we
can say that only Dasein exists. We can also say that for
Heidegger ‘Dasein exists’ is a necessary truth. This does not
of course mean that we could use a version of the ontologi-
cal argument to prove that there is Dasein. There might not
have been Dasein. When it is said that Dasein understands
being it is important to see that this does not just mean that it
understands its own being, that it understands existence. The
being Heidegger calls existence is being in a world. The under-
standing of being which belongs to Dasein – which Dasein is –
includes an understanding of something like ‘world’ and an
understanding of the being of entities encountered within the
world. Inseparable from the understanding of existence is an
understanding of the being of entities other than Dasein.16
However, let us for the moment concentrate on Dasein’s
understanding of its own being, existence. Heidegger says
that we cannot define the essence of Dasein by specifying its
‘what’. Its essence lies rather in the fact that ‘it has its being to
be and has it as its own’ (12). The being of Dasein is not the
mere occurrence of something. It is, in a manner of speaking,
a task, something to be accomplished, done. It is something
15
The ‘with’ and ‘through’ here point ahead to the fundamental distinction
Heidegger will later draw between two basic features of the being of Dasein
which he will call ‘thrownness’ (Geworfenheit) and ‘projecting’ (Entwerfen).
Cf. von Herrmann, Hermeneutische Phänomenologie, pp. 106–8.
16
Commenting on his statement ‘The understanding of being is itself a
determination of the being of Dasein’ (‘Seinsverständnis ist selbst eine
Seinsbestimmtheit des Daseins’) (12) Heidegger says: ‘But here being not
only as the being of human beings (existence). This becomes clear from
what follows. Being-in-the-world includes within itself the relation of
existence to being as a whole: understanding of being.’
 The question of being 25
to which we are delivered over, but for which, having been
delivered over, we are responsible. So if essence is understood
as what-ness (for example, the essence of a tree consists of
the properties which together make a tree a tree) Dasein does
not really have an essence. When Heidegger returns to this
topic (in § 9) he puts essence (Wesen) in scare quotes. ‘The
“essence” of Dasein lies in its existence’17 (42). Dasein does
not have an essence in the sense of properties which make it the
entity it is but it does have an essence in the sense of distinctive
ways of being which make it the entity it is.
Dasein has its being to be and has it as its own. As Heidegger
will later put it (in § 9) the being of this entity is in each case
mine (je meines). Selfness (Selbstheit) belongs to Dasein. The
being of Dasein is the being of a self. But, as Heidegger makes
clear from the outset, the sense in which Dasein is a self should
not be understood in terms of the existence (in the ordinary
sense) of a persisting, non-material, but thing-like, something
which gives unity to the multiplicity of my mental states or
experiences. Heidegger’s self is neither substance nor subject
but is to be understood in terms of existence.
Although Dasein does not have an essence in the sense of
a set of properties that make it the thing it is the notion of
what is essential is still one that has application to Dasein.
This entity, Dasein, which is by way of an understanding of
being, is such that its being, existence, exhibits a complex
interconnection of essential structures. This interconnection
of structures of existence Heidegger calls ‘existentiality’. A
structure of the being of Dasein he calls an ‘existential’. He
contrasts existentials with categories, structures of the being of
entities other than Dasein. Having its being to be (Zu-sein) and
in-each-case-mineness (Jemeinigkeit) are existentials. Other
17
‘Das “Wesen” des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz’.
26 Heidegger’s Being and Time
examples, to be examined later, are being-in-the-world, con-
cern (Besorgen), being-with, thrownness, projection, falling
(Verfallen).
As we have already indicated it will emerge that the meaning
of the being of Dasein is temporality (Zeitlichkeit). However
this does not itself amount to an answer to the question con-
cerning the meaning of being as such (we can’t equate the
being of Dasein, existence, with being as such). It does, how-
ever, prepare the ground for such an answer. Dasein is in such
a way that in its being it understands being. The ‘horizon’
of such understanding, that from the standpoint of which, in
terms of which (von wo aus), being is understood, is time. As
already indicated the concept of time which is here operative
must be distinguished from the ordinary or common concep-
tion of time. According to Heidegger this also underlies all
philosophical interpretations of time, from Aristotle to Berg-
son. Heidegger will try to show how this concept of time and
the ordinary understanding of time in general arise out of
temporality (or ‘original’ time).
The essential temporality of being for which Heidegger is
arguing should not be confused with temporality in the sense of
being-in-time, which has traditionally been used as a criterion
for distinguishing between different regions of entity. For
example there are temporal (zeitlich) entities such as processes
in nature and events in history. These are contrasted with
non-temporal (unzeitlich) entities such as spatial and numerical
relations. In addition there are timeless (zeitlos) entities such as
the senses of sentences which are contrasted with the temporal
sequence of the utterance of sentences. Finally the contrast is
made between temporal entities and the eternal. According to
the traditional concept of God, God is eternal not in the sense
of being at all times but in the sense of being right outside time
or supra-temporal (überzeitlich). If being itself is essentially
 The question of being 27
temporal then even the non-temporal, the timeless and the
supra-temporal are, with respect to their being, temporal.

p h e n o m e n o lo g y
The laying bare, the exhibiting (Aufweisen) of Dasein’s exis-
tentiality Heidegger calls phenomenology. But what does he
mean by phenomenology? Being and Time is dedicated to
Husserl, it appeared in Husserl’s Jahrbuch,18 and Heidegger
had been Husserl’s assistant.19 Moreover Heidegger himself
calls what he is doing ‘phenomenology’. So one may think
that he is simply applying the phenomenological method, as
conceived by Husserl, to a particular area of experience. This
would be a mistake. The key ideas of Husserlian phenomenol-
ogy are consciousness, intentionality and the phenomenolog-
ical reduction. The first two barely figure in Being and Time,
and the last item does not figure at all. It is true that in his
Marburg lectures on phenomenology, The Basic Problems of
Phenomenology, Heidegger uses the word ‘reduction’, but it
refers to the directing of phenomenological ‘seeing’ not from
entities to the consciousness of entities but from entities to the
being of entities.20
Husserlian phenomenology is the study of the intentional
structures of consciousness, i.e. the various ways in which
18
Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, ed. E. Husserl,
vol. VIII (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927).
19
It is only towards the end of the section on phenomenology (§ 7 ‘The phe-
nomenological method of investigation’) that Heidegger refers to Husserl
by name: ‘what is essential to [phenomenology] does not consist in its actu-
ality as a philosophical “movement”’. In a marginal comment Heidegger
writes: ‘i.e. not the transcendental-philosophical direction [Richtung] of
Critical Kantian idealism’.
20
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A Hofstader (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 1982), § 5.
28 Heidegger’s Being and Time
consciousness is directed toward objects. It describes the ways
in which objects are ‘constituted’ in consciousness. And it does
so on the basis of the phenomenological reduction, in which
all positings of the real existence of the world and of objects
in the world, including ourselves as psychophysical entities,
are suspended or put out of action. What one finds in Being
and Time is something quite different. Its ‘subject-matter’ is
not consciousness (and certainly not transcendentally reduced
consciousness) but Dasein and the structures of its being.
Heidegger takes from Husserl the idea of a return to the
things or ‘matters’ themselves (zu den Sachen selbst!), letting
things ‘speak for themselves’ rather than being dictated to
by theory, taking things as they present themselves, or show
themselves, rather than ‘constructing’ them in accordance with
the demands of a system.21 Phenomenology ‘is opposed to all
free-floating constructions and accidental findings; it is also
opposed to taking over concepts only seemingly demonstrated
(nur scheinbar ausgewiesenen Begriffe); and likewise to pseudo-
questions22 which often parade themselves as “problems” for
generations’ (27f ).
21
To be guided by the things or matters (Sachen) themselves is surely a
principle of scientific knowledge as such. ‘But this maxim [‘To the things
themselves!], one might retort, is abundantly self-evident and, moreover,
expresses the principle of all scientific knowledge ’ (28). That there is some-
thing essentially trivial about the idea of phenomenology understood in
terms of the return to the things themselves is something Heidegger does
not really succeed in countering. But then he is only claiming to give the
preliminary concept (Vorbegriff ) of phenomenology.
22
The sort of things Heidegger has in mind are the ‘problems’ of our knowl-
edge of the external world and our knowledge of other minds. With regard
to the former, what gives rise to the problem is the false conception of
knowledge as something essentially internal, something which occurs
in the purely immanent and essentially private sphere of consciousness.
Husserl had already shown the traditional epistemological problem to be
unfounded by showing that consciousness is essentially intentional. The
objects of consciousness, what are intended or meant, are not inner mental
pictures or images which ‘stand for’ the things themselves. Heidegger takes
 The question of being 29
In calling his mode of treatment of the question of the mean-
ing of being phenomenological Heidegger is keen to avoid giv-
ing the impression that he is thereby subscribing to a particular
philosophical standpoint or direction. Properly understood,
phenomenology can be neither of these things.23
As the name suggests phenomenology is the study of
phenomena.24 By ‘phenomenon’ Heidegger understands that
which shows itself as it is in itself. Phenomenon is thus to be dis-
tinguished from semblance25 and the various senses of appear-
ance – in particular that meaning according to which what
appears does not show itself but ‘announces’ itself through
something which does show itself (e.g. symptoms of illness).26
Phenomenology in what he calls the formal sense is the ‘letting
be seen’ (Sehenlassen) of that which shows itself. But in the
philosophical sense phenomenology is not the letting be seen
of entities as they show themselves. Rather it is the letting be

this further in arguing that intentionality is itself grounded in what he calls

being-in-the-world.
23
In a marginal note to p. 38 Heidegger makes it clear that in Husserl’s hands
phenomenology, despite its claims to be without presuppositions, became
itself a standpoint, a particular form of idealism (the ‘transcendental-
philosophical direction of Critical Kantian idealism’).
24
There is, it must be confessed, something rather contrived about Heideg-
ger’s approach to the nature of phenomenology. He points out that the
expression has two components, phenomenon and logos, and that both
go back to the Greek terms phainomenon and logos. He gives a detailed
analysis of both and then puts them together, the result being the meaning
of ‘phenomenology’.
25
Although they must be distinguished they are structurally related. ‘Only
when the meaning of something is such that it purports (prätendiert) to
show itself – that is, claims to be a phenomenon – can it show itself as
something it is not, can it “only look like . . . ” (29). Heidegger speaks of
semblance (Schein) as the privative modification of phenomenon.
26
Appearing, in the sense of announcing itself or making itself known (sich
melden), is a not-showing-itself. ‘Although “appearing” is never a self-
showing in the sense of phenomenon, appearing is only possible on the
basis of a self-showing of something’ (29).
30 Heidegger’s Being and Time
seen of that which for the most part does not show itself, but
is the ground and meaning of that which does show itself.
This is not an entity but the being of entities, that which deter-
mines entities as entities, that on the basis of which (woraufhin)
entities are always already understood.27
The being of entities remains concealed in an exceptional
sense, that is, in a way quite unlike that in which some enti-
ties remain concealed. Having been disclosed in the work of
philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, it again falls back
into concealment or only shows itself in a disguised way. Some
letting be seen of being occurred in the work of such thinkers
but what was made to show itself became concealed again or,
instead of falling back into total concealment, continued to
show itself but in disguised form.28 It is because the being
of entities is inherently subject to concealment and disguise
that it demands to be made into a phenomenon in a distinctive
sense.29
Husserl’s phenomenology, as phenomenology of con-
sciousness, is reflective. Heidegger’s phenomenology, by con-
trast, is essentially interpretive (auslegend). It is hermeneutic
phenomenology. What it interprets is the being of Dasein.
27
Heidegger maintains that phenomenology is ‘primarily’ a concept of
method. ‘[The term] does not characterise the “what” of the objects of
philosophical research in terms of their content (das sachhaltige Was) but
the “how” of such research’ (27). But as he now makes clear it is not simply
a method which can have any kind of object. Heidegger’s conception of
phenomenology is such that its only ‘object’ is being.
28
It is for this reason that the working out of the question of being demands
what Heidegger calls the ‘destruction of the history of ontology’.
29
The notion of phenomenon as that which shows itself or manifests itself,
together with the related notions of semblance, concealment and disguise,
make perfect sense when applied to entities but make doubtful sense when
applied to being. The difficulty increases if one considers Heidegger’s
tendency to identify being with disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) and uncon-
cealedness (Unverborgenheit).
 The question of being 31
But this also involves the interpretation of the being of entities
other than Dasein because the understanding of such being
belongs to the being of Dasein. What Heidegger understands
by hermeneutics is more fundamental than the methodology of
the historical Geisteswissenschaften. Heideggerian hermeneu-
tics interprets the historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) of Dasein,
which itself is the condition of the possibility of history
(Historie) in the sense of the discipline.
The interpretation (Auslegung) by means of which Hei-
degger’s phenomenology proceeds is not something we all
engage in. It is something which philosophers engage in. But
interpretation as the theoretical activity of the hermeneutic
phenomenologist arises out of interpretation which belongs
to the being of Dasein as such.30 Pre-theoretical interpreta-
tion is an existential. We understand our being. We understand
existence. So it would seem that Dasein, the Befragte in the
question of being, is ontologically what is closest to us, in the
sense that of all entities Dasein is the one whose ontological
structure is most easily accessible.
Dasein could not be more close to us, for after all each of
us is Dasein. We are closest to this entity by virtue of being it.
But it does not follow that ontologically it is what is closest. In
a sense it is what is ontologically closest. Dasein is itself onto-
logical. Its being is existence and existence is understanding
of being. But such understanding is pre-ontological. Simply
in virtue of existing Dasein understands its own being, but
this does not mean that it is in possession of a worked-out
ontology of Dasein. But if we simply unfold and make explicit
this pre-ontological understanding of being will we therefore
not achieve such an ontology? The problem is that the pre-
theoretical interpretation which belongs to Dasein as such,
30
This is elaborated in § 32.
32 Heidegger’s Being and Time
and not just to Dasein qua philosopher, distorts the natural
understanding. Dasein has a tendency to interpret its own
being in terms of the being of entities other than itself. It has a
tendency to understand its own being in terms of the ‘world’.
He speaks of the ‘ontological reflection back of understand-
ing of the world onto the interpretation of Dasein’ (16).31 As
will become clear later Heidegger has a conception of ‘world’
according to which the world is not an entity, not even the
totality of entities, but the framework of significance which
makes possible any kind of comportment to entities. How-
ever, as a marginal comment in his own copy of Being and
Time makes clear, in the present context ‘world’ refers to the
present-at-hand or occurrent (das Vorhandene). The tendency
of Dasein to interpret its being as presence-at-hand he will
later call ‘falling’ (Verfallen).
Heidegger is proposing an ‘analytic of Dasein’ as ‘funda-
mental ontology’. The structures of the being of Dasein it
uncovers are to be essential structures rather than arbitrary
and contingent structures. However even the uncovering of
essential structures is not engaged in for its own sake. The
analytic of Dasein remains exclusively oriented towards the
working out of the question of being. There is no intention of
providing a complete ontology of Dasein.
There is, it seems to me, a problem with Heidegger’s con-
ception of phenomenology. Given that the only access to being
is through the understanding of being, by what criterion are
we to decide whether a particular understanding of being is
adequate or not? For the most part Dasein has an inadequate
understanding of its own being, but the only way we can
achieve an adequate (or ‘true’) understanding is by unfolding

31
‘die ontologische Rückstrahlung des Weltverständnisse auf die Dasein-
sauslegung’.
 The question of being 33
the understanding we already have. We cannot ‘see’ the being
of Dasein – or the being of anything else for that matter – as it
is, and compare our understanding of being with it. A central
contention of Heidegger’s philosophy is that seeing represents
a derivative mode of comportment to entities and yet his con-
ception of the method of philosophy as phenomenology is
very much wedded to the idiom of seeing. It is a letting be
seen (Sehenlassen). This does not sit very easily with the idea
that it is also interpretation (Auslegung).32
32
Though strictly speaking what is interpretive is not the seeing itself but
the description of what is seen in the seeing.
 3

Being-in-the-world

Whereas Husserl’s phenomenology is a phenomenology of

consciousness, Heidegger’s phenomenology is a phenomenol-
ogy of being. But because being is always the being of beings or
entities it is also a phenomenology of entities in the sense that
the letting-be-seen of the being of entities can only be achieved
on the basis of a clear view of the entities in question. The
entity with which Being and Time is principally concerned
is Dasein, the entity whose being is such that it involves –
indeed is – the understanding of being, its own being and the
being of other entities to which it comports itself. Although
some entities show themselves naturally and do not need to
be made to show themselves,1 being does not normally show
itself. In the analytic of Dasein Heidegger employs the phe-
nomenological method to lay bare the being of Dasein. What
is distinctive about Dasein is that in its being it understands
being. So the phenomenology of Dasein is seeking to lay bare
what is understood in this understanding. The being of Dasein
comprises various basic structures, which, because the being

1
For example we do not have to employ special techniques to gain access to
the things of ordinary, pre-scientific experience (sticks and stones, chairs
and tables, animals and the like) but we do have to employ special techniques
to gain access to the entities which figure in physics. What is special about
being is that wherever there is comportment to entities (scientific or pre-
scientific) there is understanding of being.

34
 Being-in-the-world 35
of Dasein is existence, Heidegger calls existentials. The most
basic of the existentials is being-in-the-world.

t h e m e an i n g o f ‘ b e i n g - i n - t h e - wo r l d ’
The expression is hyphenated to emphasise the unitary char-
acter of the phenomenon. But this does not mean that we
cannot distinguish and focus on certain constitutive elements.
Initially I will focus on two of them: world and in-ness. What
does Heidegger mean by ‘world’ and in what sense is Dasein
‘in’ the world? It is perhaps easier to say what he does not
mean. World is not a great big entity. It is not the sum total
of what exists (in the ordinary sense of ‘exist’). By ‘world’ he
does not mean the earth or the physical world or the cosmos.
And by ‘being-in’ he does not mean ‘spatially contained in’.
The sense in which Dasein is in the world is not that of one
spatially extended thing being contained in another spatially
extended thing. Dasein is not in the world in the sense that, for
example, water is ‘in’ a cup, a jacket is ‘in’ a cupboard (54).2 The
‘in’ of being-in does not refer to a relationship of two spatially
extended things to one another with respect to their location in
space. However, as we shall see, this does not mean that there
is no sense in which ‘world’ as understood by Heidegger is spa-
tial. Spatiality, properly understood, belongs to the being of
Dasein. But even this spatiality does not have the fundamental
significance Heidegger ascribes to temporality. What he calls
original or primordial time (or ecstatic-horizonal temporal-
ity) is not just a structure of Dasein’s being; it is the sense or

2
Heidegger’s examples could be misleading. Cups and jackets are not mere
things. They are not as he will put it merely vorhanden (present-at-hand) but
zuhanden (ready-to-hand). They are instances of what he will call ‘equip-
ment’ (Zeug).
36 Heidegger’s Being and Time
meaning (Sinn) in terms of which not just the being of Dasein
but being as such is understood.
Now Husserl’s transcendental subject or ego is not spatially
contained in anything. It is not in the world in the sense of being
part of a psychophysical entity which is one item among others
in the entities which make up the world. It is that for which the
world is. Rather than being part of the spatio-temporal world,
the transcendental subject is that in which the spatio-temporal
world is ‘constituted’. So it might seem that in insisting that
Dasein is in the world Heidegger is denying what Husserl
affirms of the transcendental subject or ego. But Heidegger’s
Dasein cannot be equated with consciousness, whether this
be transcendental or ‘mundane’. He certainly wants to reject
the idea that Dasein is cut off from entities other than itself by
an impenetrable wall of ‘ideas’ or ‘representations’,3 that it is
confined to a private sphere of pure interiority. But in saying

3
Husserl, it must be said, was also critical of the ‘theory of ideas’. He
maintained that in the representational theory of perception perceptual
consciousness is being treated as though it were a form of picture- or
image-consciousness. This assimilation of simple perception to picture-
consciousness rests on bad phenomenology. Simple perception and picture-
consciousness have a completely different intentional structure. Take a
genuine case of picture-consciousness. I’m looking at a picture postcard
of Edinburgh Castle. Although I perceive this picture-thing the primary
object of awareness is not the picture-object but the picture-subject, what is
pictured in the picture, namely, Edinburgh Castle. I see through the picture
what is pictured. There is nothing like this in the case of simple perception.
I see the thing, the tree there in the garden, for example. This and nothing
else is the object of the perceptual intention. A second, immanent tree or an
inner picture or image of the real tree out there in the garden is in no way
given. As well as appealing to the phenomenological differences between
genuine picture-consciousness and simple perception Husserl also argues
that the assimilation of simple perception to picture-consciousness involves
an infinite regress. If perception of an object requires perception of a pic-
ture which represents the object then perceiving the picture would require
perception of another picture which represented it, and so on ad infinitum.
 Being-in-the-world 37
that Dasein is in-the-world he is not saying that Dasein is an
entity existing alongside other entities, the totality of which
makes up the world. To suppose that this is what he is saying
would be to misunderstand both ‘in’ and ‘world’ as they figure
in ‘being-in-the-world’.

c on c e r n an d e q u i p m e n t
What then does he mean by ‘being-in-the-world’? There are
different ways of being in the world. He gives the following
examples: ‘having to do with something, producing some-
thing, attending to something and looking after it, making use
of something, giving something up and letting it go, under-
taking, accomplishing, ascertaining, interrogating, observing,
discussing, determining’ (56f ). These diverse modes of being-
in are all forms of what Heidegger calls ‘concern’ (Besorgen).4
It should be clear from the examples that the term does not
refer exclusively to practical modes of comportment.5 Obser-
vational modes of comportment are just as much instances of
Besorgen as those in which I can be said to be doing some-
thing to something or with something. However, what is true
is that the practical modes are somehow more basic than the
theoretical. By the former I understand those modes of com-
portment in which, in the very broadest sense, things are used
or employed. It should also be clear from the examples that
Besorgen does not necessarily involve physical manipulation.
However, it must be said that when it comes to the analysis of
4
In ordinary language besorgen has a variety of meanings, such as ‘get’,
‘acquire’, ‘attend to’, ‘see to’, ‘take care of’. Heidegger uses it as an onto-
logical term of art which refers to a basic way in which Dasein is.
5
‘This term has been chosen not because Dasein happens to be initially, and
to a large extent, “practical” and economic but because the being of Dasein
itself is to be made visible as care’ (57).
38 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Besorgen, or laying bare its structure, such examples tend to
predominate.
As something used or employed an entity is what
Heidegger calls ‘equipment’ (Zeug). Just as concern is not
confined to physical manipulation, so too equipment does not
just refer to such things as hammers, screwdrivers, cars, trac-
tors, traffic-lights, computers. It also encompasses such things
as books, clothes, roads, houses, rooms. He speaks of such enti-
ties as being ‘ready-to-hand’ or ‘available ’ (zuhanden) and of
their mode of being as ‘readiness-to-hand’ or ‘availableness’
(Zuhandenheit or Zuhandensein).6 Engagement with such enti-
ties is a specific mode of comportment. What makes comport-
ment to entities possible is the understanding of being. What
makes this mode of comportment possible is understanding
of the being of equipment, being-ready-to-hand (Zuhanden-
sein). The phenomenology of equipment is the letting be seen
of the being of equipment. Equipment shows itself; the being
of equipment must be made to show itself.
Such entities show themselves, or are encountered, in our
having-to-do-with them. Indeed it is what is ready-to-hand
rather than mere things which we primarily and for the most
part encounter. Equipment is what first and foremost shows
itself, rather than things with their properties. However, this
should not be taken to mean that our attention is focused
on the equipment itself. Unless things go wrong in some
way the equipment is ‘inconspicuous’. When I am completely

6
All these examples of ready-to-hand entities are artefacts. However we
should not think that the notion of the ready-to-hand excludes nature. ‘The
wood (Wald) is a forest of timber (Forst), the mountain a quarry of rock;
the river is water-power, the wind is wind “in the sails”’ (70). However it
must be said that little attention is paid to the ontology of nature in Being
and Time. His ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ is much more instructive in
this regard.
 Being-in-the-world 39
engrossed in dealing with something and make use of some
equipment in this activity I am precisely not directed towards
the equipment as such, the tool for instance. And I am just as
little directed towards the work itself.

m e r e pe rc e pt i on
Contrast such having-to-do-with or engagement, which, Hei-
degger is suggesting, is the primary mode of comportment to
things, with merely looking at things. In such perception I am
aware of an object over against me, an object of a certain
size and shape, texture and colour and so on. Traditionally
this has been treated as though it were the basic relation we
have to things and the foundation of all the rest. In Husserl,
for example, although there are all manner of modes of con-
sciousness, perception is the most basic, upon which all others
are ‘founded’.7 A striking thing about Heidegger is that he
reverses the traditional order of priority. We are first and
foremost engaged with entities. Mere perception of entities
arises when engagement is held in abeyance. Perception is a
modification of engaged having-to-do-with, what he calls a
deficient mode of concern (61).
Now it might be thought that there is something absurd in
the idea that perception as such is a modification of engaged
having-to-do-with. It is surely the case that I can only manipu-
late things, work with things, if I can see them, feel them, hear
them, in short perceive them. In other words engagement with
things essentially involves perception. So how can perception

7
What Husserl calls the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) includes such things as arte-
facts and institutions but the basic stratum of the lifeworld upon which
everything else is founded is the purely perceptual stratum, the objects of
sense-perception.
40 Heidegger’s Being and Time
be simply a modification (a deficient mode) of having-to-
do-with them? To make sense of Heidegger’s claim we must
distinguish between engaged perception and pure or mere per-
ception. The perception involved in hammering in nails, in
which the hammer is seen as a hammer and the nails are seen
as nails, is engaged perception. Perception in which I simply
behold an object with its sensible qualities is pure perception.
It makes sense to speak of the latter as a deficient mode of
engaged perception.
Even when I am not actually engaged with things I do
not normally perceive them simply as objects with such and
such sensible qualities. I perceive things as something. To
use some of Heidegger’s own examples, I hear the creaking
wagon, the motor-cycle, the column on the march, the north
wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling (163). I see
the hammer, the door, the house. Simply hearing sounds or
seeing visual qualities, far from being the most basic kind of
perception and the foundation of perceiving as, is quite an
achievement.8 ‘When we have to do with anything, the mere
seeing of the things which are closest to us bears in itself the
structure of interpretation, and in so primordial a manner that
just to grasp something free, as it were, of the “as” requires a
certain readjustment (Umstellung)’ (149). What he calls as-free
perception is the privation of perceiving as.
That we primarily see and hear things as something is not
just an interesting fact for Heidegger. It is not just an inter-
esting fact that we first and foremost encounter equipment,
entities whose mode of being is readiness-to-hand. He would
argue that perceiving entities as something is a condition of the
8
‘In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert
our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly’ (‘The Origin of the Work of
Art’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings ed. David Farrell Krell (London:
Routledge, 1993), p. 152).
 Being-in-the-world 41
possibility of perceiving objects and their sensible properties
and that engagement with entities is a condition of the possi-
bility of perceiving something as something. But the condition
of the possibility of all of this is being-in-the-world. Being-
in-the-world is the condition of the possibility of any kind of
comportment to any kind of entity.

the being of equipment

Phenomenology as Heidegger understands it is the exhibit-
ing, the letting be seen, of the being of entities. The being
with which we are presently concerned is the being of equip-
ment (Zeug), readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit). It is through
the analysis of such being that we reach an understanding of
‘world’. The being of equipment is such that equipment always
belongs to a whole of equipment. Strictly speaking there is no
such thing as a piece of equipment. Any particular piece of
equipment is encountered within a broader context of equip-
ment. Heidegger gives the following examples of equipmental
wholes: stairs, corridor, windows, chair, benches, blackboard;
ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furni-
ture, windows, doors, room. The various entities are not first
encountered singly, by themselves, so as then to fill out a room
as a sum of entities. What is first encountered is the lecture-
room or the study. And these are not encountered as what
is ‘between four walls’ in a geometrical, spatial sense, but as
equipment for working in. Prior to the ‘individual’ piece of
equipment an equipmental whole is always already disclosed.
It is in the appropriate way of dealing with equipment, of
having-to-do-with it, that such entities show themselves. No
amount of mere looking (or ‘gaping’ (Begaffen), as Heidegger
is fond of saying) will give us access to the equipment as what
it is. For example, it is in using the hammer, in hammering,
42 Heidegger’s Being and Time
that the hammer shows itself as what it is – a hammer. It
is important to note that he is talking about mere perception
here. It is possible for me to see the hammer as precisely what
it is. His point would be that this possibility presupposes prior
engagement with hammers, using them in the appropriate way,
for knocking in nails.
This, we may say, is what a hammer is for. This tells
us something about the being of equipment as such. ‘Being
for something’ is constitutive of the being of equipment as
equipment. ‘Equipment is essentially “something in-order-
to”’ (68). Heidegger calls this for-what or in-order-to (Um-zu)
of an entity its ‘reference’ (Verweisung). The being of equip-
ment is readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit), so we can say that
such reference is constitutive of readiness-to-hand as a mode
of being.
Heidegger also uses the German terms Bewenden and
Bewandtnis in his analysis of Dasein’s having-to-do-with enti-
ties within-the-world (§ 18). The problem is that the German
idioms which he puts to use in this connection essentially defy
translation (I think this is the only part of Being and Time of
which this is true). The equipmental character of equipment
is constituted by what Heidegger calls Bewandtnis, variously
translated (more or less arbitrarily) as involvement, relevance
or functionality. It is not clear what is to be gained by this
additional vocabulary. Bewandtnis as Heidegger uses it is the
same as the ‘in-order-to’ (Um-zu) of something, its ‘refer-
ence’ (Verweisung). In saying of this hammer that it is ‘in
order to hammer’ or of this door that it is ‘in order to make
leaving, entering and closing possible’ we are specifying the
entity’s Bewandtnis. He also speaks of the Womit (with-which)
of Bewandtnis and the Wobei (in-which) of Bewandtnis. The
‘in-which’ is what something is for (hammering, for example);
the ‘with-which’ is the something which is for something (in
 Being-in-the-world 43
this case the hammer). In view of the difficulties created by the
untranslatability of the German idiom and because its intro-
duction does not involve any addition of substance it seems
to me best to stick to the vocabulary of ‘in-order-to’ and
‘reference’.
Mere perception in which I am aware of an object and its
sensible qualities cannot in Heidegger’s view be the most basic
mode of comportment to entities. Primarily and for the most
part Dasein comports itself to entities which are ready-to-hand
and this comportment is that of engaged having-to-do-with.
Mere perception is a deficient mode of such comportment.
However this should not prevent us from seeing that engage-
ment has its own kind of sight, something Heidegger calls
Umsicht (circumspection). I see the ‘in-order-to’ of things
and its connection with the ‘in-order-to’ of other things. It
is not something I simply add in thought to the perceptually
given.

w h at h e i d e gg e r m e an s b y ‘ wo r l d ’
The references which are constitutive of the being of ready-
to-hand entities do not occur in isolation but belong to systems
of references, ‘referential totalities’ as Heidegger calls them.
Encountering ready-to-hand entities presupposes familiarity
with the system of references to which such entities belong. A
referential totality is ultimately anchored in something which
is not itself ready-to-hand (84). I encounter this ready-to-hand
entity I call a hammer. It is for hammering. The hammering
is for making something fast. Making something fast is for
protection against bad weather. And this protection is for the
sake of providing shelter for Dasein – that is to say, for the
sake of a possibility of Dasein’s being. This last reference is
some possible way for Dasein itself to be. It is what Heidegger
44 Heidegger’s Being and Time
calls a ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ (Worumwillen). This notion
of Dasein as the ultimate ‘for-the sake-of-which’ is related
to Kant’s notion of persons as ends in themselves, although
Heidegger would say that like previous philosophers Kant has
an inadequate idea of the being of persons. The ‘for-the-sake-
of-which’ is Dasein, and the being of Dasein is not that of
something present-at-hand (vorhanden).
The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world. In at least a
preliminary way we have seen what is meant by this ‘being-
in’. Dasein is ‘in’ the world in the sense of being engaged with
or having-to-do-with equipment or ready-to-hand entities.
But what does Heidegger mean by ‘world’? He does not mean
the totality of entities. Not the totality of things or substances
(what he calls the ‘present-at-hand’ (das Vorhandene)), but
also not the totality of entities with which Dasein is engaged,
the totality of equipment or entities ready-to-hand. ‘World’
is neither an entity nor a totality of entities. Rather it is that
which makes possible the encountering of entities. ‘World’ is
the system of references. Think of the system of references
constitutive of a workshop which makes possible the various
items in the workshop and the encountering of such items. Or
the system of references constitutive of a university. But it is
important to see that such systems are themselves embedded
in wider systems of references. What Heidegger means by
‘world’ is what we might call the all-embracing system of
references.
The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world. What
Heidegger means by ‘world’ is not itself an entity. Nor is
it the totality of entities. It is, however, inseparable from enti-
ties in two respects. Firstly, world is an existential; it belongs
to the being of Dasein, and Dasein is an entity. So if there
were no Dasein there would be no world. Secondly, world is
inseparable from entities other than Dasein. There cannot be
 Being-in-the-world 45
a world without entities within-the-world (Heidegger’s ter-
minology is such that only Dasein is in the world; entities
other than Dasein are within the world, they are innerweltlich).
And comportment to entities other than itself belongs to the
being of Dasein. The world is not a condition of the possi-
bility of the existence (in the ordinary sense) of entities but
it is a condition of the possibility of entities showing them-
selves or being encountered. ‘World’ in Heidegger’s sense can
therefore be said to be a priori. But if there can be different
worlds, different all-embracing systems of references, then
the world cannot be a priori in the sense of being an essential
structure of the being of Dasein as such. What is an essential
structure of the being of Dasein as such is being ‘in’ some
world or other. So what is a priori in the strict sense is not
the world but worldhood, those basic relations constitutive of
world as such, of which a particular world, a particular sys-
tem of references, is a concretisation. Part and parcel of the
being of Dasein is an understanding of such relations (Bezüge)
as ‘in-order-to’, something as something for something, ‘for-
the-sake-of-which’. He calls the interconnection of relations,
the understanding of which makes possible the encountering
of ready-to-hand entities, ‘significance’ (Bedeutsamkeit).
The world is not an entity towards which we comport our-
selves. It is not an object over against a subject. Nor is it
something ready-to-hand with which we are engaged. Rather
it is the system of references or the web of significance from
out of which entities show themselves or are encountered. We
live in the world, dwell in it, are at home in it. In such dwelling
the world, as the condition of the possibility of entities show-
ing themselves, does not show itself. But there are certain
kinds of experience, Heidegger maintains, which are specially
disclosive of world or which at least put us in a position to
‘let it be seen’. What they have in common is a disruption
46 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of the references constitutive of entities ready-to-hand.9 In
our dealings or engagement with things something can be
encountered as unusable or not suited to the use we had in
mind. For example, I reach for the hammer, but it is broken or
too big. Or something which is needed for the task in which
I am engaged is missing. Or something is simply in the way.
In each of these cases the ready-to-hand entity assumes the
character of something merely present-at-hand. In such expe-
riences the references which are normally implicit, taken for
granted, become explicit. The system of references in which
we normally simply dwell ‘lights up’, as Heidegger puts it. He
speaks of the assuming of the character of something merely
present-at-hand which takes place in such experiences as the
‘un-worlding’ of the ready-to-hand. But in this un-worlding
the world announces itself.
Being-in-the-world is a condition of the possibility of com-
portment to entities. Now we can accept that being-in-the-
world is a condition of the possibility of comportment to the
ready-to-hand. But why is it also a condition of the possibility
of comportment to the present-at-hand or mere things? A par-
tial answer to this is that mere things only present themselves
to mere beholding, but mere beholding is only a deficient
mode of concern or engagement. Concern or engagement is
inseparable from ‘world’ in the sense of the structure of sig-
nificance from out of which the ready-to-hand shows itself. A
world-less subject would not be able to comport itself to any
entities. But isn’t Heidegger making mere things dependent on
equipment and isn’t this simply absurd? Equipment becomes
equipment by mere things being given functional properties
by human beings. The dependence is the other way round.
But this supposes that what Heidegger is talking about is ontic
9
See § 16.
 Being-in-the-world 47
dependence, the dependence of one sort of entity on another
sort of entity. In fact he is talking about ontological depen-
dence. Presence-at-hand is dependent on readiness-to-hand
in the sense that the understanding of presence-at-hand pre-
supposes the understanding of readiness-to-hand. The rela-
tionship is one between understandings of being not between
entities.

