are at all; (2) whether this Reality of the 'external world' can be adequately proved; (3) how·far this entity, if it is Real, is to be known in its Being-in-itself; (4) what the meaning of this entity, Reality, signifies in general. The following discussion of the problem of Reality will treat three topics [202] with regard to the question of fundamental ontology: (a) Reality as a problem of Being, and whether the 'external world' can be proved; (b) Reality as an ontological problem; (c) Reality and care.
(a) Reality as a problem of Being, and whether the 'External World' can be Proved
Of these questions about Reality, the one which comes first in order is the ontological question of what "Reality" signifies in general But as long as a pure ontological problematic and methodology was lacking, this question (if it was explicitly formulated at all) was necessarily confounded with a discussion of the 'problem of the external world'; for the analysis of Reality is possible only on the basis of our having appropriate access to the Real. But it has long been held that the way to grasp the Real is by that kind of knowing which is characterized by beholding [das anschauende Erkennen]. Such knowing 'is' as a way in which the soul—or consciousness—behaves. In so far as Reality has the character of something independent and "in itself", the question of the meaning of "Reality" becomes linked with that of whether the Real can be independent 'of consciousness' or whether there can be a transcendence of consciousness into the 'sphere' of the Real. The possibility of an adequate ontological analysis of Reality depends upon how far that of which the Real is to be thus independent—how far that which is to be transcended1—has itself been clarified with regard to its Being. Only thus can even the kind of Being which belongs to transcendence be ontologically grasped. And finally we must make sure what kind of primary access we have to the Real, by deciding the question of whether knowing can take over this function at all.
These investigations, which take precedence over any possible ontological question about Reality, have been carried out in the foregoing existential analytic. According to this analytic, knowing is a founded mode of access to the Real. The Real is essentially accessible only as entities within-the-world. All access to such entities is founded ontologically upon the basic state of Dasein, Being-in-the-world; and this in turn has care as its even more primordial state of Being (ahead of itself—Being already in a world—as Being alongside entities within-the-world).
The question of whether there is a world at all and whether its Being
1 '... das, wovon Unabhangigkeit bestehen soll, was transzendiert werden soll ...'