– pragmata – that is to say, that which one has to do with in one’s concernful dealings (praxis). But ontically, the specifically pragmatic character of the pragmata is just what the Greeks left in obscurity; they thought of these ‘proximally’ as ‘mere Things’. We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern equipment (das Zeug). In our dealings we come across equipment for writing, sewing, working, transportation, measurement. The kind of Being which equipment possesses must be exhibited. The clue for doing this lies in our first defining what makes an item of equipment – namely its equipmentality.
Taken strictly, then, there is no such thing as an equipment. To the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment is essentially ‘something-in-order-to …’ A totality of equipment is constituted by various ways of the ‘in-order-to’, such as serviceability, conduciveness, usability, manipulability.
In the ‘in-order-to’ as a structure there lies an assignment or reference of something to something … Equipment, in accordance with its equipmentality, always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These ‘Things’ never show themselves proximally as they are for themselves, so as to add up to a sum of realia and fill up a room. What we encounter as closest to us (though not as something taken as a theme) is the room; and we encounter it not as something ‘between four walls’ in a geometrical sense, but as equipment for residing. Out of this the ‘arrangement’ emerges, and it is in this that any individual item of equipment shows itself. Before it does so, a totality of equipment has already been discovered.
Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure – hammering with a hammer for example. But in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the ‘in-order-to’ which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is – as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ (Handlichkeit), of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses, in which it manifests itself in its own right, we call readiness-to-hand [Zuhandenheit] …
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 with 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 the 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 world’s 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.
Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others belongs to it; this means that because Dasein’s Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of Being, which, more that anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible. Knowing oneself is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It operates proximately in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us – Being in the world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with – an acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus, in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed …
What we indicate ontologically by the term ‘state of mind’ is ontically the most familiar and everyday sort of thing; our mood, our Being-attuned. Prior to all psychology of moods … it is necessary to see this phenomenon as a fundamental existentiale, and to outline its structure …
In having a mood, Dasein is always disclosed moodwise as that entity to which it has been delivered over in its Being; and in this way it has been delivered over to the Being which, in existing, it has to be. ‘To be disclosed’ does not mean ‘to be known as this sort of thing’. And even in the most indifferent and inoffensive everydayness, the Being of Dasein can burst forth as a naked ‘that it is and has to be’. The pure ‘that is’ shows itself, but the ‘whence’ and the ‘whither’ remain in darkness. The fact that it is just as everyday a matter for Dasein not to ‘give in’ to such moods, in other words not to follow up their disclosure and allow itself to be brought before that which is disclosed, is no evidence against the phenomenal facts of the case, in which the Being of the ‘there’ is disclosed moodwise in its ‘that it is’; it is rather evidence for it. In an ontico-existentiell sense, Dasein for the most part evades the Being which is disclosed in the mood. In an ontologico-existential sense this means that even in that to which such a mood pays no attention, Dasein is unveiled in its Being-delivered-over to the ‘there’. In the evasion of itself, the ‘there’ is something disclosed.
This characteristic of Dasein’s being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly. We call this the thrownness of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the ‘there’…An entity of the character of Dasein is its ‘there’ in such a way that, whether explicitly or not, it finds itself in its thrownness. In a state-of-mind, Dasein is always brought before itself, and has always found itself, not in the sense of coming across itself by perceiving itself, but in the sense of finding itself in the mood that it has.
Specimen Questions
1 What did Heidegger mean by saying that ‘Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence’?
2 What did Heidegger mean by saying that we understand the being of an object like a hammer in terms of its ‘readiness-to-hand’?
3 Explain Heidegger’s notion of Dasein, in opposition to such rival notions as ‘the biological human being’, or ‘the person’.
Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)
1 M. Heidegger, Being and Time [Sein und Zeit, 1927], trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
2 For a clear and accessible introduction to Heidegger’s thought, see G. Steiner, Heidegger (2nd edn, London: Harper Collins, 1992), and for a more detailed commentary, H. L. Dreyfus, Being in the World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’, Division I (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
3 For
