87.

FORE-STRUCTURE (VOR-STRUKTUR)

T
he fore-structure is a threefold structure of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-
conception, which is involved in every interpretation. This structure is at the core of
Heidegger’s generalization of hermeneutics from a theory of textual or historical
interpretation to an ontology of human existence in its being-in-the-world. Our under-
standing of and ability to get around in an everyday world, like our ability to understand
written or spoken language, always draws on presuppositions that we bring with us and that
constitute the perspective out of which we understand and interpret.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we always interpret texts on the basis of what we already
understand and take for granted.
If, when one is engaged in a particular concrete kind of interpretation, in the sense of
exact textual Interpretation,1 one likes to appeal [beruf] to what “stands there,” then
one finds that what “stands there” in the first instance is nothing other than the
obvious undiscussed assumption [Vormeinung] of the person who does the inter-
preting. In an interpretive approach there lies such an assumption, as that which has
been “taken for granted” [“gesetzt”] with the interpretation as such – that is to say, as
that which has been presented in our fore-having, our fore-sight, and our fore-
conception. (SZ 150)
Heidegger’s move (in SZ §32) is to show not only how this applies to our understanding and
interpretation of texts, but also that it characterizes our relationship to the everyday world in
which we live. With this move, Heidegger consummates his attack on the traditional subject–
object, epistemic model of our relationship to the world. Our fundamental relation to the world
is not one of detached knowledge which can approach an ideal of being presuppositionless,
rather it is one of involved understanding and interpretation permeated by presuppo-
sitions. Just as Heidegger denies that there is literal meaning just there to be understood
independently of our presuppositions, so he claims that our relationship to the world “is
never a presuppositionless apprehending something presented to us” (SZ 150).
Dasein is already situated or oriented by what it inconspicuously “takes for granted,” that is,
“pre-judgments” (Vor-urteile), “assumptions” (Vormeinungen, SZ 150), and “presuppositions”
(Voraussetzungen, SZ 232). Heidegger uses the term “fore-structure of understanding” to
capture this prior situatedness, and he analyzes it into three interrelated moments: the “fore-
having” (Vorhabe) which is our holistic understanding of the pre-given context from out of
which we interpret; the “fore-sight” (Vorsicht) which is the particular interests or concerns from

1
“Interpretation” with a capital ‘I’ translates Interpretation (rather than Auslegung). In Heidegger’s usage, Interpretation
refers to interpretation conducted as technical activity of the philosopher or philologist, for example, as opposed to
the interpretations (with a little ‘i’, translating Auslegung) that transpire, according to Heidegger, in Dasein’s own
interaction with the world, itself, and others.

325
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the perspective of which we interpret; and the “fore-conception” (Vorgriff) which is the particular
language and concepts by which our interpretation is framed and expressed (Lafont 2005).
This threefold fore-structure provides the substantive orientation from out of which we
relate to things, others, and ourselves; it guides our unproblematic understanding as well as our
activity of interpretation, which transpires normally as the result of a breakdown or disturbance
in our understanding.2
In keeping with the overall focus of Division i of Being and Time, Heidegger explains the fore-
structure and the role it plays in understanding and interpretation not in terms of linguistic
understanding but in terms of our understanding and interpretation of everyday equipment.
In using any given piece of equipment, say a piece of chalk (to use one of Heidegger’s pet
examples), toward the end of explaining a philosophical point, I tacitly take account of the place
the piece of chalk has in the “whole of affordances,” that is, I take account of the way it is
related to the chalkboard, the erasers, the desks, and students in the class, the right way to write
on the chalkboard so that it is legible to the students in the back of the room, the norms for
comporting oneself properly in the pedagogical setting of a university classroom, and so on. I do
not stop and think about or pay explicit attention to this context of interconnections. I simply
“get it.” This is what Heidegger calls the “fore-having.” The fore-having has to do with my
familiarity with the holistic context within which my activities unfold. Interpretation transpires
always relative to such a pre-given context. An example will help.
If suddenly a student complains because he cannot read what I have written on the chalk-
board, perhaps because the piece of chalk broke and, having become too small to wield properly,
made me write sloppily, I have to stop, come out of the immediate and normal “understanding”
flow of activity, and “work out” these taken-for-granted interconnections so as to repair the
problem and get back to the task at hand. For example, I have to find the eraser, erase the sloppy
writing, grab a new piece of chalk, and focus more directly on writing on the board in an
appropriately legible manner. Heidegger calls this a “circumspective” (i.e., non-reflective)
interpretation or explication (SZ 157) of what the chalk is for, and how the eraser is related to
the chalk, how the chalk and the eraser are related to the practice of writing in a legible way,
toward the end of explaining philosophy, for the sake of my being a philosophy teacher. This
process involves “taking apart [auseinanderlegen] the ‘in-order-to’” (SZ 148–49). The result is
that the “in-order-to” of the chalk and its various interrelations (to the in-order-to’s of the
eraser, to the practice of writing on the board, etc.) which I previously simply “had in advance”
(SZ150) become “expressly understood” (SZ 149; see Express).3
Next Heidegger discusses “fore-sight”:
when something is understood but still veiled, it becomes unveiled by an act of
appropriation, and this is always done under the guidance of a point of view
[Hinsicht], which fixes that with regard to which what is understood is to be inter-
preted. This fore-sight “takes the first cut” out of what has been taken into our fore-
having, and it does so with a view to a definite way in which this can be interpreted.
(SZ 150)

