understanding of the differences in an approximate manner to begin with. Our initial theme is now manners of being and their diversity as illustrated by two extreme modes: presence at hand and existence. Initially, therefore, we shall place on hold the problem of truth (cf. p.76ff.).
Beings, as we saw, always stand within a context, and this context precisely makes known something of the manner of being of the beings concerned: involvement, serviceability for . . ., items of use, things that are ready to hand. This is to say that the manifold of those beings manifest to us is not the merely uniform appearing next to one another of stones, plants, animals, and humans. Though all these beings, insofar as they are in space, indeed appear next to one another, or before, behind, or over one another, this seemingly uniform appearing next to one another is nevertheless different with respect to individual beings, and this not merely in a spatial sense.
We shall attempt to see somewhat more incisively this appearing next to one another of the manifold beings that are manifest to us in an everyday manner, among which we move, and to which we thus belong. To this end, we choose two extreme ways of being next to one another: presence at hand and existence. Among the manifold beings among which we ourselves appear, there are found those that have the same manner of being as we ourselves, Dasein, and those whose manner of being is different. From this results the dichotomy that all those beings that we find before us and to which we ourselves belong are either Dasein-like or non-Dasein-like beings.
Now, beings that have our manner of being, yet that we ourselves are not, but that are in each case the other, another Dasein, the Dasein of others, are not simply present at hand next to us with perhaps other things between. Rather, the other Dasein is there with us, Dasein-with; we ourselves are determined by a being-with with the other. Dasein and Dasein are a with-one-another.
Yet are not the board or chalk at the same time just as real as us, are they then set apart, not also with us, with us there at the same time, and are they not there with us all together with one another, and we together with those things? Strictly speaking, one cannot say of them that they are with one another, even though we must concede that at the same time as our Dasein, the sponge and the chalk are present at hand. Yet a being that has the manner of being of being present at hand can never be there [da-sein] with us, because it does not have the manner of being of Dasein belonging to it. Only that which is itself Dasein can be there-with. Being-there-with does not simply mean: also in being, but precisely qua Dasein; rather, the manner of being that is Dasein first imparts to the “with” its authentic sense. “With” is to be conceived as taking part [Teilnahme], while being alien, as an absence of taking part, is only a variation of taking part.4 The “with” therefore
4. On taking part (Teilnahme), see note 5 in §13d).—Trans.