Being and Time

by Martin Heidegger

Because understanding, in every case, pertains rather to Dasein’s full disclosedness as Being-in-the-world, this diversion of the understanding is an existential modification of projection as a whole. In understanding the world, Being-in is always understood along with it, while understanding of existence as such is always an understanding of the world.

Has not Dasein’s Being become more enigmatical now that we have explicated the existential constitution of the Being of the “there” in the sense of thrown projection?

As understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities.

In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself.

When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand it any more. This grasping which is free of the “as”, is a privation of the kind of seeing in which one merely understands. It is not more primordial than that kind of seeing, but is derived from it.

Comedian.

But if we see this circle as a vicious one and look out for ways of avoiding it, even if we just ‘sense’ it as an inevitable imperfection, then the act of understanding has been misunderstood from the ground up.

The ‘circle’ in understanding belongs to the structure of meaning,

All interpretation is grounded on understanding. That which has been articulated(1) as such in interpretation and sketched out beforehand in the understanding in general as something articulable, is the meaning.

Finally assertion has been accepted from ancient times as the primary and authentic ‘locus’ of truth. The phenomenon of truth is so thoroughly coupled with the problem of Being that our investigation, as it proceeds further, will necessarily come up against the problem of truth; and it already lies within the dimensions of that problem, though not explicitly.

“Assertion”

Within this pointing-out, the elements which are Articulated in predication—the subject and predicate—arise.

“Assertion” means “communication” [Mitteilung], speaking forth [Heraussage].

There is prevalent today a theory of ‘judgment’ which is oriented to the phenomenon of ‘validity’.(1)

If we bring together the three significations of ‘assertion’ which we have analysed, and get a unitary view of the full phenomenon, then we may define “assertion” as “a pointing-out which gives something a definite character and which communicates”.

When an assertion is made, some fore-conception is always implied; but it remains for the most part inconspicuous, because the language already hides in itself a developed way of conceiving.

By what existential-ontological modifications does assertion arise from circumspective interpretation?

When considered philosophically, the λόγος itself is an entity, and, according to the orientation of ancient ontology, it is something present-at-hand.

the copula.

By

The λόγος gets experienced as something present-at-hand and Interpreted as such, while at the same time the entities which it points out have the meaning of presence-at-hand. This meaning of Being is left undifferentiated and uncontrasted with other possibilities of Being, so that Being in the sense of a formal Being-something becomes fused with it simultaneously, and we are unable even to obtain a clear-cut division between these two realms.

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding. The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. That which can be Articulated in interpretation, and thus even more primordially in discourse, is what we have called “meaning”.

Significations, as what has been Articulated from that which can be Articulated, always carry meaning [...sind… sinnhaft].

He who never says anything cannot keep silent at any given moment. Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing. To be able to keep silent, Dasein must have something to say—that is, it must have at its disposal an authentic and rich disclosedness of itself.

The task of liberating grammar from logic requires beforehand a positive understanding of the basic a priori structure of discourse in general as an existentiale.

What kind of Being does language have, if there can be such a thing as a ‘dead’ language?

The care for seeing is essential to man’s Being.(2)

Therefore the experience of the senses in general is designated as the ‘lust of the eyes’; for when the issue is one of knowing something, the other senses, by a certain resemblance, take to themselves the function of seeing—a function in which the eyes have priority.”)

Therefore curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying alongside what is closest.

The supposition of the “they” that one is leading and sustaining a full and genuine ‘life’, brings Dasein a tranquillity, for which everything is ‘in the best of order’ and all doors are open. Falling Being-in-the-world, which tempts itself, is at the same time tranquillizing [beruhigend].

It follows

Only because Dasein is anxious in the very depths of its Being, does it become possible for anxiety to be elicited physiologically.

makes manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of its Being.

To put it otherwise, existing is always factical. Existentiality is essentially determined by facticity.

Wishing is an existential modification of projecting oneself understandingly, when such self-projection has fallen forfeit to thrownness and just keeps hankering after possibilities.(1) Such hankering closes off the possibilities; what is ‘there’ in wishful hankering turns into the ‘actual world’. Ontologically, wishing presupposes care.

The document which we are about to cite should make plain that our existential Interpretation is not a mere fabrication, but that as an ontological ‘construction’ it is well grounded and has been sketched out beforehand in elemental ways.

‘Once when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. ‘Care’ asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this, and demanded that it be given his name instead. While ‘Care’ and Jupiter were disputing, Earth arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter, and he made the following decision, which seemed a just one: ‘Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive that spirit at its death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since ‘Care’ first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called ‘homo’, for it is made out of humus (earth).’(1)

Burdach(vii) calls attention to a double meaning of the term ‘cura’ according to which it signifies not only ‘anxious exertion’ but also ‘carefulness’ and ‘devotedness’ [“Sorgfalt”, “Hingabe”].

Thus, by our ontological Interpretation of Dasein, we have been brought to the existential conception of care from Dasein’s pre-ontological interpretation of itself as ‘care’.

The question of the meaning of Being becomes possible at all only if there is something like an understanding of Being. Understanding of Being belongs to the kind of Being which the entity called “Dasein” possesses.

“Reality” gets defined as “the character of resisting”,

Resistance characterizes the ‘external world’ in the sense of entities within-the-world, but never in the sense of the world itself. ‘Consciousness

From time immemorial, philosophy has associated truth and Being.

Our analysis takes its departure from the traditional conception of truth, and attempts to lay bare the ontological foundations of that conception (a). In terms of these foundations the primordial phenomenon of truth becomes visible. We can then exhibit the way in which the traditional conception of truth has been derived from this phenomenon (b). Our investigation will make it plain that to the question of the ‘essence’ of truth, there belongs necessarily the question of the kind of Being which truth possesses. Together with this we must clarify the ontological meaning of the kind of talk in which we say that ‘there is truth’, and we must also clarify the kind of necessity with which ‘we must presuppose’ that ‘there is’ truth (c).

“truth” as ‘agreement’.(1)

The explanation of the name of truth—namely, that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object—will here be granted and presupposed…’(xxxi)

What in general does one have in view when one uses the term ‘agreement’? The agreement of something with something has the formal character of a relation of something to something. Every agreement, and therefore ‘truth’ as well, is a relation. But not every relation is an agreement.

To say that an assertion “is true” signifies that it uncovers the entity as it is in itself. Such an assertion asserts, points out, ‘lets’ the entity ‘be seen’ (ἀπόφανσις) in its uncoveredness. The Being-true (truth) of the assertion must be understood as Being-uncovering*. Thus truth has by no means the structure of an agreement between knowing and the object in the sense of a likening of one entity (the subject) to another (the Object).

Nevertheless, the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems.

The Possibility of Experiencing the Death of Others,

Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is experienced by those who remain.