An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1927
Dasein
Being-there: the kind of being that we are, for whom Being is a question.
Heidegger's term for human existence, used to avoid the loaded baggage of "subject," "self," "soul," "person." Dasein is the being for whom its own being matters — the being to whom Being itself can become a question. To analyze Dasein is to do fundamental ontology, the precondition of any other inquiry.