Being ahead of itself (BT191/192) (2024) Peinture par Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT191/192

Dasein is an entity for which, in its Being, that Being is an issue. The phrase 'is an issue' has been made plain in the state-of-Being of understanding – of understanding as self-projective Being towards its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. This potentiality is that for the sake of which any Dasein is as it is. In each case Dasein has already compared itself, in its Being, with a possibility of itself. Being-free for one's ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and therewith for the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity, is shown, with a primordial, elemental concreteness, in anxiety. But ontologically, being towards one's ownmost potentiality-for-Being means that in each case Dasein is already ahead of itself of itself [ihm selbst... vorweg] in its Being. Dasein is always 'beyond itself' [“über sich hinaus”], not as a way of behaving towards other entities which it is not, but as Being towards the potentiality-for-Being which it is itself. This structure of Being, which belongs to the essential 'is an issue', we shall denote as Dasein's “Being-ahead-of-itself”.
But this structure pertains to the whole of Dasein's constitution. “Being-ahead-of-itself”does not signify anything like an isolated tendency in a worldless 'subject', but characterizes Being-in-the-world. To Being-in-the-world, however, belongs the fact that it has been delivered over to itself – that it has in each case already been thrown into a world. The abandonment of Dasein to itself is shown with primordial concreteness in anxiety. “Being-ahead-of-itself” means, if we grasp it more fully, “ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world”.

Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

Thèmes connexes

Martin Heidegger