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• Heideggerian Terminology - Wikipedia

Kinds of Being

Revitalizing the Question of Being

• Heidegger seeks to understand what it means to be.

Ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit)

• Describes how we interact with things in everyday life, focusing on their practical utility and how they facilitate our actions.

Present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit)

• Refers to how things appear when they are not immediately useful, but instead exist as objects with specific properties.

Dasein

Being-there (Dasein)

Characteristics of Being

1. Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein)
   • Involves space and time.
2. Being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode)
   • Mortality drives action; without it, time would feel infinite.

Dasein and Possibilities

• Dasein always understands itself in terms of possibilities.
• It can either follow "The They" self or strive for a more authentic understanding.

Essence of Dasein

1. are aware of their own being,

2. interpret themselves, and

3. exist in relation to the world and others.

• Dasein is not static; it changes constantly, much like the atoms and cells that make up our bodies.

Real world example, The Student in a Library

You’re sitting in a library, studying for an exam. You’re not just a brain processing information. You are:

1. caring about your future,

2. interpreting your life as one where passing this exam matters,

3. acting in a shared world (e.g., the idea of education, grades, careers).

👉 Dasein is the being that finds itself in this meaningful activity, not just a body occupying a chair.

Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein)

DEFINITION

IMPORTANT DEFINITION OF WORLD

• network of meaningful involvement
• [MYTAKE] I think it's very interesting, because for example in Vancouver my friends and I have a very similar existence because we live in the same world, the same spatial world, same meaning for same the same things: panaroma ridge, visa, same sorge (concern) team onboarding, learning Azure, and same meaning for the same things in general
• [MYTAKE] I love how phenomenologist and subjective Heidegger's understanding is for, it is as if his vision of world is completely real and personal
• [MYTAKE] I think one of the reasons why spouses are so similar is that they share so much of the same world

Parts of the world

• Referential Totality (Verweisungszusammenhang)
• • The world is made up of things that refer to one another in a network of practical relations
• Significance (Bedeutsamkeit)
• Concern (Besorgen)
• • • Producing, attending, making use of, letting go, accomplishing, interrogating, considering, and discussing.
• Publicness / The “They” (das Man)
• Mood or Attunement (Befindlichkeit)
• • We are always already in a mood or emotional tone before thinking or acting.
    • Examples: waking up anxious, feeling awkward in a room, or being thrown into grief.
• These moods reveal how we are situated in the world.
• Thrownness (Geworfenheit)
• Projection (Entwurf)
• Discourse and language
• • Heidegger emphasizes the power of language:
    • “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”

Example Losing a Job.

When someone loses their job, they don’t just lose income—they may feel like their world collapses:

1. Social roles

2. Daily routines

3. Future projects

4. Sense of purpose

Everydayness

Falling (Verfallen)

Authenticity

1. Being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode)

Recognizing that death is inevitable and uniquely yours.

Living with the awareness that your time is limited.

Death individualizes Dasein — no one else can die for you.

“Death is Dasein's ownmost possibility — non-relational and not to be outstripped.”

2.Resoluteness (Entschlossenheit)

Committing to a life project that reflects your own values.

Taking decisive, clear action even in uncertainty.

Not being swayed by the anonymous voice of “the They” (das Man).

3. Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom is not abstract choice, but the responsibility to choose meaningfully.

Dasein is thrown into the world (not chosen), but must take a stand on that thrownness.

4.Owning One’s Thrownness (Geworfenheit)

You didn’t choose your birth, language, culture, or time — but they’re the conditions of your existence.

Authenticity is not escaping thrownness, but responding to it freely.

5.Anxiety (Angst)

Unlike fear, anxiety is not about something specific.

It reveals the groundlessness of existence and the burden of freedom.

In anxiety, Dasein sees that no external authority can tell it how to be.

🧠 20 Key Concepts in Heidegger's Philosophy

1. Being (Sein)

The central philosophical question: what does it mean to be?

2. Dasein

Human existence; literally “being-there.” The being that asks about being.

3. Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein)

Dasein is always already embedded in a meaningful world — never isolated.

4. Thrownness (Geworfenheit)

We are “thrown” into a world not of our choosing (language, culture, history).

5. Disposition / Disposedness (Befindlichkeit)

We are always in some mood or attunement that reveals our world.

6. Understanding (Verstehen)

We always interpret the world in terms of possibilities for action.

7. Care (Sorge)

Dasein is defined by care — concern for the world, others, and itself.

8. The They (Das Man)

The anonymous “they” who dictate norms — how people usually live.

9. Falling (Verfallen)

Our tendency to drift into distraction, gossip, and conformity.

10. Authenticity (Eigentlichkeit)

Owning one’s life, choices, and death — living true to oneself.

11. Inauthenticity

Living passively or in denial, absorbed in social norms.

12. Being-toward-death ((Sein-zum-Tode)

Awareness of our mortality as a key to authentic existence.

13. Temporality (Zeitlichkeit)

Time is not linear — it’s the horizon through which we exist.

14. Existential vs. Existentiell

Existential = structures of being; existentiell = content of life.

15. Worldhood

The meaningful structure of the world we inhabit.

16. Equipment (Zeug)

We engage with things as tools in use, not just objects.

17. Ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit)

How tools show up in smooth, everyday use.

18. Present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit)

How things appear when broken or theorized — objectified.

19. Clearing (Lichtung)

A metaphor for the openness where being can be revealed.

20. Language as the House of Being

Later Heidegger: language is not a tool — it reveals being.