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Kant’s critique of traditional metaphysics (see extract 8, above) aimed finally to lay to rest the claims of philosophers to describe the ultimate nature of reality as it is in itself. Many of those who followed him continued to practise metaphysics, and still sought to provide a general philosophical overview of the world and our place in it, but the characteristic orientation of these inquiries now tended to allow a central role to human consciousness (compare, for example, Hegel’s account of knowledge as a gradual historical progression towards full self-consciousness: see Part I, extract 9, above). In the early twentieth century the German philosopher Martin Heidegger reintroduced the fundamental question of ‘Being’ as the chief topic of philosophy. In his monumental work Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927), Heidegger insisted that the question of being must be prior to all other philosophical inquiries. In this he was partly harking back to Aristotle’s notion of a general metaphysics of being qua being, a general ‘ontology’ mapping out the fundamental categories of being, over and above the detailed descriptions of the particular sciences (see introduction to Part II, above). ‘Ontological inquiry,’ as Heidegger put it, ‘is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences’.

But Heidegger’s metaphysics focuses on a special kind of being, that characteristic of the human subject. His approach to philosophy forms part of what has come to be known as existentialism – an approach which starts not from the objective definitions or essences of things, but from the immediate predicament of the existing human being as he or she confronts the world (on this conception, as the famous slogan has it, ‘existence is prior to essence’¹). Heidegger’s ontology thus gives pride of place to our own understanding of ourselves as existing beings in the world, ‘the understanding of oneself which we call existentiell’. Heidegger’s special (and untranslatable) name for the existing human subject is Dasein (literally ‘There-being’). We are, prior to all neat objective classifications and comfortable explanations, simply there; we find ourselves thrown into the world (Geworfenheit or ‘thrownness’ is, as Heidegger puts it, the ‘characteristic of Dasein’s being’).

This characterization of the human predicament is far from a comfortable one. In common with other existentialist philosophers, Heidegger traces the vulnerability and alienation, a kind of vertigo,² that arises from the awareness of our raw existence in the world. But he also offers an account of our relationship to the world that is in a certain sense less alienating than seeing the world around us in terms of the abstract mathematical category of ‘extended substance’ (see above, extract 3). For Heidegger, the world is encountered in fundamentally human terms. In our dealings with the world we come across ‘gear’ or ‘tackle’ (Zeug): ‘equipment for writing, sewing, transport, measurement …’ We encounter a room ‘not as something between four walls (in the geometrical, spatial sense) but as equipment for residing’. The being of objects is thus a function of what Heidegger calls their ‘readiness-to-hand’ (e.g. a hammer exists not as an object with abstract physical properties, but in the context of its use and function, in terms of our human concerns). This practical slant to Heidegger’s ontology makes it importantly different from those rather austere earlier metaphysical systems which had aimed to delineate the objective essences of things in abstraction from the human perspective (compare extracts 3 and 4 above). To exist as a human being is, for Heidegger, already to be involved in specific projects and concerns; Heideggerian metaphysics thus turns out in the end to be not an abstract study of being, but rather an enterprise where understanding and valuing are inextricably intertwined. In coming to terms with the world we are drawn into a practical community of other involved agents, and thus into ‘solicitous concern for others’ – what Heidegger calls Sorge, or ‘Caring’.

The question of Being has today been forgotten. Even though in our time we deem it progressive to give our approval to ‘metaphysics’ again, it is here that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled ‘battle of the giants concerning being’. Yet the question we are touching upon is not just any question. It is one which provided a stimulus for the researches of Plato and Aristotle, only to subside from then on as a theme for actual investigation …

Inquiry, as a kind of seeking, must be guided beforehand by what is sought. So the meaning of Being must already be available to us in some way… We always conduct our activities in an understanding of being. Out of this understanding arise both the explicit question of the meaning of Being, and the tendency that leads us towards its conception. We do not know what being means. But even if we ask ‘What is “Being”?’, we keep within an understanding of the ‘is’, though we are unable to fix conceptually what that ‘is’ signifies. We do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average understanding of Being is still a fact …

… The positive outcome of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason lies in what it has contributed towards the working out of what belongs to any Nature whatsoever, not in a ‘theory’ of knowledge. His transcendental logic is an a priori logic for the subject-matter of that area of Being called ‘Nature’.

But such an inquiry itself – ontology taken in the widest sense without favouring any particular ontological directions or tendencies – requires a further clue. Ontological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains itself naïve and opaque if in its researches into the Being of entities it fails to discuss the different possible ways of Being in general. And the ontological task of the genealogy of the different possible ways of Being (which is not to be constructed deductively) is precisely of such a sort as to require that we first come to an understanding of ‘what we mean by this expression “Being”’.

The question of Being aims, therefore, at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and in so doing already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences, and which provide their foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its utmost aim if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task …

Science in general may be defined as the totality established through an interconnection of true propositions. This definition is not complete, nor does it reach the meaning of science. As ways in which man behaves, sciences have the manner of Being which this entity – man himself – possesses. This entity we denote by the term Dasein. Scientific research is not the only manner of Being which this entity can have, nor is it the one which lies closest. Moreover, Dasein itself has a special distinctiveness as compared with other entities, and it is worth our while to bring this to view in a provisional way…

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive state of Dasein’s Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards that Being – a relationship which itself is one of Being. And this means further that there is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with it and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological …

That kind of Being towards which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow, we call existence. And because we cannot define Dasein’s essence by citing a ‘what’ of the kind that pertains to a subject-matter, and because its essence lies rather in the fact that in each case it has its Being to be, and has it as its own, we have chosen to designate this entity as ‘Dasein’, a term which is purely an expression of its Being.

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, or grown up in them already. Only the particular Dasein decides its existence, whether it does so by taking hold or by neglecting. The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself. The understanding of oneself which leads along this way we call existentiell. The question of existence is one of Dasein’s ontical ‘affairs’…

Sciences are ways of Being in which Dasein comports itself towards entities which it need not be itself. But to Dasein, Being in the world is something that belongs essentially. Thus Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primordiality both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’ and to the understanding of the Being of those entities which become accessible within the world. So whenever an ontology takes for its theme entities whose character of Being is other than that of Dasein, it has its own foundation and motivation in Dasein’s own ontical structure, in which a pre-ontological understanding of Being is comprised as a definite characteristic.

Therefore fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein…

The Being of those entities which we encounter as closest to us can be exhibited phenomenologically if we take as our clue our everyday Being-in-the-world, which we also call our ‘dealings’ in the world and with entities within-the-world. Such dealings have already dispersed themselves into manifold ways of concern. The kind of dealing which is closest to us is … not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of ‘knowledge’. The phenomenological question applies in the first instance to the Being of those entities which we encounter in such concern. To assure the kind of seeing which is here required, we must first make a remark about method.

In the disclosure and explication of Being, entities are in every case our preliminary and our accompanying theme; but our real theme is Being. In the domain of the present analysis, the entities we shall take as our preliminary theme are those which show themselves in our concern with the environment. Such entities are not thereby objects for knowing the ‘world’ theoretically; they are simply what gets used, what gets produced, and so forth. As entities so encountered, they become the preliminary theme of the purview of a ‘knowing’ which, as phenomenological, looks primarily towards Being, and which, in thus taking Being as its theme, takes these entities as its accompanying theme. This phenomenological interpretation is accordingly not a way of knowing those characteristics of entities which themselves are; it is rather a determination of the structure of the Being which entities possess. But as an investigation of Being, it brings to completion, autonomously and explicitly, that understanding of Being which belongs already to Dasein and which comes alive in any of its dealings with entities. Those entities which serve phenomenologically as our preliminary theme, in this case those which are used, or which are to be found in the course of production, become accessible when we put ourselves into the position of concerning ourselves with them in some such way. Taken strictly, this talk about ‘putting ourselves into such a position’ is misleading; for the kind of Being which belongs to such concernful dealings is not one into which we need to put ourselves first. This is the way in which everyday Dasein always is: when I open the door, for example, I use the latch. The achieving of phenomenological access to the entities which we encounter consists rather in thrusting aside our interpretative tendencies, which keep thrusting themselves upon us and running along with us, and which conceal not only the phenomenon of such concern, but even more those entities themselves as encountered of their own accord in our concern with them. These entangling errors become plain if in the course of our investigation we now ask which entities shall be taken as our preliminary theme and established as the pre-phenomenal basis for our study.

