Three meanings of the word Sein

Ivo De Gennaro


Who can deny that Seinsfrage means: the question of being?11 However, the mere fact that we speak of something like a “question of being” only after and thanks to Being and Time should advise us to be more cautious in our understanding as well as in the translation of this title. In fact, Seinsfrage simultaneously says at least two intertwined things: in the first place, it says the irruption (or the breaking) of Sein as a Frage, of the FrageSein”—the enigma of the ground of beings as such and in the whole. This enigma not only concerns and claims our general capacity for “thinking” as “one of the big questions” or even “the biggest question” of “humanity”: it claims that which the enigma itself tunes as a thinking, and it does so as the one interrogative dimension in which, in the first place, the institution of the world and thus of the humanity of man is at stake. Again, it claims thinking in such a way that the breaking of this dimension already implies a hidden decision and an initial tuning of the likely manner of grounding it in answer to its (i.e. this dimension’s) own want for such a grounding. In the second place, then, the title Seinsfrage indicates the entirety of the thus claimed and tuned thinking in so far as it is, precisely, ein Fragen nach dem Sein, that is, an asking or interrogating that interrogates nach, that is, after being.12 Again, this interrogating “after” being has the twofold sense that, on the one hand, it comes second and, in coming second, seconds what it interrogates, and, on the other hand, in such seconding it maintains and grounds the nearness of being, namely, the nearness that being itself is. Thus, a provisional determination of the Seinsfrage could sound: the breaking of the claim of all claims, the issue of all issues, named Sein, which, in remaining unknown, claims to be explicitly seconded and grounded in a thinking that interrogates in a manner tuned to the dimensional ground-tone of that breaking.

Why is what has thus been roughly outlined different from simply saying: Seinsfrage—that is, the “question of being”? It is different, because it reminds us that it is not thinking per se, or even a given manhood, somehow endowed with reason, that may find itself in the situation of questioning (or of having to question) something like “being.” A more careful understanding and translation of the title Seinsfrage makes sure that we pay attention, in the first place, to the primacy of that which, in breaking as an enigma, asks for a peculiar stance (a stance commensurate to it and in tune with it) in order to be sustained and warded, and to the fact that this stance is not at all taken “by man”; rather, this stance is what, originated by Sein itself as a stance of thinking, is taken on (or not) by a unique who that finds his being and his own self beheld by (or: caught in the claiming sight of) the wanting instant of such originating; as to this who, however, his being is decided precisely in whether or not—and how—he takes on the stance that suffers the Frage that Sein itself is.13

Now, as we know, in Being and Time this peculiar, unique, and unprecedented stance is called Da-sein, that is, the manner of being that “we, those who interrogate” are (i.e. take on, bear), in so far as and when we interrogate nach dem Sein and its truth, thus offering our being to this stance and carrying it through—in one word: the manner of being that “we” are in so far as and when we ek-sist.14 Thus, the enigmatic element that here is called Sein originates the likely grounding being called Da-sein and asks for this being to be explicitly assumed and borne by thinking man in an asking tuned to the claim of that initial enigma.

Having put the matter in these terms allows us to adequately appreciate the following point: if, on the one hand, Sein itself originates Da-sein as its likely grounding, on the other hand, the unknown, ever again aporetical element that the Greeks call ὄν (on) and οὐσία (ousia), which breaks as the question τί τὸ ὄν; (ti to on?), that is, τί ἡ οὐσία; (tis hē ousia?),15 does not at all originate, as the stance for this element’s grounding, that which Being and Time calls Dasein: in fact, the manner of being wanted in the Greek onset (i.e. in the onset as φύσις [physis] and ἀλήθεια [alētheia]) is the theoretical λόγος (logos) that a peculiar contingent being (ζῷον [zōon]), tuned to οὐσία—that is, to pure being (ὃν ἀπλῶς [on haplōs])—in the attunement and temper of θαυμάζειν (thaumazein, “astoundment”), finds itself endowed with. In other words, when reading the initial quotation from the Sophist that is meant to set the tone for the interrogation of Being and Time, we ought to let this quotation tune us to the enigmatic element Sein that concerns us, namely, those who are—or are on the verge of being—awoken to its claim; at the same time, however, we ought to withstand the temptation of taking this quotation as a sign that, in what follows (i.e. in the attempt Being and Time), yet another and different effort is made to “answer” the historically well-known question τί τὸ ὄν;. In fact, if, on the one hand, τί τὸ ὄν; is a likely question (i.e. a question that obtains a stress that interrogates us) only within the scope of the Seinsfrage, on the other hand, the likelihood of that question for the Greeks consists precisely in the forgottenness of that which eventually breaks as the Seinsfrage. The latter, says Heidegger, has never been attempted, which is the same as saying that the being that “we, those who interrogate, ourselves are,”16 namely Da-sein,17 has never emerged in the tradition of thinking.18 Thus, we may well speak of a sameness of the Seinsfrage and the ὄν-Frage (or, as we may also say, the οὐσία-Frage); however, this sameness is both the element in which Sein, as intended in Being and Time, remains withdrawn and forgotten (thus giving rise to beingoblivious metaphysical thinking), and the element in which this forgottenness turns into the Frage nach dem Sein as the interrogation of precisely this sameness, which, being nothing but being itself, remains necessarily unaskable within the metaphysical ὄν-Frage as Frage after that which is, in a primary and proper sense, (a) being (πρώτως ὄν [prōtōs on]).

Once it has become sufficiently clear how decisive it is that we do not, to begin with, on the quiet subsume the theme of Being and Time under the historical heading “ὄν-Frage” (the Frage that encompasses the tradition of thinking from Parmenides to Nietzsche), we are more prepared to let us be concerned by the sense of Sein as the theme of Heidegger’s path-breaking text. Before trying to shed some light on this matter, it may help our orientation if we indicate from the very beginning—thus in part anticipating what the following sections of this chapter are meant to show—the different meanings that the word Sein assumes within the Denkweg. In fact, we can distinguish at least three such meanings:19


(1) Sein, that is: das Sein (or die Seiendheit) des Seienden, that is, being in its metaphysical sense as the being (or beingness) of beings, where the genitive “of beings” is a subjective genitive; this implies: being, here, is the a priori ground of beings, but in such a way that being is (as this a priori ground) already a posteriori with respect to the hidden contraction of the schism or cut (Unterschied),20 which (viz. this contraction) decides in advance the abiding (Anwesen) of beings in the sense of an un-open and thus excessive nearness21 that Heidegger calls Vorhandenheit—we say: contingency.22 According to this peculiar a posterioria priori structure, being as contingency is, as Heidegger says, merely an emanation or a supplement of beings, in the sense that it comes after and for their having already been established, by way of that hidden contraction, in a cut-less and nearness-less stability. The thus constituted dimension of sense is the sphere of “ontological difference,” which, in turn, entirely defines the scope of metaphysical interrogation (the ὄν-Frage) as such; this difference, however, is merely a “difference,” for that which is supposed to differ (namely, being on the one hand and beings on the other) is, from the outset, enclosed in the cut-less participle ὄν. We call this sense of the word Sein ‘(metaphysical) being.’23

(2) Sein, that is: das Sein (des Seienden) selbst, that is, again being in the sense of the being of beings, where, however, in what is called “being” is already heard the still unsaid cut of Seyn. That within which the cut is already heard, however, is precisely the breaking of time as the truth of being itself, so that this breaking is the onset not only of Being and Time, but of the entire Seinsfrage and its Denkweg. Being itself is thus cut from beings— not, though, as something that is cut off from something else, or even as an “emptiness” between something else. Rather, being is cut from beings as the initial cut (we may also say: as the schismatic openness24) for beings (including being “emptinesses,” etc.). We can in this sense speak of an “ontological difference proper,” whose sense implies that the subjective character of the genitive “of beings” is broken in favor of an “objective,” or even a “dative” genitive having the sense of the mentioned “for beings (as such and in the whole)”; “being” therefore means: (cut) being (as the discontingent provenance of the openness) for beings as such in the whole. Hence, we call this sense of the word Sein ‘being (for the whole).’

(3) Sein, that is: das Sein (zum Seienden) als Seyn, that is, being (toward beings) now explicitly as the cut that agrees to letting things abide (anwesen) in agreement with the biding (wesend)25 mirror-play of the world (earth and sky, divine and mortals), with things agreeing to abide as the gathering that keeps and shelters that mirror-play, while the world is the original coming, in that play, of a sooth, tempered measure inclined to bide in affording such abiding, thus constituting an abode for the dwelling of man. The ontological difference is now overcome, the form “toward beings” referring to the world-gathering abiding of things as agreed to and afforded in the weirdness of Seyn.26 We call this sense of the word Sein ‘being (cut).’27


In this tripartition, ‘(metaphysical) being’ indicates that which is seen as “being” in the tradition of philosophy—a tradition that, within the Denkweg, is always already thought as resulting from the forgottenness of Seyn or be3ng.28 Indeed, this constellation—‘(metaphysical) being’ in the flashing of forgotten Seyn—defines the hermeneutic space for all of Heidegger’s interpretations of the classical positions of philosophy. On the other hand, ‘being (for the whole)’ characterizes the manner in which being is cast open in Being and Time (and in the writings that remain in the sphere of the ontological difference in Heidegger’s sense, e.g., Vom Wesen des Grundes), namely, already in the light of time as the truth of being itself, which, in turn, is a first fore-name of the yet undisplayed Seyn. Finally, ‘being (cut)’ is the same as Seyn, to wit, the flashing29 of halting keeping-away,30 in whose grounded biding ‘(metaphysical) being’ is entirely overcome, and this means: freed into the provenance of its having been, and thus both genuinely grounded in its futurity and, as Heidegger says in Beiträge zur Philosophie, unmöglich (“impossible”).31 In the thinking of Seyn (as Er-eignis), the only thought of the Denkweg has found its proper site as a step toward the grounding of the other onset, which, having already begun, claims to be prepared in a tuned bethinking.32



12 The preposition nach (after, to) is related to nahe (near, close) and Nähe (nearness, closeness, vicinity).

13 The fact that thinking is not primarily an activity of man is already in some sense seen when it is said, in Greek thinking, that man is a ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (zōon logon echon), that is, a living being that, in so far as it is, holds itself within the capacity of logos. However, this remains, in a decisive sense, a determination of a contingent living being named “man.” On the other hand, in Being and Time we do not at all have a new determination of the peculiar living being called “man” (as the historical format would have, according to which in Being and Time the “essence of man” is determined as Dasein). Strange as it may seem, there is no such thing as a contingent human being, which, next to other things, could enact the thinking of Being and Time. Why? In the first place, Being and Time is precisely the instant of an onset that originates from and as being itself—that is: as being itself with its truth (Da-) and with the want of a steadiness (-sein) that bears this truth. This onset, however, instantly interrupts the contingency of man as a living being. “Those who interrogate,” then, are not contingent human beings that, for some reason, engage in the activity of “thinking being itself”: what “they” are is a who awoken to taking on, as a stance or bearing (ἕξις [hexis], the Greeks would say), that unique steadiness. Again, such interrogating is what “rational human life” is by its own constitution incapable of carrying out. This is why something like a new determination of the essence of “human life” (e.g. in terms of a new version of “subjectivity”) does not and cannot belong to the scope of the interrogation carried out in Being and Time. The reason for this is not that Being and Time is “not interested” in “human life,” but that this book tries to take a stance in having owned—in response to the enigma “Sein selbst” in its broken Da—the enigmatic character of humanness in an unprecedented manner. Summarizing: the breaking of the Seinsfrage implies that the ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (and its lineage from the animal rationale to the subject of the Will to Power)—and this means: the assurance given by the somehow supplemented contingency of human life—has already collapsed, so that there is no “human life” left to be determined in its “essence.”

14 See Being and Time, §2, as well as above, p. 118, the elucidation in Chapter 6, and p. 89 et sqq. (§5.1, Who is “we”?). In attempting to understand what Being and Time indicates as Da-sein, a hasty reading easily falls prey to what we might call the “egological temptation,” or the “temptation of identification,” namely, the temptation of identifying Da-sein with “me who is reading.” In other words, we tend to think: “Da-sein, i.e. me,” or “Da-sein, that is, who and what I am,” where “who and what I am” means: the living being that coincides with me, the being that “I am.” However, Da-sein can in no way be made to coincide with “me.” In fact, a sufficient understanding of Being and Time as an analytic of Da-sein—which, in turn, is at the service of the guiding interrogation of the sense (or truth) of being—depends on our capacity to keep Da-sein itself, as it were, at a “security distance” from the contingency of human life, and, more specifically, from the givenness of the “I.” The immediate obviousness with which “I” can state that it is “me” who is Da-sein, and affirm that the Da-sein is always “mine,” is a temptation of Da-sein and therefore of being itself, namely, of being in so far as, according to its ground- trait, it retires into forgottenness and remains forgotten (cf. Sein und Zeit, pp. 54–5). Plainly stated, the temptation consists in the following: it is tempting to take the unquestioned and apparently assured “I” as a starting point for envisaging Dasein, thus extending the apparent assuredness of the “I” to the phenomenon Da-sein. However, the ontically given “I” (“I—the thinking, living being—am given as such”) does not at all grasp the “who” of Da-sein: in fact, this “who,” and therefore the genuine saying “I,” only emerges from out of the flashing of Da-sein itself and in an instant of Da-sein, that is, in an instant in which the being of a man abruptly shows in its native belongingness to the truth of being and this man owns this belongingness, thus being born as a “who” that may eventually say “I.” On the other hand, to take the obvious givenness of the “I” as an initial evident access to Da-sein, in such a way that all structures of Da-sein are to be obtained by means of a reflection of the given “I” on its own constitution and acts, is to place the existential analytic in the domain of unquestioned contingency. Whatever we may unearth, on this basis, as “existential traits” of the “human being” will be nothing but emanations and variations of the “living I,” and therefore speak the language of ontical relations between contingent beings. As a consequence, the true existential dimension remains entirely covered by the arrogance of the “I,” and therefore unattempted and unthought (cf. on this §25 of Being and Time).

