"nothing ready-to-hand", which only our everyday circumspective discourse understands, is not totally nothing.1 The "nothing" of readiness-to- hand is grounded in the most primordial 'something'—in the world. Ontologically, however, the world belongs essentially to Dasein's Being as Being-in-the-world. So if the "nothing"—that is, the world as such—exhibits itself as that in the face of which one has anxiety, this means that Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious.
Being-anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world. It is not the case, say, that the world first gets thought of by deliberating about it, just by itself, without regard for the entities within-the-world, and that, in the face of this world, anxiety then arises; what is rather the case is that the world as world is disclosed first and foremost by anxiety, as a mode of state-of-mind. This does not signify, however, that in anxiety the worldhood of the world gets conceptualized.
Anxiety is not only anxiety in the face of something, but, as a state-of-mind, it is also anxiety about something. That which anxiety is profoundly anxious [sich abangstet] about is not a definite kind of Being for Dasein or a definite possibility for it. Indeed the threat itself is indefinite, and therefore cannot penetrate threateningly to this or that factically concrete potentiality-for-Being. That which anxiety is anxious about is Being-in-the world itself. In anxiety what is environmentally ready-to-hand sinks away, and so, in general, do entities within-the-world. The 'world' can offer nothing more, and neither can the Dasein-with of Others. Anxiety thus takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, as it falls, in terms of the 'world' and the way things have been publicly interpreted. Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about—its authentic potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Anxiety individualizes Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities. Therefore, with that [188] which it is anxious about, anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualized in individualization [vereinzeltes in der Vereinzelung].
Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its ownmost potentiality-for-Being—that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself. Anxiety brings Dasein face to face with its Being-free for (propensio in ...) the authenticity of its Being, and for this authenticity as a possibility which it always is.2 But at the same time, this is the
1 'Allein dieses Nichts von Zuhandenem, das die alltägliche umsichtige Rede einzig versteht, ist kein totales Nichts.' This sentence is grammatically ambiguous.
2 'Die Angst bringt das Dasein vor sein Freisein für ... (propensio in ...) die Eigentlichkeit seines Seins als Möglichkeit, die es immer schon ist.'