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everything in general that in itself is, as the naive concept of world suggests? If this is what were meant, then we could never remotely say that beings as a whole are manifest to us in a fundamental attunement. The fundamental attunement may be as essential as we like, but it will never provide information about the totality of beings in themselves. But then what does this 'as a whole' mean if it does not mean the substantial whole of beings in themselves? We may answer that it means the form of those beings that are manifest for us as such. Therefore 'as a whole' signifies 'in the form of the whole'. Yet what does 'form' mean here, and what does 'manifest for us' mean? Is form simply a frame that is subsequently mounted around beings insofar as they are precisely manifest for us? And what would this subsequent frame be there for? Are beings manifest in a different way than they are precisely for us? And if not, does that mean that they are subjectively grasped by us, so that we could say that world means the subjective form and the formal constitution of the human conception of beings in themselves? Must not everything in fact lead to this conclusion when we consider that our thesis claims that man is world-forming? For this surely means that world is nothing in itself but rather something formed by man, something subjective. That would be one possible interpretation of what we have hitherto said concerning the problem of world and the concept of world—one possible interpretation, but one which nevertheless precisely fails to grasp the decisive problem here.

We shall now describe the site of the problem in a preliminary fashion by explaining in general what we mean by world-formation. According to our thesis, world belongs to world-formation. The manifestness of beings as such as a whole, world, forms itself, and world only is what it is in such formation. Who forms the world? Man, according to our thesis. But what is man? Does he form the world in the way that he forms a choral society, or does he form the world as essentially man? Is this 'man' as we know him, or man as one whom for the most part we do not know? Man insofar as he himself is made possible by something in his being human? Could this making-possible precisely consist in part in what we are proposing as world-formation? For it is not the case that man first exists and then also one day decides amongst other things to form a world. Rather world-formation is something that occurs, and only on this ground can a human being exist in the first place. Man as man is world-forming. This does not mean that the human being running around in the street as it were is world-forming, but that the Da-sein in man is world-forming. We are deliberately employing the expression 'world-formation' in an ambiguous manner. The Dasein in man forms world: [1.] it brings it forth; [2.] it gives an image or view of the world, it sets it forth; [3.] it constitutes the world, contains and embraces it.

We shall have to confirm this threefold significance of the process of forming through a more precise interpretation of the phenomenon of world. Are we