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Metaphysics of Principle of Reason [250-251]

that are, "presupposes" that these objects are? There is no sensible meaning to connect with this statement, aside from the fact that we never run across any such pre-supposing. Is it supposed to mean that "we" make in advance the assumption that objects are? On account of some stipulation? By what right do we make that assumption? How did we come to it in the first place? But only on the supposition of the isolated subject. And do those particular beings show themselves as such to us that we only out of kindness, as it were, permit to exist. There is nowhere the trace of any such presupposition. And only one thing is apt in all the talk about presupposing the "world," presupposing objects, and that is that factically existing Dasein always already comes across extant things, has always already in advance come across beings. But beings and their already being in advance do not rest upon a presupposition; nor, as it were, upon a metaphysical fraternizing: let's presuppose beings are and then we want to try to exist amidst them. Our very encounter with extant things sharply contravenes our having presupposed they exist. It implies on the contrary that, as existents, we have no prior need to presuppose objects beforehand.

At any rate, beings (extant things) could never get encountered had they not the opportunity to enter a world. We are speaking therefore of the possible and occasional entrance of beings into world. When and how is this possibility realized? Entry into world is not a process of extant things, in the sense that beings undergo a change thereby and through this change break into the world. The extant's entry into world is "something" that happens to it. World-entry has the characteristic of happening, of history [Ge­ schichte). World-entry happens when transcendence happens, i.e., when historical Dasein exists. Only then is the being-in-the-world of Dasein existent. And only when the latter is existent, have extant things too already entered world, i.e., become intraworldly. And only Dasein, qua existing, provides the opportunity for world-entry.

Intraworldliness is accordingly not an extant property of extant things in themselves. Extant things are beings as the kind of things they are, even if they do not become intraworldly, even if world-entry does not happen to them and there is no occasion for it at all. Intraworldliness does not belong to the essence of extant things as such, but it is only the transcendental condition, in the primordial sense, for the possibility of extant things being able to emerge as they are. And that means it is the condition for existing Dasein's experience and comprehension of things as they are.


The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (GA 26) by Martin Heidegger