The ontological-existential structure of falling prey would also be misunderstood if we wanted to attribute to it the meaning of a bad and deplorable ontic quality which could perhaps be removed in the advanced stages of human culture.
Neither in our first reference to being-in-the-world, as the fundamental constitution of Dasein, nor in our characterization of its constitutive structural factors, did we go beyond an analysis of the constitution of this kind of being and note its character as a phenomenon. It is true that the possible basic kinds of being-in, taking care and concern, were described. But we did not discuss the question of the everyday kind of being of these ways of being. It also became evident that being-in is quite different from a confrontation [Gegenüberstehen] which merely observes and acts, that is, the concurrent objective presence of a subject and an object. Nevertheless, it must have seemed that being-in-the-world functions as a rigid framework within which the possible relations of Dasein to its world occur, without the "framework" itself being touched upon in its kind of being. But this supposed "framework" itself belongs to the kind of being of Dasein. An existential mode of being-in-the-world is documented in the phenomenon of falling prey.
Idle talk discloses to Dasein a being toward its world, to others, and to itself-this being toward is such that these are understood, but in a mode of groundless floating. Curiosity discloses each and every thing, but in such a way that being-in is everywhere and nowhere. Ambiguity conceals nothing from the understanding of Dasein, but only in order to suppress being-in-the-world in this uprooted everywhere and nowhere.
With the ontological clarification of the kind of being of everyday being-in-the-world discernible in these phenomena, we first gain an existentially adequate determination of the fundamental constitution of Dasein. What structure does the "movement" of falling prey show?
Idle talk and the public interpretedness contained in it constitute themselves in being-with-one-another. Idle talk is not objectively present for itself within the world, as a product detached from being-with-one-another. Nor can it be volatilized to mean something "universal" which, since it essentially belongs to no one, "really" is nothing and "actually" only occurs in the individual Dasein that speaks. Idle talk is the kind of being of being-with-one-another itself; and does not first originate through certain conditions which influence Dasein "from the outside." But since, in idle talk and public interpretedness, Dasein itself presents itself with the possibility of losing itself in the they, of falling prey to groundlessness, that means that Dasein prepares for itself the constant temptation of falling prey. Being-in-the-world is in itself tempting [versucherisch].
Having already become a temptation for itself in this way, the way in which things have been publicly interpreted holds fast to Dasein in