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ZOLLIKON SEMINARS
invisible, intangible capacities for receiving-perceiving [Vernehmen]* what it encounters and what addresses it. In the perspective of the Analytic of Da-sein, all conventional, objectifying representations of a capsule-like psyche, subject, person, ego, or consciousness in psychology and psychopathology must be abandoned in favor of an entirely different understanding. This new view of the basic constitution of human existence may be called Da-sein, or being-in-the-world. Of course, in this context the Da of this Da-sein certainly does not mean what it does in the ordinary sense—a location near an observer. Rather, to exist as Da-sein means to hold open a domain through its capacity to receive-perceive the significance of the things that are given to it [Da-sein] and that address it [Da-sein] by virtue of its own "clearing" [Gelichtetheit], Human Da-sein as a domain with the capacity for receiving-perceiving is never merely an object present-at-hand. On the contrary, it is not something which can be objectified at all under any circumstances.
Kant writes: "Being is obviously not a real predicate, that is, it is not a concept of something, which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain properties themselves."1
According to Kant, real has nothing to do with what is actual or nonactual, but because of its origin from res, it means accordingly: relating to the nature of a thing; something which can be found in a thing. For instance, the real predicates of a table are: round, hard, heavy, etc., whether the table actually exists or is merely imagined.
In contrast, being is not something that can be found in the nature of a table, even if the table were to be broken down into its smallest parts.
If one elucidates and explicates the term "obvious," which is not the same as merely using different words for the same thing, it means the same as manifest, or evident, which is derived from evideri—to let oneself
* We translate the German vernehmen with the hyphenated expression "to receiveperceive." In its existential-ontological meaning vernehmen implies receptivity (Greek νοεῖν: to perceive, to understand, to listen in). In a more active, juridical sense, it means that which the judge comes to perceive through the interrogation of witnesses. Vernehmen refers to a phenomenologically immediate, nontheoretical, receptive perceiving. This contrasts with vor-stellen, "to represent," literally, "setting-before" that which objectifies and reifies.—TRANSLATORS