Dasein first mentioned

So what we want to note is that Dasein comes from Hegel’s logic. Dasein is the individuated being that arises from Being and Nothing (where nothing is Buddhist Emptiness). These give rise to Heraclitian Flux as a synthesis, and then the new thesis from that is DaSein which is individuated Being.

However, as we see in the footnote on this page Dasein (being there) also means person in colloquial usage. So Dasein is not something esoteric, it just means a generic human “being”, i.e. the person with being. Heidegger is always looking for everyday vernacular that can be interpreted philosophically. So Dasein only seems mysterious to us because we are not native German speakers. But it also has the meaning of something that exists, even though it has sein, the word for Being in it, and this gives the hint that there is something about existence that is important for answering the question of Being.

So Dasein has this rich semantic tonality that Heidegger is exploiting both in everyday usage and in German philosophy.

Heidegger uses the term to indicate what is prior to the difference between Subject and Object. Otherwise it is similar to what Kant calls the transcendental subject of apperception, i,e. that which does the a priori projection of spacetime and the categories and ultimately the world horizon. In the Kantian scheme there is the transcendental subject, the transcendental object which is the noumena, and then God is the transcendental that keeps the inner coherence of the T. Subject and T. Object in sync. But what is you did not have this dualism at the transcendental level, then you would posit something like Dasein.

Jeff Malpas in Heidegger’s Topology makes the point that ‘being there’ refers to the situatedness of dasein within the world, in a particular place. Malpas commentary on Heidegger in relation to the concept of place is very interesting and recommended.