being in the world
Dasein — Heidegger’s untranslated designation for the mode of Being that is characteristically human, literally ‘Being-there’ — stands as the axial concept of Being and Time and radiates through the depth-psychology corpus wherever questions of existence, finitude, and authentic selfhood arise. The corpus preserves Heidegger’s own sustained working-out of the term across its full analytic range: Dasein as Being-in-the-world irreducibly structured by care, thrownness, projection, and Being-towards-death; as the site where truth (aletheia) is primordially ‘there’; as the locus of the tension between authenticity and the absorptive pull of das Man, the anonymous ‘they’. Ricoeur’s engagement with flesh, otherness, and intersubjectivity offers a critical counterpoint, pressing the question of whether Dasein’s ownmost character can be reconciled with genuine alterity. Throughout, the passages resist any reduction of Dasein to a Cartesian subject, a biological organism, or a sociological aggregate — each such reduction is explicitly diagnosed as an ontological category mistake. What emerges is a portrait of human existence as always already temporally structured, spatially oriented through de-severance and directionality, and fundamentally disclosed to itself through mood (Stimmung), understanding, and discourse. For depth psychology, Dasein names the horizon within which concepts such as anxiety, guilt, conscience, and care acquire their existential-ontological, rather than merely psychopathological, weight.
Dasein is in untruth’. But only in so far as Dasein has been disclosed has it also been closed off; and only in so far as entities within-the-world have been uncovered along with Dasein, have such entities… been covered up (hidden) or disguised.
This passage argues that Dasein’s disclosedness is constitutively equiprimordial with concealment — untruth is not an accidental defect but belongs essentially to Dasein’s Being.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
uncanniness pursues Dasein constantly, and is a threat to its everyday lostness in the ‘they’, though not explicitly… Anxiety can arise in the most innocuous Situations.
Anxiety is identified as the fundamental attunement (Grundstimmung) that discloses Dasein to itself against the absorbing cover of the ‘they’, making it a privileged methodological point of entry for the existential analytic.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
“Inauthenticity” does not mean anything like Being-no-longer-in-the-world, but amounts rather to a quite distinctive kind of Being-in-the-world — the kind which is completely fascinated by the ‘world’ and by the Dasein-
Inauthenticity is clarified not as an absence of Being-in-the-world but as a specific, captivated mode of it, establishing that every existential modality of Dasein remains ontologically within the structure of Being-in-the-world.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
everyday Dasein covers up the ownmost possibility of its Being — that possibility which is non-relational and not to be out-stripped. This factical tendency to cover up confirms our thesis that Dasein, as factical, is in the ‘untruth’.
The passage argues that Dasein’s structural evasion of its ownmost possibility — death — is itself phenomenal evidence for the constitutive untruth and factical fallenness intrinsic to Dasein’s Being.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
because Dasein is lost in the ‘they’, it must first find itself. In order to find itself at all, it must be ‘shown’ to itself in its possible authenticity.
Resoluteness and the attestation of authentic potentiality-for-Being are presented as the existential answer to Dasein’s constitutive lostness in the anonymous ‘they’.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
In death, Dasein has not been fulfilled nor has it simply disappeared; it has not become finished nor is it wholly at one’s disposal as something ready-to-hand.
Death is rigorously distinguished from all modes of ending proper to present-at-hand or ready-to-hand entities, establishing Being-towards-death as a uniquely existential, non-objectifiable structure of Dasein.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Being-at-an-end implies existentially Being-towards-the-end. The uttermost ‘not-yet’ has the character of something towards which Dasein comports itself.
The analysis reformulates death not as an eventual event but as an existential structure — a constant forward orientation — that pervades and defines Dasein’s temporality.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
truth, as Dasein’s disclosedness, must be. This belongs to Dasein’s essential thrownness into the world. Has Dasein as itself ever decided freely whether it wants to come into ‘Dasein’ or not?
Truth is grounded ontologically in Dasein’s disclosedness, and the question of Dasein’s thrownness — its unchosen factical entry into existence — is raised as constitutive of that very truth-relation.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Being-guilty belongs to Dasein’s Being, and signifies the null Being-the-basis of a nullity. The ‘Guilty!’ which belongs to the Being of Dasein is something that can be neither augmented nor diminished.
Guilt is ontologized as a permanent structural feature of Dasein’s Being — the null ground of a nullity — rather than a moral or psychological condition susceptible to quantification.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Along with Dasein as Being-in-the-world, entities within-the-world have in each case already been disclosed. This existential-ontological assertion seems to accord with the thesis of realism that the external world is Really present-at-hand.
The passage deploys Dasein’s constitutive Being-in-the-world to adjudicate the realism–idealism debate, arguing that worldly disclosure is prior to any epistemological question about external reality.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Ontically as well as ontologically, the priority belongs to Being-in-the-world as concern. In the analytic of Dasein this structure undergoes a basic Interpretation.
Care (Sorge) is identified as the primordial structure underlying Dasein’s Being-in-the-world, with Being-in-the-world assigned ontological priority over any derivative theoretical attitude.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
factical Dasein, understanding itself and its world ecstatically in the unity of the ‘there’, comes back from these horizons to the entities encountered within them.
Temporality as ecstatical unity — future, present, and having-been — is articulated as the ontological ground that structures how Dasein discloses itself and entities within its world.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Dasein is for the sake of the ‘they’ in an everyday manner, and the ‘they’ itself articulates the referential context of significance. When entities are encountered, Dasein’s world frees them for a totality of involvements.