s pac e an d s pat i a l i t y
Being-in (In-Sein) has been clearly distinguished from ‘insi-
deness’ (Inwendigkeit). The latter kind of spatial inclusion is
a category rather than an existential. However this does not
mean that there is no sense in which the notion of space can
be applied to Dasein. On the contrary, Heidegger thinks that
Dasein has its own specific kind of spatiality. His analysis
begins with the spatiality of the entities with which Dasein is
engaged: equipment. The kind of spatiality which applies to
equipment is bound up with its mode of being, readiness-to-
hand (Zuhandenheit). Equipment is the kind of entity which is
encountered zunächst. Not just in the sense of first (zuerst) but
also in the sense of close by (in der Nähe). ‘What is ready-to-
hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness’
(102). The closeness of equipment is not established by mea-
suring distances (Abstände) but is determined by circumspec-
tive concern. This also determines the direction (Richtung) in
which the equipment is accessible. The closeness and direc-
tion of the ready-to-hand entity together determine its place
(Platz). Place is quite different from simply occurring at a
particular location in space (Raumstelle). It is the place where
the thing belongs. It is the place of the entity as equipment
for . . . and just as the individual piece of equipment belongs
to an equipmental whole so too the place of the equipment
48 Heidegger’s Being and Time
belongs to a multiplicity of places which together constitute a
whole of places (Platzganzheit).
A whole of places in turn belongs to what Heidegger calls a
region (Gegend). This somewhat obscurely defined notion has
todowithorientation.Theplace,whichisconstitutedbydirec-
tion and closeness, is ‘already oriented towards a region and
within that region’ (103). A region is something which must
already have been uncovered if things are to be assigned their
place within a whole of places. ‘In the region of’ (in der Gegend
von) does not simply mean ‘in the direction of’ (in der Rich-
tung nach) but also conveys the idea of being within the range
or orbit (Umkreis) of something which lies in that direction.
‘The regional orientation of the multiplicity of places belong-
ing to the ready-to-hand goes to make up the aroundness –
the “round-about-us” [das Um-uns-herum] of those entities
which we encounter as closest environmentally [des umweltlich
nächstbegegnenden Seienden]’ (103). Heidegger’s emphasis on
the region makes it clear that we are not presented with a three-
dimensional multiplicity of possible positions (Stellen) which
happen to be occupied with this or that thing. The spatiality
of the ready-to-hand is such that the ‘above’ is what is ‘on the
ceiling’, the ‘below’ what is ‘on the floor’, the ‘behind’ what is
‘by the door’. Such regional ‘wheres’ are uncovered by what
Heidegger calls the ‘ways and paths of everyday dealings’
(‘Gänge und Wege des alltäglichen Umgangs’) (103) rather
than by measurement and observation.
Having examined the sense in which equipment is ‘in space’
Heidegger now turns his attention to the sense in which Dasein
itself is ‘in space’. The being of Dasein is neither presence-
at-hand nor readiness-to-hand so its spatiality can be neither
occurrence in a position (Stelle) in space nor having a place
(Platz). The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world so Dasein’s
spatiality must be grounded in being-in-the-world. The two
 Being-in-the-world 49
aspects of Dasein’s being which are constitutive of Dasein’s
spatiality are what Heidegger calls de-distancing (Entfernung)
and orientation or directionality (Ausrichtung). I will briefly
consider these in turn. The ordinary meaning of Entfernung is
‘distance’ but Heidegger transforms its meaning by emphasis-
ing the inseparable prefix ent-. This is equivalent to the English
de- or un-. Examples of the occurrence of such a prefix are ‘de-
capitate’ (Enthaupten) and ‘de-nazification’ (Entnazifizierung).
He uses the expression Entfernung in an active and intransitive
sense. So it is a kind of doing something to something – but an
ontological doing. De-distancing means making distance dis-
appear, making the being at a distance of something disappear,
bringing it near. Dasein is essentially de-distancing. Its being
is such that it lets entities be encountered in nearness.
Just as de-distancing is a structure of the being of Dasein (an
existential) which corresponds to closeness (a category) so too
directionality is a structure of the being of Dasein which cor-
responds to direction. De-distancing and directionality nec-
essarily go together. ‘Every bringing-close [Näherung] has
already taken in advance a direction into a region from which
what is de-distanced approaches [sich nähert] so that it can be
encountered with respect to its place’ (108).
A distinction is often made between space as it figures in
geometry and physics and space as we actually experience it.
But what this distinction amounts to very much depends on
what is meant by ‘experience’. Husserl distinguishes between
the spatiality of the lifeworld (the world of lived experience)
and the spatiality of the objects of natural science and argues
that the latter is grounded in ‘lifeworldly’ spatiality in the
sense that the spatial concepts of natural science arise out of
the idealisation and mathematisation of experienced shapes
and structures. But by ‘experience’ here is meant perception.
‘Lifeworldly’ spatiality is the spatiality of the world as given
50 Heidegger’s Being and Time
in sense-perception. In Heidegger, by contrast, it is engaged
having-to-do-with, circumspective dealing, which determines
the spatiality of everyday existence. Clearly we perceive things
as spatial, but such perception is grounded in concern.

h e i d e gg e r an d t h e ‘ p ro b l e m ’ o f t h e
‘ e xt e r na l ’ wo r l d
If Heidegger is right about the primacy of engaged having-to-
do-with over mere perception, then a traditional philosophical
problem – that of our knowledge of the external world – sim-
ply does not arise. What Heidegger means by ‘world’ is not
external anyway. It is an existential, a structure of Dasein’s
being. What are external, in the sense of being other than
Dasein, are ready-to-hand and present-at-hand entities. If the
primary mode of access to entities is perceptual, then scepti-
cism about the existence of external objects is possible. But if
perception is dependent on engaged-having-to-do-with, then
scepticism about entities other than Dasein makes no sense.
Kant thought it was a scandal of philosophy that no proof of the
existence of the external world had been found and proceeded
to try to remedy this by producing his own non-causal proof
(in what he calls the ‘refutation of idealism’). What he offers is
not a variation of the causal argument but an argument to the
effect that awareness of the temporal succession of my mental
states presupposes direct awareness of something external.
The problem arises from the Cartesian idea that I am, and
can only be, directly aware of my own consciousness and its
contents. This is what is given. In perception I take myself to
be directly aware of material objects and at least some of their
properties. But strictly speaking what I am directly aware of
are my ideas or representations of such objects. Ideas or rep-
resentations are mental entities, contents of consciousness.
 Being-in-the-world 51
Descartes himself sought to justify our belief in the existence
of an external world (external to consciousness) by appealing
to divine veracity. Some have tried to solve the problem by
reducing material objects to systems of (actual and possible)
contents of consciousness (‘sense-data’). But how then do we
explain the systematic, ordered character of such contents?
I have this ordered multiplicity of perceptions (ideas, repre-
sentations) when, as I say, I go out into the garden and see
a tree. To say that we are only directly aware of contents of
consciousness is already to have abandoned common sense,
but the natural explanation of my having the perceptual expe-
riences I do and of the order that they exhibit is that there is, for
example, a tree in the garden and that its presence causes me
to have the experiences that I do. Non-reductionist accounts
of material objects – given the Cartesian starting point – tend
to have recourse to causal inference. Those contents of con-
sciousness we call perceptions are caused by material objects.
But the problem is: how can we establish the existence of such
a causal relation given that one term of that relation is forever
inaccessible? To say that I can infer the inaccessible term is
already to presuppose the causal relation.
Heidegger does not offer an alternative proof. The real
scandal, in his view, is not, as Kant would have it, that no
successful proof has been forthcoming, but that such a proof
has been sought in the first place (205). The problem in his
view is a pseudo-problem. It arises from a failure properly to
analyse the being of the ‘subject’.
It is important to distinguish different kinds of question
regarding the ‘reality’ of the ‘external’ world. There is the
question of whether there are any entities which transcend
consciousness and whether the existence of such entities can be
proved. And then there is the question of whether such entities
can be known as they are in themselves. But for Heidegger the
52 Heidegger’s Being and Time
only genuine philosophical question is that which concerns
the meaning of reality as a mode of being.
As a phenomenologist Heidegger recognises that the anal-
ysis of reality as a mode of being is only possible on the basis
of the proper mode of access to the real. Traditionally this has
been regarded as anschauendes Erkennen (202). This is cogni-
tion, in which the subject beholds something. Alternatively
put, it is perception considered as a mode of cognition or
knowledge. This is something which is ‘located’ in the mind
or consciousness. It is a mode of comportment of conscious-
ness. But it belongs to the sense or meaning of reality that
the real is independent, is ‘in itself’. So inevitably, Heidegger
thinks, the ontological question about the meaning of reality as
a mode of being gets tied up with the question of the possible
independence of the real ‘from consciousness’ or the question
of the possible transcendence of consciousness beyond itself
into the ‘sphere’ of the real (202). But what has so far been
missing, in his view, is an ontological analysis of the being
of that which the real is supposed to be independent of, that
which is supposed to be transcended. What has to be got clear
about is the being of consciousness or the knowing subject.
Furthermore it has to be determined whether anschauendes
Erkennen is indeed the primary mode of access to the real.
Heidegger is not out to deny that there is such a thing as
consciousness or such a thing as the knowing subject. There
is such a thing as consciousness in the sense of having entities
before one as objects. But this is a way in which Dasein, as
being-in-the-world, is. There is cognition of entities but such
cognition is an essentially founded mode of access to enti-
ties (see § 13). We dwell with entities within-the-world, we
are involved with them, engaged with them. Cognition of
entities, though genuine, is not what first gives us access to
entities, for it can only arise on the basis of an ‘uncovering’
 Being-in-the-world 53
of entities achieved in our engaged having-to-do-with enti-
ties. Entities are only accessible as entities within-the-world.
And all access to entities within-the-world is ontologically
grounded in Dasein’s basic constitution: being-in-the-world.
Questions do not just occur: they have to be raised. Who,
Heidegger asks, raises the question of whether there is an
(external) world and whether its existence can be proved?
The answer is: not a world-less subject but Dasein as being-
in-the-world. But precisely because Dasein poses the question
the question is absurd. It is important in this context to keep
in mind Heidegger’s distinction between world and ‘world’,10
for otherwise it might seem that to dispose of the problem
of the existence of the external world in the way suggested
(Dasein raises the question and the being of Dasein is being-
in-the-world) is just verbal trickery. ‘External world’ refers to
entities which are supposed to be external to and independent
of us. If being-in-the-world meant being amidst such entities,
then if the being of Dasein is being-in-the-world, it follows
that there is no problem. But ‘world’ in being-in-the-world
does not refer to such entities. As the ‘wherein’ of being-
in, world is the web of significance or meaning which makes
possible the encountering of entities. What the problem of
the external world is concerned with is not world but ‘world’.
However, Heidegger would reject as absurd the idea that there
might be disclosure of world without the disclosure of entities
within-the-world. World is essentially disclosed with the being
of Dasein; ‘world’ is always already uncovered, dis-covered
(entdeckt) with the disclosedness of world.
The ‘problem’ of the external world concerns the indepen-
dence of something and its externality. But what is neglected is
10
World (without inverted commas) is not an entity or plurality of entities
but that which makes it possible for entities to show themselves or be
encountered. ‘World’ refers to innerworldly entities.
54 Heidegger’s Being and Time
the ontology of that from which the external world is supposed
to be independent and to which it is supposed to be external.
It is not that there is no understanding of the being of this
‘subject’ but that implicitly at least it is a false understanding.
The being of the subject is implicitly understood as presence-
at-hand (Vorhandensein or Vorhandenheit). So what is needed
to dispel the illusion that such a proof is needed is an adequate
ontology of the subject or, in Heidegger’s terms, an existential
ontology of Dasein. Properly understood in its being Dasein
already is what those who seek to provide proofs of the exter-
nal world think has to be proved for it. It is in-the-world
comporting itself to entities within-the-world.
Where, then, does Heidegger stand in relation to the real-
ism/idealism debate? According to realism the external world
exists and we can know both that it does exist and what it
is like. Some statements of Heidegger’s existential ontology,
such as that with Dasein as being-in-the-world entities within-
the-world are always already disclosed (uncovered), appear
to agree with realism. But what fundamentally distinguishes
Heidegger’s statements of existential ontology, such as the one
above, is that they are ontological, whereas the thesis of realism
is essentially ontic. It is about what there is rather than about
the being of what there is.
He takes a much more favourable view of idealism – suitably
interpreted (see 207). Being and reality are only in conscious-
ness. This is true provided such idealism does not misinterpret
itself as ‘psychological’ or ‘subjective’ idealism. Misunder-
stood in this way it would be maintaining that entities, includ-
ing those we call real entities, are in, or only exist in relation
to, consciousness considered as the object of inner percep-
tion or introspection. It is not entities that are in conscious-
ness but being, not real things but reality. And reality is only
in consciousness if consciousness is understood as Verstehen
 Being-in-the-world 55
(understanding). Being is not something that ‘is’ in a Platonic
heaven. Being only ‘is’ in the understanding of being. Reality
‘is’ in the understanding of reality. This does not mean that
entities depend on Dasein, only that entities can only show
themselves as entities on the basis of the understanding of
being that Dasein is.
Does Heidegger actually succeed in dissolving the
problem? It is we who raise the question of the existence of
the external world. Now if we are Dasein, that is, if our being
is as Heidegger describes it in his existential analytic, then the
problem must be a pseudo-problem. The being of Dasein
is being-in-the-world. But being-in-the-world is insepara-
ble from being involved with (being bei) entities within-the-
world. What I think is crucial to Heidegger’s success is his
being able to show the primacy of ‘engaged’ modes of com-
portment – which is more than just drawing attention to the
fact that they tend to predominate. If anschauendes Erkennen
is grounded in engaged having-to-do-with and is not possible
without it, then the ‘problem’ does not get off the ground.
 4

Being-with

The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world. Dasein is not a

worldless subject. Heidegger now wants to show that Dasein is
not an isolated subject.1 (In fact Dasein is not, strictly speaking,
a subject at all.)2 It is not just a matter of its being the case that I
am not the only one of my kind. My being is essentially being-
with-others. If this is so then another traditional problem of
philosophy, the problem of our knowledge of other minds,
turns out to be a pseudo-problem.
The traditional ‘problem’ arises from the assumption that
I can only be directly aware of my own mind and its contents.
Any knowledge I have of other minds is necessarily indirect.
Assuming that it is possible to have knowledge of physical
objects through sense-perception, I become aware that some of
the physical objects I encounter resemble, both in appearance

1
‘In clarifying being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without
a world never “is” proximally, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an
isolated “I” without others is just as far from being proximally given’ (116).
2
This needs qualifying. Dasein cannot be identified with being a subject.
Being-in-the-world does not consist in a subject placing something before
itself as an object. Heidegger is not, however, saying that there is no such
thing as this relationship between a subject and an object. Without objec-
tification there could be no such thing as science. But objectification can
only take place on the basis of comportment to entities which is not that of
a subject to an object. It is the idea that the subject–object relation is basic
that Heidegger is contesting.

56
 Being-with 57
and behaviour, my own body. On the basis of this resemblance
I infer the existence of a mind or consciousness like my own
‘behind’ the other body and its behaviour. The problem with
such an analogical inference is that, in the nature of the case,
it can only rest on a single case. I cannot use as a premise a
generalisation to the effect that whenever I have encountered
a body like my own it has been associated with consciousness,
because this association is known only in my own case.
Although Husserl in his treatment of intersubjectivity does
not have recourse to analogical inference his approach to the
problem, for all its subtlety and complexity, is basically the
traditional one.3 The other ego and its experiences are not
presented in my experience but appresented in something like
the way in which the (currently) unseen rear-side of an object
is appresented.4 The important thing is that appresentation is
not a matter of inference. But of course the crucial difference
is that, whereas what is appresented in the perception of an
object can subsequently be presented (I can walk round to the
other side of the object and perceive what was previously its
rear-side), this is not so where what is appresented is another
consciousness or subject. The appresentation is analogical in
the sense that it depends on the perceived resemblance between
my body and the other body, but we are assured it is not an
analogical inference.
Max Scheler, another phenomenologist and a contem-
porary of Heidegger,5 also strongly rejects any notion of
3
For Husserl’s treatment of intersubjectivity see his Cartesian Meditations,
trans. Dorian Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), Fifth Medita-
tion.
4
Appresentation is not reducible to what is seen giving rise to the thought
or image of what is not seen.
5
Heidegger had a very high opinion of Scheler, describing him as the most
powerful force in contemporary philosophy. However his references to the
details of Scheler’s work are invariably critical.
58 Heidegger’s Being and Time
inference. According to him we see the other person’s mental
states, their emotions, thoughts, attitudes and so on.
We see joy in their laughter, their sorrow and pain in their tears, their
shame in their blushing, their entreaty in their outstretched hands,
their rage in the gnashing of their teeth, their threats in the clenching
of their fist, the tenor of their thoughts in the sound of their words. I do
not merely see the other person’s eyes. I also see that the other person
is looking at me and even that they are looking at me as though they
wished to avoid my seeing that they are looking at me.6
It has repeatedly been pointed out that comportment to entities
is made possible by an understanding of the being of entities.
Thus comportment to equipment presupposes understanding
of the being of equipment, readiness-to-hand. Comportment
to mere things presupposes understanding of presence-at-
hand. Comportment of Dasein to itself presupposes under-
standing of existence. So if comportment to other Dasein is to
be possible there must be understanding of what Heidegger
calls Mitdasein, Dasein-with. He maintains that such an under-
standing is inseparable from Dasein’s understanding of its own
being.
Instead of dealing directly with what we might call the face-
to-face encounter of Dasein with Dasein, Heidegger starts by
pointing out how, in encountering ready-to-hand entities, we
also encounter other Dasein (117f ). For example, the work
produced by the craftsman involves an essential reference to
possible wearers and users. Walking along the edge of a field,
the field shows itself as, or is encountered as, belonging to
such-and-such a person, as properly maintained by him and
so on. The boat moored at the edge of the lake refers to some-
one we know who sails in it. And even if it is a boat we are
6
Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), 260.
 Being-with 59
not familiar with it still refers to others. In each of these cases
we encounter other Dasein. Now it might be suggested that
we don’t really encounter other Dasein in such cases.7 All we
have in such cases, it might be said, is a thing, something
present-at-hand. The others are not really encountered but
are simply a mental addition, something added in thought.
Heidegger emphatically denies this. Such entities (the shoes
made by the shoemaker, the field, the boot) are ready-to-
hand and can only be encountered on the basis of the dis-
closedness of world and this world is essentially one within
which such entities are ready-to-hand not just for me but for
others (118).
World is not itself an entity but what lets us encounter enti-
ties. It is what makes it possible for entities to show themselves.
What Heidegger is now saying is that Dasein’s world lets it
encounter, not only entities whose mode of being is either
readiness-to-hand or presence-at-hand, but entities whose
mode of being is the same as its own: being-in-the-world. The
other is encountered as within-the-world but at the same time
as ‘in’ the world. Being-in-the-world is being-with-others.
An entity which is merely within-the-world cannot be with
another entity. An entity which does not have the character of
Dasein can only be within-the-world. A chair can be along-
side another chair but cannot be with another chair. The world
which Dasein and the other are ‘in’ is a with-world, a shared
world. So although world is an existential and has the mode of
being of Dasein it is not the private possession of an individual.

7
In lectures delivered in the summer semester of 1925 Heidegger was still
using the Husserlian notion of appresentation. ‘The poorly cultivated field
along which I am walking appresents its owner or tenant. The sailboat
at anchor appresents someone in particular, the one who takes trips in
it’ (History of the Concept of Time. Prologomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985), p. 240).
60 Heidegger’s Being and Time
In saying that the being of Dasein is being-with Heidegger
is not saying that I am not the only one of my kind, that as
well as this instance of the species ‘human being’ there are
other instances. To say this would be to make what he calls an
ontic statement. That is to say, it is a statement about entities, a
factual statement about what entities there are and what they
are like. If the entire human population of the world, with the
exception of myself, had been wiped out, the statement that
I am not the only one of my kind, although false, would still
be an ontic statement. Its falsity would have no bearing on
the statement that the being of Dasein is being-with. This is
because the latter is a statement of existential ontology. Being-
with is something which belongs essentially to my mode of
being. It is not a property which I possess by virtue of the fact
that there happen to be other people. Even if there had been
no Man Friday on the island, Robinson Crusoe’s being would
still have been being-with. As the sole survivor of a universal
catastrophe my being would still be being-with.
And where it is not a matter of no one else existing but
of no one else being present or of my not being aware of
anyone else being present my being is just as much being-
with. As Heidegger puts it, the others can be absent only in
and for a being-with. Being alone is what he calls a ‘deficient
mode of being-with’ (120). The possibility of being alone itself
demonstrates that the being of Dasein is being-with.
Suppose I am alone. The fact that there is another instance
of the species ‘human being’ alongside me, or even many such
instances, does not make me any less alone. Being alone in
a crowd is a familiar phenomenon, but it would be a seri-
ous misdescription of this phenomenon to say that the others
who make up the crowd are merely present-at-hand. They
are encountered as other Dasein but in the mode of indiffer-
ence. Encountering others in the mode of indifference is only
 Being-with 61
possible for a being whose being is essentially being-with.
Because the being of Dasein is essentially being-with it
does not consist in the occurring together of a plurality of
‘subjects’. To think of Dasein as a subject rather than as an
object is still to think of it as something present-at-hand or
occurrent. As belonging to the being of Dasein being-with
cannot be reduced to any kind of relation between present-at-
hand entities.
We have seen that others are encountered in my deal-
ings with the ready-to-hand. It might be better to say that
they are co-encountered in such dealings because, although
they are not simply added in thought to the ready-to-hand
entity encountered, it is true to say that they are encoun-
tered through the latter. In this sense they are not encountered
directly. But of course I also encounter others directly. In
traditional treatments of the experience of others I experi-
ence the other’s body, which in important respects looks like
and behaves like (moves like) my body. On the basis of its
appearance and movement I add in thought to what is per-
ceived the mind of the other person (thoughts, feelings and
so on). For Heidegger this is a pure construction. I do not
encounter a body which looks thus and so and moves thus and
so, but someone ‘at work’, i.e. someone ‘in’ the world engaged
with entities ready-to-hand, e.g. sawing logs, writing a letter,
or just walking along the street. Even when we see some-
one ‘merely standing around’ we do not experience them as a
present-at-handhumanthing.Someonewhoismerelyhanging
about is not doing anything (if compared with someone mow-
ing the lawn). But such hanging about is not mere presence-
at-hand but a deficient mode of concern, of engaged being-
in-the-world. Even the deficient modes of concern can only
apply to Dasein, not to entities other than Dasein: ‘ “standing
around” is an existential mode of being: an unconcerned,
62 Heidegger’s Being and Time
uncircumspective lingering with (Verweilen bei) everything
and nothing’ (120).
As we shall see, when Heidegger has completed his phe-
nomenological laying bare of the structures of Dasein’s being –
the existentials – he uses the term Sorge (‘care’) to refer to the
totality of these structures in their essential unity.8 Using ‘care’
in an ontological sense, to be explained later, he says that the
being of Dasein is care. The -sorge in Besorgen, the term used to
designate Dasein’s dealings with intraworldly entities (entities
within-the-world) that are ready-to-hand, is not accidental.
All modes of comportment of Dasein have to be interpreted
in terms of the phenomenon of care which determines the
being of Dasein as such. Being-with is a way of being to,
or towards, entities which are encountered within-the-world
(intraworldly entities). But such entities are also in-the-world,
the same world that I am in. The entity to which Dasein as
being-with comports itself does not have the mode of being
of ready-to-hand equipment and likewise being-with cannot
have the same character of being as Besorgen. The entity to
which Dasein as being-with comports itself is itself Dasein. To
preserve the link with Sorge Heidegger uses the term Fürsorge
(literally care for) to designate the mode of comportment to
other Dasein, a link which unfortunately is lost in the English
word used to translate it, ‘solicitude’.
In using this term to designate the comportment of Dasein
to other Dasein Heidegger is not making any kind of eval-
uation. It would be a complete mistake to think of Fürsorge
as something positive and good and of being-with as some-
thing warm and attractive like ‘togetherness’. Being-with has
nothing to do with ‘solidarity’. We can be for one another

8
Although ‘care’ embraces all of the existentials the essence of care consists
of the three basic existentials of projection, thrownness and Sein bei.
 Being-with 63
or against one another. We can get along without each other.
We can pass one another by or be wholly indifferent to one
another. All these modes of comportment are possible modes
of Fürsorge in the ontological sense of the term. Heidegger’s
existential analytic, initially at least, is concerned with Dasein
in its everydayness. Everyday and average being-with is char-
acterised precisely by these modes of deficiency and indiffer-
ence. It is these indifferent modes of being-with-one-another
which lead to this being (being-with) being mistakenly inter-
preted as the mere presence-at-hand of a plurality of subjects.
Heidegger insists that ontologically there is all the difference
in the world between the ‘indifferent’ occurring together of
things and the not-concerning-one-another of entities that are
with one another.
There are however positive modes of solicitude. Although
these lack the indifference of the dominant modes the sense
in which they are positive does not necessarily imply praise-
worthiness. Heidegger distinguishes two extremes of positive
solicitude (122), one in which the other is dominated and one in
which they are liberated. In the first kind of solicitude the
other’s ‘care’ (Sorge) is taken away from them. I leap in for the
other as Heidegger puts it and take over whatever it is they
are engaged with. The other has the merely passive role of
taking over what has been done for them, the ‘finished prod-
uct’. Although this may seem to disburden the other it is a
form of domination which makes the other dependent, even
though the domination remains concealed from the one who
is dominated.9
In the second, positive, kind of solicitude, by contrast, I
do not leap in for the other but leap ahead of them. As we

9
There is an echo here of Hegel’s dialectic of master (Herr) and slave (Knecht)
in his Phenomenology of Spirit.
64 Heidegger’s Being and Time
shall see in chapter 6Heidegger distinguishes between existing
authentically and existing inauthentically. At this stage all we
will say is that authenticity has to do with freedom. To exist
authentically is to choose what one is, in the sense of choosing
one’s own possibilities of being. In the second kind of positive
solicitude (Fürsorge) I don’t take away the care (Sorge) of the
other person but ‘free them to be their care authentically’ (122).
This kind of solicitude, in liberating rather than dominating,
helps the other to become transparent to themselves in their
care.
The being of Dasein is in each case mine. We now know
that the being of Dasein is also being-with. There is no incom-
patibility here. It does not mean that Dasein is any less an indi-
vidual. The being-with of Dasein is in each case mine (though
as we shall see in chapter 6 there is also a sense in which
‘the others’ take away my being as an individual). Because the
being of Dasein is both in-each-case-mine and being-with I do
not first have to escape from some private sphere of my own
subjectivity and gain access to other equally private subjects.
Dasein’s knowledge of the other is not based on some dubious
analogical inference but arises out of its being always already
with in a shared world.
But not all approaches to the problem of other minds involve
inference. There are also those which appeal to empathy. As
the German word for empathy – Einfühlung – suggests this is
a kind of feeling one’s way into another person’s mind or con-
sciousness. Now Heidegger has no wish to deny that there is
such a thing. What he does deny, however, is that being-with is
made possible by empathy. Rather empathy presupposes being-
with. Being-with is the condition of the possibility of empathy,
rather than the other way round. The need for empathy arises
precisely because of the dominance in ‘everyday’ existence of
 Being-with 65
the deficient modes of being-with, the ‘indifference of passing
one another by’.
Because initially and for the most part solicitude takes the
deficient and indifferent form of passing one another by and
because of the proneness on the part of Dasein to reticence,
self-concealment and disguise there is a need for cultivating
empathy, for developing special ways of getting ‘behind’ the
other. But recognising this is quite different from supposing
that empathy is the bridge between one intrinsically private
subject and another intrinsically private subject. Heidegger is
not claiming that some other kind of bridge is required. The
mistake is to suppose that any kind of bridge is required. Dasein
is not an intrinsically private subject. Its being is being-in-
the-world and this being-in-the-world is being-with-in-the-
world.
Heidegger’s Dasein, unlike an intrinsically private subject,
is such that its understanding of its own being includes an
understanding of the being of other Dasein, or as he puts it,
an understanding of Mitdasein (being-there-with). Although
he does not make this clear the point seems to be that to have
a notion of my own being requires the contrast between my
own and that of someone else. This understanding of Mitdasein,
the being of another is precisely that: understanding. As will
become clear in the next chapter understanding (Verstehen) for
Heidegger is not a form of cognition but a basic way in which
Dasein is (a ‘primordial existential mode of being’). Cognition
(Erkennen), he will claim, can only be understood as a modifi-
cation of understanding. Knowing one another is grounded in
the understanding of being-with, which is inseparable from
the understanding of one’s own being.
Being with others is not a being towards present-at-hand
things nor is it a being towards something ready-to-hand. It
66 Heidegger’s Being and Time
is a relationship of being (Seinsverhältnis) of Dasein to Dasein
(124). Now one way in which empathy has been understood
is as the projection of oneself into another. In line with this
conception the model for the relationship between myself and
the other is the relationship I have to myself. Dasein is itself
a relationship to Dasein in the sense that Dasein in under-
standing its being comports itself to itself, that is, to Dasein.
The other is being treated as a duplicate of the self. What is
wrong with this approach is that it presupposes that the being
of Dasein to itself is being to another. And this is precisely
what it is not.
How successful is Heidegger in his attempt to expose the
problem of other minds as a pseudo-problem? If I am Dasein,
and the being of Dasein is being-with, then it is a pseudo-
problem. There is only a problem if I am an intrinsically
private subject to whose states only I have direct access. It
is important to see that Heidegger is not in the business of
refutation. That is to say, he is not seeking to establish by
argument that the conception of the subject which gives rise
to the problem is mistaken.10 In this respect at least he is not
like Wittgenstein who tries to establish the incoherence of the
idea that we are intrinsically private subjects through his pri-
vate language argument.11 On the assumption that we cannot

