by Martin Heidegger
Translated by Tobias Keiling and Ian Alexander Moore
The argument against need
[520] (for the being-in-itself of entities – “of nature”)
[Need: the belonging of the essence of mortals to beyng, a belonging which is appropriated in the event.]
Metaphysically, and that means at the same time according to the customary and scientific mode of representation, this means the dependence of being (or, understood in vulgar terms, that and how entities are) on the human.
Need then means: when there are no human beings, no entities are given either.
This sentence is easy to refute by means of incontestible references to proven facts. One can now calculate how old the Earth is (the measurement of the rate of radiocative decay). The Earth is far older than the human. Entities thus existed long before there were humans and before the human arrived. Entities would not require {bedürfte} the human in order to be. (cf. page 4)3
On the basis of this mode of representation there is nothing to object to it. The question remains as to what extent this mode of representation can and may assert itself as what sets the measure in the first place and as such.
This argumentation, and that means the mode of representation sustaining it, can never be refuted so long as one proceeds on its basis and speaks in its language; for, what is peculiar to it is precisely that it, as ontic argumentation, cannot at all let itself engage in a reflection that thinks in accord with the essence of being.
A dialogue with this mode of representation can take place only when it itself is brought to the point of experiencing itself as that which it is, namely as a very specific interpretation of entities and of the human as an occurent living being – an interpretation which, in our times, has assumed the form of an inauthentic objectification of entities as standing reserve.
The reflective {besinnliche} dialogue beseeches {ansinnen} this mode of representation to let itself engage in a way of thinking that can be attained only by a leap in which the said mode of representation and its argumentation are given up. Yet, with the giving up of this mode of representation, the question that lies unthought at the basis of it, namely the question concerning the essence of being, is still in no way discussed, let alone answered.
It is not enough that the leap into thinking cuts the ground from under the said mode of representation. Seen from the perspective of this mode of representation, the imposition to make the leap would accordingly remain a crude surprise attack, just as, inversely, the unreflective claim on the part of [521] this mode of representation to its unimpeachable correctness would be tantamount to an aversion against all readiness to think.
Thinking can at at any time easily let itself engage with the argument and concede its soundness within its mode of representation. Not only this. Thinking {Denken} is even able to reflect on this mode of representation and consider {bedenken} it in its essence; in contrast, such reflection remains fundamentally blocked off from the scientific mode of representation, unless the latter were to grasp itself as a present-at-hand physical and biologically determinable occurrence and take this mode of observation to be sufficient.
Howsoever one pursues the possibility of a dialogue between the argumentation against need and the thinking of need, this possibility always seems to both sides to demand a unique accommodation and concession, the case for which already falls within the domain of thinking, which it is the “nature” of science to avoid.
Standing opposed to one another, apparently without any possibility for reconciliation: the invocation of the being-in-itself [Ansichsein] of entities (A) and thinking from out of need [Brauch] (B)
A. takes itself to be true based on the evidence that the Earth was already there as an entity before the human was. The Earth is older than the human; for this reason, the human can never comprise the necessary condition for the being of the Earth.
B. thinks being as beyng from out of the event. B. in no way denies the correctness of A.’s argumentation, but B. asks, permits itself the questions: 1.) what being-in-itself means; 2.) whether something about “being-in-itself” and its sense are determined or could ever be discussed by means of the evidence of a chronologically older entity; 3.) whether the invocation of such an entity does not rather presuppose an understanding of being whose provenance and truth cannot stand, without further ado, outside every discussion, and which in no way can be accepted only because it is customary and easy to comprehend for customary representation.
In short: no partner in this dialogue ought in advance to tie the other down to the mode of thinking that is proper only to it. In the face of the argument against need, the counter-question must be allowed, which summarizes what was previously remarked in two4 questions:
1. In what sense does one understand the being-in-itself of nature?
2. What is one invoking as the justificatory basis for the truth of the interpretation of being-in-itself that has been brought forward?
3. Is this interpretation only a determination of the sense of being-in-itself that has been posited by human representation or is this sense given prior to human representation? [522]
4. If the second is the case, from where is this prior giving given?
5. If the first is the case, then does not the invocation of entities-in-themselves remain all the more an arbitrary assumption based on a subjective representation of being-in-itself that is unclarified in its provenance?
Without answering these questions, without the readiness to include their question-worthiness as an unavoidable element in the argumentation, every argument against need remains within the realm of the ostensible and the half-thought-out, despite its immediately evident power of persuasion.
