Abstract

As a 20th century thinker, Heidegger belongs to a tradition critical of subjectivity. However, Heidegger’s destruction of the subject does not first begin with the so-called „Turn”. Irrespective of a widely held misunderstanding, Being and Time is not an analysis of the subject or of subjectivity as the possibility-condition for understanding Being. The “Dasein” investigated in Being and Time is in fact a structure from which the subject must be taken up and made comprehensible as one of “Dasein’s” structural moments. This is how Heidegger puts into question the self-empowerment of the subject. “Dasein’s” relation to the world is not founded in its being a subject; it is instead found in the “Being-in,” in dispositional-discursive understanding. Being is disclosed in this “clearing”. The primary concern is not, however, the determination of the subject, since “Dasein” does not remain within the limits of a self. The disclosedness is already a determination of Being itself. Being-there is therefore more than being-subject, and also more than being-existent. In contrast, “Dasein” stands in the ontological difference, is itself the ontological difference; and, therewith, it is the opening and the path towards Being