15 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1028 b 2–4. (τί τὸ ὄν; What is any being as a being, namely, with regard to its beingness?)

16 See Being and Time, §2. “Are,” here, means: (“transitively”) sustain, take on, bear, suffer, and thus raise and ground; the “are” in no case identifies a contingent being, or even the “we ourselves” of interrogation, with Da-sein.

17 Again: Da is the flashing of Sein itself, which (viz. this flashing) is sustained in a steadiness or firmness of being (-sein) that is originated by and thus ab initio offered to Sein itself, and therefore, so to speak, is native in it. The being of man, then, is decided in the manner in which he takes on (or not) and opens himself (or not) to this native being that awaits him.

18 “Was wir mit ‘Dasein’ bezeichnen, kommt in der bisherigen Geschichte der Philosophie nicht vor” (Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche I (Pfullingen: Neske, 19895), p. 278: “That which we indicate as ‘Dasein’ has never emerged in the hitherto Geschichte of philosophy.” N.B. Superscripts on years indicate the number of the edition: 19895 = 5th edition, 1989.

19 This distinction is suggested, in similar terms to the ones elaborated for the present elucidation, in: Ivo De Gennaro and Gino Zaccaria, Dasein: Da-sein. Tradurre la parola del pensiero (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2007), p. 149 (hereafter DD).

20 We are thus indicating in the language of metaphysics a non- metaphysical insight into the hidden “Bedingung der Möglichkeit” (i.e. the “condition of possibility”) of metaphysical interrogation. The temporal sense of the a posteriori–a priori scheme is the following: when the beingness of beings flashes (e.g. in the form of the Platonic idea), the contraction (the refusing itself, the slipping away and thus the forgottenness) of the cut has already taken place. The temporality implied in this “when …- already …” is of a peculiar kind: in fact, there is not a succession (first the contraction, then the flashing), but a strict instantaneous simultaneity, according to which the flashing of beingness consists in the hidden breaking of the already become contraction of the cut (see below §1.3 for a more comprehensive elucidation of this original temporality).

21 “Excessive nearness” is that which holds sway where the dimension of nearness itself (the world) is contracted, so that time and space are reduced to operative implements for a domain of contingent beings- to- power together with their contingent relations (i.e. the beings and relations that modern science, and in the first place mathematical physics, grasps in its operative theories, which aim at penetrating and explaining the functioning of what has been formated [sic] for the purpose of such penetrating and explaining). In a context of sense, an excess of nearness is tantamount to the disruption of nearness itself, which is why a sphere of excessive nearness can be called nearness-less.

