CHAPTER THREE
§ 14. The Idea of the Worldliness of the World [Weltlichkeit der Welt] in General
First of all, being-in-the-world is to be made visible with regard to the structural factor "world." The accomplishment of this task appears to be easy and so trivial that we still believe we may avoid it. What can it mean, to describe "the world" as a phenomenon? It means letting what shows itself in the "beings" within the world be seen. Thus, the first step is to enumerate the things which are "in" the world: houses, trees, people, mountains, stars. We can describe the "outward appearance" of these beings and tell of the events occurring with them. But that is obviously a pre-phenomenological "business" which cannot be phenomenologically relevant at all. The description gets stuck in beings. It is ontic. But we are, after all, seeking being. We formally defined "phenomenon" in the phenomenological sense as that which shows itself as being and the structure of being.
Thus, to describe the "world" phenomenologically means to show and to conceptually and categorically determine the being of beings present in the world. Beings within the world are things—natural things and things "having value." Their thingliness becomes a problem; and since the thingliness of the latter is based upon natural thingliness, the being of natural things, nature as such, is the primary theme. The character of being of natural things, of substances, which is the basis of everything, is substantiality. What constitutes its ontological meaning? With this we have given our investigation an unequivocal direction.
But are we asking ontologically about the "world"? The problematic characterized is undoubtedly ontological. But even if it succeeds in the purest explication of the being of nature, in comparison with the fundamental statements made by the mathematical natural sciences about this being, this ontology never gets at the phenomenon of the "world." Nature is itself a being which is encountered within the world and is discoverable on various paths and stages.
63