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CONVERSATIONS WITH MEDARD BOSS, 1961 - 1972
a "rational animal," as a subject in the subject-object relationship, and as a self-producing animal (Marx). Only if die projection of human being as Da-sein is enacted and constantly sustained beforehand—only in the light of this projection can this being (the human being) be investigated [in a way that is] appropriate to Da-sein.
Just this most difficult task is demanded of the investigator, that is, to make the transition from the projection of the human being as a rational animal to [the projection of] the human being as Da-sein. Therefore, it is not the case at all that the theme the doctor investigates could be "an extremely simple one" (p. 250). The letting-be of this being (the human being) in light of Da-sein is extremely difficult, unfamiliar, and must always be examined anew by contemporary scientists, but also by the one who has already gained familiarity with the projection of Da-sein. The "letting be," that is, accepting a being as it shows itself, becomes an appropriate letting-be only when this being, the Da-sein, stands constantly in view beforehand. [This can only happen] when the investigator has experienced and continues to experience himself as Da-sein, as ek-sisting, and when all human reality is determined from there. The elimination and avoidance of inappropriate representations about this being, the human being, is only possible when the practice of experiencing being human as Da-sein has been successful and when it is illuminating any investigation [p. 281] of the healthy or sick human being in advance.
The immediate letting-be [Seinlassen] of beings is possible only then, and as long as, it is mediated each time beforehand, that is, made possible and granted by the enactment and the reenactment of the projection of being human in the sense of Da-sein. But how difficult this is has been demonstrated by decades of misinterpreting being-in-the-world as an [ontic] occurrence of the human being in the midst of other beings as a whole, of the "world."
The appearances, which showed themselves in the previously mentioned letting-be, are those of the human being in this or that condition, but they are not "phenomena" in the sense of phenomenology as ontology. These "phenomena" (cf. Foundations) provide the light by which we can glimpse the existing human being as Da-sein in the first place, and then guided by this glimpse we can describe the respective appearances. The method of investigation "appropriate to Da-sein" is not phenomenological in itself but is dependent upon and guided by phenomenology in the sense of the hermeneutics [interpretation] of Dasein [Hermeneutik des Daseins].*
* See Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 62.-TRANSLATORS