PATHMARKS
does not annihilate the world, but rather always requires it. Whatever is ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ24 did not form the latter by first being stuck together, but is in advance governed through and through by the world. Heraclitus recognizes a further essential trait of κόσμος:25 ὁ Ἡρακλειτός φησι τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων {GA 9: 143} ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀποστρέφεσθαι: To those who are awake there belongs a single and therefore common world, whereas whoever is asleep turns toward a world of his own. Here we find the world being related to fundamental ways in which human Dasein factically exists. When awake, beings show themselves in a thoroughly concordant way that is accessible to everyone in an average manner. In sleep, the world of beings is individuated exclusively with respect to each particular Dasein.
Several points are already visible from these brief hints: (1) World refers to a "how" of being of beings, rather than to these beings themselves. (2) This "how" determines beings as a whole. In its grounds it is the possibility of every "how" in general as limit and measure. (3) This "how" as a whole is in a certain manner prior. (4) This prior "how" as a whole is itself relative to human Dasein. The world thus belongs precisely to human Dasein, even though it embraces in its whole all beings, including Dasein.
Certain though it is that this rather inexplicit and somewhat dawning understanding of κόσμος may be compressed into the above meanings, it is also incontestable that this word often merely names those beings themselves that are experienced in such a "how."
It is no accident, however, that in connection with the new ontic understanding of existence that irrupted in Christianity the relation between κόσμος and human Dasein, and thereby the concept of world in general, became sharper and clearer. The relation is experienced in such an originary manner [40] that κόσμος now comes to be used directly as a term for a particular fundamental kind of human existence. Κόσμος οὗτος in Saint Paul (cf. I Corinthians and Galatians) means not only and not primarily the state of the "cosmic," but the state and situation of the human being, the kind of stance he takes toward the cosmos, his esteem for things. K6trfwc; means being human in the manner of a way of thinking that has turned away from God (ἡ σοφία τοῦ κόσμου). Κόσμος οὗτος refers to human Dasein in a particular {GA 9: 144} "historical" existence, distinguished from another one that has already dawned (αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων).
The Gospel according to Saint John employs the concept κόσμος unusually frequently - above all in relation to the Synoptics - and does so in a sense that is quite central.26 World designates the fundamental form of
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