228 I. 6
Being and Time

of entities within-the-world whose character is not that of Dasein. Because the ontological problematic of Being has heretofore been understood primarily in the sense of presence-at-hand ('Reality', 'world-actuality'), while the nature of Dasein's Being has remained ontologically undetermined, we need to discuss the ontological interconnections of care, worldhood, readiness-to-hand, and presence-at-hand (Reality). This will lead to a more precise characterization of the concept of Reality in the context of a discussion of the epistemological questions oriented by this idea which have been raised in realism and idealism.

Entities are, quite independently of the experience by which they are disclosed, the acquaintance in which they are discovered, and the grasping in which their nature is ascertained. But Being 'is' only in the understanding of those entities to whose Being something like an understanding of Being belongs. Hence Being can be something unconceptualized, but it never completely fails to be understood. In ontological problematics Being and truth have, from time immemorial, been brought together if not entirely identified. This is evidence that there is a necessary connection between Being and understanding, even if it may perhaps be hidden in its primordial grounds. If we are to give an adequate preparation for the question of Being, the phenomenon of truth must be ontologically clarified. This will be accomplished in the first instance on the basis of what we have gained in our foregoing Interpretation, in connection with the phenomena of disclosedness and discoveredness, interpretation and assertion.

[184] Thus our preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein will conclude with the following themes: the basic state-of-mind of anxiety as a distinctive way in which Dasein is disclosed (Section 40); Dasein's Being as care (Section 41); the confirmation of the existential Interpretation of Dasein as care in terms of Dasein's pre-ontological way of interpreting itself (Section 42); Dasein, worldhood, and Reality (Section 43); Dasein, disclosedness, and truth (Section 44).


40. The Basic State-of-mind of Anxiety as a Distinctive Way in which Dasein is Disclosed

One of Dasein's possibilities of Being is to give us ontical 'information' about Dasein itself as an entity. Such information is possible only in that disclosedness which belongs to Dasein and which is grounded in state-of-mind and understanding. How far is anxiety a state-of-mind which is distinctive? How is it that in anxiety Dasein gets brought before itself through its own Being, so that we can define phenomenologically the character of the entity disclosed in anxiety, and define it as such in its Being, or make adequate preparations for doing so?


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger