ON THE ESSENCE OF GROUND
concept of world).59 Rather, what is metaphysically [52 GA 9: 156] essential in the more or less clearly highlighted meaning of κόσμος, mundus, world, lies in the fact that it is directed toward an interpretation of human existence [Dasein] in its relation to beings as a whole. Yet for reasons that we cannot discuss here, the development of the concept of world first encounters that meaning according to which it characterizes the "how" of beings as a whole, and in such a way that their relation to Dasein is at first understood only in an indeterminate manner. World belongs to a relational structure distinctive of Dasein as such, a structure that we called being-in-the-world. This employment of the concept of world — as our historiographical references were intended to indicate — is so far from being arbitrary that it precisely attempts to raise to a level of explicitness and to sharpen into a problem a phenomenon of Dasein that is constantly already familiar to us, yet not ontologically grasped in its unity.
Human Dasein — a being that finds itself situated in the midst of beings, comporting itself toward beings — in so doing exists in such a way that beings are always manifest as a whole. Here it is not necessary that this wholeness be expressly conceptualized; its belonging to Dasein can be veiled, the expanse of this whole is changeable. This [53] wholeness is understood without the whole of those beings that are manifest being explicitly grasped or indeed "completely" investigated in their specific connections, domains, and layers. Yet the understanding of this wholeness, an understanding that in each case reaches ahead and embraces it, is a surpassing in the direction of world. The task now is to attempt a more concrete interpretation of the phenomenon of world. This may unfold through our response to the following questions: ( 1) What is the fundamental character of the wholeness we have described? (2) To what extent does this characterization of world make it possible for us to illuminate the essence of Dasein's relation to world, i.e., to shed light upon the intrinsic possibility of being-in-the-world (transcendence)?
{GA 9: 157} World as a wholeness "is" not a being, but that from out of which Dasein gives itself the signification of whatever beings it is able to comport itself toward in whatever way. That Dasein gives "itself" such signification from out of "its" world then means: In this coming toward itself from out of the world Dasein gives rise to itself [zeitigt sich]60 as a self, i.e., as a being entrusted with having to be. In the being of this being what is at issue is its potentiality for being. Dasein is in such a way that it exists for the sake of itself. If, however, it is a surpassing in the direction of world that first gives rise to selfhood, then world shows itself to be that for the sake of which Dasein exists. World
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