The "other beginning" of thought is so named not because it is simply different in form from all other previous philosophies but because it must be the only other beginning arising in relation to the one and only first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 7
In the first beginning: wonder.
In the other beginning: foreboding.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 18
In this decisiveness, the open realm of the transition is sustained and grounded; this open realm is the abyssal in-between amid the "no longer" of the first beginning as well as of its history and the "not yet" of the fulfillment of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 20
Thinking of beyng as event is inceptual thinking, which prepares the other beginning by confronting the first one.
The first beginning thinks beyng as presence out of the presencing that constitutes the first lighting up of one form of the essential occurrence of beyng.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 26
For this reason, inceptual thinking is necessary as a confrontation between the first beginning, which is still to be won back, and the other beginning, which is to be unfolded.
...
Inceptual thinking is:
...
2. the preparation for this act of building through the preparation for the other beginning.
3. setting the other beginning in motion as confrontation with the first beginning in its more original repetition.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 47
Inceptual thinking transposes its questioning of the truth of beyng all the way back into the first beginning as the origin of philosophy. Such thinking thereby attains the guarantee of coming from afar in its other beginning and of finding—by mastering its heritage—its highest future constancy and of thereby re-attaining itself in a changed (vs. the first beginning) necessity.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 47
Abandonment by being: the fact that beyng is abandoning beings, is leaving them to themselves, and thus is allowing them to become objects of machination. All this is not simply "decline," but is the first history of beyng itself, the history of the first beginning and of what stands in the lineage of that beginning, as well as the history of what is thereby necessarily left behind. Yet even this that is left behind is no mere "negativum"; rather, in ending, it makes appear for the first time the abandonment by being, assuming that the question of the truth of beyng is posed out of the other beginning and thus initiates the encounter with the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 88
If thoughtful meditation (as questioning of the truth of beyng and only as this) achieves knowledge of such belonging, then at the same time the basic thrust of the history of the first beginning (the history of Western metaphysics) is already grasped out of a knowledge of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 101
Yet the interplay with the history of the thinking of the first beginning is not historiological, additional, or pregiven material for a "new" "system." Instead, it is itself the essential, transformative preparation of the other beginning. Therefore we must direct our historical meditation, perhaps still more inconspicuously and decisively, only to the thinkers belonging to the history of the first beginning so that through the interrogative dialogue with their way of questioning we might unexpectedly plant a questioning that will some day find itself explicitly rooted in another beginning. But this historical meditation, as the interplay of the beginnings which are grounded in themselves and which pertain—in each case differently—to the abyss, already arises in a transitional way out of the other beginning (to grasp this already requires the leap), and therefore such meditation is all too readily subject to the misinterpretation that finds there merely historiological considerations regarding works of thought chosen by arbitrary predilection.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 133
The originary appropriation of the first beginning (i.e., the appropriation of its history) means gaining a foothold in the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 135
Thereby all idealisms, as well as the previous metaphysics and metaphysics in general, are overcome as a necessary development of the first beginning. The latter in this way falls again into darkness, to be grasped as such only out of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 138
Of itself, the leaping-away-from first takes on the leaping of the leap, and thus here the no surpasses the yes. Accordingly, however, this no as seen from the outside is the setting of the first beginning out in relief against the other one but is never "negation" in the usual sense of rejection and disparagement. Instead, this original negation is the same in kind as that refusal which deprives itself of any accompanying and does so out of a knowledge and recognition of the uniqueness of what, at its end, demands the other beginning.
To be sure, such negation is not satisfied with leaping-away-from in the sense of merely leaving behind. Rather, it develops by laying bare the first beginning and its inceptual history and by placing back into the possession of the beginning what has been laid bare, which, as deposited there, both now and in the future stands out above everything that ever arose in its wake and became an object of historiological reckoning. This erecting of what stands out in the first beginning is the meaning of the "destruction" occurring in the transition to the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 140
The first beginning experiences and posits the truth of beings without asking about truth as such, for the things unconcealed in the truth of beings-namely, beings as beings-necessarily overpower everything because they swallow up even nothingness, incorporating it as the "not" and the "over and against." Or else they utterly annihilate it.
The other beginning experiences the truth of beyng and asks about the beyng of truth in order first to ground the essential occurrence of beyng and to let beings arise as the true of that original truth.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 141
That anticipatory grasp provided by thought in the first beginning, as the guideline for the interpretation of beings, can indeed be understood from the other beginning as a kind of non-mastery of the still non-experience able Da-sein (cf. The grounding, 212. Truth as certainty).