22 Neither the words “schism” or “cut,” as translations of Heidegger’s word Unterschied, nor the word “contingency,” as a rendition of Vorhandenheit, will be justified here. The case for these translations (which in no way pretend to be sufficient, but rather try to indicate in English the dimension from which the German words speak) is made below in Chapters 2 and 4. The following aspects should, however, be kept in mind: (1) “cut” is not intended as an ontical cut (i.e. a cut in the domain of contingency), but as the original, primal, discontingent, off- grounding dimension, whose breaking implies the collapsing of all contingency; this collapsing, however, is not the result of an action the cut would perform on contingency; rigorously speaking, we must therefore say: in the very instant in which the cut breaks, the domain of contingency has already collapsed; (2) “contingency,” in turn, is to be intended neither in opposition to (logical) necessity, nor in the common sense of “casual, unpredictable event that may occur,” in other words, it is not to be intended according to its primary or derived metaphysical sense; “contingent,” here, means strictly: that which—on the basis of a hidden contraction of the cut as the original provenance of sense—abides merely by and through its immediate impact, that is, without an explicit decision concerning its sense, and thus without a decision involving the being of man (insofar as this being belongs to that provenance of sense), taking place, and which therefore admits—and offers to be thought—as its explicit “sense” only a sphere that can, ex post, ground this cut- less abiding; in other words, contingency only admits a “sense” of (i.e. functional to) such abiding- by- direct- impact. (This is, in the most succinct terms, the sense of Heidegger’s diagnosis of the “dominance of beings over being” in the domain and tradition of metaphysics: thus, what this tradition knows as “being” is, again, only an ex post or a posteriori or, so to speak, a post festum grounding of contingent beings: an a priori being that, since it is, in a decisive sense, already a posteriori, is never that which, in the order of origination, comes first.)

23 The single inverted commas are not quotation marks but are meant to indicate the unity of the saying they delimitate.

24 The word “open” comes from the idg. root *upo, “up from under, over” (cf. English up, Latin sub, Greek ὑπὸ [hypo]). Open does not simply refer to the contingent state of not being closed or shut (open door—closed door). The meanings plain, unobstructed, unimpeded, disencumbered, accessible, generous, genuine, frank, etc., show that open implies more than an indefinite, indeterminate space or the indiscriminate quality of giving an access and allowing a passage: a house is “open” not because all doors are unlocked, but thanks to a capacity for welcoming and giving hospitality (see p. 23, on the openness of the house named “possibility” in Emily Dickinson’s poem I Dwell in Possibility); a mind is “open” not because it absorbs whatever is presented to it, but thanks to the fact that it can critically assess and thus admit, or reject, new ideas or viewpoints; the relationship between two human beings is characterized by “openness” not because everything is laid bare, but when both of them grant each other the unsaid and unknown source of their freedom, in such a way that whatever has to be said in order to preserve this freedom, can be said; the sky is “open” (clear, spacious) in that it soothes the soul that, in turn, is open to it; a face or an expression is “open,” that is, friendly and such as to inspire confidence and trust, in that, in some way or another, it shows the unobstructed but invisible source of the humanity of man, etc. What is open is not at all merely accessible and readily available; on the contrary: constitutive for the open as such is a trait of integrity, of being impenetrable and in itself sheltered, insofar as, in turn, the open shelters the coming of what remains “impregnably” withdrawn.

25 In most instances, the German words anwesen and wesen are translated, respectively, as “abiding” (“to abide”) and “biding” (“to bide”). On this translation see p. 170, note 24. Occasionally, for saying wesen and related words, I also recur to “swaying,” etc., which is the rendering introduced by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly in their translation of Beiträge zur Philosophie (see p. 162, note 51).

26 The manner in which being as Seyn (i.e. Unter- Schied) is the being “of” beings, that is to say, for or toward things, is indicated in the following quotation from Unterwegs zur Sprache: “Der Unter- Schied für Welt und Ding ereignet Dinge in das Gebärden von Welt, ereignet Welt in das Gönnen von Dingen” (Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1985], p. 22 (HGA 12).

27 The distinction of the three meanings of Sein is not intended to introduce ready-made formats that should henceforth be substituted, as needed, whenever we find the word Sein in Heidegger’s writings; what they should do, however, is to provide a rough measure of the degree of familiarity we need to acquire with the Sache des Denkens in learning to be students of the Denkweg.

28 This is of course an abbreviated manner of speaking: in a more detailed exposition we would, in the first place, have to distinguish the different fore- names of Seyn (e.g. to start with, original time). On be3ng as a rendering of Seyn see p. 34 et sqq.

