Still more rare than the existentiell fact of real anxiety are the attempts to interpret this phenomenon in its fundamental, existential-ontological constitution and function. The reasons for this lie partly in the general neglect of the existential analytic of Dasein, particularly in the failure to recognize the phenomenon of attunement.4 The factical rarity of the phenomenon of anxiety, however, cannot deprive it of its suitability for taking over a methodical function in principle for the existential analytic. On the contrary, the rarity of the phenomenon is an indication of the fact that Dasein, which mostly remains concealed from itself in its authenticity because of the way things get publicly interpreted by the they, can be disclosed in a primordial sense in its fundamental attunement.
It is true that it is the nature of every kind of attunement to disclose complete being-in-the-world in all its constitutive factors (world, [191] being-in, self). However, in anxiety there lies the possibility of a distinctive disclosure, since anxiety individualizes. This individuality fetches Dasein back from its falling prey and reveals to it authenticity and inauthenticity as possibilities of its being. The fundamental possibilities of Dasein, which are always my own,* show themselves in anxiety as they are, undisguised [unverstellt], by innerworldly beings to which Dasein, initially and for the most part, clings.
To what extent has this existential interpretation of anxiety gained a phenomenal basis for answering the leading question of the being of the totality of the structural whole of Dasein?
§ 41. The Being of Dasein as Care
With the intention of grasping the totality of the structural whole ontologically, we must first ask whether the phenomenon of anxiety and
* Not egotistical, but to be taken over as thrown.
4. It is not a matter of chance that the phenomena of anxiety and fear, which have never been distinguished in a thoroughgoing way, were constitutive for the scope of Christian theology ontically and also ontologically; although in very narrow limits. 'Th.is always happened when the anthropological problem of the being of human being toward God gained priority, and phenomena such as faith, sin, love, and repentance guided the questions. Cf. Augustine's doctrine of timor castus and servilis, which is often discussed in his exegetical writings and letters. On fear in general, cf. "De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus," qu. 33; "De metu," qu. 34; "Utram non aliud amandum sit, quam metu carere," qu. 35; "Quid amandum sit" (Migne, ed., P. L., vol. 7, 23 sqq.).
Apart from the traditional conte>..1: of an interpretation of poenitentin and contritio, Luther treated the problem of fear in his commentary on Genesis, here, of course, least of all conceptually, but all the more penetratingly by way of edification. Cf. Enarrationes in genesin, chap. 3, WW. (Erl. edition), Exegetica opera latina, vol. 1, 177 et sqq.
S. Kierkegaard got furthest of all in the analysis of the phenomenon of anxiety; again in the theological context of a "psychological" exposition of the problem of original sin. Cf. Der Begriff der Angst, 1844, Ges. Werke (Diedrichs), vol. 5.