1. Dasein is the kind of being which I myself am. The intended meaning here is perhaps more clear with, “which I myself posess,” simply to avoid misunderstanding this as “I am a Dasein.” However, am in last analysis is the “action” proper to the way “I relate to” Dasein; I am Dasein in the same, not-exactly-grammatical sense that I see sight.
We must keep in mind section 25, and we allow that the “I myself” given above “no more than indicate[s an ontologically constitutive state],” and that it is far from sure that the “I” really discloses what Dasein truly is. Furthermore, we can in no wise “start with the formal givenness of the ‘I’,” because Dasein necessarily is-in-the-world, (i.e. the coin picture rather than the barbell), or, “a bare subject without a world never ‘is’ proximally.”
The ‘others’ includes ‘me’. This, again, is necessary because an isolated ‘I’ does not make any sense, or at least it is never fruitful to analyze such a thing. “It does not seek to establish ontically that factically I am not present-at-hand alone” means that the point is not just that I happen to not be alone on a desert island, but rather that “Dasein is essentially being-with,” that we in some way “expect” there to be Others. Others do not initially show themselves as ‘things,’ merely present-at-hand, then to be deduced, at some undetermined point, to be cases of Dasein. Thus Heidegger’s derision towards “Theoretically concocted ‘explanations’ of the Being-present-at-hand of Others,” i.e. attempts to show by a kind of Hume-ian induction why we interpret some ‘things’ as Others, or “like us”—the correct Interpretation is rather, as above, that Dasein is essentially Being-with.
One might want to say something to the effect that ‘the Others’ and Das Man are “coextensive.” In a vague sense this is valid, but we rather would like to point out that Others show themselves as cases of Dasein, but Das Man is never “this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all. The ‘who’ is [rather] the neuter, Das Man”, and again, “It ‘was’ always the Das Man who did it, and yet it can be said that it has been ‘no one.’ In Dasein’s everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say that “it was no one.”” On SZ 303 Heidegger says that “The phenomenon of the Self… needs to be defined existentially in a way which is primordial and authentic, in contrast to our prepatory exhibition of the inauthentic they-self.”
Heidegger’s methodology demands that he begin with everyday Dasein, rather than attempt a Cartesian blank slate. When he says on SZ 127 that “[publicness] never gets to the ‘heart of the matter’,” he is simultaneously a) speaking within his analysis of everyday Dasein, and b) speaking about the understanding of Being which his analysis has thusfar obtained. In this way, he can authentically hope to uncover those phenomena that he characterizes as “what is to become a phenomenon can be hidden…. Covered-up-ness is the counter concept to ‘phenomenon.’”
2. The last primate before the first man had no concept of the present-at-hand. Through pure instinct he used the things of the world as befitted his natural design. With the dawn of reason and the ability to “custom-fit” ‘things’, a striking distinction between the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand was rifted. All equipment, in its very Being, is “in-order-to” something. But if hammering nails were not an issue for Dasein, hammers, though they may just as well be present-at-hand, would not be ready-to-hand. The in-order-to of the ready-to-hand presupposes a state of Being ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ one hammers, and this state of Being is a way of Being-in-the-world (e.g. “not getting wet when it rains”), and thus the chain of ‘in-order-to’s always leads us to some understanding of the Being of Dasein.
3. “As understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities…. The projecting of the understanding has its own possibility—that of developing itself.”
“This development of the understanding we call ‘interpretation.’”
Note that Interpretation is not the understanding’s projection of itself onto the possibility of development, but rather it is the development itself. The former is still simple understanding, though in particular it is understanding of the possibility for understanding. It will become clear that there is no way to explain how Interpretation arises without recourse to another phenomenon: discourse. But first we outline the process of interpretation.