10
This is evident in the 1925 lectures referred to earlier: ‘It is assumed that the
subject is encapsulated within itself and now has the task of empathizing
with another subject. This way of formulating the question is absurd, since
there never is such a subject in the sense it is assumed here. If the constitution
of what is Dasein is instead regarded without presuppositions as being-in
and being-with in the presuppositionless immediacy of everydayness, it
then becomes clear that the problem of empathy is just as absurd as the
question of the reality of the external world’ (History of the Concept of
Time, 243).
11
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), sects. 243–315.
 Being-with 67
have the conception of something without language he argues
that we cannot have the conception of an intrinsically private
subject because this would require an intrinsically private lan-
guage, but this is impossible. The words of a language only
have meaning if their use is governed by rules. But they can
only be governed by rules if there can be a public or inter-
subjective check on whether rules are being followed. But for
an intrinsically private subject there would be no difference
between following a rule and seeming to follow a rule. A rule
which did not allow of the distinction would be no rule at
all. In Heideggerian language, as a language user my being is
necessarily being-with.
Heidegger makes no reference to language in his treatment
of being-with. However, as will become clear in the next chap-
ter, there is a sense in which he thinks language is essential
to Dasein. Dasein is its disclosedness, and what he calls Rede
(‘discourse’) is an essential dimension of this disclosedness.
What then is Heidegger’s justification for the claims he
makes? In fact this is a question which could be asked about
all the claims that Heidegger makes in Being and Time. Onto-
logical claims are to be established not by argument but phe-
nomenologically. So ultimately it is a matter of seeing that things
(Sachen – so broadly construed that the term covers both
beings or entities and the being of beings) are so. In the philo-
sophical sense phenomenology is the letting be seen of being –
which primarily and for the most part does not show itself but
must be made to show itself. The only kind of verification
of which ontological claims are capable is phenomenological.
This must be borne in mind throughout one’s reading of Being
and Time. It is not just a matter of reading these words and
understanding them. The words are intended to let die Sache
be seen. In reading the words we have ourselves to engage in
phenomenological seeing.
68 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Asregardstheparticularontologicalthesisthatisthesubject
of this chapter – that the being of Dasein is being-with – we
might ask how we can just see that this is so. How can we just
see that we are not isolated and intrinsically private subjects
or centres of consciousness? There is no simple answer to this.
But what is of crucial importance is the proper mode of access
to Dasein. Although the subject-matter of phenomenology
is not entities but the being of entities one can only get at
being through entities. The being with which Being and Time
is principally concerned is the being of that entity which each
of us is – Dasein (though the ultimate concern is with being
as such). As we saw in chapter 1 we could not be closer to this
entity. We are closest to it by virtue of being it.
But what is this entity which each of us is? Philosophers,
including phenomenologists such as Husserl, say that it is
an ‘I’, an ego, a ‘subject’ or a self. And this is thought of as
what persists throughout the changes in my mental acts and
experiences and which thereby unifies this multiplicity. This
is a subject in a pre-eminent sense – that which underlies. This
something which remains the same through change has the
character of a self.
Heidegger recognises that those philosophers who talk like
this may reject the idea of a mental substance and insist that
consciousness is not a kind of thing and that the person is not an
object. Nevertheless, he claims, the being of the self or subject
is being understood, implicitly at least, as presence-at-hand.
This is the mode of being of entities other than Dasein.
But in affirming the existence of the I or self, however
its being is to be understood, am I not simply accepting an
indubitable phenomenological datum? In a Cartesian spirit
we might ask: what is more indubitable than the givenness
of the I? And to get clear about the nature of the self do we
not have to focus exclusively on the self and look away from
 Being-with 69
the world and other selves? But what this assumes is that it is
self-evident that the proper mode of access to Dasein is reflec-
tion or inner perception (vernehmende Reflexion). But if, as
Heidegger claims (though this has still to be clarified), Dasein
is an essentially understanding entity the proper mode of access
to it will not be reflection but interpretation. As we have
already seen Heidegger’s phenomenology is hermeneutic phe-
nomenology. Understanding is not a property or faculty which
Dasein happens to possess. Dasein is understanding. And it is
not just understanding of entities, it is also understanding of
being. The claim that the being of Dasein is being-with is to be
verified by phenomenologically interpreting the understand-
ing of being which Dasein always already has – or better, is.
What this reveals is that Dasein is not a mere subject without
a world and not an isolated ‘I’ without the ‘others’.
However, as we shall see in chapter 6, there is another side
to his treatment of the relationship to others. This relationship
is essential to the being of Dasein, the being of Dasein is being-
with. But there is also a sense in which the others, in the shape of
what he will call ‘the One’ (das Man), take away my being. This
notion will be crucially important to the distinction, which
has still to be highlighted, between authentic existence and
inauthentic existence.
 5

Being-in

d i s c lo s e d n e s s
The impression might have been given that being-in-the-
world is simply a matter of dealing with equipment. This can
hardly be the case given that being-in-the-world is what is
supposed to make any comportment to entities possible. In the
Kantian language Heidegger favours, being-in-the-world is a
condition of the possibility of comportment to entities as enti-
ties. He also comes to identify being-in-the-world with what
he calls transcendence. The being of Dasein is transcendence
is the sense that Dasein is a going beyond or transcending
of what is (Seiendes) to being (Sein). It is in thus transcend-
ing entities that Dasein is able to comport itself to entities as
entities.
That being-in-the-world is not simply a matter of dealing
with equipment becomes clear when we turn to his analysis of
being-in. We already know what it is not. But our knowledge
of what it is is partial and incomplete. Concern (Besorgen) –
engaged having-to-do-with equipment – is at most a way
of being-in-the-world. But what being-in-the-world essen-
tially is, is what Heidegger calls disclosedness (Erschlossenheit).
Concern is a form of disclosedness in the sense that in our
engagement with things, things are disclosed. But it is also
a form of disclosedness of Dasein in the sense that Dasein

70
 Being-in 71
discloses itself to itself in its engagement with things. For
reasons of clarity, Heidegger uses the terms ‘uncover’ or
‘dis-cover’ (Entdecken) and uncoveredness or dis-coveredness
(Entdecktheit) for the disclosing and disclosedness of entities
other than Dasein. ‘Disclosedness’ he reserves for the dis-
closedness of Dasein (which as disclosedness of being-in-the-
world includes disclosedness of world) and the disclosedness
of being.
It has already been pointed out that ‘Dasein’, as Heidegger
uses it, is an ontological term. It is now made clear that the
‘da’ in ‘Dasein’ refers to disclosedness. Dasein, he says, is
itself its ‘there’ (132). ‘Da’ in ordinary language is a spatial
term. Strictly speaking it should not be translated as ‘there’.
It can mean ‘here’ as in ‘Ich bin da’ (‘I am here’) but usually
it signifies something between ‘here’ (hier) and ‘there’ (dort).
This is another reason for leaving ‘Dasein’ untranslated. But in
any case Heidegger is not using it in a spatial sense. Rather than
being itself spatial ‘da’ refers to what makes spatiality, among
other things, possible. Heidegger says of Dasein: ‘This entity
carries in its ownmost being the character of not being closed
off (Unverschlossenheit)’ (132). The expression ‘Dasein’ refers
to this essential disclosedness. Dasein is in such a way as to
be its Da. It is ‘illuminated’ (erleuchtet), ‘cleared’ (gelichtet),
but not by something else. It is itself the clearing (Lichtung).
Dasein is its disclosedness. It is the disclosedness of being,
that of itself and that of entities other than itself.
There are two fundamental modes of the disclosedness
of Dasein’s being. These are Befindlichkeit (state of mind,
affectedness)andVerstehen(understanding).Theyare,asHei-
degger puts it, equiprimordial (gleichursprünglich). That is to
say, they are equally basic, and neither is derivable from or
reducible to the other. He will also speak of something he calls
‘discourse’ (Rede) as being existentially equiprimordial with
72 Heidegger’s Being and Time
affectedness and understanding, which suggests that there are
not two fundamental modes of disclosedness but three. But dis-
course (which cannot be identified with language but is rather
the essence of language in the sense of what makes language
possible) is not equiprimordial with affectedness and under-
standing in the same sense that affectedness is equiprimordial
with understanding and understanding is equiprimordial with
affectedness, but in the sense that it determines both affected-
ness and understanding without being founded upon either.

affectedness
Affectedness is mood (Stimmung), being in a mood, being in
an affective state.1 Even though I may regard myself as not
being in any particular mood I am, as we might say, always
‘mooded’ (gestimmt), in some affective state or other. But if
Befindlichkeit and Stimmung refer to the same phenomenon
why does Heidegger use two words where one would do? It is
because it is through mood, rather than thought or cognition,
that Dasein finds itself ‘there’, finds itself disclosed. The Ger-
man word for ‘find’ is finden. The reflexive verb sich befinden
means literally ‘find oneself ’. Wie befinden Sie sich? means
literally ‘How do you find yourself?’ and is equivalent to the
English ‘How are you?’ Befindlichkeit is a noun constructed
from this verb. Heidegger uses the word because of what he
thinks mood discloses. In mood Dasein is disclosed to itself
in the thatness of its there. That I am, and have my being to
be, is something that I find, rather than choose. The ‘there’
of Da-sein is something to which Dasein is delivered over. I
am responsible for what I make of myself, how I exist, which
possibilities of being I realise, but I am not responsible for
1
For Heidegger’s treatment of this form of disclosedness see § 29.
 Being-in 73
having this responsibility. I find myself existing and with the
responsibility of existing. Mood, my affective state, discloses
the ‘that I am and have to be’ in a way that a purely cognitive
state could never do. I can observe that something is the case –
that I am taller than the person next to me, that there are tigers
in India, that there are members of the species homo sapiens,
that there is this member of that species – but the thatness
which mood discloses, the delivered-over-ness to the ‘there’,
is not something which could ever be merely observed. This
aspect of Dasein’s being – its sheer thatness – Heidegger calls
thrownness (Geworfenheit), the thrownness of this entity into
its ‘there’, its disclosedness (135). For Dasein to be is to be
in a world, so we can also say that Dasein is thrown into a
world. I am thrown into a world, but I am also thrown into a
‘world’. That is to say, I find myself in this particular world
in the sense of this historical web of significance. The world
in this sense determines which possibilities of being are open
to me. Although I can choose which ways of existing I will
realise I do not choose which possibilities are available. This
is determined by the world I find myself ‘in’. But I also find
myself in the midst of, and depending on, just these entities
other than myself.
He also calls the thatness of Dasein’s being facticity (Fak-
tizität) (135) but distinguishes this from the mere obtaining of
a state of affairs. As the aspect of my being over which I have
no control thrownness also includes my past in the sense of my
having-been-ness (Gewesenheit). What I have been is part of
what I am. However, as we shall see, the having-been-ness of
Dasein is not the same as what is past in the sense of no longer
now. The temporality of Dasein must be distinguished from
time in the ordinary sense of a uniform sequence of nows.
State-of-mind, affectedness, discloses Dasein to itself in its
facticity or thrownness. But would it not be correct to say that
74 Heidegger’s Being and Time
it is certain moods which disclose thrownness, those moods,
namely in which my being manifests itself as a burden? That
is to say, bad mood (Verstimmung) discloses the burdensome
character of existence, but not good mood, in the sense of being
in good spirits, joyous, elated and so on. In a way which is
characteristic of his thinking Heidegger interprets such good
moods as a turning away from the burdensome character of
being. Such turning away involves the disclosure of what it is
a turning away from. Turning away is not like a mere failure
to recognise.
Mood is a fundamental mode of disclosedness in which
Dasein is ‘there’ for itself, but this does not mean that being in
a mood, being ‘mooded’, is reflective. It is not a case of a subject
attending to its own inner states. To be reflective in this sense
mood would have to be something I do. But mood assails me,
comes over me. Indeed it is precisely in unreflective engaged
absorption with entities within-the-world, that moods come
over me. Heidegger is not saying that there can be no such
thing as immanent reflection, that is, reflection on my mental
states. It is just that mood is not an instance of such reflection.
It would be more correct to say that mood is a condition of
the possibility of such reflection. This is because Dasein must
always already be given to itself if it is to focus attention on its
inner states. It must always already be disclosed in its ‘there’
and it is mood in which such disclosure ‘takes place’. Mood is
neither itself an inner state nor is it directed towards an inner
state. It is a way of being-in-the-world which itself discloses
being-in-the-world.
But mood is also a condition of the possibility of entities
within-the-world showing themselves or being encountered.
This runs counter to the whole tradition, according to which
mood (feeling, emotion) is something entirely subjective, an
inner state. The traditional view is as follows. Out there there
 Being-in 75
are objects. I encounter such objects in perception. But my
moods or feelings can be ‘projected’ onto what presents itself in
perception. My inner states can as it were reach out and ‘colour’
things. For example, sadness is not a property of the landscape
but a projection of my inner state – my sadness – onto the
landscape. However it would be completely to misconstrue
Heidegger’s opposition to the traditional view if one were to
say that in his view moods are not subjective but objective,
that the sadness, for example, is an objective property of the
landscape. As an existential, mood (Stimmung) is an aspect
of the being of Dasein and as such is neither subjective nor
objective. Moods are modes of being-in-the-world, which is
not the relation of a subject to an object.
But how is mood a condition of the possibility of encoun-
tering or uncovering entities, of entities showing themselves?
If perception is treated as the basic mode of encounter it is
left unexplained why entities should show themselves. In per-
ception the object is present to the perceiver, the object shows
itself. But why does it show itself? Because of some interest
which the perceiver has in it. It is possible to be interested in
just how something looks. In theories which make perception
the basic mode of comportment to entities this interest in how
things look is treated as though this were the basic interest we
have in things. For Heidegger, such an interest is a modification
of a more basic interest. The mere having-before-one’s-gaze
of an entity as an object is founded upon concernful engagement
with entities. But such concernful engagement is only intel-
ligible if Dasein, which lets entities show themselves, which
uncovers entities, is mooded (gestimmt), essentially mooded.
This is because it is only to such a being that something can
matter. Only an essentially mooded being can be affected by
entities. Such affection cannot be reduced to objects having a
causal impact on organs of sense (137).
76 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Putting it another way, only an essentially mooded entity
can have a world, be ‘in’ a world. Theories which make per-
ception the basic mode of encounter ignore the within-the-
worldly character of entities. The ‘object’ of encounter is
treated in isolation. But according to Heidegger world is a
condition of the possibility of encounter. But world is only
possible for an essentially mooded entity, for it is only for
such an entity that there can be for-the-sake-of-whiches. The
fields of significance constitutive of world are grounded in the
for-the-sake-of-whiches of Dasein.
This is perhaps an appropriate place to comment on the rela-
tionship between Heidegger’s Dasein and Husserl’s conscious-
ness. The latter, it will be recalled, is characterised by intention-
ality, directedness towards an object. In his lectures on Husserl,
delivered in Marburg in the summer semester of 1925 as part of
a series of lectures on the theme ‘Prolegomena to the History
of the Concept of Time’, Heidegger includes intentionality
as one of the three ‘principal discoveries’ of phenomenol-
ogy.2 But what he thinks is missing in Husserl’s account is an
account of the being of the bearer of intentionality. The bearer
of intentionality, the intentional entity, is Dasein. Dasein is
intentional in the sense that it comports itself to entities. But
there are two important respects in which Heidegger differs
from Husserl on the question of intentionality. Firstly, whereas
Husserl treats theoretical modes of intentionality, in particu-
lar perceptual intentionality, as basic, with practical modes
of intentionality being founded on them, in Heidegger the
basic mode of intentionality is Besorgen (concernful having-
to-do-with). Perception as the mere beholding of something is
a deficient mode of such engaged intentionality. We now see

2
The others are the idea of categorial intuition and the original sense of the
a priori.
 Being-in 77
that the latter kind of intentionality, and so any kind of
intentionality, depends on the moodedness or affectedness
of Dasein in virtue of which things can matter. Secondly, Hei-
degger maintains that intentionality of any kind, theoretical or
practical, depends on the understanding of being. Comport-
ment to entities depends on the disclosedness of what is not
an entity, viz. being. For example, comportment to equipment
depends on the understanding of readiness-to-hand as a mode
of being. And understanding of readiness-to-hand is insepa-
rable from being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world, or tran-
scendence, is a condition of the possibility of intentionality.

u n d e r s tan d i n g
The other basic mode of disclosedness is Verstehen (under-
standing) (see § 31). In the hermeneutic tradition the term
Verstehen is used to refer to a special mode of knowledge or
cognition which is contrasted with Erklären (explanation). It
is the kind of knowledge we have of other human beings,
their mental life and the outward expressions of this mental
life – in texts, works of art, institutions and so on. There are
individualistic approaches and more Hegelian approaches to
hermeneutics, depending on whether the expressions are taken
as expressions of individual minds or the supra-individual
mind of a community or society or culture. Explanation, by
contrast, is based on the (external) observation of regularities
of sequence. Phenomena are explained by being subsumed
under causal laws. Heidegger is not concerned to deny either
the existence or the distinctness of these modes of cognition.
But he sees no point in debating the question of whether they
are distinct modes of cognition before getting clear about
what they are supposed to be modes of, viz. cognition or
knowledge. Cognition, he maintains, is a derivative mode of
78 Heidegger’s Being and Time
being-in-the-world.3 What Heidegger means by Verstehen is a
primary mode of being-in, a fundamental existential, of which
both understanding (Verstehen), in the sense used by Dilthey
and others, and explanation are derivatives. Verstehen is a basic
mode of the being of Dasein. It is not a faculty which Dasein
has, along with other faculties, but a fundamental way in which
Dasein is.
His ontological use of the term is modelled on one of its ontic
uses. The expression etwas verstehen (‘understand something’)
can mean etwas können (‘be able to do something’). Using an
idiom which exists in English but not in German, we can
say that Verstehen is knowing how in contrast to knowing
that. Knowing that . . . is propositional knowledge. Knowing
how . . . is the possession of a skill, and this is not a matter of
knowing true propositions. A person possessing a skill may be
able to describe what that skill involves, but possession of the
skill as such does not imply the ability to utter true propositions
about it. A skill can be expressed in propositions, but it need
not be. And knowing the propositions does not guarantee
possession of the skill. Someone can know the content of the
best medical text books and yet be conspicuously lacking in
the skills which make a good doctor.
In the ontological sense of Verstehen what is understood is
being. Dasein understands its own being, being as existing. If
Verstehen is knowing how then in understanding its own being
Dasein knows how to be. Such understanding is its ability to
be (Seinkönnen). Dasein is what it can be, it is its possibility.
As applied to Dasein possibility, as ability-to-be, is peculiar
to Dasein. It is not a dispositional property of the kind we
attribute to other entities. To say of sugar, for example, that
it is soluble, that it can dissolve, is to say that if it were placed

3
See § 13, ‘The exemplification of being-in in a founded mode: knowing the
world’.
 Being-in 79
in water it would dissolve. If ability-to-be (Seinkönnen) or
possibility of being (Seinsmöglichkeit) were like this then what
Dasein can be would be what Dasein would be if something
happened to it. The possibility which Dasein is, is neither
logical possibility nor physical possibility. As a modal concept
which applies to the present-at-hand, possibility is what can
happen to something. The possible in this sense is the not yet
actual and the not at any time necessary. It is the merely possible
whose ontological status is lower than that of actuality and
necessity. Possibility as an existential, by contrast, is ‘the most
primordial and ultimate positive ontological determination of
Dasein’ (143f ). Verstehen discloses Dasein to itself in the sense
that it discloses its possibilities and it is its possibilities. We
can say that in understanding Dasein ‘knows’ its possibilities,
what it is able to be, but this knowing must not be thought of as
inner self-perception or immanent reflection. Understanding
as disclosedness is neither a mere behavioural disposition nor
an inner act of self-reflection.
Verstehen in the sense of ability-to-be, knowing how to
be, is a mode of disclosedness which is ‘equiprimordial’ with
state-of-mind or affectedness. But the being of Dasein is
being-in-the-world. Dasein’s ability-to-be, knowing how to
be, is ability-to-be-in-the-world, knowing how to be-in-the-
world. Being-in-the-world encompasses being towards enti-
ties within-the-world (concern, Besorgen), being towards- or
with-others (solicitude, Fürsorge) and being towards oneself.
Understanding as knowing how to be is knowing how to be
in all these basic modes.
Understanding discloses Dasein’s possibilities of being, and
because comportment to entities other than itself is an essential
feature of Dasein’s being, understanding also discloses the
possibilities of entities other than Dasein. ‘Not only is the
world, qua world, disclosed as possible significance, but when
that which is within-the-world is itself freed, this entity is
80 Heidegger’s Being and Time
freed for its own possibilities. That which is ready-to-hand is
dis-covered as such in its serviceability, its usability, and its
detrimentality’ (144).
In affectedness or mood Dasein is disclosed in its thrown-
ness. In understanding Dasein is disclosed in its ability to be.
We might say it is disclosed in the self-making aspect of its
being. We do not have absolute freedom to choose the sort of
person we will be. This is because the ‘playroom’ (Spielraum)
of possibilities from which we can choose is not itself chosen.
We are thrown into a particular world and it is the world which
defines the possibilities of being that are open to us. Under-
standing as disclosing possibilities of being has the structure
of what Heidegger calls ‘projection’ (Entwurf). What Gewor-
fenheit (thrownness) and Entwurf (projection) have in com-
mon is werfen (throwing). In affectedness I am thrown, in
understanding I am throwing. I am throwing myself ahead
of myself into possibilities, projecting myself into them. In
ordinary German Entwurf can mean a preliminary sketch. It
does not have this meaning in Heidegger’s ontological use. It
has nothing to do with comporting oneself towards a plan that
has been thought out in advance and in accordance with which
Dasein then conducts itself. Although projecting is something
we do it should not be thought of as a mental act of planning or
sketching something in advance. Understood in this way pro-
jection would be a particular mode of comportment engaged
in on particular occasions. In the ontological sense Dasein has
always already projected itself and continues to project itself
as long as it is.4

4
What must not be lost sight of is that projection is a form of disclosing.
Although it is active, whereas mood or affectedness is passive, it is not
creative in the sense that it brings possibilities into being. It discloses pos-
sibilities of being rather than making them.
 Being-in 81
In Kant there is a fundamental distinction between sensi-
bility (Sinnlichkeit) and understanding or intellect (Verstand ).
The former is essentially receptive (it is the capacity for being
affected); the latter is active or spontaneous. There is clearly
a parallel between Kant’s distinction and Heidegger’s distinc-
tion between affectedness (Befindlichkeit) and understanding
(Verstehen). But whereas Kant’s distinction is absolute (though
there is some attempt to unite them in the notion of the tran-
scendental imagination) Heidegger makes it clear that ‘affect-
edness always has its understanding (Verständnis)’ and that
‘understanding is always mooded (gestimmt)’ (142).
Heidegger’s notion of understanding is not free of prob-
lems. If understanding is essentially knowing how, we can
see what it means to say that Dasein understands itself in its
being-possible (Möglichsein) or ability-to-be (Seinkönnen). I
know how to be this and that (a father, a husband, a teacher).
But how can understanding of being be interpreted as knowing
how? We can distinguish between the being of Dasein (exis-
tence), the being of other Dasein (Mitdasein), the being of
equipment (readiness-to-hand) and the being of mere things
(presence-at-hand). If understanding is knowing how then we
might say that understanding the being of these four kinds of
entity is in each case knowing how to comport ourselves to
such entities. For example, understanding the being of this
hammer as equipment is simply knowing how to hammer.
But this cannot be right, because knowing how to comport
ourselves to equipment itself presupposes an understand-
ing of being as readiness-to-hand. If such knowing how to
comport oneself presupposes understanding of being then
such understanding cannot be reducible to knowing how to
comport oneself. Similarly, understanding my being as exis-
tence cannot be reducible to knowing how to comport myself
to myself because I can only comport myself to myself on the
82 Heidegger’s Being and Time
basis of the understanding of my being as existence. And what
about understanding of being as such – as opposed to kinds
of being (Seinsarten)? It is even more difficult to see how this
can be interpreted as any kind of knowing how.

i n t e r p r etat i on ( au s l e g u n g )
Understanding, Heidegger tells us, contains within itself the
possibility of development, in the sense of the appropriation of
what is understood in understanding (150). I take it that what
he has in mind is the making explicit of what is understood.
He calls this making explicit interpretation (Auslegung). Inter-
pretation is not a theoretical technique, cultivated by some
but not by others. It belongs to Dasein as such. It is an exis-
tential. But it is an existential that is grounded in, or founded
upon, the more basic existential of understanding. In interpre-
tation understanding does not become something different. It
becomes itself.
Heidegger illustrates the notion of interpretation at the
level of the engaged having-to-do-with the ready-to-hand. In
preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, the ready-
to-hand entity is explicitly understood with respect to its in-
order-to (or for-what) (148f ). Interpretation is this explicit
understanding. What is explicitly understood or interpreted
has the structure of something as something (Etwas als Etwas).
By virtue of such interpretation something is ‘seen’ as a table,
as a door, as a car, as a bridge and so on. What Heidegger calls
the ‘as-free apprehension’ (als-freies Erfassen) of something,
far from being what is both basic and natural, is something
difficult to achieve. Far from being more basic than ‘under-
standing seeing’ (verstehendes Sehen) it is the privation of such
seeing (149). The seeing-as of interpretation should not be
thought of as something subjective. It is not as though we first
 Being-in 83
experience something purely present-at-hand, a mere thing,
which we then construe as a door, as a house. Interpretation
as Heidegger understands it is not a matter of throwing a
‘meaning’ (Bedeutung) over the naked thing or attaching a
‘value’ to it. It is the making explicit of what is already there
in the entity as something within-the-world.
Interpretation does not necessarily involve working out the
significance of something. It does however involve presupposi-
tions. Interpretation of something as something always essen-
tially involves what Heidegger calls fore-having (Vorhabe),
fore-sight (Vorsicht) and fore-conception (Vorgriff ). If we
stick to interpretation at the level of our dealings with equip-
ment, we can say that the fore-having required for its inter-
pretation as something is the understanding of the referen-
tial whole to which it belongs. Fore-sight is the point of view
(Hinsicht) which fixes that with regard to which what is under-
stood is to be interpreted. Fore-conception is the conceptuality
(Begrifflichkeit) in terms of which the interpretation is framed.
Interpretation, as requiring these kinds of prior understand-
ing, hasa certain circularity aboutit. The idea of the hermeneu-
tic circle is a familiar one in the area of textual interpretation.
But according to Heidegger it has a much more far-reaching
significance. It is the expression of the existential fore-structure
of Dasein itself. Interpretation presupposes the understanding
of what is to be interpreted. But interpretation is not a theo-
retical technique employed by some but not by others. As we
have seen, it is an existential. Once this is recognised we can
see the absurdity of branding any discipline which involves
interpretation as unscientific on the grounds of its circularity.
Science cannot presuppose what it is supposed to provide the
ground for. But Heidegger would say that it is absurd to try to
make understanding and interpretation conform to an ideal of
knowledge which is itself only a derivative of understanding.
84 Heidegger’s Being and Time
The possibility of scientific knowledge is grounded in the
existential constitution of Dasein. The hermeneutic circle, far
from being peculiar to certain kinds of ‘science ’, is itself a
feature of this constitution.

as s e rt i on o r s tat e m e n t ( au s sag e ) as a
d e r i vat i v e m o d e o f i n t e r p r etat i on
Interpretation is grounded in understanding. Heidegger now
wants to show that assertion or statement (Aussage) or judg-
ment (Urteil ) is a derivative mode of interpretation, that it
involves a modification of the ‘as’-structure of interpreta-
tion. There are two reasons why this is important. Firstly, it
undermines the supposed primacy of logic. Secondly, it calls
in question the traditional conception of truth according to
which the statement is the primary location of truth. State-
ments uncover, or purport to uncover, what is, entities. But
if the statement is a derivative mode of interpretation then it
cannot be the primary mode of uncovering (or letting entities
be seen). If we call the kind of uncovering accomplished by
statements predicative uncovering5 then we can say that pred-
icative uncovering is founded upon and is derivative from the
pre-predicative uncovering accomplished by the various ways
in which we engage with entities. By undermining the primacy
of the statement or judgment Heidegger thinks he is thereby
undermining the primacy of logic. And if predicative uncov-
ering has the status Heidegger says it has then it follows that
the statement cannot be the primary location of truth. At least
5
Heidegger uses this terminology in ‘On the Essence of Reasons’ (‘Vom
Wesen des Grundes’, 1929), section I. For a recent translation see ‘On
the Essence of Ground’, in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
 Being-in 85
it does so if Heidegger is right in his contention that the pri-
mary meaning of truth is unconcealedness (Unverborgenheit).
We will examine this issue in chapter 5.
Heidegger begins by distinguishing three characteristics of
the statement (or judgment). Firstly, it is a letting-be-seen, an
exhibiting or showing. He uses the German word Aufzeigen,
inadequately translated as ‘pointing out’ (154). It is supposed
to have the same meaning as the Greek apophansis, letting
something be seen from itself. Statements uncover or dis-
cover (entdecken). They uncover, let be seen, an entity, not a
sense or meaning. What is meant or intended in the statement
is the entity itself and not an ‘inner’ representation of the entity.
For example, what is meant or intended in the statement ‘The
hammer is too heavy’ is not a representation of the hammer
but the hammer itself. The entity uncovered by the statement
need not actually be present.
Secondly, statement is predication (154f ). In a statement
a ‘predicate’ is ‘asserted’ of a ‘subject’. Such predication is a
determining of the subject. This is just another aspect of letting-
be-seen. By virtue of predication it is not just the entity that
is uncovered (the hammer) but the entity in its determinate
character (the too heavy hammer).
Thirdly, statement is communication (Mitteilung) (155). It
is not just a letting-be-seen, it is a letting-be-seen-with (Mitse-
henlassen). The German word for ‘share’ is teilen. Statement
is a sharing. What is shared is not so much the entity in its
determinate character but being towards what is uncovered in
its determinate character. This sharing of being is not a case
of somehow transferring a private mental content from one
subject to another. As being-in-the-world Dasein is always
already outside itself. So the vocal utterance (Ausgesprochen-
heit, literally spoken-out-ness) which belongs to statement as
86 Heidegger’s Being and Time
communication should not be seen as the making public of
something private.
The next step is to show that statement is a form of inter-
pretation. Heidegger does this by showing that statement
has its existential foundations in fore-having, fore-sight and
fore-conception. As regards the first of these, he points out
that the uncovering which statement accomplishes is only
possible on the basis of a prior uncovering in engaged, cir-
cumspective having-to-do-with. Statement (or assertion) is
not a free-floating mode of comportment which could of
itself uncover entities. The fore-having (Vorhabe) of state-
ment is this prior uncovering. Just what fore-sight (Vorsicht) is
supposed to be in this context is less clear. ‘Thus any assertion
(statement, Aussage) requires a fore-sight; in this the predicate
which we are to assign and make stand out, gets loosened, so to
speak, from its unexpressed inclusion in the entity itself’ (157).
The fore-conception (Vorgriff ) is the articulation in terms
of meanings of what the statement uncovers. The concep-
tuality which makes up the fore-conception of the statement
includes such things as the concept of heaviness belonging to
the hammer, the concept of the hammer having the property of
heaviness.
Having shown that statement is a mode of interpretation by
showing that it has the essential structures of interpretation,
Heidegger now shows that it is a derivative mode of interpreta-
tion. For logic the simplest kind of statement is the categorical
statement. For example, the statement ‘The hammer is heavy’,
where this is understood to mean something like: the hammer-
thing has the property of heaviness (157). Such statements do
not occur at the level of concernful circumspection. Such con-
cern however has its own kind of interpretation, the verbal
expression of which would be something like ‘The hammer is
too heavy’ or simply ‘too heavy’, ‘the other hammer!’ But for
 Being-in 87
there to be interpretation no words need be uttered. There is
interpretation involved in simply putting aside or exchanging
the unsuitable tool.
The hammer is ready-to-hand as equipment. If the hammer
becomes the ‘object’ of a statement (what it is about) then
there is a fundamental change in the fore-having. The with-
which of having-to-do-with becomes the about-which of the
statement.
The fore-sight aims at something present-at-hand in what is ready-to-
hand. Through the fore-sight and in the fore-sight the ready-to-hand
becomes concealed in its readiness-to-hand. Within this uncovering of
presence-at-hand which conceals the readiness-to-hand the present-
at-hand is determined in its being-thus-and-so-present-at-hand [in
seinem So-und-so-vorhandensein]. Now for the first time there is access
to properties [Eigenschaften]. The what as which the assertion deter-
mines the present-at-hand is drawn from the present-at-hand as such.
The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. In its
appropriation of what is understood the ‘as’ no longer reaches out into
a totality of involvements [Bewandtnisganzheit]. It is . . . cut off from
the significance constitutive of worldhood. (158)

We saw earlier that what is interpreted in engaged having-to-

do-with has the structure of something as something (Etwas
als Etwas). Heidegger calls this ‘as’ the hermeneutic ‘as’. The
‘as’ of statement he calls the apophantic ‘as’.

discourse (rede)
Although interpretation is an existential it is not a primordial
mode of disclosedness because it is founded upon understand-
ing, in the sense that it is the making explicit of what is under-
stood in understanding. And assertion or statement is even
less primordial because it is a modification or derivative form
of interpretation. By contrast what Heidegger next discusses
88 Heidegger’s Being and Time
(in a section which, it must be said, is compressed, dense
6

and confusing, if not confused) – ‘discourse ’ (Rede), talk or

telling – is primordial. It is not the modification of some more
basic mode of comportment.
The first thing to be said is that discourse (Rede) is not the
same thing as language (Sprache). It is the existential or onto-
logical foundation of language. So rather than being language
it is what makes language possible.7 It is equiprimordial with
affectedness (Befindlichkeit) and understanding (Verstehen).
But this does not mean that it is another basic mode of dis-
closedness, alongside the other two. Rather it is a basic struc-
ture of disclosedness as such and hence a structure which
pertains both to affectedness and understanding. Discourse,
he says, is the ‘articulation of intelligibility’ (161).8 Articula-
tion does not mean giving linguistic expression to but giving
structure to. The world has sense but this sense is not amor-
phous but takes the form of a multiplicity of separate though
related meanings. What is articulated, or given structure, in
discourse is the totality of meanings, which for Heidegger is
the world, as opposed to the totality of entities within-the-
world. The disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of world is what
makes possible the uncoveredness (Entdecktheit) of entities.
So we can say that discourse is what gives shape, form, struc-
ture, articulation to disclosedness, the basic forms of which
are affectedness and understanding. But because the disclosed-
ness which discourse articulates is the disclosedness of Dasein

