(From Boedeker’s translation of Heidegger’s Being and Time)
First, a few notes:
Dasein = human being
Dasein’s world = the network of equipment, activities that makes up our practical space within which we can work. Thus we each have slightly different worlds, since we each have a slightly different range of things we can do.
Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world; that is, there’s no such thing as a Dasein without the world that it inhabits.
The things with which we work are “handy” (and “at hand” might be a better translation here) as opposed to merely “present” (and “on hand” might be a better translation here).
Whereas Dasein is being-in-the-world that it has, handy equipment is within the world where we encounter it; handy entities are thus intraworldly.
Circumspection = our way of “sighting” equipment we use and what we can do with them to achieve our practical purposes.
Taking-care, caretaking: how we relate to entities that are at hand when we “take care of business.”
Existential: having to do with Dasein’s being, existence, also known as Dasein.
Categorical: having to do with entities other than Dasein (e.g., those that are at hand or to hand).
is being-in-the-world. (There’s really no reason not to use “categorical” here.)
Closing-in-on would probably be better translated as closing-the-distance-on.
§23. The spatiality of being-in-the-world
If we ascribe spatiality toDasein, then this “being in space”must evidently be conceived from this entity’s manner of being. Dasein is essentially no being-present; its spatiality can mean neither anything like occurring at a position in “world-space,” nor being handy at a place. Both of these are manners of being of entities encountered within the world. Dasein, however, is ‘in’ the world in the sense of caretaking and familiar dealings with the entities encountered within the world. Accordingly, if spatiality applies to itin some way or other, then this is possible only upon {105} the basis of this being-in. But the spatiality of being-inshows the characteristics ofclosing-in-on[i]andorientation.
By“closing-in-on” as a manner of being of Dasein with respect to its being-in-the-world, we’ll understand nothing like remoteness (or proximity), and certainly not distance. We’ll use the expression “closing-in-on” in an active and transitive meaning. “To close in on” signifies aconstituent of Dasein’s being, with respect to which removing something, asputting it away,is only one particular, factical mode. “Closing-in-on” denotes a way of making farness,[1] i.e., something’s remoteness, disappear: making closer. Dasein is essentially closing-in-on; as the entity that it is, it always lets entities be encounteredinto its proximity.[2] Closing-in-on discovers remoteness. The latter is a categorical determination of non-Daseinly entities, just as isdistance. In contrast, we must hold fast to closing-in-onas an existential. Only inasmuch as entities areat all discovered in theirremoteness for Dasein do “remotenesses” and distancesamong intraworldlyentities themselves become accessible in relation to other such entities. Two points are closed-in-on by each other just as little as are two things per se because, according to their manner of being, none of these entities can close-in-on. They merely have adistance that can be found and be measured out inclosing-in-on.[3]
To close in on[ii] something is by and large to make it closer circumspectively:to bring it into one’s proximity byprocuring, making ready, or havingon hand. But particular manners of the purely cognitive discovery of entitiesalso have the character ofmaking them closer. An essentialtendency towardclosenesslies in Dasein.[4] All manners of increasingspeed, which we are today more or less forced to go along with – press toward overcoming remoteness. By way of an expansion and destruction[iii] of the everyday environment with “radio,”for example, Dasein today carries out a closing-in-on the ‘world’ – something of which we can’t yet get a sufficient overview in its sense for Dasein.
Closing-in-on doesn’t necessarily include explicitly assessing how far a handy entity is in relation to Dasein. Above all,getting-closed-in-on never gets conceived as distance. If one is to estimate how far away something is, one does this relative tothe remotenesses – which are closed-in-on – in which everyday Dasein holds itself. Taken as a kind of accounting, no matter howimprecise and vacillating these estimations may be, they have their ownandthoroughly comprehensible determinacyin Dasein’s everydayness. We say that it’s a good walk to there, a stone’s throw,[iv] or “as long as [it takes to smoke] a pipe.” These measurements express the fact that they’re not just intended to “measure,” but also that the assessedremoteness {106} belong to an entity toward which one goes caretakingly and circumspectively. But also if we help ourselves to fixed measurements and say“It’s a half hour to the house,” this measurementmust be taken as an estimated one. A“half hour” isn’t 30 minutes, but rather a duration that has no “length” at all, in the sense of a quantitativeextension. Thisduration is always respectively interpreted out of one’s usual everyday “takings-care.” Remotenesses are at first estimated circumspectively – and even where one is acquainted with measurementsthat have been “officially” stipulated. Because what’s closed-in-onis handy in such estimations, it retains its specifically intraworldly character. It also belongs to this that even easily manageable paths that we use to close in on entitieshave a different length each day. After all, the handy entities of the environment aren’t present for an eternal spectator who’s absolved of Dasein, butare encountered in Dasein’s circumspectively caretaking everydayness. Along the paths that Dasein takes, it doesn’t covera stretch of space as does a present corporeal thing; Dasein doesn’t “eat up kilometers”;making-closer and closing-in-on are at each momentcaretakingly being toward what’s made closer and closed-in-on. An “objectively” longroad can be shorter than one that’s“objectively” much shorter but that’s perhaps “difficult going” andthat occurs to one as infinitely long. In such “occurring,” however the respective world is first properlyhandy. Objectivedistances of present things don’t coincidewith the having-been-closed-in-on and closeness of handy intraworldly entities. No matter how exactly these distances may be known, this knowledge nevertheless remains blind; it doesn’t have the function ofmaking the environment closer by discovering it circumspectively; one employs such knowledge only in and for acaretaking being toward a world that “gets to” oneself; and this caretaking being doesn’tmeasure stretches.
