For Heidegger, Being-in-the-world means humans serve as a clearing where things reveal themselves

Evidence

Enabling things to un-hide themselves is what humans do: it is our distinctive contribution. We are a ‘clearing’, a Lichtung, a sort of open, bright forest glade into which beings can shyly step forward like a deer from the trees. Or perhaps one should visualise beings entering the clearing to dance, like a bowerbird in a prepared patch in the undergrowth. It would be simplistic to identify the clearing with human consciousness, but this is more or less the idea. We help things to emerge into the light by being conscious of them, and we are conscious of them poetically, which means that we pay respectful attention and allow them to show themselves as they are, rather than bending them to our will. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 591

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Lichtung or ‘clearing’ metaphor central to later Heidegger.
• XREF: The clearing idea echoes the ‘poetically man dwells’ theme and contrasts with Sartre’s more conflictual being-for-others later in the book. — connects to: Being-in-the-world means losing oneself in the instrumental chain of for-whats — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 619; Heidegger defines human reality through inseparable moments of world, being-in, and being; Heidegger accesses Being through ordinary everydayness rather than unusual states — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 212 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern observers grasp the world as a representation rather than as lived reality #contradicts (0.80) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 115
• Heidegger’s pre-ontological comprehension of being escapes the vicious circle #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 155
• Consciousness intertwines with the world like crossed hands #expands (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 742