my conclusion

Conclusion

Where does Dasein end and the world begin?
What Heidegger means by world is the worldhood of the world. Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is necessarily intertwined with the world. The world is a priori to Dasein and, in this sense, the world also within Dasein. Consequently, part of what Heidegger means by world is Dasein. But, where does Dasein end and the world begin?
We know that this boundary cannot be understood spatially. “Being-in, on the other hand, is a state of Dasein’s Being; it is an existentiale”(SZ 54). My Being-in-the-world is fundamentally different from “the water is ‘in’ the glass, or the garment is ‘in’ the cupboard”(SZ 54). Accordingly, Being-in describes Dasein’s familiarity with the world and comportment towards the world. But still, where do I end and where does my world begin?
This question of boundary is tied into of question identity. It seems that in order for me to know who I am I need to know who I am not. Heidegger often defines the boundary between Dasein and the world negatively. Dasein is not the present-at-hand, the ready-to-hand, or other Daseins. I qua Dasein am not my environment and I am not the They. However, the present-at-hand, the ready-to-hand, others, my environment, and the They are all within my world. That is, all these entities are actively involved in my identity. As Lilian Alweiss puts it in The World Unclaimed: “Dasein cannot be differentiated from its world”(WU 80).
Perhaps there is no boundary. Perhaps the question “Where does Dasein end and the world begin?” is symptomatic of an old and fallible epistemological way of thinking. In following Alweiss again: “Our temptation to locate the distinctiveness of Dasein in its spatiality is erroneous…”(85). Is not a boundary a marker of space? Yet, “in existence, man does not proceed from some inside to some outside; rather, the essence of Existenz is out-standing standing-within the essential sunderance of the clearing of beings”(OA 192). It only appears that a boundary between my world and myself is needed in order for me to retain my individuality, but for Heidegger this is not the case.
In Being-towards-death, my death distinguishes me as an individual. “Death does not just ‘belong’ to one’s own Dasein in an undifferentiated way; death lays claim to it as an individual Dasein”(SZ 263). Quite morbidly, when I die I die and no other Dasein can die for me. Here again the Aristotelian notion of continuity aids us in understanding the where Dasein ends and the world begins. The world is continuous and Dasein is in the world. The world does not stop at some border that is myself. Rather, I am the world too. The world occupies me, but I do not occupy the whole of the world. Again, Being-in ought not to be defined in terms of spatiality; instead Dasein’s existential structure of Being-in-the-world is the condition of possibility for Dasein’s spatiality.

Continuity, infinity, and math:
Aristotle’s definition of continuity in the Physics is helpful, but also complex. Aristotle’s notions of continuity and continua are intimately tied into a handful of other complex terms including indivisibility, distance, time, and movement. Of the four terms, however, it is indivisibility that is most relevant to our topic. Indivisibility is the most relevant for us because this essay does not set out to critically assess Heidegger’s theories on distance, time, and movement. Hence, the way in which I use the term continuity is meant to describe a specific type of unity and relation inherent to what Heidegger means by world. Distance, time, and movement are important for our purposes in so far as they are a part of the world. After all, “the world worlds” and time is obviously an important part of Being and Time. Distance, time, and movement are not irrelevant, but they are heavily reliant on Aristotle’s treatment of indivisibility. Consequently, the term indivisibility gets priority. A full description of Aristotle and Heidegger’s similarities ought to be fully addressed, but is outside the scope of this work.
For Aristotle, “it is impossible for a continuum to consist of indivisible things”(PH 231a21). So, when I claim that my world and the world of my historical people are continuous, does this imply indivisibility? More specifically, does this imply that either Dasein or the peasant woman’s world is indivisible? My answer is: Not necessarily. According to Aristotle, “anything indivisible has no parts” (PH 231a30). Furthermore, “if a continuum were divisible into indivisible parts, that would be a case of indivisible things being in contact, because the limits of continuous things form a unity and are in contact”(PH 231b17). For our purposes, the world can be either infinitely divisible or made up of indivisible parts in contact with one another. Either way, the world is continuous.
Beyond Aristotle, the history of continuums in both math and philosophy is unsettled. From Leibniz’s infinitesimals to D’Alembert’s limit concept and Cantor’s continuum hypothesis, the debate about what a continuum is and how one ought to understand continua is still active. For all the above-mentioned mathematicians and philosophers, the debates about continua are closely tied into debates about infinity as well. For our purposes, we ought to keep these debates and their consequences in mind. It seems that their consequences, however, would enhance our understanding of many details. However, the focus of this essay remains entirely on “What does Heidegger mean by world?” To keep this focus I rely almost entirely on information Heidegger directly gives in only Being and Time and The Origin of the Work of Art. Unfortunately, Heidegger fails to directly address continua within these two works.

A word on intentionality:
In the History of the Concept of Time Heidegger discusses Brentano’s influence on Husserl in terms of intentionality. Within this discussion Heidegger tries “to show that intentionality is a structure of lived experiences as such”(HC 29). The intentio of intentionality “literally means directing-itself-towards”(HC 29). For Heidegger, Dasein is fundamentally Being-towards the world as Being-in-the-world. We witness the direct influence of intentionality upon Heidegger’s philosophy in such phrases as “Being-towards-death”, “the constitutive assignment of the “in-order-to” to a “towards-this”, and “towards-which” [das Wozu] (SZ 74).
Importantly, the intentio has an inherent affinity with the intentum, “whereby intentum, the intended” is “the entity in the how of its being-perceived”(HC 45). These entities are included in Dasein’s environment and are within Dasein’s world. Dasein’s directing-itself-towards is a description of Dasein’s comportment towards the world and the intentum is the world’s status of necessary inclusion. To each lived experience there necessary belongs a world. This concept is reiterated in the phrase “the worldhood of the world”. Worldhood describes Dasein’s comportment as intentional, but already and necessarily included within Dasein’s comportment is the world. Consequently, the “basic constitution of intentionality as a reciprocal belonging-together of intention and intentum”(HC 45) is mimicked in Heidegger’s notion of world. Thereby intentionality plays an active role in what Heidegger means by world.
Undoubtedly intentionality is an important notion, but I describe what Heidegger means by world without it. Thus, I maintain that it is possible to describe what Heidegger means by world without the notion of intentionality. Otherwise, Heidegger ought to of directly mentioned and emphasized intentionality in both Being and Time and The Origin of the Work of Art. Yet, Heidegger does not. Consequently, the word intentionality is mostly absent from this essay. It is not my intention, however, to undermine the importance of intentionality.

Closing thoughts:
Despite my efforts, part of what Heidegger means by world remains outstanding. Yet, it is necessary that part of what Heidegger means by world be left undefined. In a sense, to define is to demarcate, or to set a limit. The world is essentially moving and continually in the process of defining itself. Since time is not at its limit, neither is the world. Therefore, I describe what Heidegger means by world by acknowledging the necessary irresolution of the world’s definition.