5. Ability as ahead. This ex-sistential ability is what we mean by “aheadness” [Verstehen], which is not about the fact that I have yet to become this or that, as if I were a thing. On the contrary, my being consists in being-able. At every moment, I either do or do not realize that I am living into possibilities, but regardless, I am always implicitly aware that I am ability. o That awareness comes not from peering inside myself but from being dis-closively open and ahead. Because I am affectively ahead (i.e., thrown open), I can also misunderstand myself and fail to recognize how I am. In fact, to some degree I am always already astray, o but as ability, I can always find my way back to myself.
6. Summary and transition. In short, my a priori structure consists in (1) aheadness-as-ability (2) that is aware of itself as ability. o We have to discuss what that means.
7. Aheadness holds open the field of intelligibility. Being thrown ahead sustains my involvement in meaning and is about my ability as involved in that world. o Aheadness not only opens up the field of intelligibility but also frees things within the world for their own possibilities so they can be seen as useful, harmful, or whatever. As a set of means-end relations, the world is the realm of possible meaning that unifies the useful things within it. In turn, I understand nature as objectively present things only in terms of their possibilities. It is no accident, therefore, that when Kant seeks the being of such objects (“nature”), he searches for the conditions that make them possible. He may be right, but we need to ask what justifies that. o
8. Projected and projecting. o I always understand things in terms of their possibilities (their possible meanings) because my aheadness is a priori projective. Consequently I understand what I primarily ex-sist for, viz., my own ex-sistence, as well as the intelligibility of the worlds I inhabit. Being projected ahead constitutes my involvement in meaning, my dis-closedness as the field of intelligibility, the arena of my ability. That realm within which my ability operates is also projective. All of this is because the ex-sistence into which I am thrown is itself projective. As we use the term, “projecting” has nothing to do with devising a plan or program (a “project”) of what I intend to do. Instead, it refers to the fact that as a priori projected, I am always projecting.
Insofar as I ex-sist and as long as I ex-sist, I understand myself in terms of possibilities. However, the projective nature of aheadness entails that I do not have a nailed-down, thematic understanding of my projected possibilities. If I did, those provisional possibilities would be deprived of their character as possible and instead would be reduced to some actual content. Instead, the possible meanings I project are and remain possibilities. Because my aheadness, as the very way I am, is projective, I am my possibilities, and I live into them as possibilities. o