38 INT. II
Being and Time

In this everydayness there are certain structures [17] which we shall exhibit-not just any accidental structures, but essential ones which, in every kind of Being that factical Dasein may possess, persist as determinative for the character of its Being. Thus by having regard for the basic state of Dasein's everydayness, we shall bring out the Being of this entity in a preparatory fashion.

When taken in this way, the analytic of Dasein remains wholly oriented towards the guiding task of working out the question of Being. Its limits are thus determined. It cannot attempt to provide a complete ontology of Dasein, which assuredly must be constructed if anything like a 'philosophical' anthropology is to have a philosophically adequate basis.1

If our purpose is to make such an anthropology possible, or to lay its ontological foundations, our Interpretation will provide only some of the 'pieces', even though they are by no means inessential ones. Our analysis of Dasein, however, is not only incomplete; it is also, in the first instance, provisional. It merely brings out the Being of this entity, without Interpreting its meaning. It is rather a preparatory procedure by which the horizon for the most primordial way of interpreting Being may be laid bare. Once we have arrived at that horizon, this preparatory analytic of Dasein will have to be repeated on a higher and authentically ontological basis.

We shall point to temporality2 as the meaning of the Being of that entity which we call "Dasein". If this is to be demonstrated, those structures of Dasein which we shall provisionally exhibit must be Interpreted over again as modes of temporality. In thus interpreting Dasein as temporality, however, we shall not give the answer to our leading question as to the meaning of Being in general. But the ground will have been prepared for obtaining such an answer.


1 The ambiguity of the pronominal references in this sentence and the one before it, reflects a similar ambiguity in the German. (The English-speaking reader should be reminded that the kind of philosophical 'anthropology' which Heidegger has in mind is a study of man in the widest sense, and is not to be confused with the empirical sciences of 'physical' and 'cultural' anthropology.)

2 'Zeitlichkeit'. 'While it is tempting to translate the adjective 'zeitlich' and the noun 'Zeitlichkeit' by their most obvious English cognates, 'timely' and 'timeliness', this would be entirely misleading; for 'temporal' and 'temporality' come much closer to what Heidegger has in mind, not only when he is discussing these words in their popular senses (as he does on the following page) but even when he is using them in his own special sense, as in Section 65 below. (See especially H. 326 below, where 'Zeitlichkeit' is defined.) On the other hand, he occasionally uses the noun 'Temporalität' and the adjective 'temporal' in a sense which he will explain later (H. 19). We shall translate these by 'Temporality' and 'Temporal', with initial capitals.


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger