Thus all taking, using, and instituting of signs are only a particular development of the specific concern in the environing world, insofar as it is to be made available. At this point, I cannot enter into a more detailed classification of the phenomena of signs like omen, vestige, symptom, mark, and distinguishing mark. I can at least say that they retain the two-fold distinction in the kind of institution, while at the same time providing insight into the character of a superior presence which is constitutive for being a sign.
It was said that because world is present, that is, because it is disclosed and in some sense encountered for the Dasein which is in it, there is in general something like sign-things, they are handy. It belongs to the being of Dasein, inasmuch as it is being-in-the-world, to let its world be encountered. The kind of being belonging to letting the world be encountered in the primary mode of concern is itself one of understanding. The correlate of this understanding which guides all concern is that with which care dwells and which always shows itself in understanding, even though in an ever so indefinite familiarity. This primary state of knowing one's way about belongs essentially to in-being; it belongs to its sense of being and is not just something that is thrown into the bargain. But this implies that understanding primarily does not mean a mode of knowing at all, unless knowing itself has been seen as a constitutive state of being for being-in-the-world. But even then it must be said that the sense of understanding is not merged with having knowledge of something, but involves a being toward something, that is, the being of Dasein. In-being as self-understanding in understanding its world discloses the understanding of its world. Formulated in another way, it is only because understanding is the primary being-relationship of Dasein to the world and to itself that there can be something like an independent understanding and an independent cultivation and appropriation of understanding as in historical knowledge and exegesis. We shall now have to interpret the previous account of the structure of the world in correlation with the basic constitution of Dasein as the understanding concernful being-in-the-world.
World hood is the specific presence {Anwesenheit} and encounter for an understanding concern. Understanding absorption in the world discovers the world, the referential connections in what they uniquely are, in their meaning. An understanding concern thus encounters what is understood—meaning.
The references and referential connections are primarily meaning. The meanings are, according to our earlier considerations, the structure of being of the world. The referential whole of the world is a