6
§ 34: ‘Being-there (Da-sein) and discourse. Language’.
7
In ordinary language Rede means speech (including speech as something
one makes) or talk. Heidegger is using the term as an ontological term of
art. It is not enough to say this. One also has to say precisely what it does
mean when used in this way. Heidegger’s explanation of its ontological
sense leaves something to be desired.
8
‘Die Rede ist die Artikulation der Verständlichkeit’.
 Being-in 89
and the being of Dasein is being-in-the-world, discourse must
also have its own peculiarly ‘worldly’ character (161). It must
express itself in words, ‘speak itself out’ (sich aussprechen). The
spoken-out-ness of discourse is language (Sprache). Discourse
takes the form of language because of Dasein’s thrownness, its
dependence on the ‘world’ in the sense of entities within-the-
world.
But what precisely does Heidegger mean by the ‘worldly’
(weltlich) character of discourse? Discourse becomes language
by virtue of being expressed in words. There is a suggestion
that words are ready-to-hand entities, a form of equipment
(Zeug). But to treat words as entities within-the-world, not
admittedly as mere things, as present-at-hand, but as ready-
to-hand seems incompatible with the idea that language is
somehow constitutive of world in the Heideggerian sense.
As expressed in words discourse is worldly (weltlich) but
this is quite different from saying that it is within-the-world
(innerweltlich).
Having said that ‘discourse’ is not the same as language but
what makes language possible Heidegger goes on to describe
the structure of discourse in ways which suggest that what
he is talking about is language. He distinguishes four basic
features of discourse: 1. Discourse is about something. 2. In
discourse something is said. 3. Discourse is communication. 4.
Discourse is expression (Bekundung). I will comment briefly on
each of these. 1. Discourse has an about-which (das Worüber)
(not just when it takes the form of a statement but equally
when it takes the form of a command, a request, a question).
2. Discourse plays an essential role in the disclosedness of
being-in-the-world. Although being-in-the-world is not itself
comportment to an entity (world is not an entity) it essen-
tially involves comportment to entities. Discourse uncovers
entities. It uncovers an entity by saying something about it.
90 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Discourse has a what-is-said (das Gesagte).9 3. The traditional
interpretation of communication (Mitteilung) sees it as the
transfer of inner experiences and thoughts from one subject
to another subject. But discourse is not a structure of con-
sciousness. It is a structure of Da-sein, of disclosedness. It is
the articulation and sharing (Teilen) of understanding and
affectedness. 4. Discourse is expression or making known
(Bekundung). In discourse Dasein ‘speaks itself out’. This is
not because it is something intrinsically ‘inner’, separated from
anything ‘outer’ by an impenetrable wall of ‘ideas’ or ‘repre-
sentations’. Dasein is always already ‘outside ’, in the sense
that it is always already bei (involved with) entities within-
the-world and always already in the world. In speaking of
expression (making known) Heidegger seems especially con-
cerned with affectedness, mood. This is what is expressed in
such things as intonation, modulation, tempo. This is not the
outward expression of an inner state because, as we saw earlier,
mood (Stimmung) is a basic mode of being-in-the-world.
Intonation, modulation and tempo are clearly properties of
speech or spoken language. To treat them as properties of dis-
course seems at odds with Heidegger’s insistence that discourse
is not the same thing as language. By contrast his treatment
of hearing and listening as an ‘existential possibility which
belongs to discourse’ (163) is consistent with that insistence.
It is the ‘existential being-open of Dasein as being-with for the
other’ (163). As such it is not reducible to acoustic perception.
Acoustic perception is grounded in hearing, just as linguistic
utterance (sprachliche Verlautbarung) is grounded in discourse.
We hear the other but we also hear entities within-the-world.
This is not reducible to the having of auditory sensations. We

9
This must be distinguished from das Beredete (what-is-talked-about) which
is the same as the about-which (das Worüber).
 Being-in 91
do not hear sensations. We hear the creaking wagon, the motor
bike, the column on the march, the north wind, the tapping
woodpecker, the crackling fire (163).
Hearing and listening belong to discourse. And so does
remaining silent (Schweigen). But unlike hearing remaining
silent is a mode of discourse, of saying. Listening is not itself
a form of saying but the listening to what is said by another.
The remaining silent Heidegger has in mind is not not saying
anything, precisely because it is a form of saying something.
It is not replying in the form of linguistic utterance. The
silence itself is a kind of reply. Remaining silent, like speech
and listening to, is essentially dialogical.
The kind of remaining silent Heidegger has in mind is
not the same as simply not saying anything in the sense of
remaining mute (stumm). A student who never says anything
in a tutorial because he or she has nothing to say is stumm. But
we cannot say that he or she schweigt. Someone who literally
cannot speak in the sense of being dumb can also not remain
silent. Remaining silent is a mode of discourse because to
remain silent is to say something about something and thus to
uncover or disclose something.

c a r e ( s o rg e )
The being of Dasein, existence, is being-in-the-world.
Although this is a unitary phenomenon it is also a manifold.
Concern, being-with, affectedness, understanding, interpre-
tation, discourse – these are all structures of Dasein’s being.
They are all existentials. But in what sense do they constitute
a unity? In what sense is this manifold of existential structures
a whole? Heidegger’s answer is to say that the being of Dasein
is care (Sorge) (§ 41). Our task is to explain this rather strange-
sounding claim. The statement that the being of Dasein is care
92 Heidegger’s Being and Time
is a statement of existential ontology and as such says nothing
about which affective states are most prevalent. People with
a care-free disposition in the ordinary sense of the term are
just as much characterised by care in the ontological sense
as naturally gloomy people. As Heidegger uses it ‘care’ is a
technical term which designates the three principal structures
of Dasein’s being in their essential unity. These are projec-
tion, thrownness and concern (Besorgen). In projecting itself
onto possibilities of being-in-the-world Dasein is ‘ahead of
itself’. As thrown Dasein is already in-the-world. As already
in-the-world it is bei entities within-the-world. It dwells with
entities within-the-world, is absorbed by them. But although
‘care’ is a technical term which means nothing more than these
three basic structures of the being of Dasein in their essential
interconnection, it is not chosen arbitrarily. Its ontic meaning
helps to convey the idea that Dasein is not a detached subject
contemplating the world but is such that its being is an issue
for it, and that the way in which its being is an issue for it is
inseparable from its engagement with intraworldly entities.

c on c lu s i on s
The structures we have been examining are all structures
of Dasein’s being. As existentials they belong to the ontol-
ogy of Dasein, or, as Heidegger also calls it in his Kant
book10 (published in 1929), the metaphysics of Dasein. The
method he has been employing is phenomenology as he under-
stands it. He does not proceed by inference but by exhibit-
ing (Aufweisung), laying bare, bringing out of concealment –
concealment which results from our natural tendency to

10
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 1990), §§ 39–45.
 Being-in 93
understand our being as presence-at-hand and to understand
our being in terms of inherited ontological concepts. The
results of Heidegger’s phenomenology reinforce the differ-
ence between his phenomenology and that of Husserl. There
is a fundamental difference between Dasein and consciousness
and between the mode of access to Dasein and the mode of
access to consciousness. Disclosedness, understood in terms
of affectedness, understanding, interpretation and discourse,
cannot be equated with consciousness, which is essentially the
relationship between a subject and an object. For Husserl con-
sciousness is a stream of experiences (Erlebnisse). In his phe-
nomenology this stream of experiences becomes the object of
reflection or inner perception. It is quite clear that no amount
of inner perception could reveal the sort of structures which
Heidegger has been bringing to light. None of this has the
implication that for Heidegger there is no such thing as con-
sciousness or a subject–object relationship. It is just that they
are grounded in Dasein and its existential structures.
 6

Truth

In its various modes of comportment to beings or entities –

what is – Dasein uncovers (dis-covers, entdeckt) beings or
entities. It lets them show themselves. Correlative to the
uncovering of entities is the uncoveredness (Entdecktheit) of
entities. But such uncoveredness of entities is only possible on
the basis of disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) – the disclosedness
of world. The disclosedness of world – which is not itself an
entity – makes possible both the uncovering and the uncov-
eredness of entities. Heidegger will argue that these notions
are the key to a proper understanding of the nature or essence
of truth. This is the topic of § 44 (‘Dasein, Disclosedness and
Truth’).
But first we need to say something about what lies behind
Heidegger’s treatment of this topic and the centrality he gives
to it. Why does the topic of truth have such a prominent place
in Being and Time? It is a topic which figures in logic but also
in epistemology. But fundamental ontology is neither of these
things.1 What does the question of the nature of truth have to
do with the question of being? Heidegger begins by pointing
1
Though it can be argued that Being and Time involves a radicalising of
epistemology as traditionally understood. Epistemology seeks to show how
knowledge is possible. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology can be seen as
showing how knowledge is grounded in engaged having-to-do-with things,
which in turn is grounded in the understanding of world.

94
 Truth 95
out how historically there has been a connection between
truth and being. The first discovery of the being of beings
by Parmenides ‘identifies’ being with the perceptive under-
standing (vernehmendes Verstehen) of being. Aristotle defines
philosophy as the science of truth but also as the science that
considers beings as beings, that is, with regard to their being.
To the extent that Heidegger sees his question concerning the
meaning of being as a ‘repetition’ or ‘retrieve’ (Wiederhol-
ung) of such Greek inquiries he is also going to recognise the
connection between truth and being. However it cannot be
said that Being and Time provides an explicit explanation of
the connection. After Being and Time it becomes increasingly
clear that Heidegger is not just connecting being and uncon-
cealedness (Unverborgenheit) but is in effect identifying them.
But as far as Being and Time is concerned his thinking seems
to be that if fundamental ontology is to make good its claim
to be fundamental then it must be able to give an account of
so basic a notion as that of truth.
If truth does have a ‘primordial connection’ with being then
the phenomenon of truth must already have been encountered,
if only implicitly, in the analytic of Dasein (213). Presumably
what is being referred to here is the earlier demonstration
(in § 33) that assertion or statement (Aussage) is a derivative
mode of interpretation. Statement is predication. In a state-
ment a ‘predicate’ is ‘asserted’ of a ‘subject’. Such predication
is a determining of the subject (154). The statement uncov-
ers the entity. But such predicative uncovering of entities is
grounded in pre-predicative modes of uncovering of enti-
ties, which are themselves grounded in the understanding
of being (or world). Given that statements or assertions –
some of them at least – are true there is the implication that
the understanding of being must be true in a more basic
sense.
96 Heidegger’s Being and Time
The question ‘What is truth?’ is not concerned with what
things are true but with the nature or essence of truth itself.
However one approach to the question of the nature of truth
is to ask what is true, not in the sense of what truths there
are but in the sense of to what does truth belong, what is it
that has the ‘property’ of truth. According to what might be
called the traditional conception of truth it is the statement
(Aussage) or judgment (Urteil) that is characterised by truth.
Or, to put it another way, the location of truth is the statement
or judgment. In other words, what is true is held to be the
statement or judgment. And the essence of truth, it is claimed,
is the agreement or correspondence (Übereinstimmung) of the
statement with its ‘object’, with what it is about (its Worüber,
its about-which). For example, the truth of the statement ‘The
cat is on the mat’ consists in its agreement or correspondence
with the cat on the mat or the state of affairs which consists in
the cat’s being on the mat.
But this does not tell us anything illuminating about the
nature of truth if we are unable to say in what this agreement
consists. There are many ways in which one thing can agree
with another. So in what way can a true statement or judgment
be said to agree with something? Heidegger points to the
sort of agreement that can hold between numbers, the form
of agreement we call equality. The number 6 agrees with 16
minus 10 in the sense that they are equal with respect to how
much. Or to use an example from Heidegger’s essay ‘On the
Essence of Truth’,2 this coin agrees with that in that they are
equal with respect to appearance. This ‘with respect to’ or ‘in
regard to’ is a feature not just of that form of agreement we
2
‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’. The English translation appears in Martin
Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge,
1993), pp. 115–38. This important essay was first published in 1943 but had
already been given in lecture form as early as 1930.
 Truth 97
call equality, but of agreement in general. If truth is a relation
of agreement then what is it in regard to which the ‘terms’
of the relation agree? Given the nature of the statement or
judgment and that of the object what is there about them in
regard to which they can agree? Because judgments and their
objects have totally different modes of being (except in the case
of judgments about judgments) there is no respect in which
they can be the same. For example, the judgment or statement
‘16 − 10 = 6’, if we are to speak of it as an entity at all, is an
entity of a completely different kind from the numbers it is a
statement about. And the statement or judgment ‘The cat is
on the mat’ is something utterly different from a cat.
But if there is no respect in which judgment and object
are the same, perhaps there is some respect in which they are
similar. But if it makes no sense to say they are the same, then
it makes no sense to say they are similar either. And even if we
could make sense of such resemblance we could not equate it
with truth. True statements are about how things are, not what
they resemble. There can, of course, be true statements about
resemblance. For example, ‘The cat on the mat resembles the
cat on the sofa’. But here the resemblance is between cats and
not between statements and cats. A true statement is not true
by virtue of resembling its object, because if it is true then it
presents things as they are, just as they are.3
The relation of agreement between judgment and thing
which is supposed to make the judgment true does not become
any clearer if we distinguish between two senses of judgment:
judgment in the sense of the act of judging, a real mental pro-
cess which takes place at a particular time, and judgment in the
sense of what-is-judged (not the about-which, but the stated,

3
‘But knowledge is supposed to “give” the thing just as it is’ (‘Aber Erkenntnis
soll doch die Sache so “geben”, wie sie ist’) (216).
98 Heidegger’s Being and Time
asserted). In the first sense the judgments of different people
(or the same person on different occasions) are necessarily dis-
tinct, but in the second sense they can be the same. For example,
my act of judging that the picture on the wall is crooked and
your act of judging that the picture on the wall is crooked
are necessarily distinct (they may be qualitatively identical
but cannot be numerically identical). Judgment in the second
sense is an ideal content. This, it is maintained, is the proper
location of truth, i.e. it is this ideal judgment-content which
stands in the relation of agreement (or correspondence). But
the about-which of the judgment is not normally something
ideal (it is in the case of mathematical or logical judgments)
but something real (e.g. the cat on the mat). Heidegger finds
mysterious the idea of a relation of agreement between entities
of radically different modes of being. And what are we to say
about the relation of agreement itself, its mode of being? Is it
real or ideal or neither of these? And how are we supposed to
understand the nature of the relation between the ideal content
and the real act of judging?
So how should we understand the relation of agreement (or
correspondence) which is supposed to make a true statement
true? Heidegger suggests that the way to get clear about this
is to attend to what is involved in showing a statement to be
true, what is involved in the verification (Ausweisung) of a true
statement or judgment. He uses the following example. With
my back to the wall I make the true statement ‘The picture on
the wall is crooked’ (217). The statement is shown to be true,
or verified, by perception. I turn round and see the crooked
picture on the wall. In making the judgment with my back to
the wall I do not perceive the picture but only ‘represent’ it
(stelle es vor). But this does not mean that in judging that the
picture on the wall is crooked I am directed toward ‘represen-
tations’ (Vorstellungen) in the sense of inner mental pictures,
 Truth 99
pictures of the real thing on the wall. I am directed to the pic-
ture on the wall. This and nothing else is what is intended or
meant. My making the judgment is as Heidegger puts it ‘a way
of being (ein Sein) towards the existing (seiend) thing itself’
(218).4 What is verified by the perception is not a relationship
of agreement between a representation ‘in here’ and a thing
‘out there’. The statement or judgment purports to ‘uncover’
the picture on the wall. What is verified by the perception is
that the statement or judgment uncovers the picture as it is in
itself. True statements are statements which uncover entities
as they are in themselves. Properly understood the relation of
agreement which constitutes the truth of a statement (proposi-
tional truth) is not a relation between an inner representation
and an outer entity but between an entity as uncovered by the
statement and the entity itself. What is verified is the identity
of the entity as uncovered and the entity itself.
Only where there is this identity between the entity as
uncovered by the statement and the entity itself is the uncov-
ering a genuine uncovering. All statement or judgment pur-
ports to uncover. Only those which genuinely uncover, in
the sense of uncovering the entity ‘just as it is in itself’, are
true. We can therefore say that the truth of a statement is its
being-uncovering (entdeckend-sein) or more precisely being-
uncovering of the entity in itself. Without this reference to
the entity as it is in itself we would have to say that all state-
ments are true because Heidegger makes uncovering part of
the definition of a statement (see 154).
Having interpreted propositional truth as uncovering,
Heidegger goes on to treat other forms of uncovering and
disclosing as forms of truth. Although wishing to avoid what
he calls word mysticism, he makes great play of the original
4
‘Das Aussagen ist ein Sein zum seienden Ding selbst’.
100 Heidegger’s Being and Time
meaning of the Greek word for truth:
, aletheia –
unconcealedness, unhiddenness (Unverborgenheit) (219). It is,
he thinks, the business of philosophy to preserve the force of
these ‘most elemental words’.
We can call the uncovering accomplished by statements or
judgments propositional uncovering or – to use the termi-
nology Heidegger adopts in ‘On the Essence of Reasons’5 –
predicative uncovering. As we saw in the previous chapter,
Heidegger’s analysis of the statement claims to show that the
predicative uncovering achieved by the statement or judgment
cannot claim to be the primary uncovering of entities. Although
the statement uncovers, this is not something it can accomplish
in its own right. Statement is not a free-floating mode of com-
portment which could of itself uncover entities. Predicative
uncovering is founded in pre-predicative uncovering. The
latter is accomplished by the various forms of engaged
having-to-do-with entities within-the-world. In such con-
cern or engagement we interpret something as something,
for example, a hammer as a hammer. The ‘as’ of such
pre-predicative comportment is what Heidegger calls the
hermeneutic ‘as’. In statement or judgment the hermeneutic
‘as’ is transformed into the apophantic ‘as’. In hammering with
the hammer, for example, the hammer is uncovered as the
entity that it is.
There is such a thing as propositional or predicative truth.6
But the predicative uncovering, and hence truth, of state-
ments or judgments is founded in the pre-predicative uncover-
ing accomplished by engaged having-to-do-with. Predicative
truth is grounded in pre-predicative truth. But now recall that
5
The distinction between ontic truth and ontological truth appears in
section I.
6
Heidegger’s claim is that such truth is not the most basic kind of truth, not
that there is no such thing as propositional truth.
 Truth 101
all our dealings with entities within-the-world are grounded
in the understanding, the disclosedness, of world. The truth of
statements as predicative uncovering is only possible as a mod-
ification of the pre-predicative uncovering of entities within-
the-world. But what makes such pre-predicative uncovering
possible is the disclosedness of world. World is not an entity but
the all-embracing web of significance relations which makes
it possible for entities to manifest themselves as entities. What
makes the uncovering of entities possible must be called true
in a more primordial sense. Pre-predicative truth is more basic
than predicative truth, but truth in the most primordial sense
is the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of world.
Disclosedness of world, however, is not the whole of dis-
closedness. It is only an aspect of the disclosedness of Dasein
as being-in-the-world. It is the disclosedness of Dasein which
is the most primordial phenomenon of truth. If the disclosed-
ness of Dasein referred to the self-awareness of an individual
human being the claim that the disclosedness of Dasein is truth
in the most primordial sense would be absurd and would jus-
tify the claim that Heidegger is purveying the most extreme
form of subjectivism. To see that this is not the case we have
to remember that Dasein’s disclosedness (the disclosedness
that Dasein is) embraces the understanding of its own being
(existence), the understanding of world and the understand-
ing of the being of entities other than Dasein to which Dasein
comports itself.
Being-true as being-uncovering is a way in which Dasein is.
Engaged-having-to-do-with uncovers intraworldly entities.
So does disengaged mere looking, although the latter depends
on the former inasmuch as it is a deficient mode of such con-
cern. In a secondary sense uncovered entities can be said to
be true. That is, a secondary sense of truth is uncoveredness.
What makes the uncovering, and hence the uncoveredness, of
102 Heidegger’s Being and Time
entities possible is the most primordial phenomenon of truth.
This is Dasein itself or rather the fundamental constitution
of Dasein. In so far as Dasein essentially is its disclosedness,
and in its disclosedness makes possible all uncovering, it is
essentially true. Dasein is, as Heidegger puts it, in the truth
(in der Wahrheit) (221). This of course has nothing to do with
omniscience. It does not mean that simply by virtue of being
Dasein – by existing – we are in possession of all truths. But
he also wants to say that it is equally ‘true’ that Dasein is in
the untruth (in der Unwahrheit) (222). However to see what
this means we will first need to become familiar with the dis-
tinction between authenticity and inauthenticity (the topic of
chapter 6).

t h e ‘ d e pe n d e n c e ’ o f t rut h on das e i n
If truth is disclosedness and uncoveredness7 there can only be
truth if there is Dasein. ‘There is (es gibt) truth only in so far as,
and as long as, Dasein is’ (226). Heidegger gives as examples of
truths the laws of Newton and the principle of contradiction.
Such truths, indeed any truths, are only true in so far as Dasein
is. He appears to be saying that the laws of physics and the
laws of logic depend on the existence of human beings. But
before human beings appeared on the scene was it not the case
that falling objects obeyed the law of gravity and was it not
the case that something could not have logically incompatible
properties? Heidegger is quite unequivocal: ‘Before there was
Dasein there was no truth and when there is no longer Dasein
there will be no truth’ (226). Given his identication of truth

7
IntheterminologywhichHeideggeralsousesin‘OntheEssenceofReasons’
disclosedness is ontological truth, uncoveredness is ontic truth.
 Truth 103
with disclosedness and uncovering and uncoveredness this
surely follows.
In saying that before they were discovered (uncovered,
entdeckt) Newton’s laws were not true he is not of course saying
that they were false. Before their discovery (Entdeckung) they
were neither true nor false. Given Heidegger’s account of
truth to say of Newton’s laws – or the propositions in which
they are expressed – that they are true is to say that they
uncover entities. ‘Through Newton the laws become true; and
with them entities become accessible in themselves for Dasein’
(227). In being uncovered entities show themselves as the
entities they already were. What these laws uncover – nature –
was the way it showed itself to be after the uncovering. Truth
as uncovering uncovers entities precisely as they were already,
regardless of their uncoveredness or non-uncoveredness.
ThekindofdependenceoftruthonDaseinofwhichwehave
just been speaking does not make truth something ‘subjective’
in the sense that it is up to the individual Dasein whether
a statement is true or not. Predicative truth is not the most
basic kind of uncovering but it is uncovering. That a statement
genuinely uncovers rather than merely purporting to uncover
is determined not by the individual making the statement but
by the entity that the statement is about. As Heidegger puts
it, ‘it brings the uncovering Dasein before the entity itself’
(227). True statements have ‘universal validity’ but they can
only have this character because Dasein can uncover entities
in themselves. The entity binds everyone making a statement
about it.
Entities are not at our disposal and so ontic truth is not at our
disposal. But what about ontological truth? We can’t say that
there are only entities if Dasein is. But we can say that there
is only being if Dasein is. ‘ “There is” (“es gibt”) being – not
104 Heidegger’s Being and Time
entities – only in so far as truth is. And truth is only in so
far as and as long as Dasein is’ (230). But this does not mean
that the disclosedness of being is at our disposal. It would be
more correct to say that that we as individual human beings
participate in this disclosedness. If there were no Dasein there
would be no disclosedness, no unconcealedness (no clearing
(Lichtung) – to use the term Heidegger favours in his later
philosophy).
 7

Authenticity

Heidegger’s phenomenology of Dasein, his existential ana-

lytic, is the laying bare, or letting be seen, of the fundamen-
tal structures of existence – the mode of being peculiar to
Dasein. In so far as Dasein is, Dasein exists. But he does not
just speak about the structures of existence. He also draws
a basic distinction between existing authentically and exist-
ing inauthentically. Initially at least, his existential analytic
is concerned solely with Dasein in what he calls its ‘every-
dayness’ (Alltäglichkeit). The structures of being which his
phenomenology of Dasein claims to lay bare are, in the first
instance, either indifferent to the distinction between authentic
(eigentlich) existence and inauthentic (uneigentlich) existence
or they are structures of inauthentic existence. So what does
this distinction amount to? It first appears in § 4 (though at
this stage the terms ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ are not used):
‘Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence –
in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself.
Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself, or got itself
into them [in sie hineingeraten], or grown up in them already’
(12). To exist authentically is to be myself, to choose my pos-
sibilities of being. The terminology is first used in § 9: ‘And
because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility
this entity can in its being “choose” itself, win itself; it can lose
itself or never win itself but only “seem” to. But only in so
105
106 Heidegger’s Being and Time
far as it is essentially something that can be authentic – that
is something of its own [belong to itself, sich zueigen sein] –
can it have lost itself and not yet won itself’ (42f ). From this
we can see that authenticity has to do with self. But to say
this is not very helpful. Whether Dasein exists authentically
or inauthentically the being of Dasein is in each case mine.
Indeed in-each-case-mine-ness (Jemeinigkeit) is the condition
of the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity. The being
of Dasein is that of a self, has the character of selfhood (it is
selbsthaft). This does not mean that there is an entity called the
self which persists through all the changes in my mental states
and which confers unity on this multiplicity of mental states.
The self thought of in this way would be something with the
mode of being Heidegger calls presence-at-hand (Vorhanden-
heit). I do not become a self by existing authentically. But in
existing inauthentically I am not being myself. I am my pos-
sibilities of being. To exist authentically is in some sense to
choose these possibilities. The self of inauthentic existence is
what he calls the One-self (das Man-selbst). My possibilities of
being are possibilities of my being but when I am existing inau-
thentically they are not chosen by me. They are determined
not by me but by something he calls the One.

t h e on e ( o r t h e y )
What does Heidegger understand by the One (das Man)? To
determine this we need to go back to what was said in chapter
3. There it was made clear that, although Dasein is a self
in the sense that its being is in each case mine, it is not an
isolated subject unrelated to others. The being of Dasein is
essentially being-with. The relationship to others is part and
parcel of Dasein’s being. But paradoxically Heidegger also
wants to say that there is a sense in which the others have
 Authenticity 107
taken away my being. My being is taken away from me in the
sense I am my possibilities, but these possibilities are ‘chosen’
not by me but by others. But the others referred to here are
not particular others. The others who take away my being
are not this or that individual Dasein. They are not some
group of individual Dasein or the sum total of Dasein. They
are what Heidegger calls das Man.1 The German word man
is the indefinite pronoun equivalent to the English one (as in
‘one shakes hands with one’s right hand’) or the French on. In
ordinary, everyday existence what Heidegger calls das Man
is not something over against me or separate from me. For
this reason it is better to translate it as the ‘One’ rather than
as the ‘They’. The separateness implied by the latter, which
excludes me from das Man, is precisely contrary to Heidegger’s
intention.
In a way that is normally hidden from me the One exer-
cises a form of dictatorship over my possibilities of being or
ways of existing. Heidegger gives as examples of possibilities
of being such things as reading, seeing things in a certain way,
judging works of art, enjoyment. The ways in which we read,
the ways in which we see things, the ways in which we judge
works of art, the ways in which we enjoy ourselves are dictated
by the One. That is to say, we read, see, judge as one reads,
sees, judges. We enjoy ourselves as one enjoys oneself. There
are, of course, some people who go out of their way to be
different, who seek to set themselves apart from the major-
ity. But they are deluding themselves if they think that they
have thereby escaped from the dictatorship of the One. As
Heidegger puts it, ‘we also withdraw from the great mass as
one withdraws’ (127).2 Authenticity essentially has to do with
1
Heidegger elaborates this notion in § 27.
2
‘wir ziehen uns aber auch vom “grossen Haufen” zurück, wie man sich
zurückzieht’.
108 Heidegger’s Being and Time
owning myself in the sense of taking responsibility for my own
being. But the One takes away my responsibility. It disbur-
dens me by as it were taking the decisions regarding my ways
of existing from me. To be thus disburdened is to exist inau-
thentically. Existing in this way Dasein is still characterised by
selfness, in-each-case-mine-ness (Jemeinigkeit), but its self is
what Heidegger calls the One-self (das Man-selbst). ‘The self
of everyday Dasein is the One-self which we distinguish from
the authentic self – that is, from the self which has been taken
hold of in its own way’ (129).3
To exist as the One-self is to exist inauthentically. But this
does not mean that in existing inauthentically Dasein is any less
real.4 It does not involve any diminution of Dasein’s ‘facticity’.
The One itself is utterly real. It is true that the others are not
any particular others, that the One is nobody. But this does
not mean that the one is nothing. With the important proviso
that the reality of the One is a kind of being that is peculiar
to Dasein and cannot be shared by things, we can say that the
One is an ens realissimum (128).5 The One is not real in the
way that a stone is real. It is not something present-at-hand.
But phenomenological ‘seeing’ discloses it as the ‘most real
subject’ of everydayness. Rather like Hegel’s objective spirit
the One is not reducible to a multiplicity of individual subjects.
But nor is it a universal subject. To think of it in this way is
to impose on Dasein the conceptual scheme of genus, species
and instance.6

3
‘Das Selbst des alltäglichen Daseins ist das Man-selbst, das wir von dem
eigentlichen, das heisst eigens ergriffenen Selbst unterscheiden.’
4
Though of course Dasein is never real in the sense of present-at-hand
(vorhanden).
5
Most real being.
6
It is not altogether clear what sort of ontological status the One is supposed
to have. Heidegger speaks of it as exercising a form of dictatorship over the
 Authenticity 109
The One is an existential (129). That is to say, it is a basic
structure of Dasein’s being. It belongs to Dasein’s ontologi-
cal constitution. So it is no accident that the self of everyday
existence is the One-self. However, it must be said that, if we
look at Heidegger’s examples of the One’s dominion, it does
not look like something which belongs to Dasein as such.7
There is, one might say, a distinct whiff of Weimar about it.
But to make this the basis of a criticism of Heidegger’s notion
of the One would be to fail to distinguish between the One as
an existential and the concrete historical forms that this exis-
tential can take. The One has what Heidegger calls ‘various
possibilities of becoming concrete’ (129).8
Given that the One is an existential, in the sense of being
something which pertains to the being of Dasein as such, it
cannot be the case that existing authentically involves Dasein
somehowdetachingitselffromit.Authenticexistenceisnotthe
annihilation of the One-self but a modification of the One-self.
‘Authentic being-one’s-self does not rest upon an exceptional

individual Dasein, which suggests a reality over and above Dasein in much
the way that Hegel’s objective spirit is independent of those individuals who
participate in it. But he also maintains that it is an existential. It is a mode
of being of Dasein, a way in which it is. It does not make sense to speak of
a way in which something is as exercising dominion over that thing.
7
The dominion of the One is the dominion of the average. ‘In this avera-
geness with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, it keeps
watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every
kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is
primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known.
Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated.
Every secret loses its force’ (‘Diese Durchschnittlichkeit in der Vorzeich-
nung dessen, was gewagt werden kann und darf, wacht über jede sich
vordrängende Ausnahme. Jeder Vorrang wird geräuschlos niedergehal-
ten. Alles Ursprüngliche ist über Nacht als längst bekannt geglättet. Alles
Erkämpfte wird handlich. Jedes Geheimnis verliert seine Kraft’) (127).
8
‘Es hat . . . verschiedene Möglichkeiten seiner daseinsmässigen Konkretion.’
110 Heidegger’s Being and Time
condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached
from the One; it is rather an existentiell9 modification of the
One – of the One as an essential existential’ (130).10 If the One is
an existential and if to exist as the One-self is to exist inauthen-
tically then it would seem to follow that simply as Dasein our
existence is inauthentic. This is true in the sense that authentic
existence, although possible, is only possible as a modification
of inauthentic existence.

fa l l i n g
Inauthentic existence is also described as fallen or falling exis-
tence. Heidegger insists that by ‘falling’ (Verfallen) he does
not mean original sin. It should not be construed as a fall
from some original state of purity and moral innocence. Nor
should it be thought of as something which happened in the
past but which continues to affect us adversely. It is an onto-
logical happening in the sense that it belongs to Dasein’s being
as such. It does not refer to an undesirable feature of human
beings which through changes in society and culture might
eventually be eliminated. It is something which belongs to
the structure of the being of Dasein. In other words, what
Heidegger calls falling is an existential – something which
belongs to the structure of existence, the being of Dasein. In
what then does it consist? It is absorption in, losing oneself
9
The distinction between existentiell and existential corresponds to that
between ontic and ontological. In fact it is the ontic–ontological distinction
as applied to the entity Heidegger calls ‘Dasein’. An example of something
existentiell would be my choosing to face up to death. That the being of
Dasein – and hence my being – is being towards death, on the other hand,
is something existential.
10
‘Das eigentliche Selbstsein beruht nicht auf einem vom Man abgelösten
Ausnahmezustand des Subjekts, sondern ist eine existenzielle Modifikation
des Man als eines wesenhaften Existentials.’
 Authenticity 111
in, the world of one’s concern. By world is meant ‘world’, the
totality of entities or beings with which I am concerned (rather
than world in the sense of what makes the encountering of
entities possible). In such absorption I understand myself in
terms of the tasks in which I am engaged.
Fallenness is absorption in entities, losing oneself in the
‘world’. But it is also absorption in being-with-one-another in
so far as this is determined by the One. In having my possibil-
ities of being prescribed for me by the One I am falling away
from myself as authentic, the self which in choosing its possi-
bilities of existence is choosing, and thus ‘owning’ itself. More
specifically, falling is absorption in being-with-one-another
in so far as this is governed by what Heidegger calls ‘idle
talk’ (Gerede), ‘curiosity’ (Neugier) and ‘ambiguity’ (Zwei-
deutigkeit) (§§ 35–7). These terms should not be understood
in a pejorative sense. Whatever their ontic meanings are, Hei-
degger uses them to refer to phenomena which constitute the
mode of being of understanding and interpretation in every-
day Dasein. Discourse which expresses itself is communication
(Mitteilung). It should aim to bring the hearer to participate
in being towards what is talked about in the discourse (das
Beredete). In idle talk being towards what-is-talked-about is
replaced by being towards what-is-said-in-the-talk as such.
Heidegger uses the term ‘curiosity’ (Neugier, literally greed
for the new) to refer to the tendency to just-perceive (Tendenz
zum Nur-Vernehmen). Curiosity is concerned with seeing, not
with a view to understanding what is seen but just in order to see.
Ambiguity has to do with the inability to distinguish between
what is genuinely understood and what is not. ‘When in our
everyday being-with-one-another we encounter the sort of
thing which is accessible to everyone and about which anyone
can say anything it soon becomes impossible to decide what is
disclosed in a genuine understanding and what is not’ (173).
112 Heidegger’s Being and Time
‘Everthing looks as if it were genuinely understood, grasped
and spoken, though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look
so, and yet at bottom it is’ (173).
It must be said that the relationship between these three
aspects of falling – absorption in entities, absorption in being-
with-one-another as determined by the One, being governed
by idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity – remains obscure. It
will be recalled that in chapter 1 it was said that Dasein has a
tendency to interpret its own being in terms of the being of enti-
ties other than itself and to interpret the being of entities other
than itself uniformly as ‘presence-at-hand’ (Vorhandenheit).
Heidegger appears to identify this tendency with falling. But
hedoesnotmakeclearjusthowthisissupposedtobeconnected
with his more ‘concrete’ definitions of the phenomenon. Why
should lostness in the publicness of the One result in inter-
preting my being as the mere occurrence of something? Why
should the fact that my being-with-one-another is governed
by ‘idle talk’ result in this false ontological interpretation? He
seems eventually to have come to identify falling with for-
getfulness of being (Seinsvergessenheit). In his later work he
speaks simply of falling onto or into entities (das Ver-fallen des
Daseins an das Seiende). Being absorbed in our comportment
to entities, to what is, we are not mindful of what makes such
comportment possible.

