149
though the question itself is still not even explicitly present in its structure. Later, when the question of being is worked out at a higher level, in Plato and Aristotle, the question of οὐσία includes a corresponding consideration of the act of interrogative determination, of the λόγος, the question of being includes the διαλέγεσθαι, the dialectic; the apprehension of εἶδος includes the ἰδεῖν. But the characteristic feature is that the λόγος and the ἰδεῖν, the addressing and the viewing, are treated as accessory, as concurrent, because a concurrent treatment of λόγος and ἰδεῖν is necessary in order to be able to treat the question at all meaningfully. That Plato came to the question of logos in the sense of dialectic lies simply in the sense of the very question which he posed and as he posed it, in the sense of the question of being, which itself calls for the determination of questioning as an entity.
The very matter which is asked for, which here is being, demands the exhibition of the entity Dasein. Only the phenomenological tendency—to clarify and to understand being as such—bears within itself the task of an explication of the entity which is the questioning itself—the Dasein which we, the very questioners, are. The explication of Dasein does not stem from some sort of special interest in the psychology of man, nor from a question of world view asking about the sense and purpose of our life. Nor is it an outstanding problem which is still left over, like the elaboration of a philosophical anthropology within the framework of the remaining philosophical disciplines, which leads to this primal task of an analysis of Dasein, but solely the fully understood and phenomenologically secured sense of the question—what is asked for, what is asked about, what is interrogated, and the questioning.
Working out the articulation of the question is the preliminary experience and explication of the questioning entity itself, of the Dasein which we ourselves are. It is a matter of an entity to which we have this distinctive, at any rate noteworthy, relationship of being: we are it itself—an entity which is only insofar as I am it. It is a matter of an entity which to us is the nearest. But is it also what is first given to us, that is, the immediately given? In this respect it is perhaps the farthest. Thus it happens that when we ask about it as such, when this entity is defined, it tends not to be defined at all from an originary apprehension of itself. This entity which we ourselves are and which in respect to its givenness is the farthest from us is to be defined phenomenologically, brought to the level of phenomenon, that is, experienced in such a way that it shows itself in itself, so that we draw out of this phenomenal givenness of Dasein certain basic structures which are sufficient to make the concrete question of being into a transparent question. That we with good reason or almost of necessity first ask about this entity, the Dasein, in such a way that we exhibit it provi