manifold 'world' of its concern, than the Self which has been individualized down to itself in uncanniness and been thrown into the "nothing"? ' It' calls, even though it gives the concernfully curious ear nothing to hear which might be passed along in further retelling and talked about in public. But what is Dasein even to report from the uncanniness of its thrown Being? What else remains for it than its own potentiality-forBeing as revealed in anxiety? How else is "it" to call than by summoning Dasein towards this potentiality-for-Being, which alone is the issue?
The call does not report events; it calls without uttering anything. The call discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent. And it does this only because, in calling the one to whom the appeal is made, it does not call him into the public idle talk of the "they", but calls him back from this into the reticence of his existent potentiality-for-Being. When the caller reaches him to whom the appeal is made, it does so with a cold assurance which is uncanny but by no means obvious. Wherein lies the basis for this assurance if not in the fact that when Dasein has been individualized down to itself in its uncanniness, it is for itself something that simply cannot be mistaken for anything else? What is it that so radically deprives Dasein of the possibility of misunderstanding itself by any sort of alibi and failing to recognize itself, if not the forsakenness [Verlassenheit] with which it has been abandoned [Überlassenheit] to itself?
Uncanniness is the basic kind of Being-in-the-world, even though in an everyday way it has been covered up. Out of the depths of this kind of Being, Dasein itself, as conscience, calls. The 'it calls me' ["es ruft mich"] is a distinctive kind of discourse for Dasein. The call whose mood has been attuned by anxiety is what makes it possible first and foremost for Dasein to project itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. The call of conscience, existentially understood, makes known for the first time what we have hitherto merely contended:vii that uncanniness pursues Dasein and is a threat to the lostness in which it has forgotten itself.
The proposition that Dasein is at the same time both the caller and the one to whom the appeal is made, has now lost its empty formal character and its obviousness. Conscience manifests itself as the call of care: the caller is Dasein, which, in its thrownness (in its Being-already-in), is anxious1 about its potentiality-for-Being. The one to whom the appeal is made is this very same Dasein, summoned to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being (ahead of itself ...) . Dasein is falling into the "they" (in Being-already-alongside the world of its concern), and it is summoned out of this falling [278] by the appeal. The call of conscience—that is, conscience itself-has its
1 '... sich ängstigend ...' The older editions have 'sich ängstend', which has virtually the same meaning, and is more characteristic of Heidegger's style.