'Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all... Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of being...
But the reasons for making this our aim, the investigations which such a purpose requires, and the path to its achievement, call for some introductory remarks.' [1]
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Heidegger's introductory remarks are presented in two sections. The first discusses the nature of the question concerning the meaning of being and the second describes the phenomenological method that he employs to further his analysis.
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Before trying to formulate it, Heidegger deals with three objections that the question of the meaning of being need not - perhaps cannot - be asked at all. The reasons given are that being is:
The concept of being is universal
This suggests that being is merely one abstract concept amongst others (though admittedly the most general one). It is abstracted from our everyday experiences of specific beings and is unworthy of particular analysis.
Heidegger willingly accepts that the concept of being is universal. We do glimpse the meaning of being in apprehending the existence of any and every particular being in the world. Indeed, to use the word 'is' means that we possess this knowledge.
However that does not mean that the issue is clear. Being is emphatically not like any other concept since it is not itself a being nor a 'property' of beings. In short, quoting Aristotle: 'Being is not a genus.' Consequently of all concepts it is 'the most obscure' and certainly worthy of further consideration.
The concept of being is indefinable
Since being is so general a concept (there is nothing to which it does not refer) it might be thought that it is devoid of definable content. How can this most general concept of all be defined in the classical way, that is by reference to other things ('the proximate genus and the specific difference')? It cannot.
However, this does not diminish the importance of the concept, nor the need to question its meaning. It simply makes plain the need for an alternative way - a non-classical way - of pursuing the issue. It also reinforces the point that being is not itself a being (entity). Dreyfus cautions against a consequent temptation to understand being as some sort of event. He declares: 'To think of being in terms of concepts like entity, or process, or event is equally misleading.' (Dreyfus, 1991: 11)
The concept of being is self-evident
The tension of 'living in an understanding of being' and yet not being able to render an account of it shows the need to ask about the meaning of being. The concept is self-evident in some sense (it is in what Dreyfus calls 'our everyday background practices'(Dreyfus, 1991: 11)) but it still remains 'shrouded in darkness'.
So the question can, and should, be asked, though in the correct way.
To ask a question presupposes certain things. Heidegger declares that you need to know:
Knowing something about the answer
This has already been hinted at. That we have an 'average and vague understanding of being is a fact'. It may not yet be possible to determine conceptually what 'is' means, but it doesn't stop the word from being used all the time and anyway, less tritely, our ordinary existence necessarily requires us to have an understanding of being. We do know how 'to be', as our everyday living makes clear. Yet this 'understanding' falls well short of a thematic ontology and is therefore termed 'pre-ontological' by Heidegger.
(Within the opening pages of 'Being and Time' it is quickly declared that 'time' is the correct orientation for finding an answer. Also that the answer must be sought in an analysis of human interactions with the world, since it is for human beings alone that being is an issue.)
Knowing what can be interrogated
It is beings themselves that are 'interrogated with regard to their being'.
Heidegger is at pains to describe the method by which an answer can be sought. The method is phenomenological, which he sums up in the phrase: 'To the things themselves'. Things 'are' in a variety of ways so Heidegger establishes that it is the analysis of human beings in the world (Da-sein) that takes priority. Consequently an 'explication of Da-sein with regard to its being' is pursued throughout Part One of 'Being and Time' (which, in fact, amounts to the whole of the published work).
Knowing what is to be asked about
It is being that is asked about - 'that in terms of which beings have already been understood' (recast by Dreyfus as 'the intelligibility correlative with our everyday background practices' (Dreyfus, 1991: 10))- and this is itself not a being. The consequence of this is that we do not seek an answer by searching out 'beings as beings by tracing them back in their origins to another being', which amounts to not 'telling a story' to explain being.
Knowing what is to be ascertained
Insight into the meaning of being is to be gained. Since being is itself not a being, the meaning of being requires its own conceptualisation, essentially different from the meaning of beings. (Though what this might look like is not clear at this stage.)
All areas of knowledge work with their own 'fundamental' concepts and principles. These are, in the first instance, half-known features of ordinary experience which, on closer analysis, furnish the building blocks for thematised inquiry. Underlying these more or less well-defined studies there is, necessarily, a foundation of insight into knowing (and all other human 'coping') itself. Understanding what it means to be scientific, to be moral, to be historical requires insight into being itself. Such understanding enjoys ontological priority.
'Da-sein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings'. Indeed, Heidegger would have it that it is only human beings (understood in the special sense in which he uses the word Da-sein) that can be said to exist (stand out) at all. It is for Da-sein alone to 'understand itself in terms of its existence, in terms of its possibility to be itself or not to be itself'. However this does not presuppose a structured (i.e. existential) understanding of what constitutes existence. It is just something that people do, since all possess 'background practices' (i.e. implicit ways to be), acknowledged or not, regardless of how they have been acquired.
Structures that describe the existence of Da-sein (or of anything else) are created by people. Inescapably, therefore, the task of creating them has in-built limitations, prescribed by 'the ontic constitution of Da-sein.' A fundamental limitation is that everyday practices are not explicit nor the subject of even hidden beliefs. Rather, they are just the way things are done within a given social setting and are not more than embodied skills and habits.
The goal of 'Being and Time' is to understand the meaning of being in general, i.e. to create a fundamental ontology. That the whole of the published work is, in fact, devoted to an analysis of human existence is not off-the-point because Heidegger stresses repeatedly that it is only Da-sein's understanding of how-to-be in a world that gives any access to the being of other things ('of equipment, of objects, of institutions, of people, etc.' (Dreyfus, 1991: 28)) and allows them to show themselves as they are. Indeed if Da-sein's way-to-be is not explicitly incorporated into the investigation then the analysis will inevitably assume some particular human way of being and the project will be undermined from the start. Therefore Da-sein must be interrogated first.