Being and Time

"For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression 'being'. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed" (Plato, Sophist 244a).

Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being.

INTRODUCTION

1. The Question of Being

§1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being

This question has today been forgotten. Even though in our time we deem it progressive to give our approval to 'metaphysics' again, it is held that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled "battle of the giants concerning being" (Plato) ....

§2. The Formal Structure of the Qp,estion of Being

The question of the meaning of Being must be formulated. If it is a fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be made transparent, and in an appropriate way ....

Inquiry, as a kind of seeking, must be guided beforehand by what is sought. So the meaning of Being must already be available to us in some way. As we have intimated, we always conduct our activities in an understanding of Being. Out of this understanding arise both the explicit question of the meaning of Being and the tendency that leads us towards it conception. We do not know what 'Being' means. But even if we ask, "What is 'Being'?," we keep within an understanding of the 'is', though we are unable to fix conceptually what that 'is' signifies. We do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average understanding of Being is still a Fact.

However much this understanding of Being (an understanding which is

Selected excerpts from about 45 pages from Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, © 1962 by SCM Press Ltd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

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Heidegger

factical potentiality-for-Being, and in such a way that Dasein itself is this revealing and Being-revealed. To any truth, there belongs a corresponding holding-for-true. The explicit appropriating of what has been disclosed or discovered is Being-certain. The primordial truth of existence demands an equiprimordial Being-certain, in which one maintains oneself in what resoluteness discloses. It gives itself the current factical Situation, and brings itself into that Situation. The Situation cannot be calculated in advance or presented like something present-at-hand which is waiting for someone to grasp it. It merely gets disclosed in a free resolving which has not been determined beforehand but is open to the possibility of such determination. What, then, does the certainty which belongs to such resoluteness signify? Such certainty must maintain itself in what is disclosed by the resolution. But this means that it simply cannot become rigid as regards the Situation, but must understand that the resolution, in accordance with its own meaning as a disclosure, must be held open and free for the current factical possibility. The certainty of the resolution signifies that one holds oneself free for the possibility of taking it back-a possibility which is factically necessary. However, such holding-for-true in resoluteness (as the truth of existence) by no means lets us fall back into irresoluteness. On the contrary, this holding-for-true, as a resolute holding-oneself-free for taking back, is authentic resoluteness which resolves to keep repeating itself . . .

Anticipatory resoluteness is not a way of escape, fabricated for the "overcoming" of death; iris rather that understanding which follows the call of conscience and which frees for death the possibility of acquiring power over Dasein's existence and of basically dispersing all fugitive Self-concealments. Nor does wanting-to-have-a-conscience, which has been made determinate as Being-towards-death, signify a kind of seclusion in which one flees the world; rather, it brings one without Illusions into the resoluteness of "taking action." Neither does anticipatory resoluteness stem from 'idealistic' exactions soaring above existence and its possibilities; it springs from a sober understanding of what are factically the basic possibilities for Dasein. Along with the sober anxiety which brings us face to face with our individualized potentiality-for-Being, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility. In it Dasein becomes free from the entertaining "incidentals" with which busy curiosity keeps providing itself-primarily from the events of the world ....

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