das e i n i s i n t h e u n t rut h
It is appropriate at this point to return briefly to the topic of
truth. Because the disclosedness of Dasein is what makes any
kind of uncovering of entities possible such disclosedness is
truth in the most primordial sense. For this reason Heidegger
says that Dasein is ‘in the truth’. But it was pointed out that he
also insists that Dasein is ‘in the untruth’. Having explained
 Authenticity 113
such notions as the One and falling, we are now better placed
to understand the notion of being in the untruth.
In being disclosed Dasein is also closed off and in uncover-
ing it also covers up and conceals. Dasein is in the truth. But
equally Dasein is in the untruth. To understand this we need
to reflect on what is disclosed in the disclosedness that Dasein
is. This is not some aspect of Dasein’s being, but the whole of
Dasein’s being, with all its structural components: thrownness,
projection, falling. Thrownness is not just finding myself in a
world, but in this world, this framework or horizon of meaning
or significance. I am always already in a particular world. And
as regards ‘world’ I am always already ‘alongside ’, dwelling
with (bei) a specific range of intraworldly entities. Projection
(Entwurf ) is Dasein’s disclosive being towards its ability-to-
be (Seinkönnen), its possibilities of being. Such projection can
be restricted to possibilities of being towards intraworldly
entities (Dasein can understand itself in terms of the ‘world’).
Such possibilities are laid down for it in advance by those
anonymous others (to which I myself belong) Heidegger calls
das Man (the One or the They). However projection can also
disclose possibilities of being which are most my own, ways
of existing authentically. Falling (Verfallen) is lostness in the
‘world’, absorption in (being held in thrall by) the ‘world’ as
interpreted by the One. Uncovering of intraworldly entities
belongs to Dasein’s being and such uncovering is grounded in
Dasein’s disclosedness. But ‘as a result of’ Dasein’s falling what
has been uncovered and disclosed is disguised and closed off.
Entities show themselves but in the mode of semblance (222).
Because Dasein is essentially falling we can say that Dasein’s
ontological constitution (Seinsverfassung) is such that Dasein
is in the ‘untruth’.
Dasein’s being is such that it discloses and uncovers, but
at the same time closes off and covers up, conceals. Both
114 Heidegger’s Being and Time
closed-off-ness (Verschlossenheit) and covered-up-ness
(Verdecktheit) belong to the being of Dasein. But it is not
entirely clear whether this essential concealedness has to
do with Dasein’s facticity (thrownness) or Dasein’s falling.
It does make a difference because, whereas it is entirely
plausible to say that facticity is ontological (in the sense that
it belongs to the essence of Dasein’s being), given some of
the things Heidegger says about falling it is not so plausible
to say that falling is ontological. The ‘idle talk’ (Gerede),
‘curiosity’ (Neugier) and ‘ambiguity’ (Zweideutigkeit) with
which he fleshes out his notion of falling may seem too
‘localised’ phenomena to characterise Dasein’s being as such.
And what he says about das Man may be true of (early)
twentieth-century Dasein but is it true of Dasein as such?
Tying ‘being in the untruth’ to Dasein’s facticity is more
plausible. In so far as I am ‘thrown’ I am essentially finite.
Unlike God, who sees everything that is from every point of
view simultaneously, or who does not need a point of view
and for whom consequently there can be no concealment,
Dasein in its finitude, its delivered-over-ness to things, can
only uncover and disclose by at the same time concealing and
covering up.

an g s t
Heidegger also speaks of falling as a kind of flight. In losing
itself in things, in being absorbed in the ‘world’, Dasein is
fleeing from itself as authentic ability-to-be-itself.11 What is
11
It is difficult to reconcile the idea that in falling what is being fled from is the
authentic self with the insistence that authentic existence is only possible
as a modification of inauthentic existence, that the authentic self is only
possible as a modification of the One-self.
 Authenticity 115
being fled from is made manifest in anxiety or Angst. We saw
in chapter 4 that there are two basic modes of disclosedness or
the ‘there’ of Dasein. These are affectedness (‘state of mind’)
(Befindlichkeit) or mood (Stimmung) and understanding
(Verstehen). Anxiety is a ‘distinguished’ mode of affectedness,
distinguished because it discloses Dasein to itself as regards
what is most basic to its ontological constitution – its thrown-
ness and projection. To understand Heidegger’s account of
Angst we must first take a brief look at his phenomenological
description of the specific mode of affectedness he calls ‘fear’
(Furcht).12 It will emerge that the account of Angst is crucially
dependent on the contrast with fear.
With regard to fear we can distinguish the Wovor of fear,
the fearing, and the Worum of fear. The Wovor of fear is the
object of fear, in the sense of what is feared. It is the ‘before
which’ (the ‘in the face of which’) of fear. The Worum of fear is
that on account of which (or for which or about which) I fear.
The Wovor of fear is the ‘fearsome’ (das ‘Furchtbare’ ). This
is in each case something which shows itself within-the-world,
an intraworldly entity. As a phenomenologist Heidegger is not
concerned with the ontic task of giving an account of the
sorts of thing that are or can be fearsome but rather with the
ontological task of describing the fearsome in its fearsomeness,
what belongs to the fearsome as such, what belongs to the being
of the fearsome.
It is in fear that the fearsome shows itself or is encountered.
The fearsome has the character of being threatening. Draw-
ing on the account of space and spatiality given in chapter
2 Heidegger describes the threatening entity as approaching
from a particular ‘region’ (Gegend) and drawing close within
12
See § 30: ‘Fear as a mode of affectedness’.
116 Heidegger’s Being and Time
what is near (innerhalb der Nähe). But though drawing close it
can stay away or pass us by (fail to strike as it were).
As regards the fearing itself Heidegger says that in fearing
the threatening is ‘freed and allowed to matter to us’ (141).
What this means is that fear – this mode of affectedness – dis-
closes or uncovers the threatening entity. It lets the threatening
entity show itself as threatening. It lets it matter to us in a spe-
cific way. It is not as though we first establish the existence of
a future evil and then fear it. Rather fear (fearing) uncovers –
dis-covers (entdeckt) – the fearsome in its fearsomeness.
The Worum of fear is that which does the fearing, the fearing
being itself – Dasein. Only a being for which in its being this
being itself is an issue can fear. I fear for myself and the
possibilities of my being. This might seem to contradict the
obvious fact that animals can be afraid (the cat fears the dog,
the mouse fears the cat). But an animal is not an instance of
Dasein, it does not exist, it does not have an understanding of
being. However Heidegger is simply restricting his use of the
term ‘fear’ to the phenomenon which exhibits the features he
describes. The being of animals is not being-in-the-world so
it cannot be threatened by entities within-the-world.
Having explained Heidegger’s analysis of fear we must now
approach Angst13 via the already familiar notion of falling.
Falling, we have seen, is a fleeing of Dasein from itself as
authentic ability-to-be-itself. As falling Dasein is fleeing from
itself into the One and the ‘world’ of its concern. In a way
that is characteristic of his thinking Heidegger points out that
where there is fleeing what is fled from (before which one
flees) must already be disclosed. To flee from myself I must
be disclosed to myself. However this does not mean that the

13
For his account of Angst see § 40. See also ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, in Basic
Writings, pp. 93–110.
 Authenticity 117
from-what or the in-face-of-which is apprehended (erfasst). It
is in Angst that the Wovor of flight becomes manifest.
Fear too has the character of flight, flight from what fear
discloses, the threatening. That which is feared is in each case
an entity within-the-world, from a particular region, which
approaches within what is near, but which can ‘fail to strike’.
So what is the difference between the Wovor of Angst and the
Wovor of fear? The Wovor of Angst is not an intraworldly
entity, something within-the-world. The Wovor of Angst is
indeterminate, not in the sense that it is left undecided which
intraworldly entity is threatening, but in the sense that in
Angst intraworldly entities are as such simply not relevant.
The totality of intraworldly entities as it were collapses into
itself. The ‘world’, in Angst, has the character of complete
insignificance. What threatens in Angst is nowhere (it belongs
to no region). And it is nothing, in the sense of being no
intraworldly entity. What threatens in Angst is ‘nothing and
nowhere’ (Nichts und nirgends) (186).
Rather puzzlingly Heidegger now tells us that the Wovor of
Angst is the world as such (187). To understand this it is vitally
important to hang on to the distinction between ‘world’ and
world. The ‘object’ of Angst is not the ‘world’ in the sense of
the totality of entities but rather the world in the sense of that
which makes comportment to entities possible. The world as
the web of significance which makes comportment to entities
as entities possible is not itself an entity. It is nothing in the
sense of not any thing, no-thing. And given that world belongs
to the being of Dasein as being-in-the-world we can say that
the Wovor of Angst is being-in-the-world itself.
What is there about being-in-the-world to be anxious
about? In our absorbed having-to-do-with-things entities and
our dealings with them have sense or significance thanks to
the world, the web of significance. In Angst the world, which
118 Heidegger’s Being and Time
normally functions as the unquestioned, taken-for-granted
background of our dealings with things, comes to the fore and
is seen as that which gives significance but is itself without
significance. That which gives significance has itself no sig-
nificance because it has no foundation in the nature of things.14
The disclosure of the world as world in Angst is not the
product of reflective thought. It is not as though we think away,
or disregard in thought, intraworldly entities and then think
only about the world and, finally, anxiety about the world
arises. Angst as a mode of affectedness does not result from
the disclosure of world but is itself the disclosure of world as
world.
So much for the ‘object’ (the Wovor) of Angst. But what
about the Worum of Angst, in the sense of that on account of
which (or about which or, better, for which) I am anxious?
What is distinctive about Angst as a mode of affectedness is
that the Wovor and the Worum are the same. That for which (or
about which) Dasein is anxious and that in the face of which it
is anxious are one and the same – being-in-the-world as such.
It is not some particular possibility of being about which I
am anxious but my being-in-the-world as such. The ‘world’
has no longer anything to offer. Not only entities within-the-
world but also other Dasein sink away into total irrelevance.
In being confronted with its own naked ability-to-be-in-the-
world Dasein is individualised. It is individualised in Angst
because Angst discloses itself to itself in its ‘being-free-for the
freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself’ (188). It is
important to see that this freedom is not the absolute freedom
of self-creation.15 The being of Dasein is characterised by
14
It is not part of a cosmic order which has validity independently of Dasein.
15
It is not the freedom Fichte attributes to the absolute ego (Ich) which posits
itself and the non-ego (Nicht-Ich) as the other of itself and is thereby free
in the sense of being absolutely independent of anything other than itself.
 Authenticity 119
projection but equally by thrownness. Dasein as being-in-the-
world has been ‘delivered over’ (überantwortet) to its freedom.
And choosing how to be is not something which takes place
in a vacuum but in a Spielraum of possibilities which is always
already there (Dasein is thrown into a world).
Mood or affectedness makes manifest ‘how one is’ (wie
einem ist). So what is the ‘how one is’ that is made manifest by
Angst? ‘In anxiety one has an eerie or uncanny (unheimlich)
feeling’ (188).16 Heim is a German word for home. So literally
unheimlich means unhomelike. In Angst one is not-at-home.
This not-at-home is not the localised not-being-at-home in,
say, Aberdeen or the Black Forest. In § 12, where Heidegger
gave a preliminary characterisation of being-in, this was char-
acterised as Wohnen bei, living in, residing in (alternatively:
being-familiar-with). In Angst every familiarity collapses into
itself. In Angst it is not a case of not-being-at-home here or
there but rather not-being-at-home-in-the-world. ‘Being-in
enters into the existential “mode” of the “not-at-home”’ (189).
In falling Dasein flees from (in the face of ) something. It
does not flee from anything within-the-world. On the con-
trary, it is entities within-the-world to which it flees, living
amongst them in ‘tranquillised familiarity’ (beruhigte Ver-
trautheit). Falling is flight into the at-home of the public ‘world’
of the One from the not-at-homeness which characterises
Dasein’s being as thrown and delivered over to itself.

d e at h
As falling Dasein is fleeing from being and seeking refuge in
beings. Angst is a turning towards what is fled from in falling.
This turning towards, which is essential to what Heidegger
16
‘In der Angst ist einem “unheimlich”.’
120 Heidegger’s Being and Time
understands by authenticity, also involves a certain way of
being towards death. But his introduction of the topic17 is in the
context of reflection on the wholeness of Dasein. Heidegger’s
existential analytic is concerned to give an account of the
basic structures of the being of Dasein. But are we able in
this account to encompass the whole of Dasein (Dasein in its
wholeness)? Being is always the being of beings (entities), so
we cannot engage in ontology independently of the experience
of entities. Accordingly the ontology of Dasein can only be
carried out on the basis of the experience of Dasein. But there
is a problem here. How can we experience Dasein as a whole
(in its wholeness) given that an essential feature of Dasein’s
being is projection? Dasein projects itself onto the possibilities
of its being and in this sense is always ‘ahead of itself’ (sich
vorweg). In Dasein, Heidegger says, there is always ‘something
still outstanding’. ‘A constant unsettledness, unconcludedness
belongs to the essence of Dasein’s basic constitution. When
there is nothing more outstanding Dasein no longer is, no
longer exists, is no longer “there” (da). As long as Dasein is
as an entity it has not attained its wholeness. If it does attain
it then this gain becomes the loss of its being-in-the-world as
such’ (236).
The impossibility of experiencing Dasein as a whole is not
simply a consequence of the inadequacy of our cognitive fac-
ulties but rather has to do with the being of Dasein (236).
To experience Dasein as a whole would require that I be able
toexperiencethelossofthebeingofthe‘there’,thetransitionto
no-longer-being-there (Nichtmehrdasein). Now instead of
concluding that an ontology of Dasein in its wholeness is
therefore impossible, a natural move would be to take as the
entity to be studied, not oneself but others. I may not be able
17
For Heidegger’s treatment of death see Division Two, chapter 1.
 Authenticity 121
to experience my own death but I can experience the death
of others. The coming-to-an-end of Dasein in another can, it
seems, be the substitute theme for an analysis of Dasein in its
wholeness (238).
But do we genuinely experience the death of another? In
one sense it is clear that we do. We see the dying person, we
see that they are still alive, we see that they are now dead. But
do we experience the dying? The dead person is no longer
in-the-world (the being of Dasein is being-in-the-world). We
might be tempted to say that the being of the dead person is
presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit). All that is left is the dead
body, the corpse, and this is a mere thing. We can experience
the other’s death, one might say, in the sense of experiencing
the end of an entity as Dasein and the beginning of this entity as
something thing-like, a change in mode of being from existence
to presence-at-hand (238). Heidegger thinks this is based on bad
phenomenology. The being of a corpse is not the same as that
of an inanimate material object. Something no longer alive is
not the same as something lifeless in the sense of inanimate.
But even if we can speak of a switch (Umschlag) of being,
experiencing such a switch is not the same as experiencing the
other’s death; for to experience this would to experience the
other’s loss of being.
The world which the dead person has left behind is a with-
world (Mitwelt). It is our world. This makes it possible for those
left behind to be still with the deceased – in tending their grave,
for example. But this being-with the dead person does not in
any way amount to experiencing the having-come-to-an-end
of the dead person. In such being-with death is experienced as
loss, but as the loss suffered by those who remain behind. ‘In
suffering this loss, the loss of being which the dying person
“suffers” does not as such become accessible’ (239). So it can’t
be said that we genuinely experience the death of others. At
122 Heidegger’s Being and Time
most we can be present at the death. It is death as a possibility
of being of the person who dies which interests Heidegger in
his ontology of death, not the way in which the dead person
is still there with those who are left behind.
There is a sense in which Heidegger denies that there is
any such thing as a self. There is no such thing as a self in
the sense of a present-at-hand entity which makes us who
we are by persisting. Dasein is a self as Dasein, not as some
other kind of entity. It is the selfness of Dasein, its in-each-
case-mine-ness ( Jemeinigkeit), which makes the taking of the
death of others as a substitute theme so misguided. For to do
so presupposes that one Dasein can be substituted for another,
so that what cannot be experienced in one’s own Dasein can
become accessible in the Dasein of another.
This is not to say that one person cannot substitute for
another in activities and tasks. Although the being of Dasein
is in each case mine, Dasein is not an isolated individual cut
off from others by virtue of being an essentially private mind
behind bodily appearance and behaviour. The being of Dasein
is not just being-in-the-world but being-with-in-the-world,
being-with-one-another-in-the-world. An essential feature of
this being-with-one-another-in-the-world is what Heidegger
calls the representability (Vertretbarkeit) (239) of one Dasein
by another. Dasein’s possibilities of being are for the most
part determined not by itself but by those anonymous oth-
ers Heidegger calls the One (das Man). Possibilities of being
are ways of existing. These can be more or less specific. For
example, being a father, mother, wife, teacher, joiner, giving
a lecture, chopping wood, collecting a package, arranging a
meeting. To the extent that the nature of such possibilities is
determined, not by the individual Dasein, but by das Man,
in projecting itself onto such possibilities one Dasein is like
 Authenticity 123
another. In teaching history someone can deputise for me, a
representative can collect the package, arrange the meeting.
This representability, which is part and parcel of everyday
being-with-one-another-in-the-world, has no place when it
comes to death – the possibility which Heidegger calls the
‘possibility of the impossibility of any comportment to . . .’
(262).
Now in one sense it might seem that what Heidegger is say-
ing is simply not true. It clearly is possible for one person to die
for another. In The Silent Angel,18 a posthumously published
novel by the German writer Heinrich Böll, a deserter from the
Wehrmacht is awaiting execution by firing squad. The person
guarding him has his own reasons for not wanting to live and
so exchanges jacket and papers with the condemned man and
goes before the firing squad in his place. Or, to take a real-life
case, in Auschwitz the Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe took the
place of a family man destined for the gas-chamber. In both of
these cases there is a clear sense in which one person is dying
for another. However, this does not mean that the other has
had their death taken away from them. Death is something
which each of us must take upon ourselves. Death is the pos-
sibility of being which is most my own. In so far as death ‘is’
it is essentially in each case mine. This is in no way altered
by the possibility of the kind of postponement involved in the
examples just given. In a sense all the possibilities of my being
are mine but that possibility which is death is a distinguished
(ausgezeichnet) possibility. It is that possibility which is most
my own.
Does Heidegger think that death is unique as regards the
impossibility of representation or deputising? Someone else
18
Der Engel schweigt.
124 Heidegger’s Being and Time
can do my lecturing, my travelling, my fetching and carrying,
but no one else can do my dying. But then no one else can do my
loving and hating for me, no one can be a friend for me. This is
all true, but there remains something about death which makes
it unrepresentable in a special way. Love, hatred, friendship
are essentially mine, but they differ fundamentally from death
in the following respect: although essentially mine and as
such unrepresentable they nonetheless involve an essential
reference to others – in love the person I love, in hatred the
person I hate, in friendship the friend. Death, by contrast,
involves a severing of all relations to others. It is my ownmost
(eigenste) possibility, precisely because it is not, and cannot be,
a possibility of being-with-one-another. The fact that I can
die alone in the Scottish mountains or at home surrounded
by my loved ones makes no difference to this point. Because
it necessarily involves the severing of all relations to others
Heidegger calls the possibility of being which is death non-
relational (unbezüglich).
Heidegger is a phenomenologist. His phenomenology of
death is not a misguided attempt to describe what it is like to be
dead. Nor is it a description of what dying is like. We should not
forget that the motivation for taking the other person’s death
as a substitute theme was that I cannot experience my own
death. The phenomenon of phenomenology, as Heidegger
understands it, is being – the being of Dasein, the being of
the entities to which Dasein comports itself and ultimately
being as such. Death is a phenomenological theme in so far
as death belongs to the being of Dasein. The being of Dasein
is being towards death (Sein zum Tode). In its being Dasein
comports itself to death. Heidegger’s phenomenology of death
is not a description of being dead or of dying but a descriptive
analysis of being-towards-death and of death as it shows itself
(and disguises itself ) in such being.
 Authenticity 125
Heidegger’s concern with death is ontological and he is keen
to distinguish ontology from other kinds of study.19 Death is
something which is studied by biologists and physiologists, by
medical science. Psychology studies the psychology of dying
and bereavement. Anthropologists study the different ways
in which death is treated in different cultures. Theologians
consider the question of how death came into the world, what
happens after death and so on. Although these disciplines
exhibit huge differences they are all what Heidegger calls ontic
disciplines, i.e. they are concerned with entities, properties of
entities, relations between entities, rather than with the being
of entities. Ontological questions are prior to ontic questions.
So the question about the ontological essence of death is prior
to the ontic question of what comes after death. In itself the
ontology of death is neutral with respect to the question of
whether there is an afterlife.20
Death is a possibility of being. This plainly does not mean
that death is something merely possible. Death is certain
though the moment when it comes is indeterminate. And the
certainty of death is not the certainty which belongs to some
propositions.
Heidegger, we have said, is not concerned to describe what
dying is like but how death shows itself in Dasein’s being
toward death, i.e. how it shows itself in Dasein’s comportment
to this possibility of its being. As projecting, Dasein is always
ahead of itself. Its being is not just being towards particular
possibilities of its being but, at the same time, being towards
that possibility of being which is its end. There is nothing in
this ontological claim to suggest that we are always thinking
19
See § 49.
20
But how plausible is this neutrality? If death is the possibility of the impos-
siblity of any comportment to anything then the idea of an afterlife surely
makes no sense.
126 Heidegger’s Being and Time
about death. Comportment towards death belongs to the being
of Dasein; thinking about death is just one specific mode of
such comportment.
Death is impending (literally stands before, steht bevor)
(250). But such standing before is clearly not peculiar to death.
The following sorts of thing can be impending or stand before:
a storm, alterations to the house, the arrival of a friend. These
are all events or happenings which we encounter within-the-
world (although they involve entities with different modes
of being: presence-at-hand, readiness-to-hand, Dasein-with).
So to speak of death as impending, or standing before, might
suggest that death is an event within-the-world and that it has
one or other of these modes of being. But death is not an event
within-the-world.
But possibilities of Dasein’s own being can also stand
before – for example, a journey, a debate, the renunciation
of something. These are all Dasein’s own possibilities. But
although they are Dasein’s own possibilities they are all,
whether obviously or not, possibilities of being-with-one-
another. Even acting alone is a mode of being-with. What
distinguishes death from all other possibilities of being is that
it is not grounded in being-with-others. In each case it must
be taken upon itself by Dasein itself. In the case of death,
what stands before Dasein is not an event and not a possibility
of being-with-one-another but Dasein itself in the possibility
which is most its own. Most its own because in death there
can be no representation. Standing before itself in this way all
relations to other Dasein are severed. It is my ownmost possi-
bility precisely because it is not and cannot be a possibility of
my being-with-one-another. It is precisely because it involves
the severing of all relations to others that Heidegger calls that
possibility of being that is death non-relational (unbezüglich).
So death is the possibility which is most my own and it is
 Authenticity 127
non-relational. It is also the most extreme possibility in the
sensethatitisthepossibilityoftheimpossibilityofallcomport-
ment to . . . It cannot be surpassed (outstripped, overtaken),
not because it is best, but because there is nothing with which
it can be compared; and it clearly does not admit of degrees.
It is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein.
So being-towards-death is being-towards this ownmost,
non-relational and unsurpassable possibility. Although in
being-towards-death Dasein is projecting itself ahead of itself
this projection, like all projection, is thrown projection. Dasein
does not choose its that-it-is and has-to-be. It does not choose
that its being is being towards death, though it can choose the
how of its being towards death.
And because the being of Dasein is characterised by falling
(Verfallen) Dasein flees in the face of this ownmost, non-
relational and unsurpassable possibility and covers it up, dis-
guises it. The self of everyday existence is the One-self (das
Man-selbst). This inauthentically existing self interprets death
as an occurrence which is constantly taking place, a ‘case of
death’, a familiar event which occurs within-the-world. It is
accepted that in the end I myself will die, but for the time
being I remain untouched. Death is understood as an indeter-
minate something which will eventually arrive but which as
far as oneself is concerned is not yet present and is therefore
no threat. Death is something that befalls the One. One dies.
Death is levelled down to an occurrence which affects, befalls,
concerns Dasein – but nobody in particular (the One, it will
be recalled, is the nobody). This attitude to death which domi-
nates everyday being-with-one-another is an evasion of death
which conceals it as a possibility of my being, a possibility
which is most my own, is non-relational and unsurpassable.
Such concealing evasion can also be seen in the way we com-
port ourselves to the dying. We try to persuade them that
128 Heidegger’s Being and Time
they are not going to die and will soon return to the familiar
world of their concern. In thus seeking to console the dying
person we are helping them to conceal from themselves the
possibility of being that is most their own. And in helping to
conceal death from the dying person we are also seeking to
conceal it from ourselves.
Dasein is an entity which by virtue of its understand-
ing of being uncovers entities other than itself and in so
doing discloses itself to itself. There are, we have seen, two
basic forms of disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) – understanding
(Verstehen) and affectedness (Befindlichkeit). How we under-
stand ourselves and things other than ourselves is determined
by the das Man and this understanding is articulated in the
‘discourse’ of das Man: ‘idle talk’ (Gerede). Affectedness is
feeling, mood (Stimmung). Dasein’s being is such that Dasein
is always in some mood or other, is always mooded. Mood, like
understanding, is regulated by das Man. It decides which mode
of affectedness is to determine our attitude to death. Anxiety
(Angst) in the face of death, in which Dasein is brought before
itself as delivered over to this ownmost, non-relational and
unsurpassable possibility, is suppressed in favour of fear of
death as an approaching event. Angst is a distinguished mode
of affectedness which has as its ‘object’ not this or that threat-
ening entity within-the-world but being-in-the-world as such
(the ‘object’ of Angst is no thing, nothing). But in suppressing
Angst in favour of fear das Man also depicts such fear as a
weakness. The ‘done thing’ is calm indifference in face of the
‘fact’ that one dies. Heidegger says of such supposedly ‘supe-
rior’ indifference that it alienates Dasein from its ownmost,
non-relational possibility of being (254).
What we have been looking at so far is Heidegger’s anal-
ysis of inauthentic being towards death, the essence of which
is evasion and concealment. It follows that authentic being
 Authenticity 129
towards death will be a ‘letting death stand before’ in such
a way that there is no evasion and concealment. The analy-
sis of inauthentic being towards death, the concrete form this
being takes in everydayness, followed what Heidegger calls an
existential sketch of being towards death as being towards
Dasein’s ownmost, non-relational and unsurpassable possibil-
ity of being. He now proposes to move in the opposite direction
and arrive at the full existential conception of death by means
of a more complete interpretation of everyday being towards
death.
It would be a mistake to proceed as follows: first give an
account of authenticity in general and then treat authentic
being towards death as a species of this. To do so would be to
overlook the pivotal role that authentic being towards death
plays in authenticity as such. It emerges that authenticity in
relation to particular possibilities of being depends on our
being towards death being authentic.
Everyday being towards death, we have seen, is articulated
in the ‘idle talk’ (Gerede) of das Man: ‘One dies too, sometime,
but not for the time being’ (255). We have already seen that the
‘one dies’ expresses the understanding of death as an event,
a ‘case’ or ‘instance’ of death. Heidegger now focuses on the
‘sometime, but not for the time being’. What this articulates –
though in a way that disguises or covers up – are two other
fundamental features of the existential conception of death:
its certainty and the indefiniteness or indeterminateness of
its ‘when’. We are already acquainted with the features of its
being the possibility which is most my own, its being non-
relational and its being unsurpassable (most extreme, cannot
be outstripped, overtaken). So the full existential conception of
death is as follows: death as the end of Dasein is the ownmost,
non-relational, certain and as such indeterminate, unsurpass-
able possibility of Dasein (258).
130 Heidegger’s Being and Time
We will consider these additional features – certainty and
indefiniteness (Unbestimmtheit) – in turn. Heidegger relates
certainty to truth. As we explained in chapter 4, truth,
according to Heidegger, is unconcealedness (Unverborgenheit,
a-letheia). Dasein is ‘in the truth’ in the sense that uncov-
ering, disclosing, bringing out of concealment, belongs to
Dasein’s being. The most fundamental truth is Dasein’s dis-
closing of itself. All disclosing or uncovering of entities is
grounded in Dasein’s self-disclosure. Propositional truth is a
derivative mode of uncovering which depends on the prior
uncovering of entities accomplished by our engaged having-
to-do-with things. Heidegger distinguishes between truth in
the sense of uncovering (entdeckend) and truth in the sense
of uncoveredness (Entdecktheit). The former is what Dasein
does, the latter is the entity as uncovered. He makes a parallel
distinction in regard to the related notion of certainty. We say
of something that it is certain but we also say I am certain.
Certainty in the sense of Dasein’s being certain corresponds to
truth in the sense of being-uncovering. Certainty in the sense
of something’s being certain corresponds to truth in the sense
of being-uncovered. In regard to death we can distinguish
between Dasein’s being certain about death and death’s being
certain. The kind of certainty (being certain) that is appro-
priate in regard to something depends on the kind of being
of what it is one is certain about. The certainty of the One-
self (das Man-selbst) about death is a certainty which covers
up or conceals death rather than uncovering it or disclosing
it.21 It is a certainty which is appropriate to a type of event.
Death is experienced or heard about every day. It is an unde-
niable ‘fact of experience’. This everyday certainty of death
can be modified by critical reflection. All human beings –
as far as one knows – die. That everyone will die is to the
21
Dasein is ‘in the truth’. But equally Dasein is ‘in the untruth’.
 Authenticity 131
highest degree probable, though not ‘unconditionally’ cer-
tain. The certainty of death is ‘merely empirical’. It falls short
of ‘apodictic’ certainty. But this empirical certainty of death is
not really certainty of death. It is the certainty of a biological
event (Ableben, demise, perishing) rather than the certainty
of death, the end of Dasein. The certainty of death is neither
empirical nor apodictic but existential. The being of Dasein
as the being of Dasein is being towards death. The empirical
certainty of one’s ‘demise’ merely covers up the existential
certainty of death as my ownmost, non-relational and unsur-
passable possibility. Death is my ownmost, non-relational,
unsurpassable and certain possibility.
Everyday, inauthentic being towards death, we have seen,
is articulated in the ‘idle talk’ of the One: ‘One dies too, some-
time, but not for the time being.’ The ‘sometime, but not for
the time being’ articulates – though in a way that disguises
or covers up – the second feature of death as an existential
phenomenon mentioned earlier: the indefiniteness or indeter-
minateness of its ‘when’. In inauthentic being towards death
this indefiniteness refers to the occurrence of an event at some
unspecified time in the future. Indefiniteness thus understood
conceals what is peculiar to death as certain: that it is possible
at any moment.
This, then, is the complete concept of death as a concept
of existential ontology. The concept of death is the concept
of the end of Dasein. The end of Dasein is its ownmost, non-
relational, certain and as such indefinite, unsurpassable pos-
sibility. In its being towards death Dasein has always decided
one way or another. It has chosen to face this ‘distinguished’
(ausgezeichnet) possibility or to evade it.
Being towards death is comportment to this possibility.
So we know what authentic being towards death would be
comportment to. And in so far as Heidegger has provided
a characterisation of inauthentic being towards death we can
132 Heidegger’s Being and Time
say what authentic being towards death is not. Authentic being
towards death will be comportment to death which does not
conceal. It will be comportment to the end of Dasein which
discloses it as my ownmost, non-relational, unsurpassable,
certain but indefinite possibility, which does not cover up this
possibility or flee from it.
There are, it will be recalled, two basic modes of
disclosedness: understanding (Verstehen) and affectedness
(Befindlichkeit) or mood (Stimmung). The one always involves
the other. All understanding is ‘mooded’, all affectedness, all
mood, ‘has’ its understanding. Death, as inseparable from
Dasein’s being, is always already disclosed. Its disclosedness
belongs to Dasein’s disclosedness of itself. Existing authenti-
cally Dasein is disclosed to itself as it is (as thrown projection).
Authentic being towards death is not just an aspect of exist-
ing authentically; it is a precondition of existing authentically
because my ‘other’ possibilities of being can only genuinely
be chosen in the light of the distinguished possibility that is
death.
So how is death disclosed as it is? In everyday, inauthentic
existence death is understood as an event within-the-world
and is the object of fear (death is disclosed but as other than
it is). What is the understanding and what is the mood or
mode of affectedness which together disclose death in authen-
tic being-towards-death? The understanding of death in which
Dasein projects itself onto its ownmost possibility Heideg-
ger calls Vorlaufen. Literally this means ‘running ahead’
(Vorlaufen in den Tod = running ahead into death) but is
rather weakly translated as ‘anticipation’. The mood or mode
of affectedness of authentic being towards death is Angst.
Vorlaufen is an example, albeit a very special one, of a mode of
comportment towards a possibility, so Heidegger tries to clar-
ify what he means by it by contrasting it with other modes of
 Authenticity 133
comportment to the possible. We have seen that a major theme
of his analytic of Dasein is engaged having-to-do-with enti-
ties within-the-world (Besorgen, concern). Examples given
include such things as producing something, getting some-
thing ready, rearranging something (261). In such comport-
ment I am concerned with a possibility but not with the pos-
sible as such – the possible in its possibility – but rather with
its actualisation or realisation. When the possibility has been
actualised – the thing has been made, is ready, has been rear-
ranged – the actuality still involves possibility in the sense that
it is for something, possible for something. But in using such a
thing I am not focused on the possibility as such, but on what
it is a possibility for.
Authentic being towards death as comportment to a possi-
bility is clearly not like this. It is not concern with a possibility
with a view to its actualisation. For a start, death as some-
thing possible (ein Mögliches) is not a possibility of something
ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, but is a possibility of being
of Dasein. Moreover concern with the actualisation of this pos-
sibility would mean bringing about one’s demise (Ableben).
Somewhat dogmatically Heidegger claims that such suicide is
incompatible with authentic being towards death. ‘But in so
doing I would deprive myself of the very basis for an authentic
being towards death’ (261).
Another mode of comportment to a possibility is dwelling
on the possibility of something. For example, dwelling on the
possibility of one’s house being broken into. Such comport-
ment, although not a concern to actualise a possibility, is still
a concern with actualisation, a concern with whether and, if
so, when and how this possibility will be actualised. When the
possibility in question is one’s death, in other words when I
dwell on death, am forever thinking about it, brooding on it,
death does not completely lose its character as possibility. It is
134 Heidegger’s Being and Time
thought about, brooded upon, as coming. But in such brood-
ing, Heidegger says, we weaken its character as possibility by
calculating with death as something we would like to have at
our disposal. In authentic being towards death the possibility
shows itself as just that – a possibility in its possibility. It is
borne, endured, as a possibility.
Yet another mode of comportment to the possible is expect-
ing (Erwarten). In such comportment something possible is
understood with respect to whether and when and how it will
become actual. It is, Heidegger says, not just an occasional
or incidental looking away from the possible to its possible
actualisation; it is essentially a waiting for this actualisation
(the German for ‘wait for’ is warten auf, for ‘expect’ the word
is erwarten).
What these various modes of comportment to the possible
have in common is that they are not concerned with the possi-
ble as possible but the actualisation of the possible. Authentic
being towards death is likewise a mode of comportment to
the possible but here there is no concern with actualisation.
It is comportment to a possibility in which the possibility is
disclosed as possibility. It is not a concern with actualisation
because in the case of this unique possibility there is nothing
to actualise. It is a possibility of Dasein the actualisation of
which is nothing that Dasein can be. ‘Death as a possibility
gives Dasein nothing to be “actualised” and nothing which
Dasein, as actual, could itself be’ (262). This is because death
as possibility is the possibility of the impossibility of existence,
the possibility of the impossibility of any comportment to . . .

