217 I. 5
Being and Time

Rather it concerns itself with a kind of knowing, but just in order to have known. Both this not tarrying in the environment with which one concerns oneself, and this distraction by new possibilities, are constitutive items for curiosity; and upon these is founded the third essential characteristic of [173] this phenomenon, which we call the character of "never dwelling anywhere" [Aufenthaltslosigkeit]. Curiosity is everywhere and nowhere. This mode of Being-in-the-world reveals a new kind of Being of everyday Dasein—a kind in which Dasein is constantly uprooting itself.

Idle talk controls even the ways in which one may be curious. It says what one "must" have read and seen. In being everywhere and nowhere, curiosity is delivered over to idle talk. These two everyday modes of Being for discourse and sight are not just present-at-hand side by side in their tendency to uproot, but either of these ways-to-be drags the other one with it. Curiosity, for which nothing is closed off, and idle talk, for which there is nothing that is not understood, provide themselves (that is, the Dasein which i s in this manner [dem so seienden Dasein]) with the guarantee of a 'life' which, supposedly, is genuinely 'lively'. But with this supposition a third phenomenon now shows itself, by which the disclosedness of everyday Dasein is characterized.


37. Ambiguity

When, in our everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing which is accessible to everyone, and about which anyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding, and what is not. This ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit] extends not only to the world, but just as much to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein's Being towards itself.

Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken, though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look so, and yet at bottom it is. Ambiguity not only affects the way we avail ourselves of what is accessible for use and enjoyment, and the way we manage it; ambiguity has already established itself in the understanding as a potentiality-for-Being, and in the way Dasein projects itself and presents itself with possibilities.1 Everyone is acquainted with what is up for discussion and what occurs,2 and everyone discusses it; but everyone also knows already how to talk about what has to happen first—about what is not yet up for discussion but 'really' must be done. Already everyone has surmised and scented out in advance what Others have also surmised and scented out. This Being-on-the scent is of course based upon


1 '... sondem sie hat sich schon im Verstehen als Seinkönnen, in der Art des Entwurfs und der Vorgabe von Möglichkeiten des Daseins festgesetzt.'

2 '... was vorliegt und vorkommt ...'


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger