the discovery of a purely measurable space in the world around us is “subjective,” and that the further elaboration of such space in a geometry is “subjective.” But even that does not in the least say that space is subjective or that space has anything to do with the subject! [291] I don’t see why space couldn’t be “objective” and yet still a priori. Of course the meaning of “a priori” would still have to be worked out as “what-one-is-antecedently-with.” Let me clarify that.

In experiencing an empirical manifold, we antecedently “have” space as the object of a pre-view. The possibility of antecedently-viewed-space can be understood only in terms of the most basic structure of human existence, which I show to be “being-in.” In turn, being-in can be understood only in terms of temporality. Therefore, antecedently having space as the object of a pre-view is grounded in the prior fact of beingin-the-world, being-in-space—where “being in” has the character of “being given over to.” ⁵⁹ As soon as we see the problematic in terms of this original basis, then we can give a phenomenally grounded meaning to the statement that space is “subjectively given” (i.e., “already resides in the mind”). “Subjectively given” now means: given with the subject, which now means: given with human existence, and specifically human existence as being-in-the-world.

The interpretation of these structures presumes a radically different basis from the one Kant was able to have on the basis of Cartesian dogmatism. Last semester⁶⁰ I treated these matters in detail—the specific foundation of possibility of the givenness of space, its foundation in human existence itself and particularly in the structure of being-in; and I stressed that, to the degree it is founded on a Cartesian problematic, the Kantian problematic loses its meaning.

The basic defect underlying this whole problematic reaches much further back. It is connected with the fact that in the first place one does not take the phenomena the way they are encountered, but instead uses certain dogmas to construct “states of affairs.” One resists understanding the structure of human existence itself as a specific way of being-spatial, or more precisely of being-in-a-space. One resists seeing that an essential structure of the human way of being is to be in the world, to be in space—but in a way that is entirely different [292] from how other things are in space. (I spelled out earlier how that way is different.) And one resists this primary determination of the subject as spatial because of an old dogma that still dominates philosophy—the doctrine (whether we admit it or not) of the immortality

59. [Sein auf does not mean being-“unto” or “toward,” as if there were some point prior to the unto-ness or toward-ness. Sein auf is another term for Geworfensein: being a priori immersed in and familiar with “the world,” i.e., the human realm of sense.]

60. [That is, in Summer Semester 1925; see GA 20 and HCT.]