From a provisionaryorientation to “nature” andthe “objectively” measureddistances of things, one is inclinedto pass off such an interpretation of closing-in-on and estimation as “subjective.” This, however,is a “subjectivity” that perhaps discovers the most real of the “reality” of the world, and that has nothing to do with “subjective” arbitrariness and subjectivistic “conceptions” ofan entity that’s different “in-itself.” The circumspective closing-in-on of Dasein’s everydayness discovers the being-in-itself of the “true world” – of the entities at which Dasein,as existing,at each moment already is.
The primary and even exclusive orientation to remotenesses as measureddistances covers up the originary spatiality of being-in. What’s supposedly “closest” is not at all what has the smallest distance “from us.” What’s “closest” lies in what’s closed in on {107} in the normal range of our reach, grasp, or view. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the manner of closing-in-on – because dealings always hold themselves in an “environment” that Dasein closes in on in a certain respective wiggle-room – we always at first hear and see over and away from what’s “closest” with respect to distance. It’s not on the basis of their range that seeing and hearing can sense what’s far away; rather, this is due to the fact that, as closing-in-on, Dasein predominantly dwells in them. For example, for someone who wears eyeglasses that are so close with respect to distance that they “rest on his or her nose,” this utilized equipment is environmentally farther away than the picture that can be found hanging on the opposite wall. As equipment, the eyeglasses have closeness to such a small extent that they often at first can’t even be found. Equipment for seeing, just as equipment for hearing (e.g., the loudspeaker on the telephone), has the unnoticeability of what’s at-first handy, as characterized above. This also applies, for example, to the street, which is equipment for walking. In walking, we touch the street with each step, and the street is seemingly the closest and most real of any handy entity at all; it so to speak presses along particular body-parts – the soles of one’s feet. Yet it’s nevertheless farther away than one’s acquaintance whom, during the course of one’s walk, one encounters in the “distance” of twenty steps “on the street.” Circumspective taking-care decides the closeness and farness of what’s environmentally at first handy. What taking-care dwells at in advance is what’s closest and what directs the closings-in-on.
If Dasein in taking-care brings something into its own proximity, this doesn’t mean that it fixes something at a spatial position that has the leastdistancefromsome point or other of its body. “In one’s proximity” meansin the sphere of what’s at first handy to one’s circumspection. Making-closer isn’t oriented toward the ‘I’-thingencumbered with a body, but rather toward caretakingbeing-in-the-world, i.e., toward what’s always at first encountered in such a being-in-the-world. Thus Dasein’s spatiality also isn’t determined by telling theposition at which a corporeal thing is present. We do indeed also say of Dasein that it always takes up a place. But this“taking-up” is to be fundamentally distinguished from being handy at a place out of somevicinity. Taking up a place must be conceived as closing-in-on the environmentally handy out intoa vicinity that’s pre-discovered circumspectively. Dasein understands its “here” from the environmental “there.” The “here” doesn’t mean ‘where’ a present entity is, but rather what some being-at that closes in on something is ‘at,’ in unison with thisclosing-in-on. In accord with its spatiality,Dasein is never at first here, but rather there; and it comes back upon its“here” from this“there” – and, furthermore, it does this {108} only in such a way that it interprets its caretaking being-toward something out of what’s handy there. Describing a phenomenal peculiarity of the structure ofthe closing-in-on that belongs to being-in should make thisfully clear.
As being-in-the-world, Dasein holds itself essentially in some closing-in-on. Dasein cannevercut throughthisclosing-in-on, i.e., the farness from itself of handy entities. Theremoteness of a handy entity from Dasein can indeed itself become found by Dasein as distance if this remotenessis determined in relation to a thing that’s thought of aspresent at the place that Dasein has taken up beforehand. Dasein can subsequently cross this“between”ofdistance, however, only in such a way that thedistance itself becomes closed in on. Dasein has so littlecrossed out theclosing-in-on of distance that it has, rather, taken it along and constantly takes it alongbecauseDasein is essentially closing-in-on, i.e., spatial. Dasein can’twander about in the respective sphere of its closings-in-on; it can never do more than alter them. Dasein is spatial in the way of circumspectively discovering space, in just such a way that Dasein constantly relates itself to the entities that it thus encounters spatially.
As being-in that closes-in-on, Dasein at the same time has the character oforientation. Everymaking-closer has already adopted a direction beforehand into a vicinity,out of whichwhat’s closed-in-onmoves closerin order to thus become able to be foundwith respect to its place. Circumspective taking-care is closing-in-on that orients [us]. The need for “signs” is already givenin this taking-care, i.e., in the being-in-the-world of Dasein itself; this equipment takes over the explicit and easily manageable giving of directions. It explicitly holds open the vicinitiesthat are utilizedcircumspectively: the respective ‘over there’ where something belongs, where someone is going, where someone brings something, or where someone is taking something. If Dasein is,then, as orienting and closing-in-on, it at each moment already has its discovered vicinity. As modes of being of being-in-the-world, both orienting and closing-in-on are provisionarilyguided by the circumspectionof taking-care.
[1] MN71: Where does the distance that’s closed-in-on come from?
[2] MN72: What’s essential is proximity and presence, not the magnitude of the distance.
[3] MN73: “Closing-in-on” is more precise than “making closer.”
[4] MN74: To what extent and why? Being as constant presence has primacy, attending to [what’s present].
[i] “Closing-the-distance-on” would be closer to Heidegger’s “Ent-fernung” than the “closing-in-on” that I’ve chosen.
[ii] Eds. 1-6 do not hyphenate Entfernen (“to close in on”); eds. 7ff have Ent-fernen.
[iii] Eds. 14ff insert “and destruction” (und Zerstörung).
[iv] Literally: “a cat’s leap.”