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that this constitutes the proper, authentic existence of man, i.e., the demand is made that this present at hand relationship toward death should become a permanent condition in man. But since the human beings who are there cannot endure this and since they are often indeed present at hand in a perfectly contented state, this proves that such a gloomy conception of existence is impossible.

With this fundamental attitude, which unwittingly comes into play from the outset, death, man's relationship toward death, is already taken as something present at hand. Since the ordinary understanding considers that which properly is to be that which is always present at hand, it sees the proper authenticity of existence in the permanent presence at hand of this relationship toward death, in this constant thinking about death. In this fundamental attitude, from which none of us may consider ourselves free, what is overlooked from the outset is that the fundamental character of existence, of human existing, lies in resolute disclosedness [Entschlossenheit]. Yet this resolute disclosedness is not some present at hand condition that I possess, but on the contrary is something which possesses me. However, this resolute disclosedness is what it is as such only and always as the moment of vision [Augenblick], as the moment of vision of genuine action. These moments of resolute disclosedness only come about in time because they are something temporal themselves, and only ever happen within the temporality of Dasein. Ordinary understanding certainly sees the moment within time as well, but it only sees the moment of vision as an ordinary moment, and only sees the ordinary moment in its evanescent character as something which is present at hand only for a short time. It is incapable of seeing the essence of the moment of vision, which rests in its seldomness when seen in relation to the time of any Dasein as a whole. The ordinary understanding is unable to grasp the seldomness of such moments and the ecstatic expanse of this seldomness, because it lacks the power of recollection [Erinnerung]. It has a memory only of what was formerly present at hand which has been retained as something now no longer present at hand. What we have called the seldomness of resolute action is a unique feature of the moment of vision, and one precisely by virtue of which the moment possesses a quite specific relation to its temporality. For where the moment of vision is not temporalized, there is not simply nothing present at hand, but rather there is always already the temporality of everydayness. Thus it is not as though man had to steal back once more into the inauthenticity of his actions from out of an unendurable anticipatory running ahead toward death. Rather this return to inauthenticity is an extinguishing of the moment of vision, an extinguishing which does not eventually come about through some external cause or other, but is essentially grounded in the momentary character of the moment of vision. Yet while the everydayness of Dasein—insofar as it maintains itself in inauthenticity—is indeed a sinking back when compared to the moment of vision and its flaring up, it is by no means to be regarded