conversely, not shut ourselves off from the phenomena by a framework of concepts. It is surely a remarkable fact that we encounter ourselves, primarily and daily, for the most part by way of things and are disclosed to ourselves in this manner in our own self. Ordinary understanding will rebel against this fact. As blind as it is nimble, it will say: That is simply not true and cannot be true; this can be clearly demonstrated. Let us take a quite simple example-the craftsman in his workshop, given over to his tools, materials, works to be produced, in short to that with which he concerns himself. Here it is quite clear, isn't it, that the shoemaker is not the shoe, not the hammer, not the leather and not the thread, not the awl and not the nail. How should he find himself in and among these things? How should he understand himself, starting out from them? Certainly the shoemaker is not the shoe, and nevertheless he understands himself from his things, himself, his own self. The question arises, How must we conceive phenomenologically of this self, which is understood so naturally and in such a commonplace way?
What does this self-understanding in which the factical Dasein moves look like? When we say the factical Dasein understands itself, its own self, from the things with which it is daily concerned, we should not rest this on some fabricated concept of soul, person, and ego but must see in what self-understanding the factical Dasein moves in its everyday existence. The first thing is to fix the general sense in which the self is experienced and understood here. First and mostly, we take ourselves much as daily life prompts; we do not dissect and rack our brains about some soul-life. We understand ourselves in an everyday way or, as we can formulate it terminologically, not authentically in the strict sense of the word, not with constancy from the most proper and most extreme possibilities of our own existence, but inauthentically, our self indeed but as we are not our own, as we have lost our self in things and humans while we exist in the everyday. "Not authentically" means: not as we at bottom are able to be own to ourselves. Being lost, however, does not have a negative, depreciative significance but means something positive belonging to the Dasein itself. The Dasein's average understanding of itself takes the self as in-authentic. This inauthentic self-understanding of the Dasein's by no means signifies an ungenuine self-understanding. On the contrary, this everyday having of self within our factical, existent, passionate merging into things can surely be genuine, whereas all extravagant grubbing about in one's soul can be in the highest degree counterfeit or even pathologically eccentric. The Dasein's inauthentic understanding of itself via things is neither ungenuine nor illusory, as though what is understood by it is not the self but something else, and the self only allegedly. Inauthentic self-understanding experiences the authentic Dasein as such precisely in its peculiar "actuality," if we may so say, and in a