Phenomenally, we would wholly fail to recognize both what mood discloses and how it discloses, if that which is disclosed were to be compared with what Dasein is acquainted with, knows, and believes 'at the same time' when it has such a mood. Even if Dasein is 'assured' in its [136] belief about its 'whither', or if, in rational enlightenment, it supposes itself to know about its "whence", all this counts for nothing as against the phenomenal facts of the case: for the mood brings Dasein before the "that-it-is" of its "there", which, as such, stares it in the face with the inexorability of an enigma.1 From the existential-ontological point of view, there is not the slightest justification for minimizing what is 'evident' in states-of-mind, by measuring it against the apodictic certainty of a theoretical cognition of something which is purely present-at-hand. However the phenomena are no less falsified when they are banished to the sanctuary of the irrational. When irrationalism, as the counterplay of rationalism, talks about the things to which rationalism is blind, it does so only with a squint.
Factically, Dasein can, should, and must, through knowledge and will, become master of its moods; in certain possible ways of existing, this may signify a priority of volition and cognition. Only we must not be misled by this into denying that ontologically mood is a primordial kind of Being for Dasein, in which Dasein is disclosed to itself prior to all cognition and volition, and beyond their range of disclosure. And furthermore, when we master a mood, we do so by way of a counter-mood; we are never free of moods. Ontologically, we thus obtain as the first essential characteristic of states-of-mind that they disclose Dasein in its thrownness, and—proximally and for the most part-in the manner of an evasive turning-away .
From what has been said we can see already that a state-of-mind is very remote from anything like coming across a psychical condition by the kind of apprehending which first turns round and then back. Indeed it is so far from this, that only because the "there" has already been disclosed in a state-of-mind can immanent reflection come across 'Experiences' at all. The 'bare mood' discloses the "there" more primordially, but correspondingly it closes it off more stubbornly than any not-perceiving.
This is shown by bad moods. In these, Dasein becomes blind to itself, the environment with which it is concerned veils itself, the circumspection of concern gets led astray. States-of-mind are so far from being reflected upon, that precisely what they do is to assail Dasein in its unreflecting devotion to the 'world' with which it is concerned and on which it expends
1 '... so verschlägt das alles nichts gegen den phänomenalen Tatbestand, dass die Stimmung das Dasein vor das Dass seines Da bringt, als welches es ihm in unerbittlicher Rätselhaftigkeit entgegenstarrt.' The pronoun 'es' (the reference of which is not entirely unambiguous) appears only in the later editions.