29 The word “flashing” indicates, in its own manner, the same as the words “breaking” and “clearing.” To flash means: “to break forth or out so as to make a sudden display,” and, in a transitive sense: “to cause the sudden appearance of something.” When we say “the sun flashed from behind a cloud,” we mean that the sun, which was previously hidden behind a cloud, suddenly broke forth and “made a display.” An attentive consideration shows that the word “flashing” indicates two distinct traits: (1) an inapparent breaking, and, in this breaking and thanks to this breaking, (2) the sudden making a display. When we use the word “flashing” in the context of the Denkweg, that is, as indicating the same as Lichtung, we must intend it according to the first of the two mentioned traits. Lichtung, the clearing, is a flashing not in the sense that the clearing itself “makes a display”; rather, the flashing is the sudden, light- and soundless breaking that tempers light and sound in such a manner that, in the clear temper of light and sound, beings can make a display, that is, show and appear. The appearing of beings is always released and ensconced in a broken avenue of clearance, and this releasing and ensconcing broken avenue of clearance is precisely what the word “flashing” indicates. With reference to light the following holds true: flashing is the “essence” or the constitutive trait of light, in other words: light bides as flashing. This does not imply that light always “flashes” in the sense that any light is a “flashing light,” namely, a sudden, and possibly intermittent, emission of light from a source of radiation. In fact, even the most quiet and constant light bides as flashing. The reason for this is that light as such is becoming light, irruption of an in itself withdrawing and absconcing clearance through which any thing may appear. In other words, light is the breaking of the clearing of absconcing and therefore, in any of its modes and tones, a flashing. That which “appears in the light” is not a given object illuminated by “beams of light,” but rather that which, in turn, is flashed and only thus, in the first place, abides and is. “A being” is that which appears, that is, that which is flashed (cleared, lightened) in the light as that which flashes. Once we mind the flashing as the constitutive trait of light, we understand that sound, too, flashes. Flashing is the biding of sound insofar as sound assumes its clear, flashing temper—namely, the temper by virtue of which in its turn it flashes that which is resoundingly flashed as a being. Beings flash in and as sound, that is, thanks to the fact that sound is at a time the temper of the light- and soundless flashing, that is, of the breaking clearance. The fact that, in reference to the phenomenon of Lichtung, we also speak of the “flagrancy” (for the first time, see p. 35) becomes intelligible if we keep in mind precisely the trait of flashing. (On the relation of light, sound and the clearing, see DD, p. 61 et sqq.)

30 The word “keeping- away” indicates the dimension of that which Heidegger, in Beiträge zur Philosophie, calls Ab- Grund: literally, the ab-ground (as Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly translate) or (as I am suggesting we say) the off-ground, in the sense of das Wegbleiben des Grundes, and this, in turn, as a trait of that which is, in some sense, the guiding phenomenon of the entire Denkweg, namely Verbergung (“hiding” or “concealment,” neither of which, however, is a sufficient English translation of this word; for a different translation see p. 172, note 41, et passim). In this context, the verb “to keep,” which, being presumably based on a root meaning “to look, to behold,” is close to the German wahren, appears most promising a word for an English thinking that engages in the Seinsfrage. It might indeed be worthwhile considering in what manner this verb could indicate (in a truly English and thus itself untranslatable manner) that which the Denkweg thinks in the words wahren and bergen.

31 The sense in which the way out from our cave implies that metaphysics becomes unmöglich should become clear from the discussion of Möglichkeit in the second part of this chapter (see §§1.4 and 1.5).

32 What motivates the resistance to acknowledging the unity of the Denkweg, the unity given by its only thought? No doubt, what resists in this resistance—namely, what resists to the Seinsfrage as such—is the historical eye, that is to say, the eye that does not think. Clinging to the historical eye and recognizing the Denkweg as the Weg of that one and only thought are mutually excluding stances. Therefore, what can indeed be said in favor of this unity does in no way intend to establish a particular historical image of Heidegger’s thinking; in other words: the unity of the only thought is not a historical value. Indeed, the effort of historical invasiveness will soon have forged a historical format for this very unity (if it has not already done so). The problem for thinking, on the other hand, is in the first place this: unless we leap into the unity not so much of Heidegger’s thinking, but of the (in its first onset, Greek) issue of thinking as such—we simply never start to think. However, once we do start to think, we will want nothing but to follow—for the sake of thinking itself and as far as we can—the numberless indications that Heidegger himself gives, all along the way, concerning the manner in which, what is still contracted in and for Being and Time, finds its way to itself in the attempts of the subsequent decades. The manuscripts of the thirties and forties (as well as, presumably, the critical notes on Being and Time that are still to be published) give invaluable hints in this respect, thus also helping to better understand the indications that Heidegger gives in several famous but scarcely pondered texts that were published during his lifetime—from the Letter on Humanism to the Letter to Richardson.



Ivo De Gennaro - The Weirdness of Being

Ereignis