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but existence [Dasein] is always extra mentem; that moreover the having of existence as something that is there is not based at all upon intellectual functions (whether it be intuition or thinking) but alone upon the resistance of the entity originally experienced solely in the act of striving and the dynamic factors of attention: this I have proposed in lectures for seven years as the first fundament of my epistemology.3
The being of objects is given immediately only in their relation to the instincts and will, and not in some form of knowing.4
Scheler here has a special need to note the time when he first presented this theory. In this regard I want to stress that I also have proposed this theory already for seven years. As I have already said, however, this agreement obviously comes from the common root of Dilthey's initiative and the phenomenological way of putting questions. I want to emphasize expressly that Scheler's theory, especially insofar as it takes into account the specific function of corporeality in the structure of the reality of the world, will lead us to discover some essential phenomena. This is because Scheler has worked out these phenomena of the biological in an essential way and has probably gone the farthest of all today in the exploration of these phenomena and their structure. We can therefore expect his anthropology to be an essential advance in the exploration of these phenomena.
All the same, it must be said that the phenomenon of resistance is not the original phenomenon. Rather, resistance in its turn again can only be understood in terms of meaningfulness. The authentic correlation of world and Dasein (if we can speak here of correlation at all, which is not my opinion) is not that of impulse and resistance or, as in Scheler, will and resistance, but rather care and meaningfulness. This correlation is the basic structure of life, a structure which I also call facticity. For something can be encountered in its resistivity as a resistance only as something which I do not succeed in getting through when I live in a wanting-to-get-through, which means in being out toward something, which means that something is already primarily present for caring and concern, which presence is the basis upon which there can first be a presence of the resistant at all. No resistance, however great, is capable of giving something objective. If resistance
3. Max Scheler, Die Formen des Wissens und die Bildung, lecture delivered in 1925 (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1925), p. 47, note 24. Editor's note: Cited according to Max Scheler, Splite Schriften, edited by Manifred S. Frings (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1976), p. 112, note 1. [This later edition introduces a variant version of this note which makes it untranslatable. We have accordingly reverted to the original version cited in Heidegger's manuscripts and found in all editions prior to this one. The problematic phrase should read: "... sondern allein auf dem im Akte des Strebens und der dynamischen Faktoren der Aufmerksamkeit allein ursprünglich erlebten Widerstand des Seienden ....")
4. Ibid., note 25·