The Meaning of the Being of an Entity (BT324/325) (2025) Painting by Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time –324/325

If we say that entities 'have meaning', this signifies that they have become accessible in their Being; and this being, as projected upon its “upon-which”, is what 'really' 'has meaning' first of all. Entities 'have' meaning only because, as being which has been disclosed beforehand, they become intelligible in the projection of that Being – that is to say, in of the “upon-which” of that projection. The primary projection of the understanding of Being 'gives' the meaning. The question about the meaning of the Being of an entity takes as its theme the “upon-which” of that understanding of being which underlies all Being of entities.
Dasein is either authentically or inauthentically disclosed to itself as regards its existence. In existing, Dasein understands itself, and in such a way, indeed, that this understanding does not merely get something in its grasp, but makes up the existentiell Being of its factical potentiality-for-Being. The Being which is disclosed is that of an entity for which this Being is an issue. The meaning of this Being – that is, of care – is what makes care possible in its Constitution; and it is what makes up primordially the Being of this potentiality-for-Being. The meaning of Dasein's Being is not something free-floating which is other than and 'outside of' itself, but is the self-understanding Dasein itself. What makes possible the Being of Dasein, and therewith its factical existence?
That which was projected in the primordial existential projection of existence has revealed itself as anticipatory resoluteness. What makes this authentic Being-a-whole of Dasein possible with regards to the unity of its articulated structural whole? Anticipatory resoluteness, when taken formally and existentially, without our constantly designating its full structural content, is Being towards one's ownmost, distinctive potentiality-for-Being. This sort of thing is possible only in that Dasein can, indeed, come towards itself in its ownmost possibility, and that it can put up with this possibility as a possibility in thus letting itself come towards itself – in other words, that it exists. This letting-itself-come-towards-itself in that distinctive possibility which it puts up with, is the primordial phenomenon of the future as coming towards. If either authentic or inauthentic Being-towards-death belongs to Dasein' Being, then such Being-towards-death is possible only as something futural [als zukünftiges], in the sense which we have now indicated, and which we have still to define more closely. By the term 'futural', we do not here have in view a “now” which has not yet become 'actual' and which sometime will be for the first time. We have in view the coming [Kunft] in which Dasein, in its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, comes towards itself. Anticipation makes Dasein authentically futural, and in such a way that the anticipation itself is possible only in so far as Dasein, as being, is always coming towards itself – that is to say, in so far as it is futural in its Being in general.


(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger