in manifold ways of taking care. However, as we showed, the closest kind of dealing is not mere perceptual cognition [Erkennen], but, rather, a handling, using, and taking care which has its own kind of "knowledge" ["Erkenntnis"]. Our phenomenological question is initially concerned with the being of those beings encountered when taking care of something. A methodological remark is necessary to secure the kind of seeing required here.
In the disclosure and explication of being, beings are always our preliminary and accompanying theme. The real theme is being. What shows itself in taking care in the surrounding world constitutes the pre-thematic being in the domain of our analysis. This being is not the object of a theoretical "world"-cognition; it is what is used, produced, and so on. As a being thus encountered, it comes pre-thematically into view for a "knowing" which, as a phenomenological knowing, primarily looks toward being and on the basis of this thematization of being thematizes actual beings as well. Thus, this phenomenological interpretation is not a cognition of existent qualities of beings, but rather a determination of the structure of their being. But as an investigation of being it independently and explicitly brings about the understanding of being which always already belongs to Dasein and is "alive" in every dealing with beings. Phenomenologically pre-thematic beings, what is used and produced, become accessible when we put ourselves in the place of taking care in the world. Strictly speaking, to talk of putting ourselves in the place of taking care is misleading. We do not first need to put ourselves in the place of this way of being in dealing with and taking care. Everyday Dasein always already is in this way; for example, in opening the door, I use the doorknob. Gaining phenomenological access to the beings thus encountered consists rather in rejecting the interpretive tendencies crowding and accompanying us which cover over the phenomenon of "taking care" in general, and thus even more so beings as they are encountered of their own accord in taking care. These insidious mistakes become clear when we ask: Which beings are to be our preliminary theme and established as a pre-phenomenal basis?
One answers: things. But perhaps we have already missed the pre-phenomenal basis we are looking for with this self-evident answer. For an unexpressed anticipatory ontological characterization is contained in addressing beings as "things" (res). An analysis which [68] starts with such beings and goes on to inquire about being comes up with thingliness and reality. Ontological explication thus finds, as it proceeds, characteristics of being such as substantiality; materiality, extendedness, side-by-sidedness. ... But the beings encountered and taken care of are also pre-ontologically hidden at first in this being [Sein]. When one designates things as the beings that are "initially