Presumably the difficulty and peculiarity of this dialogue does not consist in the fact that the one or the other side brings forward striking grounds for proof, whereby the dialogue would, as it were, be struck down. What is decisive lies in finding a sufficiently broad and versatile realm for the dialogue, within which, before anything else, what one’s partner brings forward can be heard.
This ability to hear one another {Hörenkönnen aufeinander} includes the readiness, not so much to answer the questions brought forward, as to examine them in their respective question-worthiness and scope.
Yet when the scientific argumentation becomes set only on its mode of representation, then the dialogue is over before it began. However, the same happens when “philosophical” thinking simply turns its back on the reservations of the sciences and forgets that the sciences make use of philosophical thinking everywhere, even where they do not wish to notice this use or where they reinterpret it in their own fashion.
Yet before we harass A. from the side of need, which necessarily remains unthinkable for A., it could be beneficial to listen unbiasedly to the argumentation and position of the other and to attempt to come to terms with, that is to explain, everything on the basis of its mode of representation; but further also to disregard whether A. has understood or can understand what B. brings forward.
The Earth, the cosmos, are older than the human. They were already existing before the human came to be an entity. One can hardly refer, in a more decided and persuasive way, to entities that are what and how they are independently from the human.
Yet, in order to exhibit such entities, is it necessary to make the cumbersome appeal to the results of modern natural science regarding the various ages of the Earth and the human? To these researches, one could right away pose the awkward question as to where they take the time periods from for their calculation of the age of the Earth. Is this sort of time simply found in the ice of the “ice age”, whose phases geology calculates for us? Yet to exhibit entities that are independent from the human, it is enough simply to point to the Alps, for example, which tower up into the sky and [523] in no way require {bedarf} the human and his machinations to do that. The Alps are entities-in-themselves—they show themselves as such without any reference to the various ages of the Earth’s formations and of human races {Menschenrassen}.
When one unhesitatingly invokes entities such as these, which manifestly exist in themselves, and presents them as the clearest thing in the world, one must also however accept the question, with respect to these entities-in-themselves, as to what is thereby meant by being-in-itself. Is the latter as crystal clear as these entities-in-themselves? Can one grant the claim of being-in-itself in the same hindrance-free way as the invocation of entities-in-themselves, with which one deals day in and day out? The acceptance of the perspective on the Alps as entities-in-themselves {Ansichseiendes} is as common as everything commonplace. In contrast, is not the attention to being-in-itself {Ansichsein} as such the most uncommon of the uncommon? And is that which perhaps announces itself to this attention to being-in-itself as clear as that which shows itself to the perception of the Alps? If this is not the case, then what is going on with the invocation of entities-in-themselves, if indeed nothing less than being-in-itself is thereby and to this end being claimed?
The Alps – one says – are present at hand {vorhanden}, indeed before {vor} humans are on hand to examine them or act with respect to them {darüber und daran handeln}, whether it be through research, through climbing them, or through the removal of rock masses. The Alps are before the hand {vor-handen} – that is, lying there before {vorliegend} all handling {Behandlung} by the human. Yet does not this determination of entities-in-themselves as present at hand characterize the said entities precisely through the relation to the handling by the human, admittedly in such a way that this relation to the human portrays itself as independent from the human?
Or does being-in-itself mean something still different from this independence? Is this independence from the human already and in each case only a consequence of the being-in-itself of the Alps?
What does being-in-itself mean here? esse per se {to be through itself}?
Through this determination of “existing in themselves”, entities are left to themselves – themselves, that means void of all dependence on the human. Does not this determination of “existing in itself” {“an sich seiend”} contain a hidden reference to the human? Only reflection would be in a position to answer this.
If the latter starts on its way, it will have the experience that all the knowledge and problems that come up in geology or geography, for example, do not help it to take a single step farther. If one at last advances, one will find oneself in the position of having to heed something, namely being-in-itself as such, which does not come forth as a possible theme in any sort of geology or geography. [524]
Nota bene: we are not contesting or denying that the Alps are entities-in-themselves. Nor are we contesting that, according to geo-physical and natural-scientific findings, the Earth is an older entity than the human is.
We are simply demanding that one take that which one invokes in the name of science, namely the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves, no less seriously in its determinability and revealability than entities-in-themselves.
What about this being-in-itself, then? From where and how does it arise {sich ergeben}? Which authority decides on what gives itself {sich ... gibt} as being-in-itself?
And if it is proven that the Earth is older than the human, then in that case which is older and which younger: entities-in-themselves or being-in-itself/ If the existing-in-itself of the Earth is older, that is to say, according to natural-scientific chronometry, if it lies farther back in the past, even unimaginably far back, could not being-in-itself in the end be still earlier than the oldest of the oldest entities-in-themselves? How would we come to the oldest entities-in-themselves if something like being-in-itself were not already given previously—previously, not only within the backward chronological order of the old, older, and oldest entities-in-themselves, but “previously” as before this chronological order as such? This latter “previously” belongs in the inception of earliness {Frühe}, which we must learn to think of as the time which first grants time-space to the ordinary time in which the entities-in-themselves of the cosmos and the Earth exist. What grants this is the event itself. The turning-in of the human being into the event is the turning-back into his essential provenance, in which humans have always already been, without as yet having expressly inhabited it.
It is a question with a completely unique and, to us today, thoroughly strange question-worthiness as to where and how, within historiographically and pre-historiographically represented and well-known human history, this turning-in becomes appropriated.
Presumably, this turning-in necessitates a departure from history in the sense it has had up to now; in no way does this amount to a denial of what it has transmitted; rather it signifies its transformation. In this way, the said departure from history, and that means at the same time twisting out of the Western destiny of being, could even essentially be alleviated, as planetary humanity is sliding toward a peculiar historylessness that is determined by the dominance of com-positionality {Ge-stell}, which allows only the always orderable standing reserves {Bestände} to count as entities. It is a characteristic element of the lastingness {Beständigkeit} of these standing reserves that they become ever more quickly interchangeable, expecting to find in the standing of what is without lastingness {Bestand des Bestandlosen} that which alone is effective and actual.
That an epoch first determines its historical time on the basis of the procurement and securing of natural energies and represents itself as the [525] atomic age, should merit contemplation. In the end, only a few steps are required, within the global reach of this epoch, for entities-in-themselves, which initially still appear as Earth and cosmos, also to be reduced to mere processes of energy, into which all matter breaks down; these processes of energy prove their existence {Anwesen}5 by becoming representable, and that means orderable, purely in the mode of mathematical logistics.
From here it is but one more step to represent the region of living beings, and the latter themselves, as such standing reserves of energy and to drive the independence of entities-in-themselves so far that even the human, a living being, disappears into the standing reserves of energy. Left remaining are only those humans who seek their last habitation in this mode of representation, which however will not permit the curtailment of its consequence, but rather will demand that the last human of the atomic age may become a timely contemporary of these times only when he brings himself to disappear through the sufficient machinery of energy and through the last lever that triggers the uncurtailed orderability of energy.
Somewhere among the immortal gods, jeers will then ring out at those who believe that their untiring scientific invocation of entities-in-themselves has erected a barrier against nihilism, a nihilism which the sciences believe is driven by the thinking which sets about questioning the sense and essential provenance of being.
What was just said could however strengthen the suspicion that thinking were trying to deny something like entities-in-themselves. That is in no way the case. Commonplace pre-scientific representation, but also scientific representation, is fully justified in deploying the independence of entities-in-themselves that is familiar to such representation.
In so doing, one assumes the independence of entities-in-themselves, of nature, from the existing human. Here independence means being-in-itself and vice versa. Being-in-itself, however, prevails as essencing forth {An-wesen}, that is as an enduring that comes hither and comes herein into a clearing whose openness however is dependent on the human being, insofar as the human, as ecstatic Dasein, safeguards this clearing.
The dependence of essencing on the human being is of a wholly different provenance and variety than that dependence which is laid claim to in the case of the invocation of the independence of entities-in-themselves from the existing human. That depending which treats the independence of entities-in-themselves as a non-depending, is the being-caused of entities [526] by entities. Entities-in-themselves, nature, the Earth, are not causally conditioned by whether or not entities of the sort ‘human’ appear. No one contests the independence of nature where depending means causal dependence on the human. But the question arises as to whether this non-depending already makes up the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves, whether such being-in-itself does not rather depend on the human being, whether this dependence does not remain the presupposition and condition for that causal independence in which, for example, the Earth can be a being without the human.
Being-in-itself is dependent on the human being insofar as being always already shelters within itself the clearing of essencing that is safeguarded by the human essence, but in such a way that this human essence itself belongs to the essence of being, from which that being-in-itself comes forth.