c on s c i e n c e an d g u i lt
Heidegger’s sketch of authentic being towards death is not
intended to show that such authentic existence is a real
 Authenticity 135
possibility for us or, in his terminology, an existentiell possi-
bility. It merely shows that authentic existence is an existential
or ontological possibility. In other words, the being of Dasein
as such does not exclude authentic existence as an existentiell
possibility. To show that it is such a possibility he turns to
the phenomenon of conscience, which he claims provides an
‘attestation’ (Bezeugung), not just that authenticity is possi-
ble, but that it is demanded. What he claims to provide is the
phenomenological ‘letting be seen’ of such an attestation and
of what it attests. As phenomenological in the philosophical
sense this will involve showing that such an attestation must
have its roots or origin in Dasein’s ontological constitution.
His thinking seems to be something like this. Conscience
(Gewissen) calls us or summons us to authentic existence. But
it can only do so if such existence is a genuine possibility for us.
This is rather like Kant’s ‘ought’ implies ‘can’; I can only have
a moral obligation to do what I am able to do. Initially and
for the most part Dasein is lost in the One. This means that I
exist in such a way that my possibilities of being have not been
chosen by me but have been determined by the One. As we
have seen, the One exercises an inconspicuous dictatorship. It
takes away from Dasein the burden of choosing its possibilities
of being but conceals the manner in which it does so. So it
remains indeterminate who has really done the choosing. By
contrast, in existing authentically, in being itself, Dasein is
choosing to choose its possibilities. However, it should not be
forgotten in all this that authentic existence is not existence
in detachment from inauthentic existence. Authentic being-
myself is an existentiell modification of the One-self.
Heidegger interprets what has traditionally been called the
voice of conscience as the call (Ruf ) to choose to make this
choice. In being called by conscience we are being summoned
to carry out this modification of the One-self.
136 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Dasein is its disclosedness. ‘Discourse’ (Rede) is fundamen-
tal to disclosedness in the sense that it is what gives structure
or articulation to the fundamental modes of disclosedness:
affectedness and understanding. The call of conscience is a
mode of discourse. Heidegger insists that in speaking of the
call of conscience he is not speaking figuratively (271). It is
not like Kant’s talk of conscience as a court of law.22 However
this does not mean that the call is a vocal utterance. But then,
as we have seen, discourse does not require such utterance.
It is more basic than utterance and makes utterance possible.
Conscience speaks but in the mode of silence. Correspond-
ingly, hearing the call of conscience is in the mode of reticence
(Verschwiegenheit).
The call of conscience addresses Dasein. More specifically
it addresses the One-self of Dasein. It calls upon the self in the
One-self to be itself. So the call is not a mode of discourse in
which information is conveyed, but a summons (Aufruf). The
self being summoned to be itself is not a substance, something
thing-like, albeit not a material thing. It is not the self of
introspection but the self whose mode of being is being-in-the-
world. Conscience summons the self to be itself and overcome
its lostness in the One, but because my being is being-in-the-
world it is not a summons to detach myself from intraworldly
entities and other Dasein.
We must distinguish between caller (der Rufer) and called
(der Angerufene). Who is called and who does the calling in
the call of conscience? In conscience Dasein is calling itself
but not in the sense that this calling is somehow planned or
prepared. It is not an intentional act. On the other hand, the
call of conscience does not emanate from another Dasein who

22
See ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’, in Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol. VI,
p. 438. ‘Consciousness of an internal court in man . . . is conscience’.
 Authenticity 137
is with me in the world. ‘The call comes from me and yet over
me’ (275).23 This coming over me of the call may suggest that
the call stems from some higher power or from God. But if
conscience is to be understood in terms of the being of Dasein
we must reject such appeals to alien powers. Such appeals
involve thinking in terms of a mode of being – presence-at-
hand – which applies only to entities other than Dasein.
In conscience Dasein is calling itself, so how can we make
sense of the idea that the call comes over me? We clearly cannot
saythattherearetwodistinctentitiesinDasein,onewhichdoes
the calling and the other which is called. This again would be
to treat Dasein as something present-at-hand. The distinction
we need to make is not between two entities but between
Dasein in its Unheimlichkeit (its ‘uncanniness’ or not-at-home-
ness) and Dasein as falling. Here we need to recall what was
said about Angst. This distinguished mode of affectedness
discloses Dasein in its Unheimlichkeit (its ‘uncanniness’ or not-
at-home-ness), in its sheer individuality and naked thatness.
The caller in the call of conscience is the self in its not-at-
home (Un-zuhause). The called in conscience is also the self
but the self as falling, lost in the One, the One-self. What it
is summoned to is authentic existence, the possibility of being
that is most its own. What it is summoned from is fallenness
in the One.
On Heidegger’s existential interpretation of conscience the
call of conscience summons me to authentic existence, choos-
ing to choose my possibilities of being (rather than having
them chosen for me by the One). So construed conscience
does not provide a blueprint for how I should live my life,

23
‘Der Ruf kommt aus mir und doch über mich.’ This is incorrectly translated
by Macquarrie and Robinson as: ‘The call comes from me and yet from
beyond me.’
138 Heidegger’s Being and Time
in the sense of stipulating concrete possibilities of existence
which I must embrace. Conscience, we might say, does not
specify the content of authentic existence. But although the
existential interpretation of conscience does not itself provide
the concrete possibilities of authentic existence, it does provide
the condition of the possibility of such concrete possibilities.
Conscience as ordinarily understood is closely associated
with the notion of guilt. It declares me guilty for what I have
done and for what I have failed to do. It warns me of possible
guilt for what I may or may not do in the future. And when
my conscience is clear it declares the absence of guilt. But
Heidegger wishes to maintain that there is a sense in which
Dasein as such is guilty. To exist is to be guilty and this exis-
tential or ontological guilt is a condition of the possibility of
being guilty in the ordinary sense.
His discussion of guilt in the ordinary sense is complicated
by the fact that much of what he says depends on the linguistic
accident that the German word for ‘guilt’ (Schuld) is also
the word for ‘debt’. However it is possible to approach his
conception of moral guilt in a way which avoids getting mired
in tedious linguistic analysis. There are moral requirements
on my conduct. For example, I am morally required to tell
the truth, to keep my promises, to help those in need. They
are moral requirements in the sense that my being subject to
them does not depend on whether I want to comply with them
(in Kantian language they are categorical imperatives, not
hypothetical imperatives). Moral guilt involves the breach of
a moral requirement. Seemingly disregarding the possibility
that there may be moral requirements concerning what I do
to myself (Kant’s duties to self ) Heidegger maintains that to
be guilty in the ordinary sense is to be responsible for some
harm to another or, as he puts it, it is to be the ground or basis
(Grund) of some lack or deficiency (Mangel) in the other. By
virtue of the lack I bring about I am myself defective. A lack is
 Authenticity 139
something negative. In the idea of ‘guilty’ there lies the idea of
the not. But negativity, Heidegger claims, is something which
belongs to the being of Dasein as such and in such a way that
we can say that Dasein as such is guilty. In the ordinary sense
of guilt I can only become guilty, in the sense that by breaching
a moral requirement I incur guilt. In the ontological sense of
guilt being-guilty belongs to my being as Dasein.
He defines what he calls the formally existential idea of
‘guilty’ as follows: being-the-ground for a being determined
by a not – that is, being-the-ground of a nullity (Nichtigkeit) –
and goes on to say that Dasein, by virtue of its being, is guilty
in this sense. It is the ground of a nullity. More precisely, it is
the null ground of a nullity. Guilt in the ontological sense is:
the null being-the-ground of a nullity (das nichtige Grund-sein
einer Nichtigkeit) (285).
To understand this extremely abstract-sounding claim we
have to recall Heidegger’s contention that the being of Dasein
is thrown projection (geworfener Entwurf ). With respect to
both thrownness and projection the being of Dasein is deter-
mined by a not. As thrown, Dasein is not brought by itself
into its ‘there’, its disclosedness. It is an ability-to-be which
belongs to itself but has not given itself to itself.24 It projects
itself onto possibilities into which it has been thrown. Dasein
does not create the world which defines the possibilities of
existence open to it. It is the ground of its projecting but as
thrown it is a null (nichtig) ground.
Turning to the other aspect of Dasein’s being, its projecting,
we can say that it is null, determined by a not, because it is
thrown projection. But it is also essentially null itself, simply
as projection. In projecting Dasein is choosing possibilities of
being. To the extent that it does this Dasein is free. But freedom

24
‘Seiend ist es [Dasein] als Seinkönnen bestimmt, das sich selbst gehört und
doch nicht als es selbst sich zu eigen gegeben hat’ (284).
140 Heidegger’s Being and Time
only is in the choice of the one possibility and the not having
chosen and the not being able also to choose the others.
So the being of Dasein, as Heidegger puts it, is permeated
with nullity through and through (285). Being guilty in this
ontological sense (the null being-the-ground of a nullity) is the
condition of the possibility of Dasein becoming guilty of this
or that. This essential being-guilty is the existential condition
of the possibility of the ‘morally’ good and evil, of morality
as such.25
The call of conscience declares Dasein to be guilty in this
ontological sense. But the call (Ruf ) of conscience is also a
summons (Aufruf ). So in it Dasein is being summoned to
be guilty. But isn’t this a complete distortion of the nature of
conscience? Should we not say that what conscience summons
us to is the avoidance of guilt. It all depends on what is meant
by ‘summoning to being-guilty’. It summons Dasein to be
authentically the ‘guilty’ it already is. To hear the call of con-
science is to choose oneself. In the call of conscience one might
say Dasein is being summoned to recognise or acknowledge,
to take ownership of, its essential guilt, its ontological guilt,
a guilt which remains concealed from the One-self. The only
guilt the One-self understands is that which consists in the
failure to follow rules and satisfy public norms (288).
Understanding the call of conscience is choosing. It is not
choosing conscience because this cannot be chosen. What is
chosen is having a conscience – being free for one’s ownmost
being-guilty. Understanding the appeal (Anruf ) means:
wanting-to-have-a-conscience (Gewissen-haben-wollen).
25
Heidegger is fond of these claims that something is the ‘condition of the
possibility’ of something else. Being guilty in the ontological sense is the
condition of the possibility of guilt in the ordinary sense. Ontological guilt
is the condition of the possibility of morality. However it cannot be said
that these claims are convincingly substantiated.
 Authenticity 141
So according to Heidegger’s ontological interpretation of
conscience the ‘voice’ or ‘call’ of conscience is a summons to
being-guilty, a call from Dasein in its uncanniness or not-at-
home-ness (Unheimlichkeit). And hearing or understanding
this call is interpreted as wanting – or willing (Wollen) –
to-have-a-conscience. But what has all this got to do with
conscience and hearing the voice of conscience as these are
ordinarily understood? Does the ontological interpretation of
conscience have to agree with the ordinary understanding of
conscience? If initially and for the most part Dasein is absorbed
in the objects of its concern (Besorgen) and lost in the One then
its interpretation of the voice of conscience which calls upon
it to overcome such lostness will itself be marked by falling
and concealment.
This being so, the everyday way of interpreting conscience
cannot be accepted as the final criterion for the ‘objectivity’
of an ontological analysis of conscience. On the other hand,
such an analysis has no right to disregard the everyday under-
standing of conscience and to pass over the anthropological,
psychological and theological theories of conscience which
have been based upon it.
What would be serious would be if there were certain basic
features of ‘ordinary’ conscience which simply could not be
reconciled with the existential analysis. I will consider just
one of these. As ordinarily understood conscience declares
me guilty for what I have done and for what I have failed
to do. The voice of conscience occurs after the deed has been
done or left undone. The voice points back to something in the
past. But according to Heidegger’s existential analysis of con-
sciencethecallofconscienceisasummons,acalling-forth(Vor-
ruf ). It would seem that conscience, far from pointing back
to something past, points forward to something future. But the
interpretation of ordinary conscience (more specifically, bad
142 Heidegger’s Being and Time
conscience) just outlined treats Dasein, its deeds, and the voice
of conscience as present-at-hand. The voice is interpreted as
something which occurs. It has its position in the sequence of
experiences (Erlebnisse) which are present-at-hand and it fol-
lows after the experience of the deed. But, Heidegger insists,
neither the call nor the deed which has happened nor the guilt
with which one is laden is an occurrence with the character
of something present-at-hand. The call has the kind of being
which belongs to Dasein. The being of Dasein, we have seen,
is care (Sorge). In the call Dasein ‘is’ ahead of itself in such a
way that at the same time it directs itself back to its thrownness.
Only by first positing Dasein as an interconnected sequence
of successive experiences is it possible to take the voice as
something which comes afterwards, something later, which
therefore necessarily refers back. The voice does call back,
but it calls beyond the deed which has happened and back to
the being-guilty into which one has been thrown, which is
‘earlier’ than any incurring of guilt (Verschuldung). But at the
same time this calling-back calls forth to being-guilty. Being-
guilty in the ontological sense follows the call.
However, it should be said that this attempt to demonstrate
the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential analysis of con-
science with the ordinary understanding of conscience cannot
be fully understood without first having come to grips with
his analysis of the temporality of Dasein. As we shall see in
the next chapter the sense in which Dasein is a temporal entity
is not that of occurring in a sequence of nows.

r e s o lut e n e s s
This wanting-to-have-a-conscience, the recognition and free
acceptance of one’s essential guilt, is a form of disclosed-
ness. As such it is constituted not only by understanding but
 Authenticity 143
also by affectedness (mood) and discourse. Understanding
the call discloses the self in its uncanniness (not-at-home-ness,
Unheimlichkeit) and sheer individuality. The mode of affected-
ness in which the self is thus disclosed is that of Angst. The cor-
responding mode of ‘discourse’ (Rede) is that of reticence (Ver-
schwiegenheit). This authentic disclosedness (Erschlossenheit),
involving understanding, affectedness and discourse, Heideg-
ger calls ‘resoluteness’ (Entschlossenheit). Resoluteness is ‘the
reticent self-projection upon one’s ownmost being-guilty in
which we are ready for anxiety’ (297).26
In chapter 5 we saw how disclosedness is treated by Hei-
degger as truth in the most primordial sense. Dasein, which is
its disclosedness, is ‘in the truth’ (in der Wahrheit). But equally
Dasein is ‘in the untruth’ (in der Unwahrheit). We now have
enough insight into the notion of authenticity to see what
this means. Resoluteness is the authentic mode of disclosed-
ness and as such is the most primordial truth. In resoluteness
Dasein is primordially disclosed with respect to the world,
being-in and the self. But whenever the world is disclosed,
intraworldly entities are also uncovered. So in resoluteness
intraworldly entities are somehow uncovered in a more gen-
uine way. However it still remains the case that Dasein as such
is also in the untruth. In resoluteness Dasein does not put
inauthentic existence behind it. Resoluteness is a modification
of inauthentic disclosedness.
Resoluteness only exists in decision (Entschluss). Such deci-
sion should not be understood as the selection or opting for
of possibilities which have been placed before one or recom-
mended. It is the disclosing of the possibilities themselves. The
decision is in a situation. The situation should not be thought

26
‘das verschwiegene, angstbereite Sichentwerfen auf das eigenste Schuldig-
sein’.
144 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of as a kind of pre-existing framework in which I find myself
or into which I have somehow brought myself. Rather the
situation only is in and through resoluteness.
It must be confessed that the transition from wanting-to-
have-a-conscience to resoluteness is somewhat abrupt. The
call of conscience is the summons to authentic being-guilty
i.e. authentically being the null ground of a nullity. To be
in this way is to overcome lostness in the One. But it is not
clear why this should lead to decision and action rather than
paralysis. Resoluteness is the readiness to act in the concrete
situation.
But having established that authentic existence is reso-
luteness Heidegger now has to show what the connection
is between resoluteness and anticipation of (‘running ahead
into’) death (Vorlaufen in den Tod). It is difficult to see what
the connection could be. Resoluteness is resolving to act in
the concrete situation. Death seems to have nothing in com-
mon with the concrete situation of action. Putting resolute-
ness and forerunning together would seem to be something
which follows the demands of a ‘system’ but lacks any phe-
nomenological justification. He claims, however, that, thought
through to the end, it can be seen that resoluteness ‘harbours
in itself authentic being-towards-death as the possible exis-
tentiell modality of its own authenticity’ (305). In its resolute-
ness Dasein projects itself authentically onto possibilities of
being but such authenticity is, as it were, at its most authentic
when Dasein’s projecting of itself onto concrete possibilities
is underpinned by the projection of that possibility which is
most its own, viz. death.
Resoluteness is wanting-to-have-a-conscience. Wanting-
to-have-a-conscience is acknowledging and accepting one’s
own essential guilt, that one is the null ground of one’s own
nullity. The reason why to be fully authentic resoluteness must
 Authenticity 145
become anticipatory (vorlaufend) resoluteness is this negativity
which lies at the heart of Dasein. Understood existentially
death is the possibility of the impossibility of existence. Death
is the ultimate nullity or nothingness. So it is in being towards
death – authentic being towards death – that the nullity which
Dasein is through and through is pre-eminently revealed.
Heidegger makes an interesting comment at the end of his
discussion of authenticity. Is there not, he asks, a ‘particu-
lar ontic conception of authentic existence, a factical ideal of
Dasein’ (310) underlying his ontological interpretation of the
existence of Dasein? Surprisingly perhaps, he answers that
indeed there is. He speaks of the positive necessity of this fact
(Faktum) and says it must be understood (begriffen) in terms
of the thematic object of the investigation. Philosophy will
never wish to deny its ‘presuppositions’ but equally cannot
simply admit them. This is supposed to be further clarified in
the following section (§ 63).

h e i d e gg e r ’ s ‘ e x i s t e n t i a l i s m ’
The themes with which I have been dealing in this chapter are
all associated with something called ‘existentialism’. But does
the presence of such themes make Heidegger an existentialist?
He has generally been regarded as an existentialist, although
he himself strenuously resisted this description. But leaving
aside for the moment the presence of such themes as Angst,
death and guilt it seems no accident that the existentialist
label stuck. From the outset Heidegger’s terminology invites
such a description. He is engaged in an analytic of existence.
Existence is the mode of being which distinguishes Dasein
from all other entities. ‘The “essence” of Dasein’, he asserts,
‘lies in its existence’ (42). It has already been noted that his
use of the term ‘essence’ (Wesen) is non-standard (hence the
146 Heidegger’s Being and Time
scare quotes). However it should also have become clear that
‘existence’ has a special meaning for Heidegger. Once we
reflect on this meaning we can see that the bracketing of his
thought with existentialism simply on the strength of his use of
the term existence is wholly unjustified. To see this we should
take the statement just quoted together with another basic
proposition from the early part of Being and Time (§ 4 to be
precise): ‘Understanding of being is itself a determination of
being of Dasein’ (eine Seinsbestimmtheit des Daseins). Dasein’s
understanding of being which defines its existence is not just
understanding of its own being but understanding of the being
of entities other than Dasein and understanding of being as
such.27
But if Heidegger is not an existentialist why are there exten-
sive and detailed discussions of such typically existentialist
themes as authenticity and inauthenticity, Angst, death, con-
science and guilt in Being and Time and why are they given
so much prominence? What must be borne in mind through-
out is that his ultimate concern is the being of any entity and
the being of entities as a whole, not just the being of human
beings. So we must ask how this ultimate concern is illumi-
nated by the treatment of the ‘existentialist’ themes. There are
basically two ways in which this is so. Firstly, the examination
of such themes is supposed to provide insight into the nature
27
That the ‘essence’ of Dasein is existence does not mean that in human
beings existentia precedes essentia, that human beings first just exist and
after this posit their essence. This, according to Heidegger, in his Letter
on Humanism, is how Sartre interpreted the statement in Being and Time.
He simply reversed the proposition that had been accepted in metaphysics
since Plato, viz. that essentia precedes existentia. Neither the traditional
metaphysical proposition nor its reversal by Sartre have anything to do
with Heidegger’s claim that the being of human beings is existence. See
‘Letter on Humanism’, in Basic Writings, p. 232.
 Authenticity 147
of time, and it is time which is supposed to provide the mean-
ing (Sinn) of being. However this is a discussion which we
will postpone till the following chapter. Secondly, the exam-
ination of such themes is supposed to provide insight into
the nature of nothing (das Nichts). And being and nothing are
inseparable.
As we saw at the very beginning, there is a fundamental
difference between being and any kind of entity (the ontologi-
cal difference). We encounter all manner of entities, but being
is not something we might come across and even metaphori-
cally point to. To try to take hold of being is to reach out into
the void, into nothing. Being as no kind of entity is no-thing,
nothing. It is because being and nothing essentially belong
together that any attempt to get clear about the meaning of
being must also concern itself with nothing. The ‘existential-
ist’ themes in Being and Time all involve an essential reference
to nothing. Nothing is experienced in Angst but also in con-
science and being towards death. In conscience Dasein con-
fronts itself with its own essential guilt. This ‘ontological’ guilt
we have seen is being-the-(null)-ground-of-a-nullity. And
death is nothing in the sense that it is the absolute impossibility
of any comportment to anything. So in all of these things –
Angst, conscience and (authentic) being towards death – we
experience nothing.
The ontological import of the ‘existentialist’ themes in Hei-
degger is brought into sharper focus in his 1929 inaugural
lecture, ‘What is Metaphysics?’. In this lecture he describes
the mode of existence of the members of the academic com-
munity he is addressing as ‘determined by science ’ (durch die
Wissenschaft bestimmt). Science can be seen as a system of
propositions, but Heidegger is here viewing it existentially –
as a way of existing. In all our ways of existing we comport
148 Heidegger’s Being and Time
ourselves to entities or beings, to what is. But in science we
comport ourselves to what is in a distinctive way. In all our pre-
scientific and extra-scientific modes of comportment entities
are uncovered, but in scientific comportment this uncovering
is itself the purpose of the comportment. In science Dasein
becomes the locus of what-is showing itself as it is. Science is
concerned with what-is and nothing else. ‘But what is remark-
able is that, precisely in the way scientific man secures to
himself what is most properly his, he speaks of something
different.’28 This something different is nothing. But being
exclusively concerned with entities – with what-is (Seiendes) –
science wants nothing to do with the nothing (das Nichts). And
it is surely right because the idea of inquiring into the nothing
makes no sense. This is because the question (‘What is the
nothing?’) is a question which necessarily deprives itself of
its own object. The question turns the nothing into an entity.
It involves treating the nothing as something that is thus and
so. In asking the question we are positing the nothing as a
being, an entity, something that is. But this is precisely what
the nothing is not. So the very question turns what is asked
about into its opposite. Any answer to the question takes the
form: the nothing is this or that. So both question and answer
are nonsensical. Science, it seems, is right to want to have
nothing to do with the nothing and be exclusively concerned
with entities because the question about the nothing is ruled
out by logic. It is ruled out by logic because it violates a fun-
damental principle of logic: the principle of contradiction. It
belongs to the essence of thinking that it is always thinking
of something. To think of the nothing would be to think of
something that is not something. If logic is the final arbiter
on the legitimacy of the question about the nothing then the
28
‘What is Metaphysics?’, in Basic Writings, p. 95.
 Authenticity 149
matter seems to be settled. Putting it another way, negation is
an operation of the intellect or understanding. The nothing is
the negation of the totality of what-is. So the question about
the nothing cannot escape the authority of the understanding,
of logic.
But what this assumes is that the nothing is the product of
negation and the use of the term ‘not’. What Heidegger claims
is that the nothing is more fundamental than negation and the
‘not’. If his thesis is correct then the possibility of negation as
an operation of the intellect or understanding and hence the
possibility of the understanding itself (inasmuch as negation
is essential to the understanding) depends in a certain way
on the nothing. And if this is so then the question about the
nothing cannot be decided by the understanding.
But whatever is to be interrogated (befragt) must at least be
given in some way. We must in some way be able to experience
it. If the nothing is more fundamental than negation then
we should not be prevented from asking the question about
the nothing by the question’s formal impossibility. But as a
question it must at least satisfy this basic requirement of the
givenness of what is interrogated.
The nothing is not the product of negation – because nega-
tion presupposes the nothing – but the ‘definition’ of the noth-
ing as the negation of the totality of what-is at least points us
in the direction of the nothing. If the totality of what-is is
to be negated then it must somehow be given. Now we can
certainly have the idea of this totality, we can think the totality
of beings, the whole of what-is. But as finite beings we cannot
apprehend (erfassen) it. Putting it in Kantian terms, the world
as a whole is not a possible object of experience. However,
by virtue of our moodedness (Gestimmtsein) or affectedness
(Befindlichkeit) we find ourselves amidst the totality of beings.
Some moods disclose this finding-ourselves-amidst more than
150 Heidegger’s Being and Time
others. Heidegger particularly singles out boredom (Lang-
eweile). Not what we might call focused boredom – as when we
are bored with this lecture, this book, this travelling compan-
ion, being stuck in this railway station – but real boredom, pro-
found boredom. ‘Profound boredom, drifting here and there
in the abysses of our existence [Dasein] like a muffling fog,
removes all things and human beings and oneself along with
them into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals
beings as a whole [das Seiende im Ganzen]’.29
Such boredom discloses the world as a whole in the sense
of the totality of what-is. The disclosure of the nothing is not
achieved by performing the logical operation of negation on
the world as a whole as thus revealed. Rather such disclosure
requires another basic mode of affectedness: anxiety (Angst).
We have seen that, whereas fear is fear of something (some
entity within-the-world) and fear for something, that in the
face of which one is anxious is wholly indeterminate, as is
that for which one is anxious. In Angst we experience the
nothing and in experiencing the nothing we experience the
totality of what-is as ‘slipping away’ (entgleitend). It is not as
though I first experience the nothing and then beings as a whole
slipping away. They are two aspects of the one experience. In
the slipping away of beings as a whole the nothing is disclosed.
The slipping away applies to everything that is, including the
something that is that I myself am. The nothing disclosed in
Angst is not a being, an entity, something that is. It is not given
as an object. Angst is not an apprehending (Erfassen) of the
nothing. The nothing is disclosed in and through Angst but
not as something detached from and as it were ‘alongside’
beings as a whole.
29
Ibid. p. 99.
 Authenticity 151
It is the nothing which makes possible what Heidegger calls
the original openness of entities as such. It is only for Dasein
that there are entities as such. And there are only entities as
such for Dasein in so far as Dasein experiences the nothing.
It is only on the basis of the original disclosure of the nothing
that we can have to do with, have dealings with, entities as
such. But comportment to entities – that which it is itself and
those which it is not – belongs to the being of Dasein. So
the disclosure of the nothing is the condition of the possibil-
ity of Dasein as such. As Heidegger characteristically puts it:
Da-sein means holding itself out into the nothing (Hineinge-
haltenheit in das Nichts). Holding itself out into the nothing,
Dasein is already beyond beings as a whole. He calls this being
beyond ‘transcendence’. He also characterises transcendence
in terms of Dasein’s understanding of being. But it is the same
phenomenon in both cases. Being and nothing are two sides
of the same thing. Being is nothing in the sense that it is no-
thing, not any thing, not any entity. What is understood in the
understanding of being is felt in the experience of the nothing
in Angst.
But if disclosure of the nothing is a condition of the possi-
bility of Dasein, and the nothing is disclosed in Angst is not
Heidegger in the awkward position of having to say that we
can only exist by being permanently in a state of Angst? But
by his own admission Angst is rare. His response is typical.
The nothing is permanently disclosed. If it were not we could
not comport ourselves to entities. But for the most part our
comportment to entities is such that we are preoccupied with
entities, absorbed by them, lost in them. The nothing is dis-
closed but in such a way that it is disguised. ‘The more we turn
towards beings in our preoccupations the less we let beings
as a whole slip away as such and the more we turn away
152 Heidegger’s Being and Time
from the nothing.’30 Falling (Verfallen), losing ourselves in
beings, involves a turning away from the nothing. But what is
turned away from must somehow be disclosed. This requires a
distinction between explicit Angst and latent Angst. It is only
in the former that the nothing is disclosed in an undisguised
way.
30
Ibid., p. 104.
 8

Time and being

The question of the meaning (Sinn) of being (Sein) is the

question which guides everything that is said in Being and
Time and which determines the choice of topics to be exam-
ined. As we have already indicated, and as the very title of the
work suggests, Heidegger thinks that the key to understand-
ing being is time. Properly understood, time is the sense or
meaning (Sinn) of being. But the book does not seem to be
about being as such but about the being of particular beings or
entities. So we have the detailed analyses of the being of those
entities Heidegger calls Zeug (equipment): readiness-to-hand
(Zuhandenheit); and the somewhat less detailed analyses of the
being of things or substances: presence-at-hand (Vorhanden-
heit).1 But such analyses are all in the context of the analysis of
the being of that entity which I myself am: Dasein. Properly
understood, the analyses of readiness-to-hand and presence-
at-hand are part of the analysis of the being of Dasein. This is
because comportment to entities other than itself and under-
standing of the being of entities other than itself are integral
to the being of Dasein: existence.
Being and Time not only provides an account of the basic
structures of the being of Dasein (the existentials); it also

1
For the most part the account of presence-at-hand is negative, in the sense
that it is what readiness-to-hand is not.

153
154 Heidegger’s Being and Time
claims to provide an answer to the question regarding the
sense or meaning of the being of this entity.2 The being of
Dasein is care (Sorge); and the sense or meaning of care is
time. But as we have already emphasised this does not itself
amount to an answer to the question concerning the meaning
of being as such. We cannot without absurdity equate the
being of Dasein – existence – with being as such. Nor can we
identify the meaning of the being of Dasein with the meaning
of being as such. For the moment I will leave aside the question
of whether Being and Time itself provides an answer to its own
fundamental question: what is the sense or meaning of being?
What we first need to do is to look at what it clearly does
claim to provide, viz. an account of the meaning of the being
of Dasein.
The being of Dasein is care (Sorge); and the sense or mean-
ing of care is time. But time in what sense? The first thing to
say is that it is not time in what Heidegger calls the ordinary or
common (vulgär) sense. This is time as a uniform sequence of
nows. On this understanding of time the not-yet-now becomes
the now and the now becomes the no-longer-now in a begin-
ningless and endless and irreversible sequence. In interpreting
the being of Dasein in terms of time – or what he calls tempo-
rality (Zeitlichkeit) – he is emphatically not saying that Dasein
is an essentially temporal being in the sense that it is in time
thus understood. It is not that he is denying that this is so – it
is just that this is not what he means by Dasein’s temporality.
So is it just that there is something special about the tem-
porality of human beings? The activity of human beings takes
place in time. The existence of an individual human being
begins at a certain moment in time and ends at a certain moment

2
By Sinn Heidegger understands that on the basis of which, or by reference
to which, something is understood. See Being and Time, p. 324.
 Time and being 155
in time. And other things – animals, plants, stones and plan-
ets – are ‘temporal’ in precisely the same way. But what makes
the temporality of human beings special, one might say, is
that, as well as being in time in the way other things are in
time, human beings are also conscious of time and take account
of time. But then could not the same be said of some animals?
They manage without watches or clocks but clearly demon-
strate some awareness of time. In lectures on the metaphysics
of German Idealism delivered in 1941 3 Heidegger points out
that swallows fly off in September, titmice start breeding in
March and the cock crows, not at ten in the evening, but at
around four in the morning.4
So in what sense of time is the being of Dasein temporal?
Daseinisnotsimplyintime,itstemporalityisnotwhatHeideg-
ger calls ‘within-time-ness’ or ‘intratemporality’ (Innerzeit-
igkeit). Nor does Dasein’s temporality consist in within-
time-ness combined with awareness of within-time-ness. The
temporality that is distinctive of Dasein, and in terms of which
its being is to be understood, is what he calls ecstatic temporality.

