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§47 [290-91]

involved in our three examples is fundamentally different in each case. Returning to the stone: it lies upon the earth but does not touch it. The earth is not given for the stone as an underlying support which bears it, let alone given as earth. Nor of course can the stone ever sense this earth as such, even as it lies upon it. The stone lies on the path. If we throw it into the meadow then it will lie wherever it falls. We can cast it into a ditch filled with water. It sinks and ends up lying on the bottom. In each case according to circumstance the stone crops up here or there, amongst and amidst a host of other things, but always in such a way that everything present around it remains essentially inaccessible to the stone itself. Because in its being a stone it has no possible access to anything else around it, anything that it might attain or possess as such, it cannot possibly be said to be deprived of anything either. The stone is, i.e., it is such and such, and as such turns up here or there or is simply not present. It is-but is essentially without access to those beings amongst which it is in its own way (presence at hand), and this belongs to its being. The stone is worldless. The worldlessness of a being can now be defined as its having no access to those beings (as beings) amongst which this particular being with this specific manner of being is. Having no access belongs to and characterizes the specific manner of being of the particular being in question. It is beside the point to regard the fact that the stone has no access as some kind of lack. For having no access is precisely what makes possible its specific kind of being, i.e., the realm of being of physical and material nature and the laws governing it.

The lizard basking in the sun on its warm stone does not merely crop up in the world. It has sought out this stone and is accustomed to doing so. If we now remove the lizard from its stone, it does not simply lie wherever we have put it but starts looking for its stone again, irrespective of whether or not it actually finds it. The lizard basks in the sun. At least this is how we describe what it is doing, although it is doubtful whether it really comports itself in the same way as we do when we lie out in the sun, i.e., whether the sun is accessible to it as sun, whether the lizard is capable of experiencing the rock as rock. Yet the lizard's relation to the sun and to warmth is different from that of the warm stone simply lying present at hand in the sun. Even if we avoid every misleading and premature psychological interpretation of the specific manner of being pertaining to the lizard and prevent ourselves from 'empathetically' projecting our own feelings onto this animal, we can still perceive a distinction between the specific manner of being pertaining to the lizard and to animals, and the specific manner of being pertaining to a material thing. It is true that the rock on which the lizard lies is not given for the lizard as rock, in such a way that it could inquire into its mineralogical constitution for example. It is true that the sun in which it is basking is not given for the lizard as sun, in such a way that it could ask questions of astrophysics about it and expect to


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics