striking distance [in beherrschbarer Nähe], but it is coming close. In such a drawing-close, the detrimentality radiates out, and therein lies its threatening character. 5. This drawing-close is within what is close by. Indeed, something may be detrimental in the highest degree and may even be coming constantly closer; but if it is still far off, its fearsomeness remains veiled. If, however, that which is detrimental draws close and is close by, then it is threatening: it can reach us, and yet it may not. As it draws close, [141] this 'it can, and yet in the end it may not' becomes aggravated. We say, "It is fearsome". 6. This implies that what is detrimental as coming-close close by carries with it the patent possibility that it may stay away and pass us by; but instead of lessening or extinguishing our fearing, this enhances it.

In fearing as such, what we have thus characterized as threatening is freed and allowed to matter to us. We do not first ascertain a future evil (malum futurum) and then fear it. But neither does fearing first take note of what is drawing close; it discovers it beforehand in its fearsomeness. And in fearing, fear can then look at the fearsome explicitly, and 'make it clear' to itself. Circumspection sees the fearsome because it has fear as its state-of-mind. Fearing, as a slumbering possibility of Being-in-the-world in a state-of-mind (we call this possibility 'fearfulness' ["Furchtsamkeit"]), has already disclosed the world, in that out of it something like the fearsome may come close. The potentiality for coming close is itself freed by the essential existential spatiality of Being-in-the-world.

That which fear fears about is that very entity which is afraid—Dasein.¹ Only an entity for which in its Being this very Being is an issue, can be afraid. Fearing discloses this entity as endangered and abandoned to itself. Fear always reveals Dasein in the Being of its "there", even if it docs so in varying degrees of explicitness. If we fear about our house and home, this cannot be cited as an instance contrary to the above definition of what we fear about; for as Being-in-the-world, Dasein is in every case concernful Being-alongside.² Proximally and for the most part, Dasein is

¹ 'Das Worum die Furcht fürchtet, ist das sich fürchtende Seiende selbst, das Da􀁀cin.' While it is convenient to translate 'das Worum der Furcht' as 'that which one fears about', this expression must be taken in a narrower sense than one would ordinarily expect in English. What Heidegger generally has in mind is rather the person on whose behalf or for whose sake one fears. (Cf. our remarks on 'um' in note 1, p. 93, H. 65, and note 2, p. 98, H. 69 above.) Thus 'fürchten urn' comes closer to the ordinary meaning of 'fear for' than it does to that of 'fear about'. We shall soon see, however, that Heidegger also uses the expression 'fürchten für', for which 'fear for' would seem to be the natural translation. Notice that what he then has in mind—namely, our fearing for Others—is only a special case of 'fearing for' in the ordinary English sense, and likewise only a special case of what we shall call 'fearing about' in this translation.

² 'Scin bei'. Here our usual translation, 'Being-alongside', fails to bring out the connection. A German reader would recall at once that 'bei' may mean, 'at the home of' like the French 'chez'. See our note g, p. 8o, H. 54 above.