and as correlative to human being, Being and Time stands in the centuries-long tradition of the transcendental turn to the subject (die Wende zum Subjekt), which reaches back at least as far as Descartes and, for Heidegger, arguably as far back as Parmenides.3 In that transcendental tradition, the way to solve a philosophical problem is to turn the inquiring subject into the subject of the inquiry.4 Heidegger’s place within that tradition is defined from the outset by the debate he initiated over what is meant by the “subject” (which he interprets as the “e-ject”: thrown-open ex-sistence). As located formally within the transcendental tradition, Being and Time, Part I, had three distinct tasks, each task corresponding to one of the Part I’s three divisions:
In short, “fundamental ontology” (SZ I in toto) was to show that and how meaningful presence—“being in general”—is made possible by and occurs only within human openedness as the clearing.7 The early Heidegger articulated this thrown-open clearing as the hermeneutical “horizon” sustained by ex-sistence as “transcendence.”8 Later and more adequately he spelled it out as
3. See chapter 3, note 183, and GA 26: 179.20–21 = 143.24–5: “insofern bei Parmenides zum erstenmal zur Sprache kommt, daß Sein subjektsbezogen ist.”
4. SZ 7.24–27 = 27.7–9. Plotinus thematizes the “transcendental turn” at Enneads V 1: 1.31–32: τί ὂν ζητεῖ γνωστέον αὐτῇ, ἱνα αὑτὴν πρότερον μάθῃ, εἰ δύναμιν ἐχει τοῦ τὰ τοιαῦτα ζητεῖν: “It [the soul] should know what it is as an investigating soul, so that it may learn first about itself, whether it has the power to investigate things of this kind” (Armstrong). More literally: “It is necessary for the soul to know what kind of being is doing the searching . . . (etc.).”
5. See chapter 3, notes 137–42.
6. “Clearing and meaningful presence”: GA 14: 90.2 = 73.2 and GA 11: 151.21–28 = xx.25–33. Heidegger summarized other topics to be covered in SZ I.3 at GA 24: §6 (on 4 May 1927). See chapter 7.
7. GA 7: 186.31–32 = 185.25–26: Being arrives “in den geöffneten Bereich des Menschenwesens.” On fundamental ontology, see chapter 7, below. On ex-sistence’s openness as “existential spatiality” see SZ 132.32–33 = 171.8 and §§ 22–24.
8. Heidegger understands “transcendence” (= ex-sistence qua being ahead and beyond—that is, open) as “das Offenhalten des Horizontes, in dem das Sein des Seienden vorgängig erblickbar wird”: GA 3: 123.28–30 = 87.24–25. See GA 9: 172.18–19 = 132.35–36: “in der ontologischen Wahrheit, d.h. aber in der Transzendenz selbst.” GA 27: 207.13–14: “gründet die ontologische Wahrheit in der Transzendenz.”