Being of entities within-the-world, Reality has no priority, and that Reality is a kind of Being which cannot even characterize anything like the world or Dasein in a way which is ontologically appropriate.
In the order of the ways in which things are connected in their ontological foundations and in the order of any possible categorial and existential demonstration, Reality is referred back to the phenomenon of care. But the fact that Reality is ontologically grounded in the Being of Dasein, [212] does not signify that only when Dasein exists and as long as Dasein exists, can the Real be as that which in itself it is.
Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), 'is there' Being.1 When Dasein does not exist, 'independence' 'is' not either, nor 'is' the 'in-itself'. In such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood nor not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be discovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not. But now, as long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed be said that in this case entities will still continue to be.
As we have noted, Being (not entities) is dependent upon the understanding of Being; that is to say, Reality (not the Real) is dependent upon care. By this dependency our further analytic of Dasein is held secure in the face of an uncritical Interpretation which nevertheless keeps urging itself upon us—an Interpretation in which the idea of Reality is taken as the clue to Dasein. Only if we take our orientation from existentiality as Interpreted in an ontologicaUy positive manner, can we have any guarantee that in the factical course of the analysis of 'consciousness' or of 'life', some sense of "Reality" does not get made basic, even if it is one which has not been further differentiated.
Entities with Dasein's kind of Being cannot be conceived in terms of Reality and substantiality; we have expressed this by the thesis that the substance of man is existence . Yet if we have Interpreted existentiality as care, and distinguished this from Reality, this does not signify that our existential analytic is at an end; we have merely allowed the intricate problems of the question of Being and its possible modes, and the question of the meaning ofsuch modifications, to emerge more sharply: only if the understanding of Being is, do entities as entities become accessible; only if
1 '... "gibt es" Sein.' In his letter Uber den Humanismus (Klostermann, Frankfurt A.M., n.d., p. 22, reprinted from Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Francke A.G., Bern, 1947), Heidegger insists that the expression 'es gibt' is here used deliberately, and should be taken literally as 'it gives'. He writes: 'For the "it" which here "gives" is Being itself. The "gives" however, designates the essence of Being, which gives and which confers its truth.' He adds that the 'es gibt' is used to avoid writing that 'Being is', for the verb 'is' is appropriate to entities but not to Being itself.