ABSTRACT
The ontology of Dasein leads into the science of the interpretation of that which is the 'hermeneutic' of Dasein. In this phenomenological analysis of Dasein as the Being-of-mankind, Heidegger not only deepens the epistemological analyses of Dilthey and Husserl, but also provides a critique of the body of underlying assumptions that they share with the whole of Western philosophical tradition and which Heidegger identifies as 'metaphysics'. Heidegger's development of a hermeneutic philosophy has so far been considered in its relation to the question after the meaning of Being and to Dasein as Understanding. The phase of a hermeneutic interpretation is given with the 'ontological' or 'existential circle' which provides for the methodically relevant formulation of a hermeneutic circle. Heidegger's exposition of the existential structure of understanding and interpretation, which is never merely the pre-suppositionless grasping of something pregiven, but the interpretation of something as something, covers all cognition: 'Knowledge is a mode of Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world'.
