logistic argument, but by insight into the phenomenon itself. We pursue the three conditions individually in their ur-temporality. But if they are all originally interconnected within ur-temporality, then the more our analysis gains insight into the ur-temporality of one of them, the more clearly we will see the others as well. Or more precisely, we will see the whole context of being that they delimit: the comportment of existence becomes visible.

We characterized the first condition in two ways: 1. the prior-having of something, and 2. the tendency to uncover. And we spoke of this condition on two occasions. The first time was in our analysis of the statement (§12), when we said that the statement is grounded in a prior understanding. We gave the example of chalk: The prior understanding concerns the concrete act of writing as an involvement-with. In that analysis we did not consider whether the statement that is grounded in such a prior understanding was true or false. We took as an example a true statement: “This chalk is white.”

We also treated this same phenomenon when speaking about deception (the example of the deer). There we began with a false statement, but again we showed that, as a statement (whether it be explicitly asserted or not), it too was grounded in a prior knowledge. But in this case our analysis went further. We pointed out the structure of [209] this prior knowledge (GA 21, pp. 192ff.). We said that the prior act of letting something encounter us is a comportment within which we constantly live and in which the tendency to uncover the encountering thing can also lie as an interpretation and determination that goes after the thing. The prior letting-encounter and the prior-having of something ground the tendency to uncover whatever is already-had in these ways. “Tendency” is a mode of being-disposed for the explicit “approach” of something. And this tendency in turn grounds and supports the mode of uncovering that thing.

These phenomena—letting something encounter, the prior-having of something, and the tendency to [uncover] something—must be shown in their ur-temporality. But to do so we must have secured the very horizon within which we can meet them. In other words, these phenomena have to be brought back to the context of being where they are what they are. But this context-of-being is one to which the statement belongs, whose conditions of being we are now pursuing.

We said that we live constantly in this state of letting-things-encounter-us. This, along with the already-having of something and the tendency to [uncover] something, are comportments of ourselves, i.e., comportments of the being [Seienden] that we are and that we call existence. Therefore, these comportments are ways that existence can be, ways in which it is as it is and can be as existence. Therefore, we understand the aforementioned phenomena as modes