Pre-logical manifestness is a fundamental occurrence of Dasein. This fundamental occurrence is characterized by three things: bringing the binding character of things toward oneself, completion, and the unveiling of the being of beings. We are claiming that Aristotle, in tracing the λόγος back to σύνθεσις and σύνθεσις, moved in the direction of this intrinsically articulated fundamental occurrence, without having seen this structural context as such. We also recognize this fundamental occurrence in its peculiar relational character, as we shall see, as that in which the 'as' and the 'as' -structure are rooted. We have moved from λόγος to world, world grasped formally as the manifestness of beings as such as a whole, so that the question arises as to why we did not start out directly from this initially formal definition of world and then proceed directly to the interpretation of its structure, instead of choosing a detour via the λόγος. We have seen that λόγος, ratio, reason, is what has dominated the entire problematic of metaphysics precisely with respect to the problem of world which failed to come to light. If we wish to free ourselves from this tradition in one respect, then this does not mean somehow pushing it aside and leaving it behind us. Rather all liberation from something is genuine only when it masters and appropriates whatever it is liberating itself from. Liberation from the tradition is an ever new appropriation of its newly recognized strengths. For this major step, however, which we are convinced metaphysics must take for the future, some sort of cleverness and acumen, or philosophical discoveries we think we have made, are not sufficient. Rather if we understand anything of this task at all, then it is this: that it is possible only on the basis of a transformation of Dasein itself. We have taken two paths that serve this transformation and its preparation. In the first part of the lecture course we took the path of awakening a fundamental attunement, while in the second part we took the path of dealing with a concrete problem without relating it to the fundamental attunement. The two paths now merge, yet do so in such a way that we are not thereby forcibly bringing about a transformation of our Dasein or effecting it in any sense, but only ever preparing it—which is all that philosophy can do.
§75. The 'as a whole' as the world, and the enigmatic distinction
between being and beings.
We shall summarize the state of our interpretation of the phenomenon of world anew and somewhat more concisely. We do so in order to gain a view of the unitary primordial structure of this fundamental occurrence underlying the λόγος. In understanding this originary structure of this fundamental occurrence of Dasein, we shall comprehend what is meant by the thesis that man, in the essence and ground of his Dasein, is world-forming.