[Existential] projection is a simple, unified “occurrence” that can be formally characterized as σύνϑεσις and διαίρεσις, both at the same time. Projection is διαίρεσις—i.e., as “taking away,” it takes us away as projection. In a certain sense it stretches us apart from ourselves, endows us with a stretching [Erstreckung]. It takes us away into the possible, not so as to lose ourselves there but rather so as to let the possible, as the rendering-possible of the actual, speak back precisely upon ourselves as projection, as binding—uniting and binding: σύνϑεσις.169
From this existential structure there follow existentiel acts of making sense of things, whether by way of the apophantic “as” of declarative sentences or the hermeneutical “as” of practical activity. Our ever-operative existential identity as stretched-ahead (being present to ourselves as living ahead in possibilities) is what makes possible the discursive “as” whereby we understand what and how things currently are. Thus the thrown-openness that is our very being
is also that “occurrence” in which the thing we problematize as the as-structure has its origin. The “as” is the expression for what breaks open in the in-break [of us among things]. . . . Only because we have broken into the dimension of this distinction between the actual and the possible—between things and being in the broadest sense—do we have the possibility of grasping and understanding something as something.170
Ex-sistence as appropriated to sustaining the clearing is the basic occurrence of openedness: das Grundgeschehnis der Wahrheit.171 We are structurally dis-closed (erschlossen) and thus sustain the space within which the “as” can function and the discursive understanding of things can take place.172 As such, we are pan-hermeneutical. Our lived environment is not just a natural encircling ring of instinctual drives that befits an animal, but an open-ended as-structured world of possible meanings that we can talk about, argue over, and vote on. Whatever we meet, we meet under the rubric of “is manifest
169. The emphasis in the ET is my own. I cite Heidegger’s words spoken in the classroom (Thursday, 27 February 1930) from the typescript of the Simon Moser Nachschrift, p. 703.12–13, corresponding roughly to the much abbreviated passage at GA 29/30: 530.23–28 = 365.14–19. The Nachschrift is available at the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center (see bibliography).
170. This text is from the Nachschrift (see previous note), 703.28–704.6, corresponding roughly to GA 29/30: 530.30–531.7 = 365.21–30. See above, this chapter, note 94.
171. GA 36/37: 178.3–5 = 138.38–40: “Grundakt . . . Grundgeschehnis der Wahrheit”; ibid., 178.20–22 = 138.9–10: “Grundgeschehen im Wesen des Menschen.”
172. At GA 9: 377.22 = 286.29 and 377.28–378.1 = 287.2 “geworfene Entwurf” is defined as “entwerfende Offenhalten der Wahrheit des Seins.”