that in any way is encountered as a being, that it is, without differentiating in regard to specific ways of being. Our understanding of being is indifferent but it is at any time differentiable.

Eighth. Whereas the apparently unequivocal separation of beings into res cogitans and res extensa is effected under the guidance of an overarching concept of being-being equals extantness-our present analysis showed that there are radical differences of ontological constitution between these two beings. The ontological difference between the constitution of the Dasein' s being and that of nature proves to be so disparate that .. it seems at first as though the two ways of being are incomparable and cannot be determined by way of a uniform concept of being in general. Existence and extantness are more disparate than, say, the determinations of God's being and man's being in traditional ontology. For these two latter beings are still always conceived as extant. Thus the question becomes more acute. Given this radical distinction of ways of being in general, can there still be found any single unifying concept of being in general that would justify calling these different ways of being ways of being? How can we conceive the unity of the concept of being in reference to a possible multiplicity of ways of being? How is the indifference of being, as it is unveiled in our everyday understanding of beings, related at the same time to the unity of an original concept of being?

The question of the indifference of being and its initially universal validity brings us to the problem of the fourth chapter.