STEPWISE UNFOLDING OF PERCEIVING IN ALL ITS CONNECTIONS

not come over man like some kind of arbitrary condition. We never find it present before us like a thing, mental property, or present process. We can never occupy ourselves with it in the manner of a scientifically graspable object, but the genuine essence of striving for being is such that it can exist only in and as striving itself.

Because we overlook or forget this, we are in danger of searching for this striving in some place or other, of talking about it, and in this sense arriving at a concept of it. This danger is ever present, because the Dasein is constantly disposed to see authentic having as the possession of what is had, in that sense of possession we have discussed. Since man seldom, and only with difficulty, understands his authentic mode of having as striving, i.e. understands that only what is held in (as we say) the most primordial yearning [urspriinglichste Sehnsucht] is authentically there, the primordial staking and the genuine stance of full striving for being is seldom achieved. This in turn is the reason we find it so difficult to grasp what this word refers to; not because it is difficult or intrinsically complicated, but because it seldom becomes actual i.e. occurs in its authentic, simple, and immediate illumination. For this reason man remains a stranger to this essential ground of his existence. Whoever wants to understand striving for being, i.e. wants to know what this is, must at the same time know how alone it can be, i.e. he must understand himself in relation to his own proper self.

§ 35. Inadequacy of Theaetetus' First Answer.
Perception Still More Than Perception. Broadened Experience of ai'a0r|aic; as the Condition of the Possibility of Unhiddenness

Only with this peculiar result, i.e. with the reference to 7iai8eia, is the four-step preliminary investigation concluded. The result is peculiar because it does not provide us with knowledge of anything. Instead, it delivers us over to the unavoidability of staking our authentic self.

The undecided question has now been answered. It was the question of what organ the soul perceives with when it perceives something over and above colour and sound.

1. What does it thus perceive? Beings.

2. The soul can have a relationship to these only through itself.

3. This relationship is striving for being.