e c s tat i c t e m po r a l i t y
To understand what he means by this we must return to the
notion of care (Sorge). It will be recalled that, as Heidegger
uses it, ‘care’ is a technical term which designates the three
principal structures of Dasein’s being in their essential unity.
These are projection (Entwerfen), thrownness (Geworfenheit)
and concern (Besorgen). In projecting itself onto possibilities
of being-in-the-world Dasein is ‘ahead of itself’. As thrown,

3
Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus, ed. Günter Seubold, Gesamtaus-
gabe vol. XLIX (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1991).
4
Ibid., p. 49.
156 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Daseinis alreadyin-the-world. As alreadyin-the-world it is bei
entities within-the-world (innerweltlich Seiendes), in the sense
that it is involved with them, dwells with them, is absorbed
by them. Underlying each of the three essential components
of care is what Heidegger calls a temporal ecstasis.5 The three
temporal ecstases in their essential unity are what constitutes
the ecstatic temporality (or original time) in terms of which
Dasein’s being is to be understood. They correspond to the
past, present and future of time as commonly understood but
cannot be identified with them. That is to say, they cannot be
identified with the no-longer-now, the now and the not-yet-
now.
So what then is ecstatic temporality and what are the three
ecstases? The matter is complicated by the fact that Heideg-
ger uses different terminology, depending on whether he is
talking about the temporality of authentic existence or that of
inauthentic existence. However, he also employs terminology
which is neutral with respect to this distinction. In its pro-
jection Dasein is coming-towards-itself in its possibility. In
its being-already-in (in its thrownness), Dasein is coming-
back-to-itself in its having-been (Gewesen). In letting itself
encounter entities within-the-world Dasein is making present
or, better, enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen) entities. Ecstatic tem-
porality is this unity of coming-towards-itself, coming-back-
to-itself and enpresenting. Each of them is an ecstasis in the
sense that in each of them Dasein is outside itself (außer sich). In
coming-towards-myself, coming-back-to-myself and enpre-
senting I am outside myself (though not in the sense that
I am initially encapsulated within a private sphere of pure

5
For Heidegger’s introduction of the notion of ecstasis (ekstase) see Being
and Time, p. 329.
 Time and being 157
interiority from which I somehow manage to escape; by virtue
of my ecstatic temporality I am already outside myself ).
Such ecstatic temporality is the foundation of existence
as such, regardless of whether this is authentic or inauthen-
tic. However, Heidegger initially uncovers the three ecstases,
which in their unity constitute ecstatic temporality, by means of
an analysis of authentic existence or resoluteness (Entschlossen-
heit).6 As I indicated in the previous chapter the examination
of ‘existentialist’ themes is supposed to provide insight into
the nature of time, and it is time which is supposed to provide
the meaning (Sinn) of being.
Resoluteness, we have seen, involves authentic being
towards death and understanding myself in my essential being-
guilty. The former is comportment to a possibility that is most
my own. In comporting myself to such a possibility I am
ahead of myself (325). I come from this possibility towards
that which I myself am. This coming-towards is the primor-
dial phenomenon of the future (Zukunft). In this coming-
towards-itself Dasein is futural (zukünftig). According to the
ordinary concept of the future the future is the not-yet-now.
Heidegger’s contention is that the existential concept of the
future (coming-towards-oneself ) is the presupposition of the
ordinary concept.
In understanding myself in my essential being-guilty I
am taking over my thrownness. An essential element in this
thrownness is what I have been. In taking over my thrownness I
am comporting myself to what I have been (325). This having-
been-ness (Gewesenheit) belongs to what I am. Dasein is what
it was. Everything I have been is an essential determination
6
It is not just that he approaches Dasein’s ecstatic temporality through the
analysis of authentic existence. Authentic temporality is somehow more
basic than inauthentic temporality and in a way that is difficult to make
sense of is supposed to provide its foundation.
158 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of my existence. In comporting myself to my having-been
7

I am coming-back-to-myself. This coming-back-to-myself is

the primordial phenomenon of the past. The ordinary concept
of the past as the no-longer-now presupposes the existential
concept (coming-back to oneself in one’s having-been).
Resoluteness discloses the situation. In its resoluteness
Dasein brings itself into the situation. It is an enpresenting
of the possibilities, circumstances and contingencies of the sit-
uation in which I decide and act. The ordinary concept of the
present as the now is derivative from the existential concept
of the present (Gegenwart) as enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen).
Temporality as the unity of future, past and present is the
original outside-itself, the ekstatikon (329). For reasons to be
explainedlaterHeideggeralsospeaksofecstatic-horizonaltem-
porality. It is important to see that the temporality of Dasein
is not any kind of entity. It is not. Nor is it any kind of process.
It temporalises itself (zeitigt sich), brings itself about in the
sense that it only ‘is’ in its coming-towards, coming-back-to
and enpresenting.

aut h e n t i c an d i naut h e n t i c t e m po r a l i t y
In resoluteness Dasein comes towards itself authentically, it
runs ahead of itself into the possibility that is most its own. The
authentic future is running ahead (Vorlaufen). Dasein, simply as
Dasein, is always already ahead-of-itself, but not always in the
manner of running-ahead. In everyday, inauthentic existence
Dasein projects itself onto possibilities of existence but these
possibilities are determined by the things with which it is
concerned or engaged. That is to say, it understands itself
by way of things, in the sense that it understands itself in
7
See The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, § 19.
 Time and being 159
terms of possibilities that are determined by the success and
failure, the feasibility and unfeasibility of its engagement with
things (337). Its coming-towards itself in these possibilities is
an expecting or awaiting (Gewärtigen) rather than a running-
ahead. The inauthentic future is this expecting.
Existing authentically Dasein takes itself over in its thrown-
ness, in its has-been. In thus coming back to itself authenti-
cally it repeats the being it has been. To authentic having-been
Heidegger gives the name repetition, though the word he uses –
Wiederholung – also has the meaning of bringing or fetching
back.8 In its resoluteness Dasein is bringing itself back to what
it has been. The authentic past (Gewesenheit) is this repetition.
But for the most part we do not repeat the being we have been.
Our having-been is forgotten.
Existing authentically, Dasein discloses the situation. This
disclosing of the situation is an enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen).
But as authentic enpresenting it does not lose itself in what it
enpresents. In such authentic enpresenting Dasein does not
forget its having-been or merely expect its possibilities of
being. In its ordinary dealings with things, by contrast, Dasein
loses itself in what it enpresents. The present of authentic
existence Heidegger calls der Augenblick (338). In ordinary
German this simply means ‘moment’, but Heidegger makes
use of the fact that Blick means ‘look’. Used to designate
authentic enpresenting, Augenblick takes on an active sense.
It is active because it refers to an ecstasis (for this reason it is
translated as ‘moment of vision’ rather than simply ‘moment’).
For the inauthentic present Heidegger simply uses ‘enpresent-
ing’ (Gegenwärtigen), though he also uses it in a sense which is
neutral with respect to the distinction between the authentic
present and the inauthentic present.
8
So instead of the term ‘repetition’ some translators prefer ‘retrieve’.
160 Heidegger’s Being and Time
So authentic temporality is the running-ahead, repetitive
moment of vision (der vorlaufend-wiederholende Augenblick).
Inauthentictemporalityisforgetting-expecting-enpresenting.

t h e t e m po r a l i n t e r p r etat i on
o f e x i s t e n t i a ls
Ecstatic temporality is the sense or meaning of the being of
Dasein. Heidegger thinks that if this claim is to be substanti-
ated it must be possible to give a temporal interpretation of
all those structures of Dasein’s being uncovered in Division
One. In other words, for each of the existentials it must be pos-
sible to show that it is grounded in a specific mode of ecstatic
temporality. All three ecstases must underlie each of the exis-
tentials, but individual existentials differ with respect to which
of the ecstases has primacy. Thus, for example, in understand-
ing (Verstehen) the (existential) future has primacy, whereas in
affectedness (Befindlichkeit) the (existential) past has primacy.
And although circumspective concern (umsichtiges Besorgen)
is impossible without both expecting (Gewärtigen) and retain-
ing (Behalten) the enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen) of the (item
of ) equipment (Zeug) has primacy.

t i m e as e n c o u n t e r e d i n c on c e r n
The ordinary or common conception of time sees time as a
beginningless and endless sequence of nows. In Chapter 6 of
Division Two Heidegger seeks to show that time conceived in
this way is derivative from original time (or ecstatic tempo-
rality). But first he demonstrates that the time of the ordinary
conception is an abstraction in relation to time as we actually
encounter it. He considers time as it manifests itself in our
‘reckoning with’ or ‘taking account of’ time. An example of
 Time and being 161
‘taking account of’ time would be looking at my watch to see
how much time there is till the end of the lecture (though
taking account of time does not necessarily involve the use of
clocks and watches). I use my watch to determine how much
time I still have to do this or that. He will call this feature of
time ‘significance’ (Bedeutsamkeit). This and other features
of time as it manifests itself in our concern with it are ‘ironed
out’ in the ordinary conception.
But the first feature he highlights is something he calls
‘datability’ (Datierbarkeit). The ‘now’ that I utter is always
implicitly a ‘now, when such and such’ (407). For example,
now when the door slams, now when the book is missing. It
is the same with ‘then’ (dann) and ‘then’ in the sense of ‘at
the time’ (damals). When I say ‘then’ I always mean ‘then,
when’. When I say ‘at the time’ I mean ‘at the time, when’.
Datability is this implicit reference of the now, then and at-
the-time to an event or situation. The ‘date’ in question need
not be precise and certainly does not need to be a date in the
sense of a calendar date. For example, ‘at the time, when the
French were in Germany’.9
The second structural feature of experienced time to which
Heidegger draws attention is what he calls ‘stretchedness’
(Erstrecktheit) or ‘spannedness’ (Gespanntheit). Implicit in a
‘then’ is a ‘from-now-till-then’. The stretch from now till
then is articulated by means of the ‘then’ itself. Every now,
then and at-the-time is ‘now, during the break’, ‘now, dur-
ing the meal’, ‘then, at breakfast’, ‘then, while climbing the
mountain’ (409). ‘Now’, ‘then’ and ‘at-the-time’ do not refer
to indivisible points but are intrinsically spanned, the span’s
breadth being variable.

9
This example is used by Heidegger in his 1927 Marburg lectures on phe-
nomenology, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 371.
162 Heidegger’s Being and Time
Time as reckoned with also has the feature of publicness
(Öffentlichkeit). Although each one of us utters his or her own
now, it is nevertheless the now for everyone. It is accessible to
everyone and thus belongs to no one. This is despite the fact
that each of us may ‘date’ the now differently. For example,
‘now, while having my breakfast’, ‘now, while the children are
passing the house’, ‘now, in the morning’, ‘now, towards the
end of the summer break’.10
Finally, there is what Heidegger calls ‘significance ’ (Bedeut-
samkeit). In the course of giving a lecture I look at my watch.
I do so in order to see what time it is. But I want to know what
time it is because I want to know how much time remains till
the scheduled end of my lecture. I want to establish that I have
enough time in order to finish the topic. I look at my watch in
order to determine how much time I still have to do this or
that. Time is not a series of pure nows but is always time to. It
is appropriate or inappropriate time, right or wrong time.
Time as a uniform sequence of nows is an abstraction from
time with these structures. But there is something more basic
than this concrete time of ‘everyday’ experience, something
which makes it possible. This is ecstatic temporality. ‘Then’
(in the sense of dann, which refers to something not yet)
expresses the expecting or awaiting (Gewärtigen) of some-
thing, ‘then’ (in the sense of damals, ‘at-the-time’) expresses
the retaining (Behalten) of something, ‘now’ the enpresenting
(Gegenwärtigen) of something. If time with its now, at-the-
time, then, expresses an enpresenting, retaining and expect-
ing, then these ecstases in their essential unity constitute time
in a more original sense.

10
This feature of time as reckoned with seems to be different from the other
three to which Heidegger draws attention. Publicness has to do with the
accessibility of time whereas the others have to do with the structure of time.
 Time and being 163
t h e o r i g i n o f t h e o r d i na ry
c on c e pt i on o f t i m e
But if time is as Heidegger maintains how is it that the ordi-
nary understanding of time only knows it as an irreversible
sequence of nows, one following the other from future into
past in an infinite succession? Why do the essential features
of datability, spannedness, publicness and significance remain
concealed from it? The covering up of these essential features,
of their origin in ecstatic temporality, and of ecstatic tempo-
rality itself, has its ground in falling – the tendency of Dasein
to understand its own being and that of everything else as
presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) (422f ). Time itself is inter-
preted as something somehow present-at-hand. The succes-
sion of nows is interpreted as a present-at-hand sequence. The
nows come and go like entities. Like present-at-hand entities
they perish, becoming no longer present-at-hand (423).

t e m po r a l i t y an d h i s to r i c i t y
Human beings are historical beings in the sense that each of
us has a history. We belong to communities which themselves
have a history. History consists of a process in which events
unfold and each of us has our place in this process. Although
history is dependent on nature it is not reducible to nature.
Heidegger will claim that underlying all these ‘facts’ is the
ontological truth that the being of Dasein is constituted by
historicity (Geschichtlichkeit).11 Historicity is not something
different from temporality but is the concrete form which the
existential past (having-been-ness) can be seen to take when
we consider the ontological truth that the being of Dasein is
11
Von Herrmann is particularly helpful on this area of Being and Time. See
von Herrmann, Hermeneutische Phänomenologie, pp. 199–277.
164 Heidegger’s Being and Time
being-with (Mitsein).12 Historicity concerns Dasein’s past in
the sense of what it has been. Dasein is its past, its has-been
(Gewesen). Its past is not something which ‘as it were pushes
itself along “behind” it’ (20). Its past in the existential sense
is not a property which it somehow continues to possess and
which every now and then exerts its influence. Historicity
in this ontological sense (that is, as an essential feature of
the being of Dasein) is not the same as occurring in history
understood as a sequence of events. But, as we shall see, nor is
it the same as history in the sense of the intellectual discipline of
that name. Historicity in the ontological sense is the condition
of the possibility of both of these things.
I have suggested that historicity in the ontological sense
results from the combination of the idea of the existential past
(the past in the sense of having-been-ness) and that of Dasein’s
being as being-with. Let me elaborate on this. Dasein is an
individual in the sense that its being is in each case mine. But
the being of Dasein is also being-with (Mitsein), in the sense
that Dasein is not an isolated individual but an entity which is
such that its being essentially involves a relationship to others.
So we can say that the past which Dasein is is also the past of
its ‘generation’.
Throughout Being and Time Heidegger speaks of Dasein
projecting itself onto possibilities of existence. Now ways
of existing are not simply plucked out of the air; they are
not created out of nothing by the individual Dasein. So
where then do they come from? According to Heidegger
they come from something he calls the heritage (das Erbe).
In other words, the possibilities of existence onto which
Dasein projects itself are inherited possibilities of existence. In

12
The interpretation of historicity is ‘just a more concrete working out of
temporality’ (382).
 Time and being 165
coming-back-to its having-been (Gewesen) – its existential
past – Dasein ‘takes over’ (übernimmt) the heritage (383).
Heideggerishereextendingthenotionofhaving-beentocover
the having-been-there (Da-gewesen) of others and other gen-
erations. Regarding the notion of having-been-there, he says:
‘Dasein can never be past (vergangen), not because it is imper-
ishable (unvergänglich), but because it can essentially never
be present-at-hand (vorhanden). Rather, if it is, it exists. But a
Daseinthatnolongerexistsisnotpastintheontologicallystrict
sense; it is rather having-been-there’ (380). The coming-back-
to oneself which is an essential element of Dasein’s ecstatic
temporality involves a handing-over of oneself (Sichüberliefern)
to traditional (überkommen) possibilities of existence (383).
This handing-over is the occurrence (Geschehen) of historic-
ity (Geschichtlichkeit).
The handing-over of possibilities that have-been does
not have to be such that it involves explicitly knowing the
provenance or origin (Herkunft) of the inherited possibilities.
But it can, and when it does Heidegger calls such explicit
handing-over (ausdrückliche Überlieferung) retrieval or repe-
tition (Wiederholung)) (385). This is the explicit ‘going back
to the possibilities of Dasein that has-been-there’.13
The being of Dasein is historical in the way described but
its historicity can remain hidden from it. But it can also be
discovered in a certain way and be properly cultivated. Dasein
as such is determined by tradition but it can also ‘explicitly
pursue’ (ausdrücklich nachgehen) tradition. ‘The discovery of
tradition and the disclosure of what it “transmits” [übergibt]
and how this is transmitted can be undertaken as a task in its
own right’ (20). In other words Dasein can become historical
in the sense of engaging in the discipline of history (Historie).
13
‘. . . der Rückgang in Möglichkeiten des dagewesenen Daseins’ (385).
166 Heidegger’s Being and Time
History in this sense is a mode of being of Dasein, a distinctive
way in which Dasein can be. ‘The idea of history as a science
implies that it (Dasein) has grasped the disclosure of historical
entities [das geschichtlich Seiende] as its own task’ (393).
Dasein is necessarily historical (geschichtlich) but it does
not necessarily engage in history (Historie). But Dasein’s
ontological historicity is a condition of the possibility of his-
tory as the study of the past. The ‘historical [historisch] dis-
closure of history [Geschichte]’ is ‘rooted’ in the historicity
(Geschichtlichkeit) of Dasein. ‘[T]he historical [historisch] the-
matisation of history [Geschichte] is only possible if the “past”
[Vergangenheit] has always already been disclosed in general
(or as such, überhaupt)’ (393). The way into the past – the
history (Geschichte) of Dasein must as such be open. But it is
always already open by virtue of Dasein’s ontological con-
stitution. ‘[O]n the basis of its ecstatic-horizonal temporality
Dasein is open in its having-been-ness [Gewesenheit]’ (393).
The ontological thesis that the being of Dasein is historical
has important implications for the way in which philosophy
is engaged in. Philosophy is what Heidegger calls an ‘ontic
possibility of Dasein’ (19). It is a way of existing. As such it
is determined by Dasein’s essential historicity. By virtue of its
essential historicity Dasein as philosopher cannot detach itself
from philosophy’s past, its history. The question of being
has a history, and in posing the question of being now the
philosopher or ontologist, whether or not he or she is aware
of it, is determined by the history of the question. According to
Heidegger, Greek ontology and its history continues to deter-
mine the conceptual frameworks of philosophy. The concepts
of Greek ontology he maintains arise out of genuine onto-
logical experiences. But over the course of history they have
become progressively more detached from such experience.
In a way which remains somewhat obscure Heidegger applies
 Time and being 167
his notion of falling (Verfallen) to the relationship of Dasein to
the philosophical tradition. Dasein has the tendency not only
to fall into its ‘world’ in the sense of interpreting its being in
terms of it but also to fall into the philosophical tradition. ‘The
tradition that in this way becomes dominant, far from mak-
ing what it “transmits” accessible, initially and for the most
part conceals it. It delivers over what has been handed down
to obviousness [Selbstverständlichkeit] and blocks access to the
primordial “sources” [Quellen] from which the traditional cat-
egories and concepts were . . . drawn’ (21).This necessitates
what he calls the ‘destruction of the history of ontology’. This
is understood as a process of tracing back the concepts of ontol-
ogy to their origin in the ‘original experiences’ in which the
‘first determinations of being’ were achieved. ‘Destruction’
(Destruktion) in this context does not have a negative sense
(Destruktion is not being used as equivalent to Zerstörung).
The crucial aspect of the Greek ontological experience con-
cerns the connection between being and time, the understand-
ing of being as presence (Anwesenheit), ousia. But whereas
Heidegger will claim that he makes this connection explicit, in
the Greek interpretation of being there is no explicit knowl-
edge or even understanding of the fundamental ontological
function of time.
The first philosopher who has gone any way towards grasp-
ing the ontological function of time is, in his view, Kant.
Kant’s categories are concepts which apply to entities simply
as objects. They are concepts which determine the being of
objects – their objectivity or objecthood (Gegenständlichkeit).
But according to his doctrine of transcendental schematism
these concepts have to be given a temporal interpretation. For
example, the category of substance is interpreted in terms
of permanence. But because Kant has no proper concep-
tion of Dasein the time in terms of which he interprets the
168 Heidegger’s Being and Time
categories, and hence the being of entities, is time understood
as a sequence of nows – what Heidegger calls the ordinary or
common (vulgär) conception of time.

t i m e as t h e m e an i n g o f b e i n g as s u c h
In § 5 (‘The ontological analytic of Dasein as the laying bare
of the horizon for an interpretation of the meaning of being
as such [überhaupt]’) Heidegger anticipates the demonstration
that the meaning of the being of Dasein is temporality. How-
ever, he makes it clear that this does not amount to an answer
to the question about the meaning of being as such. It merely
prepares the ground for such an answer. Dasein is in such
a way that it understands being. What needs to be shown is
that that in terms of which Dasein understands and interprets
being is time. Time must be brought to light as the horizon for
all understanding and interpretation of being.
If being is to be conceived in terms of time and the ‘vari-
ous modes and derivatives of being in their modifications and
derivations’ (18) are to be understood from the standpoint of
time then being itself must be shown to have an essentially
temporal character. This was to have been the task of Divi-
sion Three (‘Time and Being’). Although Heidegger wrote
this section he appears to have found it unsatisfactory. In lec-
tures on Schelling and the metaphysics of German Idealism14
delivered in 1941, he reveals that the decision to withhold Divi-
sion Three was made at the end of December 1926, during a
visit to his friend the philosopher Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg.
What he had written, he surmised, would not be understood.
There is some evidence that the Marburg lectures of 1927
were intended as a substitute. However it would be a gross
14
Die Metaphysik des deutschen Idealismus.
 Time and being 169
exaggeration to say that they provide an answer to the ques-
tion of the meaning of being as such. The most they provide
is a somewhat obscure temporal interpretation of the mode of
being he calls ‘readiness-to-hand’ (Zuhandenheit).
I will give a brief outline of this temporal interpretation
as it appears in the Marburg lectures.15 But first we need to
say something about the notion of ‘horizon’ and ‘horizonal
schema’. The temporality of Dasein as coming-towards-itself
(future, Zu-kunft), coming-back-to-itself (past, having-been-
ness, Gewesenheit), and enpresenting (present, Gegen-wart,
Gegenwärtigen), in their essential interconnection, is ecstatic
inasmuch as in its three dimensions it has the character of being
outside itself. Each ecstasis is a kind of movement (Entrückung)
outside itself. But this ‘movement’ outside itself, this ecsta-
sis of temporality, is not a directionless movement ‘as it were
into the nothing’,16 but has a ‘whereto’ (Wozu) or ‘whither’
(Wohin) which Heidegger calls the horizon or horizonal schema
of the ecstasis. It is for this reason that he calls the original
temporality of Dasein ecstatic-horizonal temporality.
The crucial ‘ecstasis’ for the temporal interpretation of
readiness-to-hand is that of enpresenting (Gegenwärtigen). For
the horizonal schema of this ecstasis he uses the Latin name
‘praesens’. ‘That which lies beyond the ecstasis as such, due
to the character of the ecstasis and as determined by that char-
acter, or, more precisely, that which determines the whither
of the “beyond itself” as such in general, is praesens as hori-
zon. The present projects itself within itself ecstatically upon
praesens.’17 The ecstasis of the present in unity with those
of future and past (having-been-ness) projects readiness-to-
hand as such onto the horizon of praesens. The understanding

15
See The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, § 21 (a).
16
Ibid., p. 306. 17
Ibid.
170 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of that mode of being he calls readiness-to-hand – the being of
equipment (Zeug) – is made possible by this projection onto
praesens.
It is difficult to see how anything of substance is achieved
by this terminological innovation. But even if the obscurity of
the notions of ‘horizon’ and ‘horizonal schema’ could be over-
come and their specific application in the shape of ‘praesens’
could be understood we would still be very far from having
an answer to the question of the meaning of being as such. If
all that was meant by ‘being as such’ was the being of entities
other than Dasein then, to the extent that it can be under-
stood, Heidegger’s temporal interpretation of readiness-to-
hand (Zuhandenheit) would provide at least a partial answer
to the question of the meaning of being as such. But what
would still be needed would be a temporal interpretation of
the being of the present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit), the being
of living things, the being of works of art, the being of ideal
entities and so on.
 9

Beyond phenomenology

The subject matter of Being and Time is being – the being of

Dasein and the being of entities other than Dasein to which
Dasein comports itself. The method Heidegger employs in
what, for a time at least, he called the science of being is
phenomenology. We have seen that there are profound dif-
ferences between Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology
and that of Husserl. However, despite the differences, it is
still possible to see Heidegger’s phenomenology as a form
of transcendental philosophy. Viewed in this way it would
be a radicalisation, rather than a straightforward rejection,
of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. In Heidegger’s
view it is not enough simply to describe the intentional struc-
tures of consciousness in order to be able to see how inten-
tionality, or as he would put it, comportment to entities, is
possible. Intentionality must be seen not as a structure of con-
sciousness but as a structure of Dasein, the essence of whose
being is the understanding of being. It is the understanding of
being which makes intentionality possible. It is Heidegger’s
concern with the understanding of being as what makes com-
portment to entities possible which makes it legitimate to see
his phenomenology as a form of transcendental philosophy.
His concern with being in Being and Time is with being as
it is disclosed in the understanding of being. Although there is
clearly a verbal distinction between the understanding of being
171
172 Heidegger’s Being and Time
and what is understood in this understanding, at this stage in
his thinking there is no notion of being as something over
and above the understanding of being. There is really no dis-
tinction between being and the disclosedness of being.1 This
is not true of his later philosophy. The period during which
Heidegger called his own philosophy or way of doing philos-
ophy phenomenology was relatively short. Abandoning the
word phenomenology corresponds to significant philosophi-
cal changes. Although he will continue to speak of Dasein
this will no longer occupy a position in his thought at least
analogous to that of the transcendental subject in the thought
of Husserl. Whereas in Being and Time Dasein has at least a
quasi-constitutive role in his later thought Dasein is seen as
itself constituted by being. It is the relation (Bezug) of being,
construed as something over and above the understanding
of being, that makes Dasein what it is. Hence his talk of the
relation of being to the essence of human beings. In the later
philosophy, we might say, being takes on a life of its own.
Central to Heidegger’s later philosophy is what he calls
the ‘overcoming of metaphysics’.2 This may suggest that
he became anti-metaphysical in something like the way in
which the logical positivists and logical empiricists were anti-
metaphysical. But this would be a mistake. The ‘overcoming’
of which Heidegger speaks is not the dismissal or destruction
(in the merely negative sense of the term) of metaphysics. It is a

1
Though one might argue that there must be a distinction if as he claims
there are ways of understanding being which cover up, conceal, distort,
disguise.
2
The following works can be taken as representative of Heidegger’s post-
Being and Time thinking: Introduction to ‘What Is Metaphysics’ (1949) and
‘Letter on Humanism’ (1947). The English translation of the former can
be found in Heidegger, Pathmarks; that of the latter both in Pathmarks and
Basic Writings.
 Beyond phenomenology 173
going beyond metaphysics but not one which involves declar-
ing metaphysics it to be false or even meaningless. Metaphysics
as Heidegger understands it is thinking beings as beings (das
Seiende als das Seiende). Interpreting reality as mind or spirit
(Geist), as matter or force, as becoming, as idea or representa-
tion (Vorstellung), as will, as subject – these would all count as
metaphysics as Heidegger understands it. What lies beyond
metaphysics as the thinking of beings as beings is the thinking
of being as being (or what he will call the truth of being).
In each of the examples of metaphysics given, entities appear
or show themselves in a certain way – as mind, as matter, as
becoming and so on. But what makes this possible is being
itself. In each case entities appear as entities ‘in the light of
being’ (Sein), but in thinking beings as beings being itself is
not thought. Whenever metaphysics thinks entities as enti-
ties, being as the ‘clearing’ (Lichtung) in which entities show
themselves has already ‘happened’. The essence of truth is
unconcealedness (Unverborgenheit). The truth of being is what
makes the unconcealedness of entities possible. In metaphysics
being is not thought in its unconcealing essence, in its truth.
Metaphysics is only possible on the basis of the truth of being
but as metaphysics, the representing of entities as entities –
or, as Heidegger sometimes puts it, the beingness (Seiendheit)
of beings – it does not attend to the truth of being. In ques-
tioning entities as entities it is absorbed by entities and does
not turn to being as being. The truth of being is the ground
of metaphysics but is not recognised by metaphysics. Heideg-
ger’s retrospective view of Being and Time seems to be that it
is at least a step on the way to the overcoming of metaphysics.
The change in Heidegger’s thinking can be seen if we reflect
on the significance of his substitution of the word eksistence
for existence. The being of Dasein is ek-sistence. This does
not just mean that the being of Dasein is the understanding
174 Heidegger’s Being and Time
of being (that of itself and that of entities other than itself )
but that Dasein ‘stands out into’ being, stands ‘in’ the clearing
(Lichtung) of being – where being and the clearing of being
are construed as something over and above the understanding
of being. We can only reach a proper understanding of what
it is to be Dasein by raising the question of the relation of the
truth of being to the essence of Dasein. Now already in Being
and Time there was some such notion. The disclosedness of
being as such is seen in its relation to existence. Existence is the
being of an entity which understands being (its own being, the
being of entities other than itself, and being as such). But to
talk in this way of an essential relation of being to the essence
of Dasein is compatible with thinking of being as nothing
over and above the understanding of being. But when Heideg-
ger talks of such a relation in his later work he does so in a
way which suggests that in the understanding of being what is
disclosed takes possession of Dasein, has Dasein at its disposal.
Being is not simply a function of Dasein’s understanding of
being. Dasein is, however, the location of the unconcealed-
ness of being. Being, we might say, while not being reducible
to Dasein’s understanding, requires Dasein. Dasein depends
on being (the relation of being to its essence). But equally
being depends on Dasein in the sense that there is an essential
relationship of Dasein to the openness of being as such.
We can get some idea of what the change in Heidegger’s
thinking involves by taking a brief look at his influential lecture
on modern technology, ‘The Question Concerning Technol-
ogy’ (1953).3 In his lecture he is concerned with what he calls
the essence (Wesen) of technology. The ordinary, most natu-
ral, understanding of technology is what Heidegger calls the
instrumental and anthropological definition of technology.
3
Basic Writings, pp. 311–41.
 Beyond phenomenology 175
According to this definition technology is a means to an end
and a human activity. It is a human activity in which aims are
set and the means for achieving these aims are created and
used. There is something undeniable about this ‘definition’.
It presents us with a basic feature of technology and in that
sense tells us what technology is. As the term ‘essence’ is ordi-
narily understood – the whatness of something – it gives us
the essence of technology. Now even in this sense of essence
it is clear that the essence of technology is not something
technological, any more than the essence of a tree is itself a
tree. But what Heidegger understands by the essence (Wesen)
of technology is not only not something technological, it is
not the whatness of the technological either. The essence of
technology is not what all instances of the technological have
in common. As Heidegger understands essence, the essence
of technology is the understanding of being, or, as he now
puts it, the way of revealing (Weise des Entbergens), which
makes technology possible. The essence of technology is a
distinctive way in which reality – what is – is brought out of
concealment.
However, it is a way of revealing which, unlike the ways
of revealing underlying fine art and handicraft, ‘sets upon’
and challenges rather than brings forth (it is a Herausfordern
rather than a Hervorbringen). Technological revealing is not a
bringing but a demanding; and this demanding does not have
the character of bringing forth but of forcing out. It demands
of nature that it supply energy which can be extracted and
stored. ‘(T)he energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what
is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up,
what is stored up is in turn distributed, and what is distributed
is switched about ever anew’.4 A windmill, by contrast, uses
4
Ibid., p. 322.
176 Heidegger’s Being and Time
the power of the wind but it does not unlock energy from the
air currents in order to store it.
Corresponding to a way of revealing is the revealedness
of what is revealed. The mode of revealedness in the case of
the technological way of revealing is what Heidegger calls
‘standing reserve’ (Bestand). The essence of technology is the
way of revealing in which entities are revealed as standing
reserve.5
But who accomplishes this revealing in which entities are
revealed as standing-reserve? In a sense we do, human beings.
We comport ourselves in this way or that to entities and in so
doing bring them out of concealment. But, Heidegger insists,
we do not have control over the unconcealment itself in which
things show themselves. ‘Wherever man opens his eyes and
ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating
and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking,
he finds himself everywhere already brought into the uncon-
cealed.’6 The unconcealment of the unconcealed has always
already ereignet, happened. We reveal or uncover entities but
from within an unconcealment which is not of our making.
We do the revealing but the way of revealing and the mode of
revealedness are not subject to our will. The unconcealment
takes possession of us. It is this combination of happening and
taking possession which gives us the meaning of the key Hei-
deggerian notion of Ereignis. In ordinary German this simply
means event (though usually one of some significance). In
the way he uses it Heidegger is exploiting its relation to the
German word for ‘own’ (as in ‘my own book’), eigen. Ereignis
means something like ‘event which propriates’. Ereignis is a
5
The ontological term of art, Bestand, is formed in a way that corresponds
to Gegenstand (object). For Heidegger Gegen-stand like Be-stand is a mode
of unconcealedness of entities.
6
Basic Writings, p. 324.
 Beyond phenomenology 177
mode of unconcealment (in the case under discussion this is the
mode of unconcealment in which nature shows itself as stand-
ing reserve) taking possession of Dasein. We can say that it
is Dasein in its ek-sistence which accomplishes the revealing,
but only in so far as the mode of revealing is ‘sent’ by being
itself. Ek-sistence combines the relation of being to the essence
of man and the essential relationship of man to the openness
of being as such. The former is thrownness (Geworfenheit),
the latter projection (Entwurf ). But in the later philosophy
these notions have undergone a significant change, a change
which reflects the change in the conception of the relation
between Dasein and being. The ‘throwing’ is now attributed
to being (Sein). Human beings are thrown by being into the
truth of being or the clearing (Lichtung). Projection refers
to the understanding of the truth of being. Human beings,
we might say, are dependent on being, but equally being is
dependent on human beings, inasmuch as human beings are
the ‘location’ of the truth of being.
The essence of modern technology is what Heidegger calls
‘enframing’ (Ge-stell). This difficult notion combines the idea
of the technological way of revealing in which entities are
revealed as standing-reserve with the idea of this way of
revealing as claiming us, taking possession of us. Thus under-
stood enframing is not itself a technological activity but what
makes such activity possible. As what makes it possible for
something to be, enframing is not the essence (Wesen) of tech-
nology in the sense of the properties which together make it
what it is. Heidegger is using Wesen in a verbal form, which is
presumably meant to indicate that enfaming is an ontological
happening.
Enframing is what Heidegger calls a ‘destining’ (Geschick).
As an element in the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) it does
not just happen. It is ‘sent’ (the German for ‘send’ is schicken)
178 Heidegger’s Being and Time
by being, or perhaps it would be better to say that we are ‘sent’
into this mode of revealing. So there is a kind of necessity of
the ‘holding sway’ of this way of revealing (though there is
nothing in Heidegger corresponding to the dialectical logic of
Hegel to explain the way in which different ways of revealing
unfold).
Whatever one makes of this sort of talk it clearly represents
a move away from the purely phenomenological thinking of
Being and Time. The account he gives there of Dasein and
the structures of its being is at least arguably open to a certain
kind of verification. If we ask how does Heidegger know that
what he says about human being and its structures is true, the
answer would be: he knows what he says is true because he is
able to let this being (Sein) and its structures be seen. It will
not be enough for us just to read his words and sentences. We
must ourselves ‘see’ the ‘matter’ (die Sache) they disclose. In
other words, we must read the text phenomenologically.
We have chosen to look at his lecture on the essence of
(modern) technology because it is representative of much
of his later thinking. If we now ask: how does Heidegger
know that what he says about the essence of technology is
true? things become more difficult. If enframing is simply an
understanding of being then the question of whether we do
understand reality as standing-reserve (Bestand), is one that
can in principle be answered. The claim is open to what we
can call phenomenological verification. As an understanding
of being it would not be something which primarily and for
the most part shows itself, but it could be made to show itself.
But the problem is that enframing is not just an understand-
ing of being. It is also a ‘destining’ (ein Geschick). That we
understand being in the ways we do is, Heidegger maintains,
not of our making. Ways of understanding being – ways of
 Beyond phenomenology 179
revealing – are necessary because what is understood in the
understanding of being, namely, being itself, ‘sends’ them. In
understanding being Dasein is being used by being. It is claims
of this kind, which characterise the whole of Heidegger’s later
philosophy, that seem to resist any kind of phenomenological
authentication.
 Bibliography

t r an s lat i on s o f s e i n u n d z e i t
Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992).
Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of
New York, 1996).

ot h e r wo r k s b y h e i d e gg e r r e f e r r e d to i n t h e t e xt
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1982).
History of the Concept of Time. Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985).
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 1990).
Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London:
Routledge, 1993).
‘What Is Metaphysics?’, in Basic Writings, pp. 93–110.
‘On the Essence of Truth’, in Basic Writings, pp. 115–38.
‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Basic Writings, pp. 143–212.
‘Letter on Humanism’, in Basic Writings, pp. 217–65.
‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Basic Writings, pp. 311–41.
Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

s o m e wo r k s a b o ut h e i d e gg e r
Dreyfus, Hubert, Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger’s
Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).

