135 I. 3
Being and Time

we must show how the aroundness of the environment, the specific spatiality of entities encountered in the environment, is founded upon the worldhood of the world, while contrariwise the world, on its part, is [102] not present-at-hand in space. Our study of Dasein's spatiality and the way in which the world is spatially determined will take its departure from an analysis of what is ready-to-hand in space within-the-world. We shall consider three topics: 1. the spatiality of the ready-to-hand within-the-world (Section 22); 2. the spatiality of Being-in-the-world (Section 23); 3· space and the spatiality of Dasein (Section 24).


23. The Spatiality of the Ready-to-hand Within-the-world

If space is constitutive for the world in a sense which we have yet to determine, then it cannot surprise us that in our foregoing ontological characterization of the Being of what is within-the-world we have had to look upon this as something that is also within space. This spatiality of the ready-to-hand is something which we have not yet grasped explicitly as a phenomenon; nor have we pointed out how it is bound up with the structure of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand. This is now our task.

To what extent has our characterization of the ready-to-hand already come up against its spatiality? We have been talking about what is proximally ready-to-hand. This means not only those entities which we encounter first before any others, but also those which are 'close by'.1 What is ready-to-hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness. To be exact, this closeness of equipment has already been intimated in the term 'readiness-to-hand', which expresses the Being of equipment. Every entity. that is 'to hand' has a different closeness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring distances. This closeness regulates itself in terms of circumspectively 'calculative' manipulating and using. At the same time what is close in this way gets established by the circumspection of concern, with regard to the direction in which the equipment is accessible at any time. When this closeness of the equipment has been given directionality,2 this signifies not merely that the equipment has its


1 'in der Nähe.' While the noun 'Nähe' often means the 'closeness' or 'nearness' of something that is close to us, it can also stand for our immediate 'vicinity', as in the present expression, and in many passages it can be interpreted either way. We shall in general translate it as 'closeness', but we shall translate 'in der Nahe' and similar phrases as 'close by'.

2 'Die ausgerichtete Nähe des Zeugs . . .' The verb 'ausrichten' has many specialized meanings-to 'align'- a row of troops, to 'explore' a mine, to 'make arrangements' for something, to 'carry out' a commission, etc. Heidegger, however, keeps its root meaning in mind and associates it with the word 'Richtung' ('direction', 'route to be taken', etc.). We shall accordingly translate it as a rule by some form of the verb 'direct' (which will also be used occasionally for the verb 'richten'), or by some compound expression involving the word 'directional'. For further discussion, see H. 108 ff. below.


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger