Being and Time to identify the criteria or conditions by which any specific entity can show up at all (see world disclosure). If we grasp Being, we will clarify the meaning of being, or "sense" of being ("Sinn des Seins"), where by "sense" Heidegger means that "in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something." Presented in relation to the quality of knowledge, according to Heidegger, this sense of being precedes any notions of how or in what manner any particular being or beings exist, and is thus pre-scientific. Thus, in Heidegger's view, the question of the meaning of being would be an
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