In the first beginning, truth (as unconcealedness) is a character of beings as such, and according to the transformation of truth into the correctness of assertion, "truth" comes to determine beings as transformed into objects. (Truth as correctness of judgment, "objectivity," "actuality"—the "being" of beings)
In the other beginning, truth is recognized and grounded precisely as the truth of beyng and beyng itself precisely as the beyng of truth, i.e., as the intrinsically turning event to which pertain the inner falling-apart of the fissure and thus the abyss.
The leap into the other beginning is the return to the first, and vice versa. Yet the return to the first beginning ("re-petition") is not a transposition into something past, as if this could be made "actual" again in the usual sense. The return to the first beginning is rather, and precisely, removal from it, the occupying of that remote position which is necessary in order to experience what began in that beginning and as that beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 145-146
If this plight did not have the greatness of origination out of the first beginning, from where would it then take its power of compelling us to prepare for the other beginning?
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 146
Therefore this confrontation is also not an opposition, neither in the sense of crude rejection nor by way of a sublation of the first in the other. The other beginning, on the basis of a genuine originality, procures for the first beginning both the truth of its history and thereby its inalienable, most proper otherness, which becomes fruitful only in the historical dialogue of thinkers.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 147
That the truth of beyng remains concealed, although beingness is placed in it ("time"), must be grounded in the essence of the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 153-154
Does it not also mean, on the other hand, that what follows the first beginning is delayed and has to withstand a self-refusal of being all the way up to the abandonment by being?
The transition to the other beginning needs to prepare a knowledge of this historical destiny. The confrontation with the first beginning and with its history also belongs here.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 154
Being and thinking: the title for the history of thought within the first and the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 169
To bring about the preparedness for the transition from the end of the first beginning and into the other beginning does not mean to enter a "period" which simply has never occurred before; rather, it is to step into a wholly other domain of history.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 179
The meditation of "fundamental ontology" (laying of the foundation of ontology as its overcoming) constitutes the transition from the end of the first beginning to the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 180
In the first beginning, being (beingness) is inventively thought (through νοεῖν and λέγειν), envisioned, and posited in the open realm of its essential occurrence so that beings might show themselves.
...
In the other beginning, however, beings are such as to bear the clearing into which they themselves come to stand, and this clearing essentially occurs as the clearing for the self-concealing, i.e., for beyng as event.
In the other beginning, all beings are sacrificed up to beyng, and only from there do beings as such receive their truth.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 181
In the other beginning, what matters is the leap into the fissuring center of the turning of the event in order to prepare the "there" with respect to its grounding and to do so knowingly, interrogatively, and by forging a style.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 182
The first beginning and its ending encompass the entire history of the guiding question, from Anaximander to Nietzsche.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 183
This unasked question is the basic question, seen within the purview and on the path of the guiding question and seen only by way of an indication; time as the truth of beyng; beyng experienced in the first beginning as various forms of presencing.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 184
It is possible that the other beginning also may be able to hold fast to the event and shelter it as the clearing again only in a unique lighting up corresponding to the way φύσις alone (indeed scarcely and momentarily) came into gatheredness (λόγος) in the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 186
In the other beginning of thinking, beyng is therefore experienced as event, specifically such that this experience, as springing forth, transforms all relations to "beings."
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 195
In the other beginning, the essential occurrence of beyng itself must be apprehended as the inceptual and in its full strangeness with respect to beings.
...
Only where, as in the first beginning, the essential occurrence appears merely as presencing, does there occur an immediate separation between beings and their "essence," and that is precisely the essential occurrence of beyng as presence.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 203
Hence thinking, as inaugural of the other beginning, also may come into the remote nearness of the last god.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 206
Only now does the animal rationale collapse, though we are in the act of relapsing into it precipitously whenever we know neither the first beginning and its end nor the necessity of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 232
"Dasein," terminologically and substantively, means something essentially different in the history of the first beginning (i.e., in the entire history of metaphysics) than it does in the other beginning
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the full genuine content of the term "Dasein" in the first beginning is as follows: to occur essentially (there) by emerging out of itself as unconcealed.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 233
This compliance, as the compliant preparation for the site of the moment of the extreme decision, is the law of the thoughtful procedure in the other beginning in contrast to the system at the end of the history of the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 245
Because the question of beings indeed had to be posed in the first beginning and, as the guiding question, continued to be posed into the future, despite Descartes, Kant, and others, so also something like soul, reason, spirit, thought, or representation always had to supply the guideline.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 248
The task is not to "explain" the projection but to transfigure it in its ground and abyss and to dis-lodge human being into it, i.e., into Da-sein, and thus to show human being the other beginning of its history.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 258
Plight of what? Of beyng itself, which must bring into the open, and thus overcome, its first beginning through the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 260
Self-concealing, however, is the basic teaching of the first beginning and of its history (metaphysics as such).
