very own being. And that is its fundamental kind of existence: that in its being, it is concerned for that very being.
Ultimately (but not exclusively) the network of comportments, oriented to this in-order-to, is directed to this: that existence might be in the possibility as which it has chosen itself and [220] into which it has posited itself. In its very being, existence is out unto its own being as the being with which it is concerned.
We need to understand this determination still more precisely insofar as the being of existence can be understood, in its structure, more completely as being-in-the-world. In other words, to the degree that we make basic statements about the being of existence, if these statements are to touch on the complete phenomenon, we must keep in mind the structures we have brought to light heretofore.
§17. Care as the being of existence. Concern-for and concern-about, authenticity and inauthenticity
As being-in-the-world—i.e., as being familiar with the world—existence is out unto its ownmost being as what it is concerned about. The basic kind of being [Sein] of a being which is in such as way that, in its being, it cares about that very being [Sein]—this kind of being [Sein] we call care. Care is the basic mode of the being of existence, and as such it determines every kind of being [Seinsart] that derives from the ontological structure of existence.
The phenomenon that we characterize by the term “care” is a very special structure of existence, and everything depends on a correct philosophical interpretation of it. The crucial point does not consist in establishing that existence is concerned about its being. The point, rather, is to interpret this phenomenon in the direction of a primordial understanding of being.
Clearly Kant had this state of affairs in mind when he said, using traditional ontological categories: Humans belong to those “things whose existence is an end in itself.” Or as he once put it: “Existence is an end in itself.” Or again, [human beings are those] “whose existence has an absolute value in itself.” Kant provides these determinations in §2 of his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,15 and for him they are the basis and the proper metaphysical (that is, ontological) condition of the possibility [221] of the fact that there can be a categorical imperative, that is, one that can be expressed categorically rather than hypothetically, as do the usual imperatives in an “if . . . then” proposition. A categorical imperative is not preceded by a prior condition regarding something
15. [GM, p. 428 / tr. 36–37.]