Abstract

This dissertation endeavors to study the phenomenon of everydayness that emerges in the analyses of Heidegger's first systematic work, Being and Time. The study shows that and how Being announces itself in each and every instance of Dasein's comportment towards entities in their readiness-to-hand. It characterizes the way of this "announcement" as a mystery. This mystery pertains to how ready-to-hand entities in their worldhood freely take on a significance that is without a logical basis. This "significance" and its non-logical status is discussed in terms of the formal structure of appearance that characterizes the structure of entities in their mode of indication. ;The study finds that the phenomenal basis of everydayness is ontological. The phenomenal basis of everydayness is shown as the basis of all modes of Dasein's "Being-in," This finding is in marked contrast to prevailing views on the place of "everydayness" in Heidegger's thinking, which for the most part equate this phenomenon with Dasein's inauthentic mode of "Being-in" and its ontologically derivative modes of understanding. The dissertation concludes by offering a provisional reading of Temporality that preserves the phenomenal structure of everydayness in which Being announces itself