Should we accordingly keep to the beings with which Dasein initially and for the most part dwells, to "valuable" things? Do not these things "really" show the world in which we live? Perhaps they [64] do in fact show something like "world" more penetratingly. But these things are, after all, also beings "within" the world.
Neither the antic description of innerworldly beings nor the ontological interpretation of the being of these beings gets as such at the phenomenon of "world." In both kinds of access to "objective being," "world" is already "presupposed" in various ways.
Can "world" ultimately not be addressed as a determination of the beings mentioned at all? After all, we do say that these beings are innerworldly. Is "world" indeed a character of being of Dasein? And then does every Dasein "initially" have its own world? Does not "world" thus become something "subjective"? Then how is a "common" world still possible "in" which we, after all, are? If we pose the question of "world," which world is meant? Neither this nor that world, but rather the worldliness of world in general. How can we encounter this phenomenon?
"Worldliness" is an ontological concept and designates the structure of a constitutive factor of being-in-the-world. But we have come to know being-in-the-world as an existential determination of Dasein. Accordingly, worldliness is itself an existential. W hen we inquire ontologically about the "world," we by no means abandon the thematic field of the analytic of Dasein. "World" is ontologically not a determination of those beings which Dasein essentially is not, but rather a characteristic of Dasein itself. This does not preclude the fact that the path of the investigation of .the phenomenon of "world" must be taken by way of innerworldy beings and their being. The task of a phenomenological "description" of the world is so far from obvious that its adequate determination already requires essential ontological clarification.
The multiplicity of meanings of the word "world" is striking now that we have discussed it and made frequent application of it. Unraveling this multiplicity can point toward the phenomenon intended in their various meanings and their connection.
1. World is used as an ontic concept and signifies the totality of beings which can be objectively present within the world.
2. World functions as an ontological term and signifies the being of those beings named in 1. Indeed, "world" can name the region which embraces a multiplicity of beings. For example, when we [65] speak of the "world" of the mathematician, we mean the region of all possible mathematical objects.