with-one-another requires special ways in order to get close to others or to "see through them."
But just as opening oneself up or closing oneself off are grounded in the actual mode of being of being-with-one-another, indeed it is nothing besides this mode itself, so too does the explicit disclosure of the other in concern only grow out of one's primary being-with with him. Such a disclosure of the other which is indeed thematic, but not in the mode of theoretical psychology, easily becomes the phenomenon that first comes into view for the theoretical problematic of understanding the "psychical life of others." What "initially" presents phenomenally a way of being-with-one-another that understands-is at the same time, however, taken to mean that which "originally" and primordially makes possible and constitutes being toward others. This phenomenon, which is none too happily designated as "empathy," is then supposed, as it were, to provide the first ontological bridge from one's own subject, initially given by itself, to the other subject, which is initially quite inaccessible.
To be sure, being-toward-others is ontologically different from being toward objectively present things. The "other" being itself has the kind of being of Dasein. Thus, in being with and toward others, there is a relation of being from Dasein to Dasein. But, one would like to say, this relation is after all already constitutive for one's own Dasein, which has an understanding of its own being and is thus related to Dasein. The relation of being to others then becomes a projection of one's own being toward oneself "into an other." The other is a duplicate [Dublette] of the self.
But it is easy to see that this seemingly obvious deliberation has little ground to stand on. The presupposition which this argument makes use of-that the being of Dasein toward itself is a being toward another-is incorrect. As long as the presupposition has not been demonstrated [125] clearly in its legitimacy, it remains puzzling how the relation of Dasein to itself should thus be disclosed to the other as other.
Being toward others is not only an autonomous, irreducible relation of being, as being-with it already exists with the being of Dasein. Of course, it is indisputable that a lively mutual acquaintanceship on the basis of being-with often depends on how far one's own Dasein has actually understood itself, but this only means that it depends upon how far it has made one's essential being with others transparent and not disguised it. This is possible only if Dasein as being-in-the-world is always already with others. "Empathy" does not first constitute being-with, but is first possible on its basis, and is motivated by the prevailing deficient modes of being-with in their inevitability.
But the fact that "empathy" is not an original existential phenomenon, any more than is knowing in general, does not mean that there is no