Editing Martin Heidegger (section)

====Being-in-the-world====
Heidegger introduces the term [[Dasein]] to denote a "living being" through its activity of "being there".{{sfn|Horrigan-Kelly|Millar|Dowling|2016}} Understood as a unitary phenomenon rather than a contingent, additive combination, it is characterized by Heidegger as "being-in-the-world".{{sfn|Wheeler|2020|loc=§2.2.3}}

Heidegger insists that the 'in' of Dasein's being-in-the-world is an 'in' of involvement or of engagement, not of objective, physical enclosedness. The sense in which Dasein is 'in' the world is the sense of "residing" or "dwelling" in the world.{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=54}} Heidegger provides a few examples: "having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something".{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=56}}{{sfn|Polt|1999|pages=46–49}}

Just as 'being-in' does not denote objective, physical enclosedness, so 'world', as Heidegger uses the term, does not denote a universe of physical objects. The world, in Heidegger's sense, is to be understood according to our sense of our possibilities: things present themselves to people in terms of their projects, the uses to which they can put them. The 'sight' with which people grasp equipment is not a mentalistic intentionality, but what Heidegger calls 'circumspection'.{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=69}} This is to say that equipment reveals itself in terms of its 'towards-which,' in terms of the work it is good for. In the everyday world, people are absorbed within the equipmental totality of their work-world.{{sfn|Polt|1999|loc=pp. 46–61, esp. diagram on p.61}}{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=88–100}} Moreover, on Heidegger's analysis, this entails a radical holism.{{sfn|Wheeler|2020|loc=§2.2.3}} In his own words, "there 'is' no such thing as ''an'' equipment".{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|loc=p. 97, qtd. in translators' fn. 1}}

For example, when someone sits down to dinner and picks up their fork, they are not picking up an object with good stabbing properties: they are non-reflectively engaging an 'in-order-to-eat'. When it works as expected, equipment is transparent; when it is used, it is subsumed under the work toward which it is employed. Heidegger calls this structure of practically ordered reference relations the 'worldhood of the world'.{{sfn|Polt|1999|loc=pp. 46–61, esp. diagram on p.61}}{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=88–100}}

Heidegger calls the mode of being of such entities "ready-to-hand", for they are understood only in being handled.{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=50}} If the fork is made of plastic, however, and it snaps in the course of using it, then it assumes the mode of being that Heidegger calls "present-at-hand." For now the fork needs to be made the object of focal awareness, considering it in terms of its properties. Is it too broken to use? If so, could the diner possibly get by with another utensil or just with their fingers? This kind of equipmental breakdown is not the only way that objects become present-at-hand for us, but Heidegger considers it typical of the way that this shift occurs in the course of ordinary goings-on.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=71-72}}

In this way, Heidegger creates a theoretical space for the categories of subject and object, while at the same time denying that they apply to our most basic way of moving about in the world, of which they are instead presented as derivative.{{sfn|Wheeler|2020|loc=§2.2.2}}

Heidegger presents three primary structural features of being-in-the-world: understanding, attunement, and discourse. He calls these features "existentiales" or "existentialia" (''Existenzialien'') to distinguish their ontological status, as distinct from the "categories" of metaphysics.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=40–42}}{{sfn|Inwood|1999|pages=61–62}}

* ''Understanding'' is "our fundamental ability to be someone, to do things, to get around in the world". It is the basic "know-how" in terms of which Dasein goes about pursuing the usually humdrum tasks that make up daily life. Heidegger argues that this mode of understanding is more fundamental than theoretical understanding.{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=65}}
* ''Attunement'' is "our way of finding ourselves thrust into the world".{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=65}} It can also be translated as "disposition" or "affectedness". (The standard translation of Macquarrie and Robinson uses "state-of-mind", but this misleadingly suggests a private mental state.) There is no perfect equivalent for Heidegger's ''Befindlichkeit'', which is not even an ordinary German word.{{sfn|Heidegger|1996a|page=xv}}{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=168}}{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=65}} What needs to be conveyed, however, is "being found in a situation where things and opinions already matter".{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=168}}
* ''Discourse'' (sometimes: ''talk'' or ''telling'' [de:''Rede'']) is "the articulation of the world into recognizable, communicable patterns of meaning." It is implicated in both understanding attunement: "The world that is opened up by moods and grasped by understanding gets organized by discourse. Discourse makes language possible."{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=65}} According to Heidegger, "Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility."{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=161}} In its most basic form, this referential whole manifests itself in the way things are told apart just in the course of using them.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=214}}

Heidegger unifies these three existential features of Dasein in a composite structure he terms "care":{{efn|[[Michael Inwood]] provides a brief discussion of this term to illustrate Heidegger's use of language more generally: "The word 'care', which corresponds closely, if not exactly, to the German ''Sorge'', has a range of senses. We can see this from the adjectives it forms and the words they contrast with: 'careworn' and 'carefree'; 'careful' and 'careless'; 'caring' and 'uncaring'. These oppositions are not the same: one can be, for example, both careworn and careless. In ordinary usage not everyone is careworn, careful and caring all the time. Some of us are carefree, careless or uncaring. Heidegger makes two innovations. First, he uses 'care' in a broad sense which underlies its diversification into the careworn, the careful and the caring. Second, in this sense of 'care', he insists, everyone cares; no one is wholly carefree, careless or uncaring. It is only because everyone is, in this fundamental sense, care-ful, that we can ever be carefree, careless or uncaring in the ordinary, or as he has it, the 'ontical', senses of these words. In the 'ontological' sense of 'care', everyone cares. All human beings, again, are 'ahead of themselves' (''sich vorweg''), roughly 'up to something' or on the look out for what to do. What about those mired in hopeless despair? Even those, Heidegger insists, are 'ahead of themselves': 'Hopelessness does not tear Dasein away from its possibilities; it is only a particular mode of being toward these possibilities' (BT, 236)."{{sfn|Inwood|1999|pages=2–3}} }} "ahead-of-itself-being-already-in-(the-world) as being-amidst (entities encountered within-the-world)."{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=192}}{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=238–39}} What unifies this formula is ''temporality''. Understanding is oriented towards future possibilities, attunement is shaped by the past, and discourse discloses the present in those terms.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|pages=244–45}}{{sfn|Wheeler|2020|loc=§2.2.7}} In this way, the investigation into the being of Dasein leads to time. Much of Division II of ''Being and Time'' is devoted to a more fundamental reinterpretation of the findings of Division I in terms of Dasein's temporality.{{sfn|Polt|1999|page=85}}