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Heidegger summarises his complex discussion thus far:
The average everydayness of Da-sein can thus be determined as entangled-disclosed, thrown-projecting being-in-the-world which is concerned with its ownmost potentiality in its being together with the 'world' and in being-with the others.' (His emphasis.)
How is this to be grasped as one? Not by piecing parts together, we are emphatically assured. Rather, through a particular understanding attunement which will disclose Da-sein to itself in a 'simplified' way. The distinctive attunement Heidegger chooses is anxiety (Angst). In anxiety the 'primordial totality of being of Da-sein' is revealed to be 'care'.
Setting out the direction of the coming discussion Heidegger indicates that in considering our starting question - the question of the meaning of being in general - we will further clarify elements previously described (e.g. handiness, objective presence) which will lead to a 'more exact determination of the concept of reality'. This requires an 'ontological clarification of the phenomenon of truth'.
A careful look at the (ontic) experience and (ontological) phenomenon of anxiety (Angst) helps to reveal the unified structure of being-in-the-world in a distinctive, simplified way.
Earlier (§30), Heidegger analysed fear, a phenomenon that is clearly related to anxiety. In fear Da-sein flies from some definite, localised, threatening innerwordly being. 'Flight from...' also characterises Da-sein's trajectory as it falls prey to 'the they and the 'world' taken care of' (§38), but this is not a flight based on the fear of innerworldly beings. Instead it is a turning towards innerwordly beings as Da-sein becomes absorbed in them. Anxiety underlies all such flight since 'the turning away of falling prey is... based on Angst which in turn... makes fear possible'. In anxiety Da-sein flies from the threat of no definite thing. In this state every thing shows itself to be utterly irrelevant. When anxiety passes we are inclined to say, truthfully: 'It was really nothing'. What anxiety is about is 'nothing and nowhere'.
Heidegger sees past this 'nothing and nowhere' (it 'is not a total nothing' he says, and is so near that it is 'oppressive and stifles one's breath') to realise that what Da-sein shrinks from is being-in-the-world itself, and since this is Da-sein's very being he can say that we are oppressed by, and turn away from, ourselves.
If it seems paradoxical to try to gain a better view of Da-sein by investigating a phenomenon in which it turns precisely away from itself it remains an appropriate approach. For if Da-sein turns away from itself this unequivocally demonstrates that there is something from which it turns. And since that from which anxious Da-sein turns is itself then a careful investigation of this particular phenomenon permits anxiety's distinctive disclosure to be developed into an interpretation of Da-sein in its being. By disclosing Da-sein's being-in-the-world as a whole through the primordial experience of being anxious we will avoid misleading artificial conceptions (e.g. of the self) and our interpretation will be genuinely phenomonological.
Since being anxious is about nothing definite, Da-sein is also anxious for nothing definite. Indeed, the 'world' and others are irrelevant in the face of anxiety so that no concrete potentiality can be jeopardised. Instead Da-sein is anxious for its very being-in-the-world, in particular its ownmost potentiality-for-being. Temporarily unable to fall back into an average everyday understanding, Da-sein's anxiety reveals its own individual 'being-possible' and in doing so manifests its awful freedom.
Attunement always reveals 'where you're at'. The particular attunement of anxiety has an 'uncanny' feeling and the character of not-being-at-home. In its everyday fallen state Da-sein is at home taking care of things, lost in the tranquillized self-assurance of the they, but Angst fetches it back and '(e)veryday familiarity collapses'. Da-sein is individuated, wrested back from being-at-home to its more primordial (if far less commonly felt) condition of not-being-at-home, revealing authenticity and inauthenticity as possibilities of its ownmost being.
Anxiety is not the only illuminating mood. Polt identifies others ('delight in the existence of someone we love... profound joy and profound ennui... boredom' (Polt, 1999, 77)) and Heidegger reminds us that every kind of attunement is potentially revealing. However it is the individualising character of anxiety that makes it an eminent means to disclose Da-sein's unified being-in-the-world.
Anxiety shows Da-sein's being-in-the-world to be characterised by existentiality, facticity and falling prey. Although not a metaphor that Heidegger develops he uses the word 'woven' to hint at how these characteristics are combined. What he does not do is speak of these three 'woven together' as if each was a separate and separable thread. Rather, 'a primordial content is woven in them which constitutes the totality of the structural whole that we are seeking'; as if they are revealed in the pattern of the whole fabric or in its very texture.
I am at all times free to project myself into the future, and must always do so. (Anxiety reveals this because it is my potentiality-for-being-in-the-world for which I am anxious.) In always already comparing myself with a possibility of myself I am ahead of myself. This being concerned about its being Heidegger calls the 'being-ahead-of-itself' of Da-sein.
Though always ahead of myself I am at the same time always grounded by who I have already become. My existence is always my own, thrown in a particular way with a particular past. (Anxiety makes this plain because it is precisely my own being-in-the-world about which I become anxious.) To take account of this Heidegger modifies his formulation of the structure of Da-sein's being: it is 'being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world'.
If being anxious affords me a brief, uncanny, 'not-at-home' moment of illumination I will quickly fall back into my normal entangled relationship with the ready-to-hand objects of my everyday world. This flight back to the reassuring 'being-together-with innerworldly things at hand taken care of' (and to the 'at-homeness made plain in the explanations given by them' (King, 2001: 96)) is 'not merely accidental and occasional; it is constant and basic' (King, 2001: 96).
So with all three characteristics of Da-sein's being noted Heidegger can finally state its complete, unified nature, namely 'being-ahead-of-oneself-already-in (the world) as being-together-with (innerworldly beings encountered)'.
This is 'care'.
Care is an ontological, existential term. In this sense I take care of things, and show concern for others and for myself (though this last statement is tautological). Ontic choices may range from the careful or concerned to the careless or carefree but, positive or negative, they all lie somewhere on a scale that is rightly labelled 'care'.
Heidegger presents an ancient myth, ostensibly as confirmation of his interpretation of Da-sein's nature. In the story Care moulds clay, an offering of Earth, into human form and Jupiter animates it. The three protagonists quarrel over the new creature's name so Saturn arbitrates and names it homo, 'for it is made out of humus'.
Mulhall understands the myth as a 'perspicuous representation of everything preceding it' (Mulhall, 1996: 111). It encapsulates, he suggests, the understanding that human existence is 'a matter of being fated to a self and to a world of other selves and objects about which one cannot choose not to be concerned' (Mulhall, 1996: 111).
This curious little section lies at the centre of the book and looks as much forward as back. Mulhall sees in the authoritative figure of Saturn a fore-shadowing of the principal theme of the investigation to follow in Division II, for he is, after all, the god of Time.