Heidegger' Categories in Being and Time
In Division One of Being and Time Heidegger presents a novel categorization of what there is, and an original account of the project of on tology and consequently of the nature and genesis of those ontological categories. He officially recognizes two categories of Being: Zuhandensein (readiness-to-hand) and Vorhandensein (presence-at-hand). Vorhandene things are roughly the objective, person-independent, causally interacting subjects of natural scientific inquiry. Zuhandene things are those which a neo Kantian would describe as having been imbued with human values and significances. In addition to these categories, there is human Being, or Da sein, in whose structure the origins of the two thing-ish categories are to be found. This essay concerns itself with three of Heidegger's conceptual innova tions: his conceiving of ontology in terms of self-adjudicating anthropological categories, as summed up in the slogan that "fundamental ontology is the regional ontology of Dasein," his corresponding anti-traditional assertion of the ontological priority of the domain of the Zuhandensein to that of the Vorhandensein, which latter is seen as rooted in or precipitated out of that more basic (Heidegger says "primordial") world of human significances, and the non-Cartesian account of awareness and classificatory consciousness as social and practical. Section I presents an interpretation of Heidegger's notion of fundamen tal ontology, and its relation to the "vulgar" ontology practiced by previous philosophers. Section II introduces Zuhandendensein?the world of equip ment, each element of which is experienced as having some practically con stituted role or significance. Section III offers a reading of Mit-Dasein, the social mode of Being which institutes the world of equipment. Finally, Sec tion IV discusses the move from a world of equipment, about which there are no facts over and above how things are taken to be by all the bits of Dasein in volved, to a realm of things which have properties not exhausted by their pos sible roles in Dasein's practical dealings.1