95
§58 [119-121]


57. The history of beyng and the abandonment by being


The abandonment by being is the ground and thereby at the same time the more original determination of the essence of that which Nietzsche was the first to recognize as nihilism. Yet how little did he and all his power succeed in compelling Western Dasein to meditate on nihilism! Accordingly, the hope is even less that our era might summon up the will to know the ground of nihilism. Or is this knowledge first supposed to clarify the "fact" of nihilism?

The abandonment by being determines a unique era in the history of the truth of beyng. It is the era of beyng of the long duration in which truth hesitates to put its essence into clarity. The time of the danger that every essential decision passes by, the time of the renunciation of the battle over measures.

Decisionlessness as the realm of the unboundedness of machinations, where size spreads to the monstrous proportions of the gigantic and the transparency of what is empty passes for clarity.

The long hesitation of truth and decisions is a withholding of the shortest path and of the greatest moments. In this era, "beings" (that which we call the "actual," "life," "values") are dis appropriated of beyng.

The abandonment by being is cloaked in the increasing authority of calculation, speed, and the claim of the massive. The obstinately distorted essence of the abandonment by being is hidden away under this cloak, and it makes the abandonment unassailable.


58. The three ways the abandonment by being cloaks itself:
What they are and how they appear


1. Calculation—first placed in power through the machinations of technology, which are epistemologically grounded in mathematics; here unclear anticipation in rules and guiding principles, hence the certainty of governing and of planning, the experiment; without questioning, one makes it through some way or other; nothing impossible, one is certain of "beings"; the question of the essence of truth is no longer needed; everything has to conform to the current state of calculation; on that basis the priority of organization, renunciation of a freely developing change from the ground up; here the incalculable is merely that which has not yet been mastered in calculation but which in principle will also be incorporated some day; therefore in no way is anything outside all calculation; in


Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) (GA 65) by Martin Heidegger