Dasein - Monoskop

HEIDEGGER'S ONTOLOGY AND LANGUAGE AS THE UNIVERSAL MEDIUM 173
makes no reference to the subject-object distinction, and thus leaves
open the possibility of adopting a starting point entirely different
from Husserl's.
On the methodological level, Heidegger's notion of phenomenology
demands descriptions that are given not on the basis of some
traditional philosophical bias (like the subject-object distinction),
but rather on direct and immediate unprejudiced contact with the
subject matter. How the definition specifies a specific subject matter,
namely Being (das 5esn), is more difficult to appreciate upon
first sight. Heidegger establishes this link by observing that a systematic
"letting-something-see" makes sense only if this something
cannot easily be seen in the first place. That is to say, phenomenology
is needed only where the phenomena are still to be revealed,
where they are still hidden. Furthermore, those phenomena that are
most hidden, where the amount of work needed to reveal them is the
greatest, are the most important, and even the defining phenomena
of phenomenology. Being and Time claims that the Being of beings
(das Sein des Seienden) is this most hidden phenomenon, and that
phenomenology thus turns out to be ontology:
What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever
we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is something
that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for
the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something
that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to
it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground.
Yet that which remains hidden in an egregious sense ... is not
this entity or that, but rather the Being of entities .. . 156
That Heidegger held this conception already in 1921 can be read
from the following passage:
Philosophy is a knowing attitude towards beings, an attitude
concerned with the principal matter. ... And what is as such
the principle (das Prinzipielle] for such beings? ... [It is] Being,
it is, to be more exact, a taking into account the manner in which
such "Being" can be grasped, i.e., the "meaning of Being". l57
In a lecture given in 1927, Heidegger even writes that Being
is "the proper and sole theme of philosophy", 158 Here he explains