the concept of reality has a peculiar priority in the ontological problematic. This priority diverts the path to a genuine existential analytic of Dasein; it also diverts our view of the being of innerworldly things initially at hand. Finally, it forces the problematic of being in general into a direction which lies off course. The other modes of being are defined negatively and privatively with regard to reality.
Therefore, not only the analytic of Dasein, but the development of the question of the meaning of being in general must be wrested from a one-sided orientation toward being in the sense of reality. We must demonstrate that reality is not only one kind of being among others, but stands ontologically in a definite foundational context with Dasein, world, and handiness. To demonstrate this, we must discuss in principle the problem of reality, its conditions and limitations.
Under the heading "the problem of reality" various questions are clustered: (1) whether the beh1gs which are supposedly "transcendent to consciousness" are at all; (2) whether this reality of the "external world" can be sufficiently proven; (3) to what extent this being, if it is real, is to be known in its being-in-itself; (4) what the meaning of this being, reality, signifies in general. The following discussion of the problem of reality treats three things with regard to the question of [202] fundamental ontology: (a) reality as a problem of being and the demonstrability of the "external world," (b) reality as an ontological problem, (c) reality and care.
(a) Reality as a Problem of Being and the Demonstrability of the "External World"
Of these questions enumerated about reality, the one which comes first is the ontological question of what reality signifies in general. However, as long as a pure ontological problematic and methodology was lacking, this question (if it was asked explicitly at all) was necessarily confounded with a discussion of the "problem of the external world"; for the analysis of reality is possible only on the basis of an appropriate access to what is real. But intuitive cognition has always been viewed as the way to grasp what is real. Intuitive cognition [anschauende Erkennen] "is" as a kind of behavior of the soul, of consciousness. Since the character of the in-itself and independence belongs to reality, the question of the possible independence "from consciousness" of what is real, or of the possible transcendence of consciousness in the "sphere" of what is real, is coupled with the question of the meaning of reality. The possibility of an adequate ontological analysis of reality depends on how far that from which there is independence, what is to be transcended, is itself clarified with regard to its being. Only in this way can the kind of being that belongs to transcendence be ontologically