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Exposition of Time Itself [422-423]

nor the being of the acts is defined. The structures which we have exhibited are themselves ways of being of this entity and as such are understandable only from the being always already intended with them, namely, from care. Dasein understands itself from itself as care. Care is accordingly the primary totality of the constitution of the being of Dasein, which as this totality always adopts this or that particular way of its can-be. This totality of being is as such totally present in every way of being of Dasein. What has thus been secured with the phenomenon of care as the being of Dasein is not a derived universal concept which, as a genus, would underlie every way to be. Still less is it the concept resulting from the interplay of various ways to be and conceived by drawing an abstract universal out of them. The interplay of the various ways of being is what it is only as the playing out and playing apart, so to speak, at any given time of the primary structures of the totality of Dasein itself.

The question now is, what aim did we have in mind in undertaking this analysis of Dasein? The elaboration of the structures of the being of the entity which we ourselves are and which we called Dasein, was approached earlier as that investigation which has the task of working out the formulation of the question of being as such. The concrete fundament for any possible kind of research into being as such has to be secured. In other words, the fundament for the question, What is meant by being?, is to be made manifest. We want to come to an answer to this question which is not only formulated in a formal proposition but which prescribes concrete ways for the research into being itself. After what has been secured up to this point, we can formulate the basic phenomenological question, What is meant by being?, with greater methodological precision.

Phenomenological research is the interpretation of entities with regard to their being. For such an interpretation, what is put into prepossession is what it has in advance as its thematic matter: an entity or a particular region of being. This entity is interrogated with regard to its being. In other words, that with regard to which [woratifhin] what is put into prepossession is interrogated, the view to which [woraufhin] it is seen and to be seen, is being. Being is to be read off in the entity; that is to say, what phenomenological interpretation puts into pre-view is being. It has put a temporally particular entity into prepossession. It asks about the being of the entity. Such a question about the being of the entity is a clear and sure guide for the investigation only when that with regard to which the entity is interrogated, namely being, is adequately elaborated and conceptually determined. The more originally and the less prejudicially the elaboration of what is put into pre-view is brought about, the less one uses fortuitous, seemingly self-evident and worn-out concepts which are unclear in their origin, then all the


Martin Heidegger (GA 20) History of the Concept of Time