192 I. 5
Being and Time

something presented to us.1 If, when one is engaged in a particular concrete kind of interpretation, in the sense of exact textual Interpretation, one likes to appeal [beruft] to what 'stands there', then one finds that what 'stands there' in the first instance is nothing other than the obvious undiscussed assumption [V ormeinung] of the person who does the interpreting. In an interpretative approach there lies such an assumption, as that which has been 'taken for granted' ["gesetzt"] with the interpretation as such—that is to say, as that which has been presented in our fore-having, our fore-sight, and our fore-conception.

How are we to conceive the character of this 'fore'? Have we done so if we say foqnally that this is something 'a priori'? Why does understanding, which we have designated as a fundamental existentiale of Dasein, have [151] this structure as its own? Anything interpreted, as something interpreted, has the 'as'-structure as its own; and how is this related to the 'fore' structure? The phenomenon of the 'as' -structure is manifestly not to be dissolved or broken up 'into pieces'. But is a primordial analytic for it thus ruled out? Are we to concede that such phenomena are 'ultimates'? Then there would still remain the question, "why?" Or do the forestructure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation show an existential-ontological connection with the phenomenon of projection? And does this phenomenon point back to a primordial state of Dasein's Being?

Before we answer these questions, for which the preparation up till now has been far from sufficient, we must investigate whether what has become visible as the fore-structure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation, does not itself already present us with a unitary phenomenon—one of which copious use is made in philosophical problematics, though what is used so universally falls short of the primordiality of ontological explication.

In the projecting of the understanding, entities are disclosed in their possibility. The character of the possibility corresponds, on each occasion, with the kind of Being of the entity which is understood. Entities within-the-world generally are projected upon the world-that is, upon a whole of significance, to whose reference-relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has been tied up in advance. When entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein—that is, when they have come to be understood—we say that they have meaning [Sinn]. But that which is understood, taken strictly is not the meaning but the entity, or


1 '... eines Vorgegebenen.' Here, as in many other passages, we have translated 'vorgeben' by various forms of the verb 'to present'; but it would perhaps be more in line with Heidegger's discussion of the prefix 'vor-' to write '... of something fore-given'.


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger