Heidegger's Being And Time (Section 14): The Idea of the Worldhood of the World in General

The following sections are my attempt at explaining Heidegger's Being and Time. Each section is formatted as X-Y, where X is the section number and Y is the paragraph number.



14-1

Our task is to make the 'world' transparent. The world is not the present-at-hand world we are familiar with, but it is one of the structures of Being-in-the-world; and as such it must be grasped as a phenomenon. The entities in the world, which we aim to describe, must reveal themselves.



If we walk outside, we see trees, cars, stars, etc. We could enumerate and describe these entities and be satisfied with our definition of this world. However, this world is the ontical world. We are instead attempting to grasp the being of the world; its ontological structure.



14-2

In order to describe the being of the world, we will start by exhibiting the being of the entities that are present-at-hand in the world (e.g trees, stars) and assign them into categories. All things in the present-at-hand world are substances (i.e. Aristotle's substance). What is the ontological meaning of substantiality?



14-3

Is asking what the ontological meaning of substance the correct approach? It might help us explain the alignment of the world with mathematical sciences, but it will not lead us to the phenomenon that is the ‘world.' Is substance therefore not the correct entrypoint for our phenomenological inquiry into the 'world'?



14-4

Instead of starting with substance and nature, we will start our inquiry at the entities that are closest to Dasein: the entities with which we primarily engage within-the-world.



14-5

"Neither the ontical depiction of entities within-the-world nor the ontological Interpretation of their being is such as to reach the phenomenon of the 'world'"



The objective being of the entities in the world already presuppose a world. And therefore we are not starting from the most fundamental entrypoint of inquiry.



The entities we refer to in the world have already shown themselves by Dasein's prefigured mode of being, namely a “natural” one. Are there different modes of being that reveal different kinds of entities that are not simply present-at-hand within-the-world.



14-6

How do we not know if the world is an inexplicable thing? We know because we already refer to entities within-the-world in our everyday speech. We somehow subconsciously understand the world, yet we can't explicate it.



What if the world is just that which is experienced by Dasein? If that were the case, how would we explain the common world shared by all other Dasein?



So what “world” are we aiming for? Not an objective world (nature); not a subjective world (specific to each Dasein). Instead we aim for the "worldhood of the world as such"



14-7

Worldhood is the structure of the 'world'. The ‘world’ is one of the constitutive items of Being-in-the-world. Therefore, Worldhood is an existentiale.



The world is not all the entities that Dasein is not. Instead, it is a characteristic of Dasein itself. The task of phenomenologically apprehending the world is far from understood. It would be incorrect for us to assume a any preliminary definition of what it means to be an entity within-the-world.



14-8

We use the word ‘world’ in everyday language. Maybe by investigating it's uses in language we can uncover what it means to be a world (worldhood).



14-9

  1. the world is an ontical concept for indicating to totality of entities which are present-at-hand

  2. world is ontological and signifies the being of the ontical entities which are present-at-hand

  3. world is ontical and are the entities that are closest to Dasein. It is the totality of entities with which Dasein concerns itself.

  4. world is ontological and described by its worldhood.



14-10

Going forward, we will denote the word “worldly” as a kind of Being that belongs to Dasein (not present-at-hand). We will use the word “within-the-world” to designate the world that is the present-at-hand 'in' the world



14-11

If we don't use Dasein as an entrypoint for understanding the world, we will fall back into previous ontologies (biology, anthropology, etc). Without starting with Dasein, the world becomes present-at-hand entities within-the-world, which we refer to as Nature. We fall back into our past limitations.



Dasein's world is more fundamental. It has a mode of being which represents the world as Nature. But it has other modes of being, which we will investigate, that expand the opportunity for grasping the world.



14-12

Traditional ontology is limited to seeing the world as Nature.



Worldhood gives us a way to penetrate Dasein's worldly character. Again, worldly is the way of being Dasein has when it engages with the world. One worldly engagement could be that of traditional ontology, seeing entities as all ontical entities that are not Dasein. However, our task is to delimit all possible worldly characteristics of Dasein into the structure of worldhood.



14-13

Environment is "the world of everyday Dasein which is closest to it". We will use everyday Dasein as an entrypoint into our investigation into worldhood. We will do so by using an ontological interpretation of those entities that are within-the-environment.



While the term environment infers the idea of spatiality, we shouldn't think of Dasein's environment as spatial in the physical sense. Dasein's spatiality is given from the point of view of the structure of worldhood (more on this in section 12)



Traditional ontology, starting with Descartes, attempted to describe the world first be assuming spatiality, and then interpret being in the world. This is an error, and in the following sections we will show why.





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