2
But see Wrathall 2013b for an alternative take on the way interpretation emerges out of and is related to
understanding.
3
As the translators remind us, “to take apart,” auseinanderlegen, is etymologically connected to the word for “inter-
pretation,” Auslegung, and “to interpret,” auslegen (literally, “to lay out”).
 Fore-structure ( Vor-Struktur) / 327
Fore-sight has to do with the particular perspective from which I understand and interpret
things. It involves the particular interests or concerns by which I am oriented in the current
situation. In the present example, my perspective and interests are those of someone attempting
to explain a philosophical point in the course of teaching a class. It is in the light of this
perspective, in light of my commitment to being a philosophy teacher, that I engage in the
act of getting a better grip on the particular equipment with which I carry out the relevant tasks.
If, for example, I notice that my mobile phone is not working or has received a call, the fact that
this piece of equipment is not directly relevant to my current interests means that its place in the
“whole of significance” does not at the moment need to be “unveiled” or “appropriated” in my
interpretation (my response to the breakdown of the chalk). The fore-sight captures the way
interpretation is interest relative, always transpiring according to a guiding particular interest or
point of view.
Third, Heidegger mentions the fore-conception: “anything understood which is held in our
fore-having and towards which we set our sights ‘fore-sightedly’, becomes conceptualizable
through the interpretation” (SZ 150). To conceptualize something is to subsume it under
explanatory categories, for example, of a philosophical or scientific kind. The fore-conception
is the particular range of concepts that are available to make sense of what is being interpreted.
But the range of available concepts is a feature of the specific language and lexicon of the
interpreter. The fore-conception captures the sense in which interpretation is language-relative.
To put this in terms of the above example, if one of the students asked me to give a philosophical
interpretation of the change the piece of chalk underwent when it went from being “usable to
write on the chalkboard” to being “too short to write on the chalkboard,” I could (to
Heidegger’s chagrin) explain the change by using concepts drawn from substance ontology: the
piece of chalk is a substance that formerly had the properties of being “13mm long” and “useful
for writing on the chalkboard,” but now it has the properties of being “2mm long” and “bad for
writing on the chalkboard.” Interpretation is always relative to an available stock of concepts
and descriptive terms. Heidegger himself seems to have such a case (of making use of ontolo-
gical concepts like “occurrentness”) in mind when he puts a gloss of “fore-conception” in the
passage we are considering: “In such an interpretation, the way in which the entity we are
interpreting is to be conceived can be drawn from the entity itself, or the interpretation can
force the entity into concepts to which it is opposed in its manner of being” (SZ 150). According
to Heidegger’s argument in Division i of Being and Time, chalk as available equipment and
people as Dasein are entities that are “opposed in their manner of being” to concepts char-
acteristic of “occurrentness” (substance, accident, etc.).
Together, these three fore-structures make up Dasein’s “hermeneutic Situation” (SZ 231–32) –
the Situation into which Dasein is thrown and which guides the active projections and anticipations
it forms in understanding and interpretation. The fore-structure operates as the taken-for-
granted background against which things show up and make sense to Dasein. Despite the taken-
for-granted self-evidence with which the fore-structures tend to orient us, they are not simply
a fixed or brute force acting on us. In an attempt to repair a breakdown or deepen understanding,
the interpreter can “get a grip on” (ergreifen) these antecedent structures. In piecemeal fashion,
the interpreter can clarify, appropriate, and if necessary, revise them. That is precisely the work of
Interpretation, and it is behind Heidegger’s own hermeneutical method at work in Being and Time
itself. Hence, in the methodological reflections that begin Division ii, Heidegger refers back to
his discussion of the fore-structures in order to explain why it is necessary in Division ii to go
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back over (“repeat”) the material provisionally interpreted in Division i in order to arrive at “a
more primordial” interpretation of Dasein’s way of being (in terms of temporality).
Ontological investigation is a possible kind of interpreting, which we have described
as the working-out and appropriation of an understanding. Every interpretation has
its fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. If such an interpretation, as an
Interpretation, becomes an explicit task for research, then, the totality of these
“presuppositions” (which we call the “hermeneutical Situation”) needs to be clarified
and made secure beforehand [einer vorgängigen Klärung und Sicherung]. (SZ 231–32)
Attempts to deny the influence of the fore-structure and appeal to literal meaning or a world we
can supposedly access independently of the fore-structures amount to “failing to recognize
beforehand the essential conditions under which [interpretation] can be performed,” and this
prevents “the basic conditions which make interpretation possible” from being “fulfilled” (SZ
153). Accordingly, Heidegger thinks that an interpreter who properly recognizes and takes
responsibility for his own involvement in and ability to get a grip on or appropriate the fore-
structures will produce a more primordial interpretation, an “owned” or “authentic” (eigentliche)
one. An authentic interpretation, to use the Heideggerian technical terms, is one whose
hermeneutic situation has been actively “taken hold of” (ergriffene) and thereby has become
more “transparent” (durchsichtig).
Hence Heidegger’s exhortation that the fore-structure be “genuinely taken hold of” (in echter
Weise . . . ergriffen), and that this prescribes a readiness to revise or challenge our taken-for-
granted fore-structures, giving us the “constant task . . . never to allow our fore-having, fore-
sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions” (SZ 153).
B. Scot Rousse

references in heidegger
SZ 150–53, 231–33, 316; GA17:109–12; GA18:273–76; GA20:413–17; GA63:16–17

further reading
Carman 2003, 212–15, Dreyfus 1980, Gadamer 2004, Lafont 2000, Lafont 2005, Wrathall 2013b