conception of existence underlie our interpretation of the authenticity and totality of Dasein, an ontic interpretation that might be possible, but need not be binding for every one? Existential interpretation will never seek to take over by fiat those things that, from an existentiell point of view, are possible or binding. But must it not justify itself with regard to those existentiell possibilities that it uses to give the ontic basis for the ontological interpretation? If the being of Dasein is essentially potentiality-of-being and being-free for its ownmost possibilities, and if it always exists only in freedom or unfreedom for them, can the ontological interpretation take as its basis anything other than ontic possibilities (modes of potentiality-of-being) and project these upon their ontological possibility? And if Dasein mostly interprets itself in terms of its lostness in taking care of the "world," is not the determination of the ontic and existentiell possibilities and the existential analysis based upon them (in opposition to that lostness) the mode of its disclosure appropriate to this being? Does not then the violence of this project amount [313] to freeing the undisguised phenomenal content IBestand] of Dasein?
The "violent" presentation of possibilities of existence may be required for our method, but can it escape being merely arbitrary? If our analytic takes anticipatory resoluteness as its basis, as an existentielly authentic potentiality-of-being, and if Dasein itself summons this possibility right out of the ground of its existence, is this possibility then an arbitrary one?* Is the mode of being in accordance with which the potentiality-of-being of Dasein relates to its eminent possibility, death, picked up by chance? Does being-in-the-world have a higher instance of its potentiality-of-being than its own death?
The ontic and ontological project of Dasein upon an authentic potentiality-of-being-a-whole may not be arbitrary, but is the existential interpretation of these phenomena then already justified? Where does this interpretation get its guidelines if not from a "presupposed" idea of existence in general? How are the steps of the. analysis of inauthentic everydayness regulated, if not by the concept of existence that we have posited? And if we say that Dasein "falls prey," and that thus the authenticity of its potentiality-of-being is to be wrested from this tendency of being-from what perspective are we speaking here? Is not everything illuminated by the light of the "presupposed" idea of existence, even if rather dimly? Where does this idea get its justification? Has our initial project, in which we called attention to it, led us nowhere? By no means.
The formal indication of the idea of existence was guided by the understanding of being in Dasein itself. Without any ontological transparency, it was, after all, revealed that I myself am always the being
* Probably not; but "not arbitrary" does yet not mean "necessary and binding."