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 262
What thereby gets lost back into the first beginning, so that concealedness and concealing, as such, are never questioned?
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 263
Neo-Kantianism: affirmed by the philosophy of "life" and the philosophy of "existence" ["Existenz"philosophie], because both (for example, Dilthey, and equally Jaspers) utterly fail to surmise what genuinely occurred in Western metaphysics and what must prepare itself as the necessity of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 267
Philosophy in the other beginning is essentially historical, and in that respect a more originary kind of recollection of the history of the first beginning must also arise now.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 283
Meditation on the provenance out of the history of the first beginning (being as beingness—constant presence) is unavoidable.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 294
For such representations are to be grasped only last, as anterior with respect to the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 295
Time-space as the essential occurrence of truth (essential occurrence of the abyssal ground) first comes to be known in carrying out the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 296
From the hesitant withholding, which is the intimation as the inceptual essence of the event, inceptual in the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 304
the unfolding of space and time out of the explicitly and originarily grasped time-space as the abyss of the ground within the thinking of the other beginning;
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 305
The down-going, in the essential sense, is the path to the reticent preparation for what is to come, i.e., for the moment in which and the site in which the advent and the remaining absent of the gods will be decided. This downgoing is the utterly first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 314
The last god is not the end; the last god is the other beginning of the immeasurable possibilities of our history.
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Refusal, as belonging to the event, can be experienced only on the basis of the more originary essence of beyng as lit up in the thinking constitutive of the other beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 326
The reason is that the truth of beyng itself must first be grounded, and for this task all creating must take another beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 330
Only the transition to the other beginning, the first overcoming of metaphysics (under the transitional necessity of retaining its name), raises this distinction to the level of knowledge and thereby places it into question for the first time—not casually, but as what is most question-worthy.
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The difference carries the concealed history of metaphysics (not the historiology of metaphysical doctrines) over to the history of beyng and moves this latter history into the effective space of the first beginning of the Western thinking of being, a thinking which bears the name "philosophy."
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 335
For these other thinkers must still incorporate into thinking, along with what is most proper to them, the questioning dialogue with the first beginning and with its history, as these have emerged in bright depth, and must be equipped to become, along with the most solitary ones of the first thinking, even more solitary ones of the abyss which in the other beginning not only bears all grounds but also suffuses them.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 341
It remains concealed in its own depths—now no longer (as occurred since the first beginning of Western thinking and during the entire history of metaphysics) through the concealment of its seclusion in the unbroached origin but through the clarity of a heavy darkness pertaining to a depth that knows itself and arises in meditation.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 340
These individuals still bring with them, however, the past of the concealed history of being, that detour (as it may seem) metaphysics had to take through beings so as not to attain being and thus to come to an end which is strong enough for the plight leading toward the other beginning. This beginning at the same time leads back into the originariness of the first beginning and transforms the past into something not lost.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 342
This beginning at the same time leads back into the originariness of the first beginning and transforms the past into something not lost.
...
Indeed, it is this detour which first leads into the plight of the refusal and into the necessity of bringing up for decision that which (φύσις, ἀλήθεια) in the first beginning was only the intimation of a bestowal and did not allow itself to be grasped and preserved.Indeed, it is this detour which first leads into the plight of the refusal and into the necessity of bringing up for decision that which (φύσις, ἀλήθεια) in the first beginning was only the intimation of a bestowal and did not allow itself to be grasped and preserved.
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The old is not the archaic, which inevitably struts about as soon as the greatness of the beginning (which is incomparable as the greatness of the first beginning) falls into historiological tradition and disavowal.
