Blackwell Reference Online

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Heidegger uses three cognate words: 1. Sorge, ‘care’, is ‘properly the anxiety, worry arising out of apprehensions concerning the future and refers as much to the external cause as the inner state’ (DGS, 56). The verb sorgen is ‘to care’ in two senses: (a) sich sorgen um is ‘to worry, be worried about’ something; (b) sorgen für is ‘to take care of, see to, provide (for)’ someone or something. 2. besorgen has three main senses: (a) ‘to get, acquire, provide’ something for oneself or someone else; (b) ‘to attend to, see to, take care of’ something; (c) especially with the perfect participle, besorgt, ‘to be concerned, troubled, worried’ about something. The nominalized infinitive is das Besorgen, ‘concern’ in the sense of ‘concerning onself with or about’ something. 3. Fürsorge, ‘solicitude’, is ‘actively caring for someone who needs help’, thus: (a) ‘welfare’ organized by the state or charitable bodies (cf. BT, 121); (b) ‘care, solicitude’.These three concepts enable Heidegger to distinguish his own view from the view that our attitude towards the world is primarily cognitive and theoretical. Descartes's and Husserl's ‘concern for known knowledge’ (Sorge um erkannte Erkenntnis) is only one type of concern, and not the primary, or a self-evidently appealing, type (XVII, 62; LXIII, 106). But Sorge is not specifically practical: it lies deeper than the customary contrast between theory ... log in or subscribe to read full text