Heidegger and the Priority of Dasein

THE PRIORITY OF DASEIN

In short, Heidegger rejects the sorts of reasons standardly offered
by philosophers for dismissing the question of the meaning of
Being: it is neither unanswerable, nor possessed of a simple or self-
evident answer. Nonetheless, that question has been systematically
passed over in the discipline, to the point at which it now seems
obscure and disorientating to most philosophers – and so to most
of Heidegger’s readers. Accordingly, before attempting to answer
the question, an adequate or appropriate way of formulating it is
required. We need to remind ourselves of what is involved in the
asking of such a question – which means that we need to remind
ourselves first of the fundamental structure of any enquiry, and
then of this enquiry in particular.