From the ‘dispersion’ and analysis of fear in §40 of Sein und Zeit to the experience of nothingness in What ist Metaphysik? Paths of Experience

Abstract

Throughout the history of philosophy, attempts have often been made to define what man really is. The being that we ourselves are and yet find so mysterious. In his seminal work Being and Time, Heidegger, in his endeavour to establish a foundation for understanding being, sets out to discuss the existence of man, and now takes this surprising step (surprising in light of the history of philosophy) by saying that man is, in any case, existence. And to exist is, in any case ‘to be-in-the-world’. This does not simply mean being present in the world as one thing among other things, but rather (and here he is now a very precise phenomenologist) existing in a certain way, namely, as ‘relating to’, as ‘dealing with’, as ‘dwelling with’,etc., a certain way of really existing. This ‘being-in-the-world’, which is discussed here as a basic determination of human existence, is initially given the title of ‘care’ in the subsequent analysis, but not at the beginning.