the future, and moods are made possible by having been, the third constitutive item in the structure of care—namely, falling—has its existential meaning in the Present. Our preparatory analysis of falling began with an Interpretation of idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity.ix In the temporal analysis of falling we shall take the same course. But we shall restrict our investigation to a consideration of curiosity, for here the specific temporality of falling is most easily seen. Our analysis of idle talk and ambiguity, however, presupposes our having already clarified the temporal Constitution of discourse and of explanation (interpretation).
Curiosity is a distinctive tendency of Dasein's Being, in accordance with which Dasein concerns itself with a potentiality-for-seeing.x Like the concept of sight, 'seeing' will not be restricted to awareness through 'the eyes of the body'. Awareness in the broader sense lets what is ready-to-hand and what is present-at-hand be encountered 'bodily' in themselves with regard to the way they look. Letting them be thus encountered is grounded in a Present. This Present gives us in general the ecstatical horizon within which entities can have bodily presence. Curiosity, however, does not make present the present-at-hand in order to tarry alongside it and understand it; it seeks to see only in order to see and to have seen. As this making-present which gets entangled in itself, curiosity has an ecstatical unity with a corresponding future and a corresponding having been. The craving for the new1 is of course a way of proceeding towards [347] something not yet seen, but in such a manner that the making-present seeks to extricate itself from awaiting. Curiosity is futural in a way which is altogether inauthentic, and in such a manner, moreover, that it does not await a possibility, but, in its craving, just desires such a possibility as something that is actual. Curiosity gets constituted by a making-present which is not held on to, but which, in merely making present, thereby seeks constantly to run away from the awaiting in which it is nevertheless 'held', though not held on to.2 The Present 'arises or leaps away' from the awaiting which belongs to it, and it does so in the sense
1 'Die Gier nach dem Neuen ...' Here Heidegger calls attention to the etymological structure of the word 'Neugier' ('curiosity').
2 'Die Neugier wird konstituiert durch ein ungehaltenes Gegenwärtigen, das, nur gegenwärtigend, damit ständig dem Gewärtigen, darin es doch ungehalten "gehalten" ist, zu entlaufen sucht.' This sentence involves a play on the words 'Gewärtigen' and 'Gegenwärtigen', 'gehalten' and 'ungehalten', which is not easily reproduced. While 'ungehalten' can mean 'not held on to' (as we have often translated it), it can also mean that one can no longer 'contain' oneself, and becomes 'indignant' or 'angry'. In the present passage, Heidegger may well have more than one meaning in mind. The point would be that in curiosity we are kept (or 'held') awaiting something which we 'make present' to ourselves so vividly that we try to go beyond the mere awaiting of it and become irritated or indignant because we are unable to do so. So while we are 'held' in our awaiting, we do not 'hold on to it'.