180
 Bibliography 181
Dreyfus,H.L.andH.Hall(eds.), Heidegger: A Critical Reader(Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
Guignon, Charles (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Herrmann, F.-W. von, Subjekt und Dasein (Frankfurt: Vittorio Kloster-
mann, 1985).
Hermeneutische Phänomenologie des Daseins, vol. I (Frankfurt: Vit-
torio Klostermann, 1987).
Inwood, Michael, Heidegger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Mulhall, Stephen, Heidegger and Being and Time (London: Routledge,
1996).
Pöggeler, Otto, Heidegger’s Path of Thinking (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1987).
Polt, Richard, Heidegger: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1999).
Safranski,Rüdiger,MartinHeidegger:BetweenGoodandEvil(Harvard:
Harvard University Press, 1998).
 Index

ability-to-be 78–82, 113 apophansis 85, 87, 100

about-which (das Worüber) 89, 96, 98 appearance
access to Dasein, proper mode of 21, 68, compared with phenomenon 29
69, 93 equality with respect to 96
affectedness 6, 71, 72–7, 80, 115, 119, appresentation 57
128, 132, 143, 149 Aristotle 2, 16, 26, 30, 95
primacy of existential past 160 assertion see statement
and understanding 81 Aufzeigen see letting be seen
afterlife 125 Augenblick, der 159
agreement Auslegung see interpretation
ideal judgment content 98 Aussage see statement (assertion)
real or ideal relation 98 Ausweisung see verification
of a statement with its object 96 authenticity 7, 64, 105–52
truth as a relation of 97, 99 and authentic being towards death 7,
aletheia 100 129, 134
alienation 128 conscience as call to 8, 135
alone (being), as a deficient mode of and freedom 64
being-with 60 and inauthenticity 102
ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit) 111, and resoluteness 143, 157
114 and self 106, 107
Angst 7, 114–19, 128, 143 and turning towards 120
compared with fear 117, 132 availableness see readiness-to-hand
as a distinguished mode of
affectedness 115, 137, 150 Basic Problems of Phenomenology, The
explicit and latent 152 (Heidegger) 27
and falling 116 Bedeutsamkeit see significance
and the nothing 147, 150, 151 Befindlichkeit see affectedness
Worum of 118 being 3, 13–33, 171
Wovor of 117 ‘battle of the giants’ over true 16
animals change from existence to
awareness of time 155 presence-at-hand in death 121
fear in 116 choosing how it is in Dasein 23
anxiety see Angst compared with entities 15

182
 Index 183
of consciousness 52 as eksistence 173
definition by genus and species and falling 110
difference 17 as in-each-case-mine 5, 25, 64, 106,
and essence of human beings 172 108, 122, 164
Heidegger’s phenomenology of 34 structures of 7–9, 28, 31, 32, 34, 62,
history (Seinsgeschichte) of 177 92
kinds (Seinsarten) of 82 understanding of 34, 69, 78
loss of 121 see also existence
meaning of reality as a mode of 52 Being and Time (Heidegger)
as the most general concept 16 foreword 13
and nothing 147, 151 overview 3–12
and ontologies 18 publication 2
in phenomenology 4 being-in (In-Sein) 47, 70–93
possibility of 6, 78–82, 107, 122 being-in-the-world 4, 5, 26, 34–55, 136
as presence (Anwesenheit) 167 ability 79
the question of 13–33 and Angst 117, 118
relation with time 14 as being of Dasein 44–7, 48, 53, 55
relationship (Seinsverhältnis) of 66 as being-with-others 59
showing itself 38, 67 as disclosedness 70
structures of 4, 7–9 examples 37
of the subject 51, 54 meaning of 35–7, 46
as such 16 and the problem of the external
temporal character of 12, 26–7, 168 world 50–5
and time 12, 14, 153–70 as transcendence 70, 77
towards death: authentic and web of significance or meaning 53
inauthentic 128, 131, 134, 144 beingness (Seiendheit) 16
and truth 95 being-to-be (Zu-sein) 25
the truth of 173, 177 being-with 5, 7, 26, 56–69
see also Dasein; meaning of being; being of Dasein as 60, 68–9, 106–10
understanding of being empathy presupposes 5, 64–5
being of Dasein and language 67
as being towards death (Sein zum see also Mitdasein
Tode) 124 being-with-others-in-the-world 5, 65,
as being-in-the-world 44–7, 55, 120, 111
122 beings
as being-with 58, 60, 65, 68–9, 81, 164 beingness of (Seiendheit) 173
as care 6, 9, 11, 62, 91, 154, 155 thinking as beings (das Seiende als das
character of selfhood 106 Seiende) 173
closed-off-ness and covered-up-ness Bergson, Henri 26
114 Besorgen see concern
and comportment to entities 151 Bestand see ‘standing reserve’
as constituted by historicity 163, Bewenden/Bewandtnis see functionality
165–8 Böll, Heinrich,
ecstatic temporality as the meaning of The Silent Angel 123
the 9–12, 36, 160, 168 boredom (Langeweile) 150
184 Index
Braig, Carl modes of 5–7, 38
On Being: A Sketch of Ontology 2 and understanding of being 58, 176
Brentano, Franz Clemens comportment to others, modes of 62–4
On the Several Senses of Being in comportment towards death 7, 9, 125,
Aristotle 1 127, 131, 132
bringing-close (Näherung) 49 concealment 30, 128
concepts 20
care 6, 9–12, 91–2, 142 only seemingly demonstrated 28
meaning of 9–12, 154 concern 6, 10, 26, 37, 62, 70, 79, 92,
ontological sense of 62 155
and time 9–12, 154 analysis of 37
as unity of structures of Dasein 9, 62, circumspective 47, 160
91, 154, 155 enpresenting and 160
caring for see solicitude and equipment 37–9
Cartesianism 50, 68 examples of 133
Cassirer, Ernst 2 indifference as a deficient mode of 61,
categorical imperative 138 63
categories 4, 19 intentionality as 76
compared with existentials 25, 47, 49 mere perception as a deficient mode
Kant’s 167 of 39, 46
and meanings in Duns Scotus 2 pre-predicative uncovering in 100
temporal interpretation of 167 spatial perception and 50
causal inference 51 time as encountered in 160–2
choosing ways of existing 5, 7, 9, 23, 64, world of one’s 110, 141
73, 106, 135, 164 conscience
clearing 104, 173, 177 as call to authenticity 8, 135, 136, 140,
cognition 52 141
as a derivative mode of as a court of law (Kant) 136
being-in-the-world 77 and guilt 8, 134–42, 147
as a founded mode of access to Heidegger’s existential interpretation
entities 52, 55 137, 141
as a modified form of understanding ontological interpretation of 141
65 wanting to have a 140, 142, 144
common sense 18, 51 consciousness 68
communication 85, 90, 111 the being of 52, 54
comportment 4 Cartesian 50
apophantic ‘as’ 100 compared with Dasein 76, 93
engagement as primary mode of 39, Husserl’s phenomenology of 4, 27,
55 34, 36, 39, 76, 93
hermeneutic ‘as’ 100 possible independence of the real
observational modes of 37 from 52
practical modes of 37 possible transcendence of 52, 171
pre-predicative 100 contradiction, the principle of 102, 148
comportment to entities 15, 39, 151, 153 correspondence see agreement
as intentionality 171 curiosity (Neugier) 111, 114
 Index 185
Dasein 3, 4 and relationship to others 45, 66, 69,
analytic of 34, 95, 105, 120, 153 124, 164
as being-in-the-world 53 spatiality of 47, 48
as care 6, 9, 62, 91, 154, 155 temporality of 9–12, 26–7, 35, 142,
coming-to-an-end as substitute 156
theme 121, 122, 124 as in the truth and in the untruth 102,
as condition of the possibility of 112–14, 130, 143
history 31 use of ontological term 22
‘Da’ in 5, 23, 71, 72, 120, 165 wholeness of 120
as de-distancing 49 in the world 6, 35, 45, 59
dependence of truth on 102–4 see also access to Dasein; being; being
disclosedness of 5, 71, 101, 102, of Dasein; Mitdasein
112 datability 11, 161
ecstatic temporality as the meaning of death 8, 119–34
the being of 9–12 the case of 127, 129
eksistence 173, 177 certainty of 8, 125, 129, 130
the end of 7, 131 comportment towards 7, 9, 125, 127,
as entity to be interrogated in the 132
question of being 21 as the end of Dasein 7, 131
essence of 24 experience of death of others 121
existential fore-structure of Heidegger’s ontology of 122
interpretation of 83 Heidegger’s phenomenology of 124
existential ontology of 54 indeterminacy of when 8, 125, 129,
for-the-sake-of-which (Worumwillen) 131
44, 45 as nothing 147
as fundamental ontology 31, 32 one person dying for another 123
futural 157 as a possibility of being 122, 133,
as guilty 8, 138, 139 134
individualised in Angst 118 and presence-at-hand 121
language as essential to 67 and resoluteness 143, 157
negativity at the heart of 8, 139, 145, running ahead into (vorlaufen) 132,
151 144
ontological constitution way of being towards 120, 145
(Seinsverfassung) 113 de-distancing (Entfernung) 49
other than as external 50–5 dependence
as outside itself 10 domination and 63
philosophy as an ontic possibility of ontic 46
166 ontological 47
as the place (Stätte) of the of truth on Dasein 102–4
understanding of being 22, 26, Descartes, René 50
174 destining (Geschick) 177, 178
possibility of impossibility of 126, Dilthey, Wilhelm 78
132 direction (Richtung) 47
as a primordial existential mode of directionality see orientation/
being 65 directionality (Ausrichtung)
186 Index
disclosedness 5, 6, 23, 24, 70–2, 93, 94, engagement 4, 6, 38, 39
172 pre-predicative uncovering in 100,
acceptance of guilt and 142 101, 130
being-in-the-world as 70 primacy of 55
of Dasein 5, 71, 101, 102, 112, 132 Umsicht of 43
and discourse 67, 88, 136 vs. mere perception 39–41, 50–5, 75,
equiprimordial modes of 71 101
human beings participate in 104 see also concern
modes of 6, 71, 115, 128, 132 enpresenting 10, 156, 158, 159, 160, 169
as ontological truth 102, 143 entdeckt see discovered; uncovered
prior of the whole 41 Entdeckung see un-covering
resolute 9 Entfernung see de-distancing
and understanding 79 entities
of the world 53, 59, 94, 101 as bearers of properties 20
discourse 71, 87–91, 128 being compared with 15
as the articulation of intelligibility 88 concealed or disguised being of 30
basic features of 89 defined 15
call of conscience as a mode of 136, enpresenting 10
143 ‘in the light of being’ 173
as communication 111 lostness in 7
and disclosedness 67, 88, 136 original openness of 5, 151
has a what-is-said (das Gesagte) 90 other than Dasein 4, 50–5
as primordial 88 phenomenology of 34
‘worldly’ character of 89 as proper mode of access to Dasein
discovered 6, 53, 71, 103 21, 68
domination, and dependence 63 the reference of 42, 43
Duns Scotus, John 2 revealed as ‘standing reserve’ 176
temporal and non-temporal 26
ecstasis within the world 6, 10, 45, 53, 59, 119
as movement outside itself 169 see also comportment to entities;
temporal ecstases 10, 156, 159, 160, mental entities; readiness-to-hand
162 Entschlossenheit see resoluteness
ecstatic temporality 9–12, 26, 35, 155–8 epistemology 94
and falling 163 equality 96
horizonal 14, 35, 158, 168, 169 equipment 4, 38
as the meaning of the being of Dasein the being of 38, 41–3, 153
9–12, 36, 160, 168 and concern 37–9
relation to ordinary conception of in-order-to (Um-zu) 42, 43, 45
time 160, 162 readiness-to-hand of 42, 47, 81
ego see I; self showing itself 38, 41
Einfühlung see empathy Erbe, das see heritage
eksistence 173, 177 Ereignis, as a mode of unconcealment
ekstatikon 158 176
empathy 5, 64–5 Erkennen see cognition
enframing (Gestell) 177, 178 Erklären see explanation
 Index 187
Erschlossenheit see disclosedness kinds of questions concerning reality
essence of the 51
of Dasein and truth of being 174, scepticism about the 50
177
and existence 145, 146, 172 facticity (Faktizität) 73, 108, 114,
of technology 174 145
as whatness 25, 175 falling 7, 26, 32, 110–12, 114, 137, 152
eternal, the 26 as absorption in entities 110, 113
everydayness 7, 48, 63, 105, 108, 129 and ecstatic temporality 163
existence 4, 23, 58, 81, 105, 145, 153 as flight 114, 116, 119, 127
authentic 7, 64, 69, 105, 108, 109, 145, and inauthenticity 7, 110
156, 158–60 and the philosophical tradition 167
and ecstatic temporality 157 three aspects of 112
and eksistence 173 fear 7, 115, 116
and essence 145, 146, 174 of death 128, 132
everyday as inauthentic 7, 105, 109 and flight 117
and guilt 138 Worum of 115, 116, 150
inauthentic 7, 64, 69, 105, 156, 158–60 Wovor of 115, 117, 150
inauthentic as fallen 110 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 118
use of term 24 finitude 114
see also Dasein Fink, Eugen 13
existentia 23 flight 114, 117, 119, 127
existentialism, Heidegger’s 120, 145, fore-conception (Vorgriff ) 83, 86
157 fore-having (Vorhabe) 83, 86
‘existentiality’ 25, 27 fore-sight (Vorsicht) 83, 86, 87
existentials 4, 35, 44, 62, 92, 109, 153 forgetfulness of being
compared with categories 25, 47, 49 (Seinsvergessenheit) 112
specific modes of ecstatic temporality freedom
10, 160 and authenticity 64
existentiell/existential distinction 110, and choice 9, 118, 139
135, 144 functionality 42
Existenz see existence Furcht see fear
experience Fürsorge see solicitude
of Dasein 120 future 10, 156, 157, 160, 169
of death of others 121 authentic and inauthentic 158
disclosive of world 45
of others 61 Gegenwärtigen see enpresenting
and spatiality 49 Geisteswissenschaften, methodology of
and the world as a whole 149 the 31
explanation 77 genus, and species 17
expression (Bekundung) 90 Geschichtlichkeit see historicity
external world 53 Gewissen see conscience
Cartesian view 51 Geworfenheit see thrownness
Heidegger and the problem of the God
50–5 as supra-temporal (überzeitlich) 27
188 Index
Gröber, Conrad 1 dependence of the laws of science on
Grundsatz see principle existence of 102
guilt 8, 138, 157 as historical beings 163
acceptance as a form of disclosedness as location of the truth of being
142, 144 177
and conscience 8, 134–42, 147 participation in disclosedness 104
incurring of 142 temporality of 154
moral 138 Husserl, Edmund 2, 18, 27
ontological 8, 9, 138, 139, 140, and intersubjectivity 57
147 Jahrbuch 27
Logical Investigations 2
Hartmann, Nicolai 18 phenomenology 4, 27, 30, 93, 171
hearing 90 phenomenology of consciousness 4,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 77, 27, 34, 36, 39, 68, 76
108, 178 on spatiality of the lifeworld 49
Heidegger, Martin transcendental subject or ego 36,
biographical details 1–2 172
existentialism 120, 145, 157
later philosophy 172–9 I, the givenness of the 68
lectures (1941) 155, 168 idealism
Marburg lectures (1927) 168 German 155, 168
phenomenology 4, 22, 30, 31, 32, 41, Heidegger’s view of 54
92 Kant’s ‘refutation’ of 50
writings 2, 20, 27, 76, 92, 96, 100, 147, psychological or subjective 54
174 transcendental 18
see also Being and Time; titles of other see also realism/idealism debate
works ideas 16, 36, 50, 173
heritage 164 idle talk (Gerede) 111, 114, 128, 129,
hermeneutic circle 22, 83 131
hermeneutics 31, 69, 77, 100 inanimacy 121
Hegelian approaches to 77 inauthenticity 7, 108
individualistic approaches to 77 and authenticity 102
historicity 31 and falling 7, 110
and being of Dasein 163, 165–8 indifference 60, 63, 65
ontological sense of 164, 166 inference 57
and temporality 163–7 analogical 57, 64
Historie see history causal 51
history 163, 165 Ingarden, Roman 18
of being (Seinsgeschichte), enframing insideness (Inwendigkeit) 47
of 177 intellect/understanding (Kant) 81
Dasein as condition of the possibility intelligibility 88
of 31, 166 intentionality
horizon (horizonal schema) 12, 158, 168, as comportment to entities 171
169 as concern 76
human beings 22 in Husserl’s phenomenology 27, 76
being and essence of 172 as a structure of Dasein 171
 Index 189
interest, and perception 75 language
interpretation 68–9 and being-with 67
apophantic ‘as’ 87 compared with discourse 88, 89
in Heidegger’s phenomenology 31, rule-following in 67
33, 69 spoken 90
hermeneutic ‘as’ 87 Wittgenstein’s private language
judgment as a derivative mode of argument 66
and mere perception 40 letting be seen 29, 33, 85
pre-theoretical as an existential 31, Lichtung see clearing
82, 83 lifeworld (Lebenswelt) 39, 49
presuppositions in 83 listening 90, 91
seeing-as 82 location in space (Raumstelle),
statement as a derivative mode of 84, compared with place (Platz) 47
95 logic 84, 86, 102, 148
temporal of existentials 160
intersubjectivity 57 Man, das see One, the
meaning of being 1, 3, 15, 16, 36
Jaspers, Karl 168 preliminary understanding of 19
Jesuits 1 as self-evident 16, 17
judgment time and the 147, 153, 168–70
as location of truth 96 Mensch see human being
two senses of 97 mental entities 50
as a way of being towards the thing mere perception 39–41, 42, 43, 46
itself 99 curiosity and 111
vs. engaged having-to-do-with
Kant, Immanuel 39–41, 50–5, 101
categories 167 metaphysics
on conscience 136 of Dasein 92
Heidegger on 18, 92 of German idealism 155, 168
morality 135, 138 Heidegger’s view of 147, 173
persons as ends in themselves ‘overcoming’ of 172
44 method, phenomenological 20, 27, 34,
refutation of idealism 50 67, 92
on sensibility and understanding or mineness (Jemeinigkeit), in-each-case-
intellect 81 5, 25, 64, 106, 108, 122, 164
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics of death 123
(Heidegger) 92 Mitdasein 58, 65, 81, 164
knowledge see also being-with
of the external world 50–5 Mitteilung see communication
as knowing how 78, 81 mood 6, 72–6, 115, 119, 128, 132, 149
ontological 22, 52, 78 morality 140
of other minds 56–66 Kantian 135, 138
possibility of scientific
83 National Socialism 2
propositional 78 nature 103, 163, 175, 177
Kolbe, Maximilian 123 negation 149
190 Index
negativity 8, 139, 145 fundamental 3, 95
Newton, Isaac 102 Greek 166
Nichtmehrdasein phenomenological destruction of the
(no-longer-being-there) 120 history of 14, 30, 167
Nichts, das see nothing, the and the question of being 18, 31, 49
not, determines thrownness and regional 19
projection 8, 139 of the subject 54
nothing, the 7, 149 openness 5, 151, 166, 174, 177
being and 147, 151 orientation/directionality (Ausrichtung)
definition of 149 48, 49
disclosure of 7, 150, 151 Origin of the Work of Art, The
and science 148 (Heidegger) 20
null being-the-ground of a nullity (das original time see ecstatic temporality
nichtige Grund-sein einer other minds
Nichtigkeit) 8, 139 knowledge of 56–66
null ground 8, 139, 144 traditional problem of 56, 66–7
others
objects experience of death of 121
constituted in consciousness 28 modes of comportment to 62–4
determined by categories 167 relationship to 66, 69, 124, 164
existence of external 50–5 ousia see presence
‘On the Essence of Reasons’
(Heidegger) 100 Parmenides 95
‘On the Essence of Truth’ (Heidegger) past 10, 156, 160, 169
96 authentic 159
One, the (das Man) 7, 69, 106–10, 113, as having-been-ness (Gewesenheit)
122 73, 158, 163, 165, 166, 169
as an ens realissimum 108 perception 39
as an existential 109, 110 acoustic 90
dictatorship of 107, 109, 135 as-free 40
lostness in the publicness of 112, 119, Cartesian 50
137 as caused by material objects 51
One-self (das Man-selbst) 106, 108, 109, as a deficient mode of concern 39
127, 130, 135, 136, 137 engaged compared with pure or mere
ontic/ontological distinction 46, 54, 60, 40, 75
78, 92, 110, 115, 125 inner see reflection
ontological claims, established and lifeworldly spatiality (Husserl) 49
phenomenologically 67 as a mode of cognition or knowledge
ontological difference, between being 52
and entities 15, 20, 147 verification by 98
ontology 3, 18–20, 52, 54, 125 see also mere perception; sense
of Dasein 92, 113 perception
of death 122 persons as ends in themselves (Kant) 44
existential of Dasein 54, 60, 92, phenomenology 4, 18, 27–33, 92
120 beyond 171–9
 Index 191
of consciousness 4, 27, 34, 36, 39, 76, possibility
93 and actualisation or realisation 133
and exhibition of being 20, 27 a priori conditions of 19
as a form of transcendental as an existential 79
philosophy 171 of being 6, 78–82, 107, 122
formal sense of ‘letting be seen’ of choosing ways of existing 5, 7, 9,
(Sehenlassen) 29 64, 73, 106, 135, 164
Heidegger’s of being 34 existentiell or existential 135, 144
Heidegger’s of death 124 of non-relational being in death 8,
Heidegger’s and Husserl’s compared 123, 124, 126, 129, 131
27, 30, 34, 93, 171 ‘praesens’ 169–70
Heidegger’s as interpretive 30, 31, 92 predication 85, 95
Heidegger’s view of 22, 32, 41 presence, being as 167
hermeneutic 30, 69 presence-at-hand 4, 11, 32, 46, 54, 81,
Husserl’s 4, 27, 30, 34, 93, 171 106, 153
and intentionality 76 death and 121
philosophical sense 30 and falling 112, 163
as the science of being 171 and readiness-to-hand 47, 50, 58
way of reading the text 178 subject as 68
phenomenon, Heidegger’s use of the time and 163, 170
term 29 present 10, 156, 158, 169
phenomenon/phenomena, causal laws authentic and inauthentic 159
for 77 ecstasis of the 169
philosophy see also enpresenting
as an ontic possibility of Dasein 166 presupposition
Aristotle’s definition 95 in interpretation 83
conceptual frameworks of 166 in preliminary look at being
defined as the science of truth and of (vorgängige Hinblicknahme auf
beings 95 Sein) 22
Greek 16, 166 principle, unproven 22
Heidegger’s later 172–9 private language argument
Heidegger’s view of 100, 145, 166 (Wittgenstein) 66
phenomenology as a form of projection 6, 8, 9, 26, 92, 155, 177
transcendental 171 ahead of itself 10, 120, 144
physics 102 change in Heidegger’s later
place (Platz) philosophy 177
compared with location in space coming-towards-itself in its
(Raumstelle) 47 possibility 10
and whole of places (Platzganzheit) 48 onto possibilities of existence 6, 80,
Plato 30, 146 113
Sophist 13, 16 thrown 6, 9, 80, 127, 139
point of view (Hinsicht) 83 ‘Prolegomena to the History of the
positions (Stellen), range of possible 48 Concept of Time’ (Heidegger) 76
positive sciences 19 pseudo-questions/pseudo-problems 28,
possession 176, 177 51, 53, 55, 56–67
192 Index
psychologism, theory of judgment in 2 relations (Bezüge) 45
publicness of time 11, 162 repetition 159, 165
representability 122, 123, 126
question representations 36, 50, 98, 173
about the nothing 149 resemblance 97
of being 13–33 resoluteness 9, 142–5, 157
das Befragte 20, 21, 31 and death 144, 157
das Erfragte 20 discloses the situation 158
das Gefragte 20 responsibility 107
elements of a 20–2 reticence 136, 143
ontological prior to ontic 125 revealing see way of revealing
structure of a 19 Rickert, Heinrich 2
see also pseudo-questions/pseudo- running ahead (vorlaufen) 132, 144,
problems 158
Question Concerning Technology, The
(Heidegger) 174 Sachen see things
Sartre, Jean-Paul 146
range/orbit (Umkreis) 48 scepticism, about existence of external
rationality 17 objects 50
readiness-to-hand 4, 38, 41, 42, 43, 47, Scheler, Max 18, 57
81, 153 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
and closeness 47 von 168
and direction (Richtung) 47 science, Heidegger’s existential view of
disruption of 46 147
for others 59, 61 scientific knowledge, possibility of 83,
and presence-at-hand 47, 50, 58 102
temporal interpretation of 169 seeing, phenomenological 4, 33, 67
real 108 Sehenlassen see letting be seen
proper mode of access to the 52 Sein see being
realism, as ontic 54 Seinsmöglichkeit see ability-to-be
realism/idealism debate 54 self 5, 68–9, 106, 118
reality and authenticity 106, 108
meaning as a mode of being 52 denial of 122
as mind or spirit (Geist) 173 see also One-self
as standing-reserve 178 selfness (Selbstheit) 5, 25
in the understanding of reality 55 semblance 113
way of revealing 175 compared with phenomenon 29
Rede see discourse sense perception 16
reductionism 27, 51 sense-data 51
reference sensibility, Kant on 81
of an entity 42, 43 showing see letting be seen
or referential totalities 43 significance 45, 46, 53
world as system of 44, 45 of time 11, 161, 162
reflection 69, 74 silence, conscience in 136
critical 130 silent, remaining (Schweigen) 91
region (Gegend) 48, 115 Sinn see meaning
 Index 193
Sinnlichkeit see sensibility temporality
situation, resoluteness discloses the 158 authentic and inauthentic 156, 158–60
Society of Jesus see Jesuits as being-in-time 26
solicitude 62–4, 65, 79 of Dasein 9–12, 26–7, 35, 142, 154
positive modes 63 distinguished from ordinary
Sorge see care conception of time 9, 73
space ecstatic see ecstatic temporality
as experienced 49 and historicity 163–7
in geometry 49 thatness see facticity (Faktizität)
and spatiality 47 theology 1
spannedness of time 11, 161 They see One, the (das Man)
spatiality 35, 47 things
Heidegger’s compared with Husserl’s comportment to mere 58
50 letting them speak for themselves 28
lifeworldly (Husserl) 49 seeing that they are so 67
species, and genus 17 see also presence-at-hand
spirit, objective (Hegel) 108 thinking beings as beings (das Seiende
Sprache see language als das Seiende) 173
‘standing reserve’ (Bestand) 176, 178 thrownness 6, 9, 26, 73, 80, 89, 92, 155,
statement (assertion) 177
agreement or correspondence with its already in-the-world 10, 113
object 96 change in Heidegger’s later
categorical 86 philosophy 177
characteristics of 85 coming-back-to-itself in its
as communication 85 having-been (Gewesen) 10, 157,
as a derivative mode of interpretation 159
84, 95 and a not 8
as location of truth 96 see also projection, thrown
as predication 85, 95 time
predicative uncovering 84, 99 and being 12, 14, 153–70
universal validity of true 103 and care 9–12, 154
Stimmung see mood as encountered in concern 160–2
subject 56, 61 features of ordinary 11, 161
the being of the 51, 54 and the meaning of being 147, 153,
conception of the 66 168–70
Husserl’s transcendental 36, 172 ontological function of 167
the knowing 52 ordinary conception of 9–12, 14, 26,
most real of everydayness 108 73, 154, 160–2, 168
ontology of the 54 origin of the ordinary conception of
predication of a 95 163
which underlies 68–9 original or primordial see ecstatic
suicide 133 temporality
philosophical interpretations of 26
technology as the possible horizon of any
essence of 174, 177 understanding of being 14, 146
way of revealing 175 totality of beings 149, 150
194 Index
tradition 165 adequate or true 32
the philosophical 167 and affectedness 81
transcendence 70, 77 average 19, 22, 32
beyond 151 consciousness as 54
transcendental philosophy and interpretation 82
idealism 18 Kant’s conception of 81
phenomenology as a form of 171 ontological and ontic uses of the term
truth 94–104, 112 78
and being 95 perceptive 95
of being 173, 174, 177 primacy of existential future 160
and certainty 130 understanding of being 4, 11, 13–18, 47,
Dasein as in the 102, 130, 143 55
dependence on Dasein 102–4 as ability to be (Seinkönnen) 78–82
examples of 102 and comportment to entities 58, 171,
nature or essence of 96 176
ontological 103, 163 Dasein as 34, 69, 78, 171
pre-predicative 101 Dasein as the place (Stätte) of the 22,
propositional or predicative 99, 100, 26, 174
103, 130 and the essence of technology
as a relation of agreement 97 175
traditional conception of 84, 96 as itself a determination of being of
as unconcealedness 6, 9, 85, 100, 101, Dasein 23, 146
130, 173 and of Mitdasein 65
as uncovering entities precisely as and the nothing 149, 151
they were already 103, 130 pre-ontological 31
ways of revealing 178
Übereinstimmung see agreement Unheimlichkeit see uncanniness
uncanniness 119, 137, 141, 143 untruth (Unwahrheit), Dasein in the 102,
unconcealedness (Unverborgenheit) 6, 112–14, 143
85, 95, 100, 173, 176 Urteil see judgment
uncovered 6, 53, 71, 103, 130
uncoveredness Verfallen see falling
of entities 6, 71, 94, 99, 101 verification 98
as ontic truth 102 phenomenological 178
uncovering Verschwiegenheit see reticence
and Dasein’s disclosedness 112, 113, Verstand see intellect/understanding
130 (Kant)
different from being exhibited 20 Verstehen see understanding
predicative of a statement 84, 99, Vertretbarkeit see representability
100 Verweisung see reference
pre-predicative 100 vocabulary, German features of 14
and uncoveredness of entities 94, 99, von Herrmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm 13
101, 103 Vorhandenheit/ Vorhandensein see
understanding 6, 13–18, 65, 71, 77–82, presence-at-hand
115, 128, 132 Vorstellungen see representations
 Index 195
Wahrheit see truth inseparable from entities other than
way of revealing (Weise des Entbergens), Dasein 44
technological 175, 177, 178 lets us encounter entities 59,
Wesen see essence 76
‘What is Metaphysics?’ (Heidegger) 147 shared 5, 59, 64
Wiederholung see repetition as system of references 44,
willing (Wollen) 141 45
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 66 ‘un-worlding’ the 46
words 99 as web of significance 5, 32, 53, 73,
as verbal expression of our 101, 117
comportment 17 and with-world (Mitwelt) 121
world see also being-in-the-world; external
as a priori 45 world
as an existential 44, 50
and the being of equipment 41 Zeitlichkeit see temporality
disclosedness of the 53, 59, 94, 101, Zeug see equipment
118 Zuhandenheit/Zuhandensein see
Heidegger’s meaning for 5, 35, 43–7, readiness-to-hand
50, 117 Zukunft see future