its falling prey. Idle talk and ambiguity, having-seen-everything and having-understood-everything, develop the supposition that the disclosedness of Dasein thus available and prevalent could guarantee to Dasein the certainty, genuineness, and fullness of all the possibilities of its being. The self-certainty and decisiveness of the they increasingly propagate the sense that there is no need of authentic, attuned understanding. The supposition of the they that one is leading and sustaining a full and genuine "life" brings a reassurance [Beruhigung] to Dasein, for which everything is in "the best order" and for whom all doors are open. Entangled being-in-the-world, tempting itself, is at the same time tranquillizing [beruhigend].
This tranquillization in inauthentic being, however, does not seduce one into stagnation and inactivity, but drives one to uninhibited "busyness." Being entangled in the "world" does not somehow come [178] to rest. Tempting tranquillization increases entanglement. With special regard to the interpretation of Dasein, the opinion may now arise that understanding the most foreign cultures and "synthesizing" them with one's own may lead to the thorough and first genuine enlightenment of Dasein about itself. Versatile curiosity and restlessly knowing it all masquerade as a universal understanding of Dasein. But fundamentally it remains undetermined and unasked what is then really to be understood; nor has it been understood that understanding itself is a potentiality for being which must become free solely in one's ownmost Dasein. When Dasein, tranquillized and "understanding" everything, thus compares itself with everything, it drifts toward an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality for being-in-the-world is concealed. Entangled being-in-the-world is not only tempting and tranquillizing; it is at the same time alienating.
However, this alienation cannot mean that Dasein is factically tom away from itself. On the contrary, it drives Dasein into a kind of being intent upon the most exaggerated "self-dissection" which tries out all kinds of possibilities of interpretation, with the result that the "characterologies" and "typologies" which it points out are themselves too numerous to grasp. Yet this alienation, which closes off to Dasein its authenticity and possibility, even if only that of genuinely getting stranded, still does not surrender it to beings which it itself is not, but forces it into its inauthenticity, into a possible kind of being of itself. The tempting and tranquillizing alienation of falling prey has its own kind of movement with the consequence that Dasein gets tangled up [verfängt] in itself.
The phenomena pointed out of temptation, tranquillizing, alienation, and self-entangling (entanglement [Verfangnis]) characterize the specific kind of being of falling prey. We call this kind of "movement'' of Dasein in its own being the plunge [Absturz]. Dasein plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nothingness of inauthentic