Heidegger- "Being and Time" I

Heidegger begins with the question “What is meant by “Being-in”?” Taking this question as his point of departure, Heidegger proceeds to demonstrate how this question has been answered incorrectly by the Cartesian tradition. In the first place, this way of proceeding intends to demonstrate that for the most part, Dasein’s Being-in has been taken ontically in the sense of being something merely present-at-hand alongside other present-at-hand entities in the world. As such, the Cartesian tradition has passed over a much more basic phenomenon of Being-in-the-world as an a priori state of the Being of Dasein. Due to the absence of the ontological question, Being-in has for the most part been taken to be “knowing the world” grounded in a subjectivity which encounters a world of objects. Heidegger treats Being-in equiprimordially, or in such a way that its essence may not be given in any single modality of its Being. Furthermore, because Dasein’s Being-in-the-World, a particular modality of Being-in, is for the most part presupposed ontically it is most often veiled ontologically or understood negatively in terms of entities which it itself is not. By proceeding, as it were, apophatically, Heidegger will attempt to uncover a positive characterization of Being-in-the-world, not as something present at hand but as state of Dasein’s Being.

If we take Being-in, as Heidegger suggests, to have a dual meaning–both the sense of a location, or a dwelling alongside, and a kind of absorption, or concern for that dwelling–then the world would be the space wherein Dasein finds itself concernfully located. Dasein is principally absorption in the world, or in other words Dasein always already has a world. We are, as it were, faced with a departure from the Cartesian tradition, which has taken Dasein’s relation to the world to be one of a knower to the objects of knowledge. In Heidegger’s account Dasein’s Being-in is inseparable from World in that Dasein always already understands itself in terms of its environment, which constitutes a kind of field of familiarity to which Dasein has recourse. Notice that this Being-in-the-World is not a theoretical standing before, nor an epistemological relation between a subject and a world of objects but an existential modality of Dasein’s Being-in.

Dasein, therefore, is always already concernfully situated in the world and always already understands itself environmentally in terms of a totality of possible involvements. Dasein’s Being-in-the-World, is not conceived nor perceived in a manner present-at-hand, but rather, Dasein is always already Being-in-the-World. Dasein’s facticity is such that it comports itself in terms of the entities it finds within the world, and expresses itself in terms of its Being-in-the-World as its primary mode of Being.