Essencing is in itself time-like according to a still unclarified essence of time. Essencing forth {An-wesen} is an arrival {An-kommen} in unconcealment, for which reason essence is presumably the same as the time we mean now. Time and unconcealment prevail in the essence of being as such. Arrival from a to-come and unconcealment need in themselves an openness; the human is that essence which is needed for the true sheltering {Wahrnis} of openness. He is authentically human as the one so needed.
Referring to this need does not humanize being, but rather directs the human into his essence and this essence into the belongingness to being.
Need is not a degrading of being into a dependence effected by an isolated being called the human. Need is rather the experience of being, insofar as being thus first comes to shine in the fullness of its essence. Accordingly, with the needed belongingness of the human essence to being, the latter itself transforms into the event {Ereignis} that brings the need into its own {vereignend} and appropriates it for itself {sich vereignend}. Need {Der Brauch}, in the sense of needing {des Brauchens}, is the relation, but no longer as that wherein being lays a claim upon the human essence, but rather as that which comprises the essencing {das Wesende} of being as event itself.
Need is not a relativizing of being to an isolated entity of the special sort ‘human’. Need is being itself as the beckoning, summoning correlation {Be-zug} of the true sheltering of the clearing of being, that is of entities as such in the midst of entities that appear in the mode of what becomes present {Anwesenden} of its own accord.
The Earth can be heeded as an entity that has existed throughout time periods that have long been past, an entity that, as an entity-in-itself, in no way needs an entity of the sort of living being called “human”.
This argument for the unnecessariness of the human is, with respect to entities-in-themselves, correct. By orienting itself strictly to the objects [527] represented in the sciences, this argument can always draw convincing justifications from this for its statements and consider and assert itself to be objectively {objektiv} secured as standing over against {gegenständig}.6
But is this character of standing-over-against {das Gegenständige} of entities already entities-in-themselves? Such standing-over-against remains always only that region of experience of entities-in-themselves, whereby the latter turns toward scientific representation. The doctrine of the oppositionality of the objects {Gegenständigkeit der Gegenstände} of nature, for example Kant’s doctrine of the objectivity of objects {Objektivität der Objekte}, could lead us to consider here that this objectivity is grounded in the categorial modes of representation on the part of the transcendentally determined subjectivity of the subject. If we take this subject to be the representing self-consciousness of the human, then the invocation of Kant would evince the subjectivity of everything objective and thereby make plain the dependence of the determination of objects and of the arguments drawn from this on the human.
Yet the invocation of Kant is too hasty; for, although Kant experiences scientific representation as empirical realism, he interprets the latter in terms of his transcendental idealism. In short: Kant posits in advance that being means objectivity. Objectivity however contains the turnedness of entities toward subjectivity. Objectivity is not synonymous with the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves.
Yet does not all science believe it has reached the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves precisely by means of and with the objectivity of its objects? Certainly. Yet with what right does scientific representation invoke the being-in-itself of entities that has been established through its research? Being-in-itself is itself manifestly not one object among others; nor can it even be equated with the objectivity of objects.
The argument of the sciences against the dependence of the previously intended entities-in-themselves on the human remains correct within the region of scientifically objective representation. But this region has, as such, no authority to decide about the essence and provenance of being-in-itself. Science cannot even ask in a scientifically objective way about being-in-itself as such.
That which is correct about the sciences’ statements concerning objective entities-in-themselves still does not contain any truth (that is, unconcealment) about being-in-itself. Howsoever the truth about being-in-itself may go, it does not affect the correctness with regard to entities-in-themselves; it does, however, set a limit on the sciences’ claim to truth, a limit that the [528] sciences themselves cannot cross. All correctness in the representation of entities is based on a truth about being. Seen in this way, the correctness of scientific cognition, insofar as it is limited to itself, is without truth {Wahrheit}. It is true-less {wahr-los} in the sense that scientific research cannot shelter {wahren} being as being, even though it always and everywhere implicitly avails itself of a truth about being. The more implicitly this occurs, and the more exclusively scientific representation lunges for objective entities-in-themselves and seeks the all-regulating truth in the results of such representation, the more trueless do the sciences become. With this comes what we can call, in the properly thought sense of the term, the neglect of truth {Verwahrlosung}7 in the sciences.
To the extent that this neglect of truth increases, the discoveries of the sciences become more encompassing and more encroaching, indeed so unconditionally that, in the end, the being-in-itself which they discover—atomic energy—is able to determine and shape the historical sense of the age.
The increasing neglect of truth on the part of the sciences and everyday representation involves the increasing disappearance of readiness for a reflection on being-in-itself as such. Because the discoveries about objective entities follow in rapid succession in all areas of research, one finds oneself equipped with the useful results of the sciences and thus finds it completely useless to listen even for a moment to a question that could go: What are we saying when we say being-in-itself, when we say being? From where does such saying speak, provided that being-in-itself and being can never be encountered within the domain of objects and entities-in-themselves?
Where do our opining, knowing, and understanding move when we experience that “being”, which is said everywhere and always, bespeaks nothing other than “presence {Anwesen}”? Where and how is there something like “presence”? Can we ever, sensibly and with understanding, bring forward something about being-in-itself and invoke it so long as we have not considered what “presence” means?
Yet, the sciences could reply, those entities-in-themselves that we have demonstrated do exist—without us engaging in an eludication and discussion of what “being”, “presence”, means.
Certainly: the correctly established entities-in-themselves are neither supported nor shattered by us fostering a discussion of what being and presence mean.
Yet, provided that we renounce such a discussion, provided that we are really serious about about this renunciation, then we must also forswear saying [529] and meaning something like being, being-in-itself. When we engage in this renunciation, what happens to the invocation of entities-in-themselves? At one blow this phrase then becomes an empty sound. That which we would like to invoke, entities-in-themselves, has become unnameable. If it should come to that, science could reply, the evinced unnameability of entities-in-themselves in no way proves that entities-in-themselves are not what and how they are. Indeed, their being-in-itself consists in the fact that they even remain independent from whether we can say and intend something like “being-in-itself”.
Only, is not what has just been brought forward, namely that being-in-itself consists in the independence from our capacity to say something about it, also a saying and even a saying that has arrogated the right to conclude something about being-in-itself, without having examined in the slightest on what basis and with what binding authority we say such things about being-in-itself?
Yet even these flaws will not dissuade scientific representation from believing that it has scientifically demonstrated an entity-in-itself. Science insists on the correctness of what it has ascertained. Science will no longer be challenged by the fact that, in what it has established and in the latter’s correctness, the being-in-itself of entities-in-themselves is and must always already be said.
The neglect of the truth of that in which the sciences are everywhere fundamentally grounded, the neglect of the truth of being that is implicitly said, not only does not challenge the sciences; it does not even carry weight in comparison to the uninterrupted progress of the confirmations of the results of their research. The self-certainty of the sciences with regard to their statements about entities-in-themselves, a self-certainty which is everywhere increasingly reinforced by their successes, will let itself be led astray even less by the following reflection.
For the sciences, there appear to be entities-in-themselves without a being-in-itself. If we cross out being, then entities-in-themselves still remain for the sciences. The question may be posed once again: What then does it mean for entities to “be in themselves”? Science answers: we are not concerned with what this means; we are satisfied with “entities-in-themselves”, that they are in themselves. If we allow the sciences this frugality as something possible and necessary for their requirements, then we arrive at the point of saying: entities-in-themselves are—without remaining reliant on being-in-itself.
When all being remains unconsidered, entities-in-themselves are then, in the sense of the sciences, in no way non-entities; but science will not be able to avoid the concession that entities-in-themselves are beingless {seinlos}. The burden of proof as to what this means falls to science. What will it reply to this imposition? [530]
1. According to calculable half-lives, mountains were there before the human being was.
2. It is admitted that this is correct, but only within the scientific sphere of observation.
3. Correct, however, does not mean true in the sense of the complete unconcealment of entities as such.
4. Only one aspect of this truth, or a partial truth, is correct.
5. Entities-in-themselves, mountains for example, could not be entities without being-in-itself. {note in the lefthand margin in Heidegger’s hand: “How so?”}
6. The human being, as clearing, belongs to being-in-itself, as to being in general.
7. If entities-in-themselves are grounded in being-in-itself, but the latter requires {bedarf} the human being, then entities-in-themselves, mountains for example, cannot have been there before the arrival of the human being. {note in the lefthand margin in Heidegger’s hand: “How so?”}
a
The argument against need10
The argument against the dependence of being on the human being
“Need”
the name for the belonging of the human being to the essence of being. (Need, however, means something entirely different from subjectivity)
Need itself belongs before this to being qua event
“Need” [531]
Appropriation {Vereignung} from out of the event {Ereignis} into the holding in a relation {Ver-hältnis}
Need is the delivering up of the event to the human being – as transformed from out of the event
The event does not itself thereby become dependent on the human; rather the independence of what is delivered over becomes clear {lichtet sich}.
This appropriation first brings {übereignet} the human into the unfolded essence of mortals that has been brought into its own from out of the harboring of the relation.
!! In the following elucidation of the argument against “need”, need – that is to say both the name and as it is in its essence – must be allowed to remain in the realm of the unsaid.
b
The argument against need
In the presentation, proceed from the concern to defend “objectivity” by way of positing a being-in-itself.
To what extent everday experience unifies entities-in-themselves everywhere, without ever being able to provide precise information about being-in-itself or even finding such information to be necessary.
By conceding in advance the correctness of representing entities as in themselves, the following sketch misleads one into taking what is granted here and henceforth as what sets the measure everywhere.
Anything which then explains (the) “correctness” (of the representation of entities) as such in terms of the truth of being, and anything that at all pertains to being in contrast to entities, is then simply passed off as a derivative abstraction, as a “superstructure” (an ideological superstructure) over the authentic and legitimate representation of entities existing in themselves {des an sich Seienden} (of reality, of actuality), and not taken seriously.
c
The argument against need
Correctness persists as the sole measure of representation only so long as the latter has become fixed in the delusion that only entities and the representation thereof are the “true”; what is brought forth besides this belongs in the empty and groundless field of unreal abstraction and has no justificatory force within the realm of scientific argumentation.
This sort of “evident” argumentation has its provenance in the forgottenness of being. Thus, so long as no path is forged to experience the latter in such a way that it fundamentally unsettles the sciences, and that means unsettling the technical management that dominates them, a fruitful dialogue between thinking and the sciences is not possible. [532]
It is difficult to make the sciences comprehend that they are not responsible for the unfolding of the “question concerning being” or for its solution.
The sciences are used, for now at least, only whenever their results and successes display threatening consequences for the survival of the human.
A
What concern determines and rouses the argumentation with respect to being-in-itself – ?
The unsettling of “objectivity”? What does this mean? The dawning insight, within the contemporary situation and location of the human, into what objectivity truly means? Up to now one has assumed that it is the securing of entities-in-themselves.
B
Which concern ...
now everything is shifted into subjectivity –, which itself remains without foothold and ground – in what way?!
The search for assistance!
For what purpose?
The simultaneous increase of the frenzy of the technological and its ever more palpable utility and indispensibility.
(the question concerning sources of raw materials; the question concerning the alimentation of a propogating humanity)
The vocation of the human11 and the world religions
the possibility of thinking.
The argument against the dependence of being on the human
What does “dependence” mean?
What does “being” mean?
What does “the human” mean?12
with respect to modern physics (uncertainty principle and retrogressive question concerning an entity-in-itself)
with respect to historigraphy and writing qua transmitting as a whole: within positionality {Gestell}.
The argument for the being-in-itself of entities
Independence
The independence of entities-in-themselves is given.
Independence as a character of entities.
Independence: in what sense of depending? in what sense of “in-”? [533]
How is such independence given? In which giving, by which “it” that gives13 – ? Or does one do better to say, instead of “it”, “he” | by invoking the first article of the Nicene Creed?14 and this? and the invoking of it?
The independence of entities-in-themselves from the existing human does not exclude, but rather includes that, presumably, even the “being”-in-itself of entities needs the human essence, which is itself what is needed in the event {das im Ereignis Gebrauchte} and thus belongs to “being”.
1
“Being-in-itself” and essencing
To what extent can being-in-itself and essencing be thought of – as the same?
Essencing forth {An-wesen} – as emerging of its own accord
An enduring that comes hither {Her-Währen}
“Being”-in-itself | what does “being” mean here?
{1.} the in-itself {das Ansich} – means not only of its own accord – but | per se! | in contrast to, i.e. not a se {from itself}
{2.} means causation as production!
(cf. not as crude fabricating of something) “Creation”, too, is represented within the horizon of understanding of letting-essence-forth!
In what way is the in-itself proper to “being”?15
2
“Being-in-itself” and essencing
in “being-in-itself” – is rather and precisely an absolute independence represented, | (what about the ens creatum {created being} – ?)
while
“essencing” – in itself already includes a reference to a hither-toward16 – (clearing) and thus a dependence in “being” as such
“being-in-itself” – means the independence of entities.
“independence” a character of “being” – in what sense?
re 1317 [534]
{crossed-out paragraph:} The Earth can be taken as an entity-in-itself that does not necessitate, for its being-in-itself, an entity in the manner of the living human being.
Yet the question returns: what does the being-in-itself of the Earth mean? What are we saying when we name this being-in-itself? What are we saying when we say “being”? “Essencing” ......
When being is not something existing in entities, where and how is being given?
Being is given {literally “It gives being”} only as sayable and said. | And whence and how is an “It gives” granted? the “It gives” -- | Which “It gives” here {see} Vigilae II. 61.18
1. The following is a translation of texts that are part of Martin Heidegger’s literary estate preserved at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach a. N. An updated version of the German original is available in the online version of BJHP (Heidegger, “Das Argument gegen den Brauch (für das Ansichsein des Seienden)”). In the archive, the texts are included in a slipcase entitled “Brauch” (Sign. A: Heidegger 1, Inv.-Nr.: 2006.21.1). The material falls into two categories: a longer, more elaborate text in Heidegger’s hand (section I below) as well as preparatory material, including notes in Heidegger’s hand (section II.2), and typed notes whose author could not be definitetly ascertained (section II.1) For further comment on this material and its context, see Keiling and Moore, “Heidegger on Deep Time and Being-in-Itself”.
The texts were first selected, transcribed, and annotated by Dietmar Koch and Michael Ruppert; they were published for the first time in the Jahresgabe der Martin Heidegger-Gesellschaft 2013/14, a gift booklet for members of the Martin Heidegger Society (see http://www.heidegger-gesellschaft.de/en/) presenting as yet unpublished material from the estate (printed in Stuttgart, Germany, © Dr. Hermann Heidegger). In the following, we will refer to this first publication as the Jahresgabe-edition. The German title (“Das Argument gegen den Brauch (für das Ansichsein des Seienden)”) comes from a draft title page included as document no. 84 in the slipcase, reproduced in the Jahresgabe-edition on p. 5. In the notes, numbers separated by a slash refer, respecively, to the pagination of the Jahresgabe-edition and to the document numbers. Since Heidegger uses parentheses and square brackets, we have placed our notes and interpolations in curly brackets. Numbers in curly brackets in the body of the text refer to the pagination of the German published in this issue of BJHP.
The Jahresgabe-edition includes facsimilies of the manuscripts (pp. 5-39), transcriptions of these manuscript pages (pp. 40-74) as well as editorial remarks (pp. 75-76) and annotations (pp. 77-79). We modify the sequence used in the Jahresgabe-edition, presenting the most elaborate text first. Our translation is based on the German transcription established by Koch and Ruppert; on four occasions, indicated in notes to the German text, we slightly modify their transcription and translate accordingly. Information which Koch and Ruppert give in the remarks and annotations is rendered in notes attached to the passages concerned.
The material is scheduled to appear as part of volume 91 of the Gesamtausgabe, the German edition of Heidegger’s works published by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M., Germany. We are indebted to Arnulf Heidegger and the publisher for permission to reproduce and translate this material. We thank Chris Merwin, Andrew J. Mitchell and Peter Trawny for help with the transcriptions of Sütterlin script and for other useful comments, and Henrike Gätjens for assistance with preparing the document.
2. 55-74/116-136; the editors of the Jahresgabe-edition report that on p. 82 of the manuscript, a page not included in the Jahresgabe-edition, the 21 manuscript pages are referred to as “Complete elaboration ‘The Argument against Need’” (“Vollständige Ausarbeitung ‘Das Argument gegen den Brauch’”). Although they also report that this title is likely not by Heidegger but a later handwritten addition, we continue to refer to this body of text as “Complete elaboration”. The pages in format A5 are numbered sequentially in the upper right-hand corner. The numbering is 1 through 19, with the additon of 4a and 4b. For the sake of readibility, we omit the page headers and these numbers.
3. See p. $, “…” to “…57/119…” below.
4. Apparently, Heidegger went on to add more, without going back to revise the initial enumeration.
5. While Anwesen typically means ‘estate’ or ‘property’, Heidegger tends to use it in two other senses throughout this text: more positively, as (1) an autarchic, verb-like activity of being (wesen in Middle High German) that is more foundational than the static essences of things. The prefix an-, especially when Heidegger hyphenates Anwesen, signifies ‘to’, in the sense that being is essencing forth ‘to’ or ‘for’ someone. A Latinate equivalent would be: ‘ad-essencing’. In this passage and elsewhere, Heidegger uses Anwesen pejoratively or derivatively, in the sense of (2) fixed presence or putative existence.
