V


BEING-IN AS SUCH


28. The Task of a Thematic Analysis of Being-in

IN the preparatory stage of the existential analytic of Dasein, we have for our leading theme this entity's basic state, Being-in-the-World. Our first aim is to bring into relief phenomenally the unitary primordial structure of Dasein's Being, in terms of which its possibilities and the ways for it 'to be' are ontologically determined. Up till now, our phenomenal characterization of Being-in-the-world has been directed towards the world, as a structural item of Being-in-the-world, and has attempted to provide an answer to the question about the "who" of this entity in its everydayness. But even in [131] first marking out the tasks of a preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein, we have already provided an advance orientation as to Being-in as such, and have illustrated it in the concrete mode of knowing the world.

The fact that we foresaw this structural item which carries so much weight, arose from our aim of setting the analysis of single items, from the outset, within the frame of a steady preliminary view of the structural whole, and of guarding against any disruption or fragmentation of the unitary phenomenon. Now, keeping in mind what has been achieved in the concrete analysis of the world and the "who", we must turn our Interpretation back to the phenomenon of Being-in. By considering this more penetratingly, however, we shall not only get a new and surer phenomenological view of the structural totality of Being-in-the-world, but shall also pave the way to grasping the primordial Being of Dasein itself—namely, care.

But what more is there to point out in Being-in-the-world, beyond the essential relations of Being alongside the world (concern), Being-with (solicitude), and Being-one's-Self ("who")? If need be, there still remains the possibility of broadening out the analysis by characterizing comparatively the variations of concern and its circumspection, of solicitude and the considerateness which goes with it; there is also the possibility of contrasting Dasein with entities whose character is not that of Dasein by a more precise explication of the Being of all possible entities within-the-world.


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger page 169