The question of alterity in Martin Heidegger's Being and time

Abstract

This article is a brief exegesis of the fourth chapter of the first section of Martin Heidegger's work, Being and time, which addresses the question of how the Being of Dasein is constituted by the structure of coexistence essentially as Being-with [Mit-Sein]. Up to this point in the work, Heidegger has presented and structured the problem of Being from the perspective of occupation, from the Being-together with the intramundane entity encountered, because this phenomenal moment of the Dasein structure as an understanding of Being is what manifests itself most visibly in everyday life. This hermeneutical procedure aims to undertake a path of deepening the question, always going from the clearest understanding to the most obscure and difficult places to be seen (even to the invisibility inherent in the structure), since these constitute the totality of the form of the Being of this entity, whose absolute immediacy means that its structure is only constantly experienced (phenomenally), but almost never thematically. Now, the question is precisely what this structure might be, starting from the existential Being-with, since Being-with encompasses both the engagement with the intramundane entity and coexistence (with another Dasein).