6. Heidegger here uses both Latinate terminology (objektiv, Objektivität) and its German counterpart (Gegenständlichkeit), modifying the latter to emphasize its implicit directionality: Gegenständigkeit emphasizes the adverbial root gegenständig, ‘standing over against’.
7. While Verwahrlosung typically just means ‘dilapidation’ or ‘neglect’, here for Heidegger it signifies a state in which something has become ‘trueless’ (wahrlos) or no longer shelters (wahrt), sc., being.
8. 42/104; author unknown, likely Medard Boss or Martin Heidegger. The editors of the Jahresgabe-edition (p. 78) comment (our translation): “The author of this typewritten page could not be determined. The paper size, which differs from that of the letter by Rudolf Trümpy, and the different sort of paper used, indicate either that Martin Heidegger himself composed these theses or that Medard Boss is the author and passed the page on to Heidegger together with Trümpy’s letter. Heidegger’s handwritten marginalia and yellow underlining could also support the latter option”. Regarding the letter, see our introduction.
9. 43-53/105-115; these notes are reproduced in the sequence they were found in the manuscript folder. Most manuscript pages contain page headers reiterating the title and certain indexing markers, e.g. a, b, c; A, B; 1, 2. To allow the reader to identify references to passages in this text, for these preparatory notes, both the page headers and these markers are reproduced here. Sequential pages are grouped together as they were found in the manuscript and reproduced and transcribed in the Jahresgabe-edition.
10. Heidegger’s note on the bottom of the manuscript page: “1) dependence; 2) being; 3) human being”.
11. Possibly an allusion to Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s work Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800, translated as The Vocation of Man), a treatise in the philosophy of religion.
12. Heidegger drew a downward line connecting this question to the next paragraph.
13. In German, people frequently use the phrase “es gibt...” (it gives...) where we in English would say “there is...”. When Heidegger seems to be playing on the language of ‘giving’, we have rendered the idiom more literally.
14. In their notes to the first edition of the the German text, the editors cite the following portions of the AD 325 version of the creed as follows: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God {...}. However those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘Before he was born he was not’ and that he was made from nothing or who say that the Son of God may be of a different hypostasis or essence, or may be created or [-!] subject to change and alteration, [such persons] the Catholic Church anathematizes”. Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, p. 123f. (Nr. 125f.) The text cited in the Jahresgabe-edition is the German version in the Denzinger compendium.
15. Line from “In what way” to “what does ‘being’ mean here?”
16. See note *** above.
17. It is unclear what this is referring to. Perhaps it is a reference to page 13 of the consecutively numbered pages of the “Complete Elaboration”; see above, p. $ from “…” to “68/130…”.
18. The notebook Vigilae II is published in Heidegger, Vigilae und Notturno, 97-198. Heidegger here (pp. 140-141) indeed refers to Brauch, writing at the end of p. 60 of the notebook: “Need is the correlation {Be-zug}, the beckoning, summoning letting-come of the clearing of being and that means of entities as such in the midst thereof”. The next page then begins: “As this relation {Bezug}, being itself unfolds itself and allots {vergibt} itself its true sheltering {Wahrnis} as event. The event yields {ergibt} every ‘It gives’ {‘Es gibt’}, into which the final steps of metaphysical representing find their way, insofar as they have already become heedful to the extent that they have avoided explaining being from entities or transposing being into a highest entity. / The event, in eventuating, allots and gives the difference between presencing and what presences, gives [in a still concealed way], in needing, ‘Da-sein’, gives such at the cost of the forgottenness of the difference, a forgottenness that itself remains forgotten”.
Denzinger, Heinrich. Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. Edited by Peter Hünemann, Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash for the English edition. 43rd edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012.
Heidegger, Martin. “Das Argument gegen den Brauch (für das Ansichsein des Seienden)”. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2022): 1-16. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2021.1988898.
Heidegger, Martin. Vigilae und Notturno (Schwarze Hefte 1952/53 bis 1957). Gesamtausgabe vol. 100. Edited by Peter Trawny. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 2020.
Keiling, Tobias, and Ian Alexander Moore. “Heidegger on Deep Time and Being-in-Itself: Introducing ‘The Argument against Need’”. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2022): 508-518. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2021.1990852.
Martin Heidegger - The Argument against Need (for the Being-in-Itself of Entities).
Original Word document.