The ‘they’ (das Man) is shown to be an ontological structure that pre-articulates Dasein’s world of significance, not a mere sociological aggregate but a constitutive mode of Dasein’s everyday Being.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Hopelessness, for instance, does not tear Dasein away from its possibilities, but is only one of its own modes of Being towards these possibilities.
Even the most apparently negative existentiell states — hopelessness — are reclaimed as modes of Dasein’s Being-towards-its-possibilities, subordinate to the existential structure of the ‘ahead-of-itself’.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Dasein does not do when it thus flees. It turns away from itself in accordance with its own inertia of falling.
Fallenness is described as Dasein’s own structural tendency to turn away from itself, establishing that inauthenticity is not externally imposed but belongs to Dasein’s own Being.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
In Dasein, as being towards its death, its own uttermost ‘not-yet’ has already been included — that ‘not-yet’ which all others lie ahead of.
Being-towards-death is identified as the structural inclusion, within Dasein’s very Being, of a ‘not-yet’ that is irreplaceable and cannot be represented or shared by any other Dasein.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
the end which belongs to the potentiality-for-Being — that is to say, to existence — limits and determines in every case whatever totality is possible for Dasein.
Death as the end of Dasein’s potentiality-for-Being is shown to be the limit that conditions and circumscribes every possible wholeness that Dasein could attain.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
seizing upon the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world throughout all the constitutents of its Being.
Understanding is characterised not as a theoretical act but as the existential grasp of the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, implicating all structural moments of Dasein simultaneously.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
‘Care’ first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives… it is made out of humus (earth).
The mythological Cura fable is deployed to ground care (Sorge) as the primordial structural whole of Dasein — the ontological articulation of its thrownness, projection, and Being-alongside.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
a structure in accordance with whose phenomenal content the concepts of Being must be Articulated; because of this, and because this structure is in principle one which cannot be
The primordial structure of Dasein’s Being is established as the indispensable phenomenal basis from which all ontological concepts must be articulated, ruling out any shortcut through pre-given categories.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Dasein is essentially de-severance — that is, it is spatial. It can never do more than change them. Dasein is spatial in that it discovers space circumspectively.
Dasein’s spatiality is argued to be existential rather than geometric — constituted by de-severance and directionality as modes of Being-in-the-world rather than by objective location in homogeneous space.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
it is already ‘there’, and yet nowhere; it is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath, and yet it is nowhere. Dasein itself.
Anxiety’s uncanny character — threatening from nowhere and everywhere — is used to disclose Dasein to itself as the very entity before which it shrinks, marking Dasein’s ownmost uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit).
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
This ‘with’ is something of the character of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of Being as circumspectively concernful Being-in-the-world.
Being-with (Mitsein) is articulated as an existential structure of Dasein itself — not an external social relation added to a pre-given subject — establishing co-existence as ontologically co-primordial.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
No one can take the Other’s dying away from him. Of course someone can ‘go to his death for another’. But that always means to sacrifice oneself for the other.
The ownmost and non-relational character of death is defended against the apparent counter-example of dying-for-another, confirming that Dasein’s Being-towards-death is structurally non-representable.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Resoluteness, by its ontological essence, is always the resoluteness of some particular factical Dasein.
Resoluteness is shown to be not an abstract existential ideal but an essentially factical, individuating event tied to the particular thrownness of each Dasein.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Ethnology itself already presupposes as its clue an inadequate analytic of Dasein. But since the positive sciences neither ‘can’ nor should wait for the ontological labours of philosophy to be done.
The existential analytic of Dasein is claimed as the unacknowledged but indispensable foundation that every positive human science — including ethnology — tacitly presupposes.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Dasein’s ‘Essence’ is grounded in its existence. If the ‘I’ is an Essential characteristic of Dasein, then it is one which must be Interpreted existentially.
The ‘Who?’ of Dasein is answered not through substance or ego-theory but through existential exhibition of a distinctive kind of Being, grounding selfhood in existence rather than in essence.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Only in some definite mode of its own Being-in-the-world can Dasein discover entities as Nature. This manner of knowing them has the character of depriving the world of its worldhood in a definite way.
Nature as object of scientific cognition is shown to be derivative from Dasein’s more primordial Being-in-the-world, which is always already more than a theoretical encounter with extended substance.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
finite Dasein… dispels the danger that it may, by its own finite understanding of existence, fail to recognize that it is getting outstripped by the existence-possibilities of Others.
Dasein’s finitude is identified as both a structural condition and an ethical risk — the finite understanding of existence may fail to attend to the existence-possibilities belonging to others.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
is, has always submitted itself already to a ‘world’ which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its Being.
Dasein’s constitutive submission to a world it did not choose is invoked as the phenomenal basis for the analysis of worldhood and the ready-to-hand.
, Being and Time, 1962aside
It is because Husserl thought of the other than me only as another me, and never of the self as another, that he has no answer to the paradox summed up in the question: How am I to understand that my flesh is also a body?
Ricoeur, engaging obliquely with the Dasein-tradition, argues that genuine alterity — the self as another — cannot be recovered within Husserl’s reduction to ownness, implicitly pressing against Dasein’s structural ownmost solipsism.
, Oneself as Another, 1992aside