itself, then everything becomes confused. From this, the problematic which alone guides the analytic of Dasein then becomes completely invisible.
To be sure, it remains to be considered that precisely the working-out of the innermost essence of finitude, which was demanded for the intended grounding of metaphysics, must itself always be fundamentally finite and can never become absolute. From that, however, only this follows: the renewed consideration of finitude cannot succeed by means of a reciprocal playing-out and equalizing of standpOints which mediates them in order, finally and yet nevertheless, to attain absolute knowledge of finitude, secretly put forth, which is "true in itself." Rather, there remains only the working-out of the problematiC of finitude as such. Finitude becomes manifest according to its ownmost essence if it is made accessible through unswerving application, accompanied in turn by the originally grasped, basic question of metaphysics which, to be sure, can never be claimed as the only one possible.
From this it has already become clear that the MetaphysicS of Dasein, as the laying of the ground for metaphysics, has its own truth which so far is essentially still much too veiled. No world-view-oriented position, i.e., one which is always ontically popular, and especially no theological position—which wants to approve or reject—comes as such in any way into the dimension of the problem of a Metaphysics of Dasein. As Kant says, "the critique of reason can never become popular, but it also has no need to be."294
Hence, if a critique wants to engage in the transcendental interpretation of "Care" as the transcendental unity of finitude—and who wants to deny this possibility and necessity?—then, first, it must show that the transcendence of Dasein, and, consequently, the understanding of Being, is not the innermost finitude in the human being. Second, it then must show that the grounding of metaphysics does not have this innermost reference to the finitude of Dasein at all, and, finally, it must show that the basic question of the laying of the ground for metaphysics does not lie enclosed in the problem of the inner possibility of the understanding of Being.
Immediately prior to the integral interpretation of transcendence as "Care," the fundamental-onotological analytic of Dasein intentionally seeks to work out "anxiety" as a "decisive basic disposition," in order in this way to give a concrete reference to the fact that the existential analytic was constantly guided by the question of the possibility of the understanding of Being from which it arises. It is not with the intention of [offering] some world-view-derived proclamation of a concrete ideal of existence that anxiety is supposed to be the decisive basic state of attunement. Rather, it derives its decisive character solely on the basis of the consideration of the problem of Being as such.
Anxiety is that basic disposition which places us before the Nothing. The
294. B xxxiv.