Heidegger- "Being and Time" III

In order to attend to what Heidegger outlines in his discussion of interpretation, the ‘as’ structure, and meaning, we must first be able to attend to the structure of the understanding itself. What is required, therefore, is a certain kind of attention, a way of seeing, or an attentiveness to the understanding, such that it comes to light, or is made manifest, in terms of itself. Through this kind of attentiveness, we might be able to grasp the understanding, as it were, understandingly, in terms of the possibilities it projects. Attention, mindfulness, or a vision of this sort, cannot be a presuppositionless undertaking, but rather must base itself upon the very understanding it seeks to attend to. This movement, which we are now attuned to–this movement of becoming attentive, the cultivation of our interpretive powers–is precisely the move Heidegger would have us attend to. The understanding is essentially circular in that the fore-structures of the understanding are the ground from which the interpretation interprets. By becoming attentive, by recognizing the hermeneutic circle, we are able to cultivate the movement of interpretation such that the fore-structures of the understanding might unfold in light of a responsibility to the things themselves. The understanding is a projection of Dasein’s possibilities, or fore-structures, which it may, or may not, attend to in an interpretive way, that is to say, meaningfully. In other words the understanding is always already engaged meaningfully when it comes to interpret the fore-structures of the understanding. Through this circle, we are provided with the ontological structure of meaning.
If we attend carefully to the movement that Heidegger unfolds–and to the attention we are able to give to it–we see that through our attentiveness we do not add anything to the understanding that wasn’t already there in advance, rather we realize the understanding in terms of the possibilities it already has. We must keep in mind the structure of the ready-to-hand– encountered circumspectively in terms of the ‘in-order-to’ that it possesses in reference to a totality of equipment– with which the understanding is always already actively involved. The understanding engages with ready-to-hand entities in terms of the background, the totality of involvements, the world of significance, which is a shared one. The understanding occurs, as it were, pre-cognitively, as a kind of pre-thematic engagement with the shared world. The prefix ‘pre’, does not mean to suggest that this way of engaging with the world must necessarily be thematized, but rather, that it always possesses this as a possibility of itself. When Heidegger says that, “in interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself” (MR, 188) he is pointing to the movement whereby interpretation accomplishes the understanding as something. The ‘as’ structure of interpretation is such that it is already involved in the unfolding of Dasein in terms of a totality of involvements, and opens up the possibility of making explicit the meaning structures latent therein. If this world of significance is indeed a shared one, as Heidegger suggests it is, then how often are we given over to the interpretations of others? How often do we engage in the movement of interpretation and surrender ourselves to the ready-made interpretations? It is only through this movement of becoming attentive that we are able to engage with the strange movement of the hermeneutic circle.