is the possibility of being free for its ownmost potentiality of being. Being-possible is transparent for it in various possible ways and degrees.
Understanding is the being of such a potentiality of being which is never still outstanding as something not yet objectively present, but, as· something essentially never objectively present, "is" together with the being of Dasein in the sense of existence. Dasein is in the way that in each case it understands (or, alternatively, has not understood) to be in this or that way. As this understanding, it "knows" what is going on, that is, what its potentiality of being is. This "knowing" does not first grow out of an immanent self-perception, but belongs to the being of the there which is essentially understanding. And only because Dasein is its there, understandingly, can it go astray and fail to recognize itself. And since understanding is attuned and attunement is existentially surrendered to thrownness, Dasein has always already gone astray and failed to recognize itself. In its potentiality of being, it is thus delivered over to the possibility of first finding itself again in its possibilities.
Understanding is the existential being [Sein] of the ownmost potentiality of being of Dasein itself in such a way that this being [Sein] discloses in itself what its very being is about. The structure of this existential must be grasped more precisely.
As disclosing, understanding always concerns the whole fundamental constitution of being-in-the-world. As a potentiality of being, being-in is always a potentiality of being-in-the-world. Not only is the world, qua world, disclosed in its possible significance, but innerworldly beings themselves are freed, freed for their own possibilities. What is at hand is discovered as such in its serviceability, usability, detrimentality. The totality of relevance reveals itself as the categorial whole of a possibility of the nexus of things at hand. But the "unity," too, of manifold [145] presence, nature, is discoverable only on the basis of the disclosedness of one of its possibilities. Is it a matter of chance that the question of the being of nature aims at the "conditions of its possibility?" On what is this questioning based? It cannot omit the question: Why are beings unlike Dasein understood in their being if they are disclosed in terms of the conditions of their possibility? Kant presupposed something like this, perhaps correctly so. But this presupposition itself cannot be left without demonstrating how it is justified.
Why does understanding always penetrate into possibilities from among all the essential dimensions of what can be disclosed to it? Because understanding in itself has the existential structure which we call project [Entwurf]. It projects the being of Dasein just as primordially upon its for-the-sake-of-which as upon significance as the worldliness of its particular world. The project character of understanding constitutes being-in-the-world with regard to the disclosedness of its there as