Heidegger defines human reality through inseparable moments of world, being-in, and being

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

The astronomer Carl Sagan began his 1980 television series Cosmos by saying that human beings, though made of the same stuff as the stars, are conscious and are therefore ‘a way for the cosmos to know itself’. Merleau-Ponty similarly quoted his favourite painter Cézanne as saying, ‘The landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness.’ This is something like what Heidegger thinks humanity contributes to the earth. We are not made of spiritual nothingness; we are part of Being, but we also bring something unique with us. It is not much: a little open space, perhaps with a path and a bench like the one the young Heidegger used to sit on to do his homework. But through us, the miracle occurs. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 593 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: For Heidegger, Being-in-the-world means humans serve as a clearing where things reveal themselves — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 591; Heidegger saw humanity as the place where Being becomes conscious of itself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 593; Ontology describes the conditions under which a world and human reality exist (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• For Heidegger, Being-in-the-world means humans serve as a clearing where things reveal themselves #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 591
• Heidegger saw humanity as the place where Being becomes conscious of itself #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 593
• Ontology describes the conditions under which a world and human reality exist #expands (0.72)