For example. Suppose that there is a case of Dasein whose ontical understanding of a hammer is limited to its standard role (i.e. pounding in nails). Heidegger would say then that Dasein’s capability for projecting the hammer onto possibilities is limited to the possibility of using it in this one function. Suppose, then, that a situation arises wherein a hammer could be used to a different end, for instance, in breaking a window. We presuppose, of course, that Dasein is concerned with this possibility, that the broken window has already been understood as being for-the-sake-of a way of being that Dasein has care for. We need to determine how understanding could develop to include the capability to project the hammer onto the possibility of using it to break the window. We cannot just say that Dasein understands the development of its understanding, for this would just say that it is capable of projecting its capability for projecting the hammer onto possibilities, onto the possibility of including this new capability. This clearly does nothing to shed light on the phenomenon of how this ‘new capability’ enters in to the picture, even though the above quotation implies that a certain ‘understanding of the understanding’ is requisite for its development. So far, though, the only plausible meaning of this is that we have a vague understanding of the mere, undetermined possibility for development of the understanding. Further analysis is needed to see how a definite capability can be ‘grasped.’
This grasping of the new capability is called interpretation; Heidegger has on SZ 148 that “Interpretation [is not] the acquiring of information about what is understood; it is rather the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding.” That is to say, the “information” is already presupposed to lie in the understanding, and constitutes the fore-having upon which interpretation is grounded. In our example, what is already had is the understanding of the typical usage of a hammer and some understanding of the broken window as in-order-to something. If Dasein is facing the problematic window with nothing disclosed to it as in-order-to break the window, Dasein looks around, and in our example, sees a hammer. The fore-sight of Interpretation has been half-blindly searching “with a view to a definite way in which [an entity] can be interpreted.” This ‘definite way’ is the being of in-order-to break the window. Now it fixes upon the hammer which is initially ready-to-hand in-order-to pound in nails, and takes ‘the first cut’ out of the fore-had understanding of the role of the hammer. The fore-grasp which “can force the entity into concepts to which it is opposed in its manner of being,” can be nothing but “the definite way” of interpretation with a view to which fore-sight searches, which forces the hammer out of its Being as ready-to-hand in-order-to pound nails, and thus the totality of the fore-structure allows the understanding of the hammer and of the window to be articulated in such a way that the hammer may be allowed to Be ready-to-hand in-order-to break the window.
Now, Heidegger says that interpretation is the development of the understanding, so we should expect that something else underlies interpretation, since as I said above, the phenomenon of understanding, as unveiled in section 31, does not suffice to explain the phenomenon of the development of the understanding. In the previous paragraph, we outlined the process of interpretation. Note that this entire process is one of communication; Dasein puts questions to entities in the world, tests them out, picks them up and projects them against the boundary wall of disclosedness. The entities, in turn, respond with some result which brings with it a new batch for the ‘totality of involvements’ that Dasein is interpreting.
4. The ahead-of-itself of Dasein as care is seen, for example, in Dasein as concern in the above section 3. Dasein is concerned with the window, because of some care for its own most-potentiality-for-being. For example, Dasein cares for its wealth and so it concerns itself with breaking into houses and takes jewels, and so it is concerned with the unbroken window. The care Dasein has is the end towards which it projects itself, but it can only project itself in so far as it can project the entities around it, concernfully. It can only be ahead of itself caringly if it is amidst entities concernfully. The latter are that with which Dasein deals directly. Thus on SZ192, “ “Being-ahead-of-itself” does not signify anything like an isolated tendency in a worldless ‘subject’, but characterizes Being-in-the-world.”
The Being-already-in-the-world of Dasein as care, is manifest in that we are attuned to the world in a certain way that effects what it is that we are presently concerned with. Thus concern is derivative of care.
5. Consider first the discussion of ‘Meaning’ in the section on Articulation. “Meaning is an existentiale of Dasein, not a property attaching to entities, lying behind them, or floating somewhere as an ‘intermediate domain’. Dasein only ‘has’ meaning…” This discussion has followed upon an exposition mostly of ontical understanding and interpretation. Things only ‘mean’ something if we notice them as in-order-to something, or if they manifest a deprivation of in-order-to. Thus a word only ‘means’ something, if the word is in-order-to communicate some entity which is in-order-to something we are concerned with. (what we have absolutely no concern for is invisible to us).
At the ontological root of this is the relationship between truth and care. The only things we can say are true are those which are disclosed to us, and they are only disclosed insofar as they concern us, which relates ultimately to care. In other words, if we do not care about something, it is utterly invisible to us. Conversely, if we say it is true that stars existed long before humans, it is only in so far as we could possibly care about this proposition; that is, only because it could be disclosed as false.
Conclusion: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Trick question!!! Yayy!