One may answer: ‘Things’. But with this obvious answer we have perhaps already missed the pre-phenomenal basis we are seeking. For in addressing these entities as ‘Things’ (res) we have tacitly anticipated their ontological character. When analysis starts with such entities and goes on to inquire about Being, what it meets is Thinghood and Reality. Ontological explication discovers, as it proceeds, such characteristics of Being as substantiality, materiality, extendedness, side-by-sideness and so forth. But even pre-ontologically, in such Being as this, the entities which we encounter in concern are proximally hidden. When one designates Things as the entities that are ‘proximally given’, one goes ontologically astray, even though ontically one has something else in mind. What one really has in mind remains undetermined. But suppose one characterizes these ‘Things’ as Things ‘invested with value’? What does ‘value’ mean ontologically? How are we to categorize this ‘investing’ and Being invested? Disregarding the obscurity of this structure of investiture with value, have we thus met that phenomenal characteristic of Being which belongs to what we encounter in our concernful dealings?

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

Taken strictly, then, there is no such thing as an equipment. To the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment is essentially ‘something-in-order-to …’ A totality of equipment is constituted by various ways of the ‘in-order-to’, such as serviceability, conduciveness, usability, manipulability.

In the ‘in-order-to’ as a structure there lies an assignment or reference of something to something … Equipment, in accordance with its equipmentality, always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These ‘Things’ never show themselves proximally as they are for themselves, so as to add up to a sum of realia and fill up a room. What we encounter as closest to us (though not as something taken as a theme) is the room; and we encounter it not as something ‘between four walls’ in a geometrical sense, but as equipment for residing. Out of this the ‘arrangement’ emerges, and it is in this that any individual item of equipment shows itself. Before it does so, a totality of equipment has already been discovered.

Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure – hammering with a hammer for example. But in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the ‘in-order-to’ which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is – as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ (Handlichkeit), of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses, in which it manifests itself in its own right, we call readiness-to-hand [Zuhandenheit] …

Being with Others belongs to the Being of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being. Thus as Being-with, Dasein ‘is’ essentially for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential statement as to its essence. Even if the particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, and supposes that it has no need of them or manages to get along with them, it is in the way of Being-with. In Being with, as the existential ‘for the sake of’ of Others, these have already been disclosed in their Dasein. With the Being-with, their disclosedness has been constituted beforehand; accordingly this disclosedness also goes to make up significance, that is to say, worldhood. And, significance, as worldhood, is tied up with the existential ‘for the sake of which’. Since the worldhood of that world in which every Dasein essentially is already, is thus constituted, it accordingly lets us encounter what is environmentally ready-to-hand as something with which we are circumspectively concerned, and it does so in such a way that together with it we encounter the Dasein-with of Others. The structure of the world’s worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world.

Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others belongs to it; this means that because Dasein’s Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of Being, which, more that anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible. Knowing oneself is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It operates proximately in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us – Being in the world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with – an acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus, in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed …

What we indicate ontologically by the term ‘state of mind’ is ontically the most familiar and everyday sort of thing; our mood, our Being-attuned. Prior to all psychology of moods … it is necessary to see this phenomenon as a fundamental existentiale, and to outline its structure …

In having a mood, Dasein is always disclosed moodwise as that entity to which it has been delivered over in its Being; and in this way it has been delivered over to the Being which, in existing, it has to be. ‘To be disclosed’ does not mean ‘to be known as this sort of thing’. And even in the most indifferent and inoffensive everydayness, the Being of Dasein can burst forth as a naked ‘that it is and has to be’. The pure ‘that is’ shows itself, but the ‘whence’ and the ‘whither’ remain in darkness. The fact that it is just as everyday a matter for Dasein not to ‘give in’ to such moods, in other words not to follow up their disclosure and allow itself to be brought before that which is disclosed, is no evidence against the phenomenal facts of the case, in which the Being of the ‘there’ is disclosed moodwise in its ‘that it is’; it is rather evidence for it. In an ontico-existentiell sense, Dasein for the most part evades the Being which is disclosed in the mood. In an ontologico-existential sense this means that even in that to which such a mood pays no attention, Dasein is unveiled in its Being-delivered-over to the ‘there’. In the evasion of itself, the ‘there’ is something disclosed.

This characteristic of Dasein’s being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly. We call this the thrownness of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the ‘there’…An entity of the character of Dasein is its ‘there’ in such a way that, whether explicitly or not, it finds itself in its thrownness. In a state-of-mind, Dasein is always brought before itself, and has always found itself, not in the sense of coming across itself by perceiving itself, but in the sense of finding itself in the mood that it has.