Being And Time

Dasein is implicated in the ready-to-hand. Equipment makes sense, and comes to life, only through the projects and concerned involvement of human beings. Thus, the being of Dasein and the being of the world are essentially intertwined, but the Dasein in question is also not a generic or abstract one. It is, as Heidegger stated in Chapter 1, “in each case mine” (67). What this means is that the Dasein in the everyday world of projects and situations is a specific, individual one. It is “me.” This is what Heidegger now aims to address—the question of the “who” of everyday Dasein.

It should also be apparent that the answer usually given to this question is inadequate. As already seen, Dasein is co-constituted, in its involvement in the ready-to-hand, with other Dasein. A task, and its equipment, can have meaning only because another Dasein “for whom” it is completed is always implicitly considered in the work. This means the independent “I” is problematized. To say, as we typically do, that the who of Dasein is “the self” or “the individual” cannot quite be right. There must be something more going on.