ABSTRACT
According to the philosopher Martin Heidegger, our very beingin-the-world, our being there or Da-sein as he called it, is characterized by care. It is not an occasional or episodic feature of our human being. Most of our care, of course, is devoted to ourselves: Da-sein, according to Heidegger, “is that being whose being is an issue for itself ”. We look after our being in a myriad diff erent ways as we pursue a multitude of goals, creating or running away from narratives of ourselves; and of course we also care for those close to us – lovers, friends, relationships and dependents. And we care for the things we like – our possessions – and the parts of the environment that impinge on us. is care can be self-centred, as it mainly is, or other-centred, where we forget ourselves in thinking of the needs of others.
