beings. Heidegger calls this differentiating the going beyond beings toward Being, the "transcendence" of Dasein. The question about ground leads to the question about truth, the question about truth to the question about the ontological difference, the question about the ontological difference to the question about the transcendence of Dasein.
The transcendence of Dasein is that going beyond each and every being which has somehow always occurred. It is a going beyond from which Dasein can first of all return to things, to other Daseins, and to itself in an authentic manner, and from which the question about Dasein's possible relationship can first be raised. Transcendence, the going beyond the totality of beings, occurs toward the world and is therefore being-in-the- world. World is not the totality of beings, but rather this totality in which Dasein has always found itself, understood in the how of its manifestness, in ever-differing degrees by means of an anticipating-enveloping understanding. "World as totality 'is' not a being but rather that from which Dasein directs itself towards the beings to which it relates in the manner in which it can do so" (37). Thus the world is joined together with the for-the-sake-of-itself which Dasein exists as. It is the "world-forming" surpassing of being, transcendence as being-in-the-world, which first grants beings an entrance to the world so that they can become manifest as themselves. Transcendence is, therefore, the primal occurrence, primordial history itself (39). It must be grasped as freedom, for freedom contrasts itself with a "for-the-sake-of-itself and thus lets the world hold sway.
Freedom as letting the world hold sway is the origin of ground in general. It is "to ground," namely: 1. as founding or endowing (as the projection of the for-the-sake-of-which, as understanding); 2. as the laying hold of ground (as infatuated with beings, state-of-mind); and 3. as the giving reasons for (articulation or classification, discourse). As the threefold yet unified grounding, freedom is being-the-ground, the origin of ground, the "ground of ground." Yet, it is finite, "thrown." That it is at all or that it occurs as transcendence is not a matter of freedom. As the ground of ground, it is the ground's staying away for its proper being-the-ground, the abyss [Abgrund].
Being, ground, and truth must be grasped from out of freedom's abysmal being-the-ground. There is Being only in being-the-ground of transcendence; "ground" is primordially a transcendental, essential character of Being itself, and only because of this can it give the principle of ground as a principle regarding beings. From this belonging-together of Being and ground, the question about truth must be asked in a primordial manner. The "transcendental" grounding—the articulation of the world which is there only together with founding and laying-hold-of-the-beings.