§2. General Meaning of Laying the Foundation of a Science
a) Phenomenological Interpretation of Science's Way of Being
In the following we shall characterize, first in only a general way, the idea of science as such; and then we shall determine more precisely what is needed for a science to arise at all, i.e., for a science as such to ground itself. This should make visible the supporting ground of a science and accordingly should indicate where the laying of the foundation of a science must begin. (For an exposition of the logical and phenomenological- existential concept of science, d. the lecture given in Ti.ibingen on March 9, 1927, under the title #Phenomenology and Theology.")
a) The Existential Concept of Science. Knowledge as a Revealing Comportment to Beings, the Primary Revealing in the Practical-Technical Realm, and the Prescientific Understanding of the Being of Beings
We begin our observation with a preliminary designation of science as a kind of knowing. But we do not mean knowing in the sense of the known, but rather as a knowing comportment. This comportment is not a so-called psychic process in the interior of a so-called soul. Rather, as human comportment it is a definite, possible way for humans to be. To inhere in this way of being and of knowing means to have a relationship with beings that are knowable or known, such as nature, history, space or time. This way of being relates to beings themselves; in fact, it is a comportment which reveals the being to which it is related.
The revealing comportment toward beings which occasionally surrounds human Dasein is a free possibility of this Dasein. Generally we give the name existence to the way of being which is peculiar to human Dasein and to which moreover knowing belongs as a free possibility. Humans exist, whereas things in nature are extant. Accordingly we conceive knowing as a free possibility of human existence.
In attempting to explicate knowing, and particularly science as a possibility of the existence of Dasein, we are inquiring into the existential concept of science. What is science when it is taken as the possibility of existence of human Dasein? H we wanted to respond to this question at all satisfactorily, then we would first have to go back to a general, essential determination of human Dasein itself, i.e., we must return to its essential constitution. We cannot do that here. Instead we will consider only two essential determinants which belong to the existence of Dasein: being-in-the-world and freedom. These are sufficient for a preliminary designation of the essence of science.
Human Dasein is a being which has a world; or, to put it differently,