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§67 [404-405]

From this quite rough and ready characterization of the specific manner of being that belongs to living nature we can already see that in future we must not permit ourselves to speak of the totality of beings as if this were a collection of certain realms or other. Accordingly, the manifoldness of the various specific manners of being with respect to their possible unity poses a quite specific problem, one that can only be tackled as a problem once we have developed a satisfactory concept of world.

The characterization given here is itself only a first rough indication of a perspective on a problem that we can hardly imagine, but one that we may only dare to enter philosophically once we have grasped that the ineluctable presupposition for doing so is an adequate unfolding of the problem of world and thus of the problem of finitude.


§67. The question concerning the occurrence of
manifestness as the point of departure for the question
concerning world. Return of the question concerning
world-formation and world to the direction disclosed
by the interpretation of profound boredom.


We wish to develop this problem in the direction in which we began, namely with our three theses, i.e., we wish to proceed from and advance upon what we discovered in examining the second thesis. According to our investigation the accessibility of beings, and indeed of beings as such, is one characteristic of world. The essence of world is not exhausted by this determination. Indeed, the question is whether this characteristic announces anything of the innermost essence of world or is only a determination that follows from this essence. For now we shall leave this on one side and consider something else.

When we say that world is amongst other things the accessibility of beings, then we already thereby contradict the so-called natural concept of world. By 'world' we usually mean the entirety of beings, everything that there is, taken together. A human being comes into the world and catches sight of the light of the world. That means that he himself becomes a being among the other beings, and indeed in such a way that he himself as a human being finds before him these other beings and himself among them. World—this here means the sum of beings in themselves, and implicitly so, because this seems the most natural thing: all beings in the factical undifferentiatedness of everydayness.

Yet clearly the concept of world which we have indicated does not mean this, but means the accessibility of beings as such rather than beings in themselves. According to this, beings do indeed also belong to world, but only insofar as they are accessible, insofar as beings themselves allow and enable something of the kind. This is true only if beings as such can become manifest.


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

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