that it need not be asked: "... the comprehension of Being ... itself is the innermost essence of finitude ...."34
One final word. If eventually we distinguish several different components in this process of transcending, they are nevertheless all synthetized into a profound unity, the single process of a There-being whose unique concern is to salvage itself, to (continue to) be. This unity Heidegger calls "concern" (Sorge), a term which, like "fallen-ness," has for him not an axiological but only an ontological sense, sc. the "structural unity of the intrinsically finite transcendence of There-being." 35
The broad lines of Heidegger's problematic are now clear, and we are almost in a position to examine Being and Time (SZ), which ambitioned to develop a fundamental ontology such as is here described, without permitting the luxuriance of its trees to obscure the unity of the forest. Fundamental ontology, itself only a preliminary analysis to expose the horizon necessary for the analysis of the sense of Being itself, will prepare to interrogate the Being that is comprehended by first interrogating the comprehending itself. The prelude to the question of Being is the question of There-being.36 We have seen already a rough draft of Heidegger's answer to such a question: There-being is transcendence, sc. a being in which the comprehending of Being comes-to-pass in a radically finite way. If, by pushing further to discover the sense of such a being, one discovers that the ultimate foundation which renders it possible is time, then we add to the first two characteristics of There-being (transcendence, finitude) a third, sc. temporality. We will have achieved, too, the program proposed by the author in the imposing title of SZ, Part I: "The interpretation of There-being in terms of temporality and the explanation of time as the transcendental horizon
34 "... Jetzt zeigt sich: wir brauchen gar nicht erst nach einem Bezug des Seinsverständnisses zur Endlichkeit im Menschen zu fragen, es selbst ist das innerste Wesen der Endlichkeit ...." (KM, p. 207). Heidegger's italics.
35 "die strukturale Einheit der in sich endlichen Transzendenz des Daseins" (KM, p. 213). We translate Sorge as "concern" because: it is less misleading, perhaps, than "care"; it admits of derivatives parallel with German (v.g. besorgen: "to be concerned with"); it suggests in English (though without verbal warrant in German) a correlation between Sorge and Dasein: "[dem es] in seinem Sein um dieses Sein selbst geht." (SZ, p. 12 and passim). What true disciple of the master will begrudge us this modest comfort ?
36 SZ, p. 7.