I was so going to be a good girl this evening and read a whole introductory chapter on Heidegger's contribution to philospohical hermeneutics.  And I tried so hard to make head or tail of 6 whole pages before I gave up trying to discern from context the meaning of one word central to making sense of the whole chapter.  And then I gave up and opted for Wikipedia for a starter for ten!  Clearly, and demonstrating I maybe grasped 0.01% of the words I read, my "fore-understanding" was inadequate - I did not have a subsumed interpretive framework to understand the German word, never mind its purpose: I didn't know what 'Dasein' meant or did, any more than a Martian would have known what 'door' (an example of fore-understanding cited) meant or did.  Having re-read the six pages three times and still not found a definition, or even a hint, I feel vindicated in my stupidity, but please nice kind author in an 'introuction to...' book, please define your words at first useage!

For the record, wikipedia and online dictionaries think it means 'existence' or 'presence' - a kind of 'being there' - and it probably doesn't translate very well into English.  Philosophy is hard enough when I understand the plain meaning of the words.  When I'm trying to get my head around how people understand understanding and interpret interpretation if I don't understand the words what hope have I got?!

Now I'll be good and attempt a few more pages before bedtime!