Abstract

Although Paragraph 7 of Being and Time is one of the most comment­ed-on paragraphs of Heidegger’s main work, an extensive interpretation of the notion of “semblance” (Schein) has been neglected by most of the literature. Most studies merely note that Schein represents a contingent way of covering-up a phenomenon. However, in this paragraph, Heidegger explicitly distinguishes between contingent and necessary coverings-up. In the present paper, I argue that this difference between contingent and necessary coverings-up received a more extensive analysis in the Marburg lecture courses—especially in GA 17, GA 19, and GA 20—and that this distinction is crucial for understanding Heidegger’s phenomenological description of being. In particular, the paper illustrates that the possibility of a contingent covering-up corresponds to Heidegger’s treatment of the ψεῦδος in GA 17, while Heidegger develops the possibility of a necessary covering-up in his discussions of ἕτερον in GA 19 and Husserl’s “categorial intuition” in GA 20. Thus, I argue that Schein, as a necessary covering-up, is Heidegger’s phenomenological way of understanding being. Being is not something metaphysically hidden behind the phenomenon, but rather shows itself phenomenologically in every entity as its unthematically apprehended condition of possibility.