PART ONE

DIVISION ONE: The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Da-sein continued...

'Being-in-the-World'
II. Being-in-the-World in General as the Fundamental Constitution of Da-sein

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'Preliminary Sketch'
§12: A Preliminary Sketch of Being-in-the-World in Terms of the Orientation towards Being-in as Such [53-59]

Recapitulation (ref. §9):

• The 'essence' of Da-sein 'lies in its to be... its existence'
• The being of Da-sein is always 'my own'.

These determinations are grounded, a priori, in the unified existential 'being-in-the-world'. Though being-in-the-world cannot be broken into component parts it has 'structural factors' to be investigated in turn, viz.:

• 'In-the-world': i.e. the ontological structure of 'world' and 'worldliness' (ch. III)
• Who is in-the-world (ch. IV)
• 'Being-in' as such (ch. V).

Da-sein's being-in-the-world is an existential with the sense of 'dwelling in', rather than a description of location. It is what makes the world 'our home'. In contrast, objectively present beings are spatially related to each other ('the water is 'in' the glass'). They can seemingly 'touch' each other but they certainly cannot encounter each other, since they are 'worldless'.

However, Da-sein, though not worldless, can legitimately be understood as merely objectively present, and in two ways:

1. Da-sein can be taken as merely occurrent when the existential constitution of being-in is disregarded (Dreyfus, 1991: 44) indicates that this seems to be an oblique reference to the body)
2. Each Da-sein has its own kind of objective presence by virtue of its specific, factical engagement with the world and with particular equipment within the world. The way in which each Da-sein actually is Heidegger calls its 'facticity'.

Da-sein's being-in-the-world takes many forms. Underlying all of them is a way of being that Heidegger calls 'taking care of'. 'Care' is the way Da-sein comports itself to the world: indifference is strictly not possible.

Being-in is not a 'quality' that Da-sein sometimes does without. It cannot sometimes be free from being-in and then, at will, take up a 'relation' to the world.

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'Knowing isn't Everything'
§13: The Exemplification of Being-in in a Founded Mode: Knowing the World [60-62]

The classical picture of being human is predicated on a relation between 'subject' and 'object': underlying this way of being is knowledge of the world. But knowing, for Heidegger, is 'a mode of being of Da-sein as being-in-the-world', i.e. just one mode of being, of which there are others (all characterised by 'care').

For Heidegger knowing is a setting aside of other ways of having to do with the world - 'a refusal of every manipulation and use' - and simply 'lingering'. Thus dwelling together with beings in the world, 'perception' occurs as an 'addressing and discussing something as something', then 'interpretation in the broadest sense' allows 'perception' to become 'definition' and this, expressed in propositions, 'can be maintained and preserved'.

Despite his stress on practical involvement in the world it is not Heidegger's intention to replace knowledge with activity. Rather, he indicates that both knowing and doing alike are possible only on the basis of a more fundamental, everyday coping and this is not a relationship (active or passive) between a subject and objects 'out there'. By making 'knowing' just one mode of being-in-the-world he can declare that Da-sein is always 'outside' in whatever it does. 'In knowing, Da-sein gains a new perspective of being towards the world always already discovered in Da-sein. This... can be independently developed... and take over the guidance for being-in-the-world. But knowing neither first creates a 'commercium' of the subject with the world, nor does this commercium originate from an effect of the world on a subject. Knowing is a mode of Da-sein which is founded in being-in-the-world.'

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