BEING AND TIME MARTIN HEIDEGGER Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson HARPER & ROW. PUBLISHERS New York. Hagerstown, San Francisco, London BEING AND TIME Copyright © 1962 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repro­ duced in any manner whatsoever without written pennission except in the case of brief quotations em­ bodied in critical articles and reviews. For infonna­ tion address Harper &: Row. Publishers, Incorporated. 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N. Y. 1002~ Translated from the Gennan Sein und Zeit (Seventh edition, Neomarius Verlag, Tiibingen) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-7289 INT. II Being and Time , 6. The Task oj Destroying the History of Ontology All research-and not least that which operates within the range of the central question of Being-is an ontical possibility of Dasein. Dasein's Being finds its meaning in temporality. But temporality is also the con­ --which makes historicality possible as a temporal kind of Being . which Dasein itself possesses, regardless of whether or how Dasein is an entity 'in time'. Historicality, as a determinate character, is prior to what is called "history" (world-historical historizing).l "Historicality" stands for the state of Being that is constitutive for 20 Dasein's 'historizing' as such; only on the basis of such 'historizing' is anything like 'world-history' possible or can anything belong historically to world-history. In its factical Being, any Dasein is as it already was, and it is 'what' it already was. It is its past, whether explicitly or not. And this is so not only in that its past is, as it were, pushing itself along 'behind' it, . and that Dasein possesses what is past as a property which is still present­ at-hand and which sometimes has after-effects upon it: Dasein 'is' its past in the way of its own Being, which, to put it roughly, 'historizes' out ofits future on each occasion. 2 Whatever the way of being it may have at the time, and thus with whatever understanding of Being it may possess, Dasein has grown up both into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself: in terms ofthis it understands itself proximally and, within a certain range, constantly. By this understanding, the possibilities of its Being are disclosed and regulated. Its own past-and this always means the past of its 'generation'-is not something which follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it. This elemental historicality of Dasein may remain hidden from Dasein itself. But there is a way by which it can be discovered and given proper attention. Dasein can discover tradition, preserve it, and study it explicitly. The discovery of tradition and the disclosure of what it 'transmits' and how this is transmitted, can be taken hold ofas a task in its own right. In this way Dasein brings itself into the kind of Being which consists in historiological inquiry and research. But historiology-or more precisely historicity3-is possible as a kind ofBeing which the inquiring Dasein may 1 'weltgeschichtliches Geschehen'. While the verb 'geschehen' ordinarily means to 'happen', and will often be so translated, Heidegger stresses its etymological kinship to 'Geschichte' or 'history'. To bring out this connection, we have coined the verb 'historize', which might be paraphrased as to 'happen in a historical way'; we shall usually translate 'geschehen' this way in contexts where history is being discussed. We trnst that the reader will keep in mind that such 'historizing' is characteristic ofall historical entities, and is not the sort of thing that is done primarily by historians (as 'philosophizing', for instance, is done by philosophers). (On 'world-historical' see H. 381 ff.) 2 'Das Dasein "ist" seine Vergangenheit in der Weise seines Seins, das, roh gesagt. jeweils aus seiner Zukunft her "geschieht".' ' 3 'Historizitiit'. Cf. note 2, p. 31. H. 10 above. 42 Being and Time INT. II INT. II Being and Time 43 possess, only because historicality is a detennining characteristic for inquiring or in choosing. This holds true-and by no means least-for that Dasein in the very basis of its Being. If this historicality remains hidden understanding which is rooted in Dasein's ownmost Being, and for the from Dasein, and as long as it so remains, Dasein is also denied the possibility of developing it-namely, for ontological understanding. possibility of historiological inquiry or the discovery of history. If his­ When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what toriology is wanting, this is not evidence against Dasein's historicality; on it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, the contrary, as a deficient model of this state of Being, it is evidence for that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to it. Only because it is 'historical' can an era be unhistoriological. us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those On the other hand, if Dasein has seized upon its latent possibility not primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down only ofmaking its own existence transparent to itse1fbut also ofinquiring to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn'! Indeed it makes us forget into the meaning of existentiality itself (that is to say, of previously that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the neces­ inquiring into the meaning of Being in general), and if by such inquiry sity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even its eyes have been opened to its own essential historicality, then one cannot understand. Dasein has had its historicality so thoroughly uprooted by fail to see that the inquiry into Being (the ontico-ontological necessity of tradition that it confines its interest to the multiformity of possible types, which we have already indicated) is itself characterized by historicality. directions, and standpoints of philosophical activity in the most exotic The ownmost meaning of Being which belongs to the inquiry into Being and alien of cultures; and by this very interest it seeks to veil the fact that 2I as an historical inquiry, gives us the assignment [Anweisung] of inquiring it has no ground of its Own to stand on. Consequently, despite all its into the history of that inquiry itself, that is, of becoming historiological. iological interests and all its zeal for an Interpretation which is In working out the question of Being, we must heed this assignment, so philologically 'objective' ["sachliche"], Dasein no longer understands the that by positively making the past our own, we may bring ourselves into most elcmentary conditions which would alone enable it to go back to full possession of the ownmost possibilities of such inquiry. The question the past in a positive manner and make it productively its own. of the meaning of Being must be carried through by explicating Dasein We have shown at the outset (Section I) not only that the question of beforehand in its temporality and historicality; the question thus brings the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one that itself to the point where it understands itself as historiological. has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite forgotten Our preparatory Interpretation of the fundamental structures of in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'. Greek ontology and its history Dasein with regard to the average kind of Being which is closest to it -which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the con­ (a kind of Being in which it is therefore proximally historical as well), ceptual character of philosophy even today-prove that when Dasein 22 will make manifest, however, not only that Dasein is inclined to fall back understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the upon its world (the world in which it is) and to interpret itselfin terms of 'world', and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated that world by its reflected light, but also that Dasein simultaneously falls to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident prey to the tradition of which it has more or less explicitly taken hold.2 -merely material for reworking, as it was for In the Middle Ages This tradition keeps it from providing its own guidance, whether in this uprooted Greek ontology became a fixed body of doctrine. Its syste­ matics, however, is by no means a mere joining together of traditional 1 'defizienter Modus'. Heidegger likes to think of certain characteristics as occurring in various ways or 'modes', among which may be included certain ways of ' not occurring' pieces into a single edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have or 'occurring only to an inadequate extent' or, in general, occurring 'deficiently'. It is as been taken over dogmatically from the Greeks, a great deal of unpre­ if zero and the negative integers were to be thought of as representing 'deficient modes of being a positive integer'. tentious work has been carried on further within these limits. With the I! ' ••• das Dasein hat nicht nur die Geneigtheit, an seine Welt, in der es ist, zu verfallen peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology has, in and reluzent aus ihr her sich auszulegen, Dasein verfallt in eins damit auch seiner mehr oder minder ausdrucklich crgriffenen Tradition.' The verb 'verfallen' is one which its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes meta­ Heidegger will use many times.