Being-with for the sake of Others (BT123) (2025) Schilderij door Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT123

The world not only frees the ready-to-hand as entities encountered within-the-world; it also frees Dasein – the Others in their Dasein-with. But Dasein's ownmost meaning of Being is such that this entity (which has been freed environmentally) is Being-in in the same world in which, as encounterable for Others, it is there with them. We have interpreted worldhood as that referential totality which constitutes significance (Section18). In Being-familiar with this significance and previously understanding it, Dasein lets what is ready-to-hand be encountered as discovered in its involvement. In Dasein's Being, the context of references or assignments which significance implies is tied up with Dasein's ownmost Being – a being which essentially can have no involvement, but which is rather that Being for the sake of which Dasein itself is as it is.
According to the analysis which we have now completed, Being with Others belongs to the being of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being. Thus as Being-with, Dasein 'is' essentially for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential statement as to its essence. Even if the particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, and supposes that it has no need of them or manages to get along without them, it is in the way of Being-with. In Being-with, as the existential “for-the-sake-of” of Others, these have already been disclosed in their Dasein. With their Being-with, their disclosedness has been constituted beforehand; accordingly, this disclosedness also goes to make up significance – that is to say, worldhood. And, significance, as worldhood, is tied up with the existential “for-the-sake-of-which”. Since the worldhood of that world in which every Dasein essentially is already, is thus constituted, it accordingly lets us encounter what is environmentally ready-to-hand as something with which we are circumspectively concerned, and it does so in such a way that together with it we encounter the Dasein-with of Others. The structure of the worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

Verwante thema's

Martin Heidegger