Heidegger’s modified categories disclose a curious partial sphere of life, not a piece of the whole real life as it is actually lived, but a partial sphere which receives its independence, its independent character and laws as it were through having the circulation of the blood in the organism arrested at some point and the isolated part examined. We enter a strange room of the spirit, but we feel as if the ground we tread on is the board on which a game is being played whose rule we learn as we advance, deep rules which we ponder, and must ponder, but which arose and which persist only through a decision having once been reached to play this intellectual game, and to play it in this very way. And at the same time, it is true, we feel that this game is not arbitrarily chosen by the player, but he is under necessity, it is his fate.

Martin Buber, “What Is Man?”, in Between Man and Man