This ontological basis of Heidegger's work thus opposes the Cartesian "abstract agent" in favour of practical engagement with one's environment.
[3] Heidegger considered that language, everyday curiosity, logical systems, and common beliefs obscure Dasein's nature from itself.
[11]: 69–70 Authentic choice means turning away from the collective world of Them, to face Dasein, one's individuality, one's own limited life-span, one's own being.
[12]: 81–89 Heidegger thus intended the concept of Dasein to provide a stepping stone in the questioning of what it means to be—to have one's own being, one's own death, one's own truth.
Some scholars disagree with this interpretation, however, arguing that for Heidegger Dasein denoted a structured awareness or an institutional "way of life".
[23] Similarly, he saw the analyst as searching for authentic speech, as opposed to "the subject who loses his meaning in the objectifications of discourse...[which] will give him the wherewithal to forget his own existence and his own death".
[24][25]: 60 Alfred Schütz distinguished between direct and indirect social experience, emphasising that in the latter, "My orientation is not toward the existence (Dasein) of a concrete individual Thou.
[28]Theodor W. Adorno criticised Heidegger's concept of Dasein as an idealistic retreat from historical reality.
[29] Richard Rorty considered that with Dasein, Heidegger was creating a conservative myth of being, complicit with the Romantic elements of Nazism.