For this purpose, the idea of "guilty" must be formalized to the extent that the vulgar phenomena of guilt, which one related to being-with others in taking care of things, drop out. The idea of guilt must not only be removed from the area of calculating and taking care of things, but must also be separated from the relationship to an ought and a law such that by failing to comply with it one burdens oneself with guilt. For here, too, guilt is still necessarily defined as a lack, when something which ought to be arid can be is missing. But to be missing means not being present. A lack, as the not being present of what ought to be, is a determination of being of objective presence. In this sense nothing can be essentially lacking in existence, not because it is complete, but because its character of being is distinguished from any kind of objective presence.
Still, the character of the not [Nicht] is present in the idea of "guilty." If the "guilty" is to be able to define existence, the ontological problem arises here of clarifying existentially the not-character of this not. Furthermore, there belongs to the idea of "guilty" that which is expressed without differentiation in the concept of guilt as ''being responsible for": being-the-ground for. ... Thus we define the formal existential idea of "guilty" as being-the-ground for a being [Sein] which is determined by a not-that is, being-the-ground of a nullity [Nichtigkeit]. If the idea of the not present in the existentially understood concept of "guilt" excludes relatedness to anything objectively present which is possible or which ought to be, if thus Dasein is altogether incommensurate with something objectively present or valid which it itself is not, or which is not in the way Dasein is, that is, exists, then any possibility that, th regard to being-the-ground for a lack, the being that is itself such a ground might be reckoned as "deficient," is a possibility that is excluded. If a lack, such as a failure to fulfill some [284] requirement, has been "caused" in a way characteristic of Dasein, we cannot simply calculate back to a deficiency of the "cause." Being-the-ground-for ... need not have the same character of not as the privativum, which is grounded in it and arise,s from it. The ground need not acquire its nullity from that which grounds it. But this means that being-guilty does not result from an indebtedness, but the other way around: indebtedness is possible only "on the basis" of a primordial being guilty. Can something like this be pointed to in the being of Dasein, and how is it existentially possible at all?
The being of Dasein is care. It includes in itself facticity (thrownness), existence (project) and falling prey. Dasein exists as thrown, brought into its there not of its own accord. It exists as a potentiality-of-being which belongs to itself, and yet has not given itself to itself. Existing, it never gets back behind its thrownness so that it could ever release this "that it is and has to be" from its being a self and lead it into