What is there in the room there at home is the table (not a table among many other tables in other rooms and houses) at which one sits in order to write, have a meal, sew, play. Everyone sees this right away, e.g., during a visit: it is a writing table, a dining tab1e, a sewing table - such is the primary way in which it is being encountered in itself. This characteristic of "in order to do something" is not merely imposed on the table by relating and assimilating it to something else which it is not.

Its standing-there in the room means: Playing this role in such and such characteristic use. This and that about it is "impractical," unsuitable. That part is damaged. It now stands in a better spot In the room than before — there's better lighting, for example. Where it stood before was not at all good (for...). Here and there it shows lines — the boys like to busy themselves at the table. These lines are not just interruptions in the paint, but rather: it was the boys and it still is. This side is not the east side, and this narrow side so many cm. shorter than the other, but rather the one at which my wife sits in the evening when she wants to stay up and read, there at the table we had such and such a discussion that time, there that decision was made with a friend that time, there that work written that time, there that holiday celebrated that time.

That is the table - as such is it there in the temporality of everydayness, and as such will it perhaps happen to be encountered again after many years when, having been taken apart and now unusable, it is found lying on the floor somewhere, just like other "things," e.g., a plaything, worn out and almost unrecognizable - it is my youth. In a corner of the basement stands an old pair of skis, the one is broken in half — what stands there are not material things of different lengths, but rather the skis from that time, from that daredevil trip with so and so. That book over there was a gift from X, that one there was bound by such and such a bookbinder, this other one needs to be taken to him soon, with that one I have been wrestling for a long time, that one there was an unnecessary buy, a flop, I still need to read this one for the first time. My library is not as good as A's but far better than B’s, this matter is not something one would be able to derive pleasure from, what will the other say about this way of doing it, and the like. These are characteristics of the world’s being-encountered. What now needs to be inquired into is how they constitute the being-there of the world.

Of the two descriptions, the first was characterized as an inaccurate description, i.e., with respect to the basic task posed: ontologically and categorially grasping the immediate givens closest to us in the beings-which-are-there. This does not mean it is "false," as if it had no basis in the subject matter. It is possible for the essential content of its results to prove itself vis-à-vis a speci& domain of heing-there to be objectively there for a theoretical observing which has a definite direction and focus.

Pp. 69-70

¶ 7:30 PM