arne grøncannot be reduced to how we take it. Even when we would tell our-
selves: “Oh, this is just... ” (for example, this is just how things are),
taking it to be this (this is just) implies that it is more: it is that which
we take just to be....
Understanding the world does not take the world as an object. The
world is not an object next to others, even if this were another world.
Rather, it is the world within which we understand that which we are
dealing with. Yet, it is possible to speak about experiencing the world.
There are different layers to this. A “deep” experience is where the
world itself stands out. What I have in mind is not so much situations
where something does not work and familiarity in dealing with the
world seems to be broken^5 or situations where one in anxiety becomes
aware of one’s being in the world.^6 Rather, it is where we come to face
ourselves as interpreting the world. What happens to us, what comes
up “on the horizon,” can affect us in our ways of orienting ourselves
in the world so that we cannot contain it within our world. There are
human experiences that we only can articulate by saying that the
world of the one affected has broken down. What does this show? Our
world does not just break down — rather it “stands out” in situations
where we cannot contain what we experience within our world. This
tells us something not only about marginal situations. Rather, it shows
that our ways of understanding the world are accompanied by the
possibility of losing orientation. To put it differently, our experiences
can question our ways of understanding the world so that in our
understanding the question can come up whether we can contain
within our world that which affects us. Horizon is here turned into a
question: how can a loss of familiarity with the world take place within
a horizon as our “take on the world”? There must be some sort of
minimal grasp or take on the world, maybe a grasp of the world as the
world losing its familiarity or breaking down.
The question of horizon harbors the question of subjectivity. We are
ourselves implied in seeing and understanding: as the ones seeing and
understanding. Therefore we cannot just see and understand differently
- Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, [1927], Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1971,
§16. - Cf. Ibid., §40.