truth for that which exists. The latter truth consists only in being-true qua existing. And questioning too must be understood accordingly, not as an inquiry-about but as a questioning-for, where the questioner's situation is included in the question.
Before then one sets out prematurely to give an answer to the question about the final human purpose—an answer which would be at bottom none at all—before we try to fill in the content of the formal for-the-sake-of, we must first examine more closely this for-the-sake-of itself, so as to avoid an inadequate construal of for-the-sake-of as the constituent of worldhood.
The existence of Dasein is determined by the for-the-sake-of. It is Dasein's defining characteristic [Auszeichnende] that it is concerned with this being, in its being, in a specific way. Dasein exists for the sake of Dasein's being and its capacity-for-being. But, one might immediately object, here we have just provided a determination of the contents of the for-the-sake-of, and we have pinned down the final purpose that is one-sided in the greatest degree; it is an extreme egoism, the clearest delusion to assert that all beings, including nature and culture and whatever else there might be, only exist in each case for the individual human being and his egotistic goals. In fact, if this were the sense of the claim of the ontology of Dasein, then it would indeed be madness. But then neither would it be explicable why one would need an analysis of Dasein in order to assert such outrageous nonsense. On the other hand, finally, Kant has said that man exists as an end in himself.
But things are not finally so simple if the statement of essence, "It belongs to Dasein's essence to be concerned about its own being," occurs within a metaphysics of Dasein. In that case it would be completely superfluous were one to correct the statement by pointing to the many humans who sacrifice themselves for others and who perish in friendship and community with others. To correct the statement in this way is superfluous, because such a correction would correct something it cannot correct. For the aforementioned statement is not at all an ontic assertion claiming that all existing humans in fact use or even should use all that surrounds them solely for their own particular egotistic aims. The ontological statement, "It belongs to the essence of Dasein that its own being resides in its for-the-sake-of," does not exclude humans from being in fact concerned about the being of others; this ontological statement, moreover, supplies the metaphysical ground of the possibility for anything like Dasein to he able to be with others, for them and through them. In other words, if the statement,