260
More Original Explication of Dasein [358-359]
of information and proofs. On the contrary, all knowing, cognitive proving, and the producing of arguments, sources, and the like always already presuppose understanding.
By the odd fact that we must distinguish between authentic and inauthentic understanding, it is already apparent that understanding as enactment of the being of discoveredness is itself subject to specific modifications which are given with Dasein itself. There is in Dasein itself the possibility of operating with an understanding which only looks like but is not understanding. This characteristic pseudounderstanding dominates Dasein to a large extent.2 Since understanding as a structure of the being of Dasein is subject to this possibility of semblance,3 any understanding requires appropriation, consolidation, and preservation. This implies that the process and state of understanding can slip away, and what is understood can in turn become distorted and inaccessible. Understanding becomes non-understanding. This does not mean that there is no longer anything at all here; for this is absurd, inasmuch as discoveredness and so understanding always belong to Dasein. Rather, there is something more fundamental here than nothing, namely pseudo-understanding, a semblance of understanding, a look-alike, as though this incomprehension were still a genuine comprehension. There is in Dasein itself the possibility of bringing itself into deception.
The cultivation of understanding is accomplished in expository interpretation . We saw that understanding is the enactment of the being of discoveredness. Interpretation is the mode of enactment of this enactment of the being of discoveredness. Interpretation is the basic form of all knowing .
From what was said earlier, this means that interpretation as such does not actually disclose, for that is what understanding or Dasein itself takes care of. Interpretation always only takes care of bringing out what is disclosed as a cultivation of the possibilities inherent in an understanding. The most proximate everyday mode of interpretation has the functional form of appresentation, specifically the appresentation of meaningfulness in the sense of bringing out the referential correlations accessible at any given time.
The child's question, "What is this thing?", is thus answered by stating what it is used for, defining what one finds in terms of what one
2. Cf. §26b) above.
3. Cf. §9a, α) above.