Heidegger describes the Being of “Dasein” as “being-there”, where “there” refers to the world. For Heidegger, the world is not a physical space, but rather a context in which meaning arises for Dasein and becomes understandable, a realm of possibilities in which Dasein’s understanding of what surrounds Dasein dwells.
Being and Time on the “World”
The world is the totality of the possibilities surrounding Dasein and hence shaping Dasein’s existence in its entirety; “that ‘wherein a factical Dasein as such can be said to ‘live’”. This means that one’s world is one’s culture, country, environment, family, education, friends, career, tradition, etc. The totality of the possibilities and impossibilities in which one finds oneself is one’s world.
Hence, there is more than one world, according to Heidegger. For example, there are sporting, business, academic, or entertaining worlds. Each world offers its inhabitants different possibilities, different impossibilities. Each world shapes the possibilities and potentialities for the being of its inhabitants differently. Each world differently and uniquely determines and governs who one is and in what ways one can live.
The particular world in which a specific Dasein dwells shapes the way of living of this specific Dasein, and decides what this Dasein sees as significant, meaningful, or purposeful in life. Dasein might also be involved in more than one world. This involvement defines and decides this specific Dasein.
Heidegger’s thinking of the world differs from traditional philosophy. For instance, Descartes attempts to objectively investigate and understand the human being by rendering the human being world-less, by taking the human being out of the world.
Heidegger, on the other hand, thinks that this objectivity is impossible and misleading, for Dasein and its world belong to each other in a relation of familiarity, not a relation governed by objectivity. Dasein inhabits and experiences its world familiarly. That is, Dasein does not dwell in the world objectively.
Since Dasein’s relation to its world is a relation of familiarity, Dasein dwells in its world by making it its home through being connected with it. Dasein is never distanced or detached from its world, in which it is immersed and rooted. This means that Dasein and its world are both entangled in each other, and this entanglement forms not Dasein’s objective thinking of its life or Dasein’s detached speaking of its life, but Dasein’s life itself, Dasein’s way of life.
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