phenomenon. This perversion, however, is one that is shared by every "superior" criticism in which conscience is taken as something just occurring from time to time rather than as a 'universally established and ascertainable fact'. Among such proofs and counterproofs, the Fact of conscience cannot present itself at all. This is no lack in it, but merely a sign by which we can recognize it as ontologically of a different kind from what is environmentally present-at-hand.
Conscience gives us 'something' to understand; it discloses. By characterizing this phenomenon formally in this way, we find ourselves enjoined to take it back into the disclosedness of Dasein. This disclosedness, as a basic state of that entity which we ourselves are, is constituted by state-of-mind, understanding, falling, and discourse. If we analyse conscience more penetratingly, it is revealed as a call [Ruf]. Calling is a mode of discourse. The call of conscience has the character of an appeal to Dasein by calling it to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self; and this is done by way of summoning it to its ownmost Being-guilty.1
This existential Interpretation is necessarily a far cry from everyday ontical common sense, though it sets forth the ontological foundations of what the ordinary way of interpreting conscience has always understood within certain limits and has conceptualized as a 'theory' of conscience. Accordingly our existential Interpretation needs to be confirmed by a critique of the way in which conscience is ordinarily interpreted. When this phenomenon has been exhibited, we can bring out the extent to which it attests an authentic potentiality-for-Being of Dasein. To the call of [270] conscience there corresponds a possible hearing. Our understanding of the appeal unveils itself as our wanting to have a conscience [Gewissenhabenwollen]. But in this phenomenon lies that existentiell choosing which we seek-the choosing to choose a kind of Being-one's-Self which, in accordance with its existential structure, we call "resoluteness".2 Thus we can see how the analyses of this chapter are divided up: the existential-ontological
1 'Der Gewissensruf hat den Charakter des Anrufs des Daseins auf sein eigenstes Selbstseinkonnen und das in der Weise des Aufrufs zum eigensten Schuldigsein.' Our translation of 'Anruf' as 'appeal' and of 'Aufruf' as 'summoning' conceals the etymological connection of these expressions with 'Ruf', which we here translate as 'call'-a word which we have already used in translating expressions such as 'nennen', 'heissen', and a number of others. The verb 'anrufen' ('appeal') means literally 'to call to'; 'einen auf etwas anrufen' means 'to call to someone and call him to something'. Similarly 'aujrufen' ('summon') means 'to call up'; 'einen zu etwas aufrufen' means 'to call someone up to something which he is to do', in the sense of challenging him or 'calling' him to a higher level of performance.
2 '... das gesuchte existenzielle Wahlen der Wahl eines Selbstseins, das wir, seiner existentialen Struktur entsprechend, die Entschlossenheit nennen.' While our version preserves the grammatical ambiguity of the German, it seems clear from H. 298 that the antecedent of the second relative clause is 'Selbstsein' ('a kind of Being-one's-self'), not 'Wahlen' ('choosing').