In this introductory chapter the main conceptual framework of the book is presented. The chapter begins by sketching a phenomenology of world understood as the dynamic interplay of the domains traditionally classed as those of the metaphysica specialis: self, nature and divinity. It is argued that world is neither a collection of objects nor itself an object, but names rather that which is both regulatively and constitutively fundamental to all appearing. World is constituted by modes of appearing that can be understood as transcendentals in a manner indebted to the Scholastic understanding of what transcends specific objects or classes of objects. However, the transcendentals of self, nature and divinity are hermeneutical in the sense that the manner of their appearing is co-constituted by historically specific interpretations of world. Finally, it is shown that faith and reason are modes of response to these hermeneutical transcendentals. Faith is both fundamental to being in the world and as faithfulness essential to the phenomenological description of appearing. Reason in seeking intelligibility, is always called to fidelity both to itself and to world as the happening of appearing.