197
§132 [250-251]


132. Beyng and beings


This distinction has been understood ever since Being and Time as the "ontological difference," and the aim has been to keep the question of the truth of beyng safe from all admixture. But this distinction is immediately applied to the path from which it originated. For there beingness comes to validity as οὐσία, as ἰδέα, and, in its train, as objectivity qua the condition of the possibility of an object. Accordingly, the effort to go beyond the first approach to the question of being as it was instituted in Being and Time and in the works which radiated out from it ("On the Essence of Ground" and the Kant book3) required various attempts to master the "ontological difference" and to grasp its origin itself, i.e., its genuine unity. Therefore, the endeavor had to be made to get free of the "condition of possibility" as a merely "mathematical" retrogression and to grasp the truth of beyng out of the latter's own essence (event). That explains why this distinction has been so tormenting and discordant. For, as necessary as the distinction is and even if it must be thought in terms of the tradition in order to create a very first horizon for the question of beyng, it is just as fatal—since it indeed arises precisely from an inquiry into beings as such (beingness), and that path never leads immediately to the question of beyng. In other words, it is precisely this distinction that becomes the genuine barrier obstructing the taking up of the question of beyng, insofar as the attempt is made, while presupposing the distinction, to go beyond it and ask about its unity. This unity is always no more than a reflection of the distinction and can never lead into the origin from which it could be seen that the distinction no longer is primordial.

Therefore, the task is not to surpass beings (transcendence) but, instead, to leap over this distinction and consequently over transcendence and to question inceptually out of beyng and truth.

In transitional thinking, however, we must withstand this discrepancy: first, to bring this distinction to an initial clarity, and then to leap over that very distinction. Yet such leaping over occurs only through the leap as the creative grounding of the ground of the truth of beyng, i.e., through the leap into the event of the appropriation of Da-sein.



3. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (GA3).


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