Understanding is not a primary phenomenon of knowledge but a way of primary being toward something, toward the world and toward itself. Furthermore, this being toward something is now first fully defined by the 'I can.' 'I can' necessarily corresponds as a correlative to the understandability of something. And conversely, what can be of concern as something understandable is what can be pursued in care and in concern. Understanding in the earlier sense, where it was taken solely as a way of being toward, now has, as a mode of being of Dasein, the character of care. But this implies that understanding and more so the way of enacting understanding, interpretation, are determined by this kind of being of Dasein, by care. This phenomenon of care as being-ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-involved-in includes the character of 'before.' It is precisely interpretation, as a mode of being of understanding and so of care, which is defined by this character of the 'before.'
All interpretation, considering something as something, interprets by laying out in an already-being-involved-in, namely, in intimacy with that about which the discourse is. That about which the discourse is from the start is always already discovered in some sense, anticipated as this or that for a primary preunderstanding. It necessarily stands in an understandability which is by and large preliminary. As a kind of being of Dasein, that is, of care and so of being ahead, interpretation at any given time has its prepossession in which, before it takes any further step—indeed as a basis for it—it already understands the about-which. To this prepossession, to the predetermination of that of which the discourse is, always belongs in its being—inasmuch as interpreting considers something as something—a certain view under which we place what is to be spoken about and talked over in the interpretation. In every speaking, in every interpretation, what is placed in prepossession is aligned in our sights in a certain way. That toward which what is placed in prepossession is thus sighted, that toward which it is regarded, with respect to which it comes into sight, is what we call the preview. These two constitutive moments determine in advance, prior to all discussion, how the theme is approached in interpretation as this or that, in this or that view. Prepossession and pre-view indicate in advance which of the possible correlations of meaning (should and can) be brought out in the thematic field. They point forward to the correlations of meaning which are taking conceptual shape in interpretive discourse and especially in scientific discourse. This means that