Being and Time word literally meaning "being-there," i.e., "existence"), and the method pursued in "Being and Time" consists in the attempt to delimit the characteristics of "Dasein", in order thereby to approach the meaning of Being itself through an interpretation of the temporality of Dasein. "Dasein" is not "man," but is nothing other than "man"—it is this distinction that enables Heidegger to claim that "Being and Time" is something other than philosophical anthropology. Heidegger's account of Dasein passes through a dissection of the experiences of "Angst" and mortality, and then through an analysis of the structure of "care" as such. From there he
Being and Time of what a hammer "is" is not determined by a theoretical understanding of its presence, but by the fact that it is something we need at the moment we wish to do hammering. Only a "later" understanding might come to contemplate a hammer "as" an object. The total understanding of being results from an explication of the implicit knowledge of being that inheres in "Dasein". Philosophy thus becomes a form of interpretation, but since there is no external reference point outside being from which to begin this interpretation, the question becomes to know in which way to proceed with this