already lets beings be encountered as things at hand. That within which Dasein understands itself beforehand in the mode of self-reference is that for which it lets beings be encountered beforehand. As that for which one lets beings be encountered in the kind of being of relevance, the wherein of self-referential understanding is the phenomenon of world. And the structure of that to which Dasein is referred is what constitutes the worldliness of the world.
Dasein is primordially familiar with that within which it understands itself in this way. This familiarity with the world does not necessarily require a theoretical transparency of the relations constituting the world as world. However, the possibility of an explicit ontological and existential interpretation of these relations is grounded in the familiarity with the world constitutive for Dasein, which, in its turn, constitutes Dasein's understanding of being. This possibility can, be explicitly appropriated when Dasein has set as its task a primordial interpretation of its being and the possibilities of that being or, for that matter, of the meaning of being in general.
But as yet our analyses have only first laid bare the horizon within which something akin to world and worldliness is to be sought. For [87] our further reflection, we must first make clear how the context of the self-referral of Dasein is to be understood ontologically.
Understanding, which will be analyzed with proper penetration in what follows (cf. § 31), holds the indicated relations in a preliminary disclosure. In its familiar being-in-relevance, understanding holds itself before that disclosure as that within which its reference moves. Understanding can itself be referred to in and by these relations. We shall call the relational character of these referential relations signifying [be-deuten]. In its familiarity with these relations, Dasein "signifies" ["bedeutet"] to itself. It primordially gives itself to understand its being and potentiality-of-being with regard to its being-in-the-world. The for-the-sake-of-which signifies an in-order-to, the in-order-to signifies a what-for, the what-for signifies a what-in of letting something be relevant, and the latter a what-with of relevance. These relations are interlocked among themselves as a primordial totality. They are what they are as this signifying in which Dasein gives itself to understand its being-in-the-world beforehand. We shall call this relational totality of signification significance [Bedeutsamkeit]. It is what constitutes the structure of the world, of that in which Dasein* as such always already is. In its familiarity with significance Dasein is the antic condition of the possibility of the discovery of beings with the kind of being of relevance (handiness) which are encountered in a world and that can thus make themselves known in their in-itself. As such, Dasein always means that a context
* The Da-sein in which human being [Mensch] presences.