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Instead, the new refers here to the freshness of the originariness of re-beginning, that which ventures out into the concealed future of the first beginning and thus cannot at all be "new" but must be even older than the old.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 343
The disentanglement of philosophy from the snares binding it to the grounding of science, to the interpretation of culture, to serving world-views, and to metaphysics as its proper first essence (which deteriorates into its distortion) is merely the consequence of the other beginning, and only as such a consequence can it truly be mastered. The other beginning is the more original appropriation of the concealed essence of philosophy, an essence which itself arises out of the essence of beyng and which, according to the specific purity of the origin, remains closer to the essence of decision pertaining to the thinking "of" beyng.
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Philosophy, in the other beginning, questions by way of asking for the truth of beyng. Seen from the horizon of the now explicit difference between beings and being and calculated on the basis of a historiological comparison to metaphysics and its starting point in beings. the questioning in the other beginning (the thinking of the historicality of beyng) might look like a simple inversion, i.e., here, a crude one.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 344
Now, if beyng is what is needed by the god, and beyng itself finds its truth only in the inventive thinking which is philosophy (in the other beginning), then "the gods" are in need of the thinking of the historicality of beyng, i.e., they need philosophy.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 346
An intimation of this essence of beyng could strike us only if we were already equipped to experience ἀλήθεια as in the first beginning.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 354
If here, in the preparation for the other beginning, we hold on to the essence of philosophy as the questioning of being (in a twofold sense: questioning the being of beings and questioning the truth of beyng)—and we must hold on to this, precisely because the initial question of being came indeed to its end and thus not to its beginning—then philosophizing must also continue to be called thinking.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 360
Now, in the transition to the other beginning, the question of being indeed becomes the question of the truth of beyng in such a way that this truth, as the essence of truth, belongs to the essential occurrence of beyng itself.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 361
For the other beginning, this unshaken and never questioned determination of being (unity) still can, and indeed must, become question-worthy, and then unity points back to "time" (the abyssal time of time-space).
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 362
"Logic" itself, which attains its highest form in Hegel's metaphysics, can be grasped in its essence only out of the other beginning of the thinking of beyng.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 363
This applies already to the way beyng essentially occurs in the first beginning, namely, as φύσις, which comes forth as ἀλήθεια but which is at once forgotten in favor of beings (ones that are perceivable as such only in virtue of ἀλήθεια) and is reinterpreted as a being that is most eminently, i.e., as a mode of being and specifically the highest mode.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 367
Yet to unify both of these or to possess them already as radically one (i.e., to begin in what is wholly other and to remain faithful to the history of the first beginning, while essentially surpassing all previous historiological accomplishments, to master and yet to maintain, with equal decisiveness, what is mutually exclusive) is so foreign to the usual procedure of historiology and system-building that these latter can never be struck by the idea that such unity could be required.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 368
The "ontological difference" once again seems to be something "new," which it cannot be and does not want to be. It is the name only of that which bears the entire history of philosophy and as such could never be for philosophy (in the form of metaphysics) something that had to be questioned and thus named. It is something transitional in the transition from the end of metaphysics to the other beginning.
...
On the other hand, with respect to the overcoming of metaphysics (i.e., with respect to the historical interplay between the first and the other beginning), the "ontological difference" must be clarified in its belonging to Da-sein and, seen in that regard, will assume the form of a, indeed the, "basic structure" of Da-sein itself.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 369
With this knowledge of beyng, thinking first attains the trace of the other beginning in the transition from metaphysics.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 372
Nevertheless, the transition to the other beginning cannot be prepared unless the courage for the old (of the first beginning) comes to the fore in the transition and thus the attempt is first made to propel the old, in its own setting, beyond itself: beings, being, the "meaning" (truth) of being (cf. Being and Time).
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 373
The possible essentially occurs in beyng alone and as its deepest fissure, so that in the thinking of the other beginning beyng must first be thought in the form of the possible.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 374
Here, thought in Platonic-Aristotelian terms, conditioning as a character of being still corresponds most nearly to the essence of being (presence and constancy) in the first beginning but also cannot be explained further.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 376
Thinking in the other beginning does not know any explanation of being by beings and knows nothing of any conditioning of beings by beyng.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 377
In the first beginning, inasmuch as φύσις was illuminated in ἀλήθεια and as ἀλήθεια, wonder was the basic disposition. The other beginning, that of the thinking of the historicality of beyng, is disposed and pre-disposed by unsettlement, which opens Da-sein to the plight of the lack of a sense of plight.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 380
Nevertheless, meditation on the first beginning (out of the necessity of preparing the other beginning) leads to an esteeming of inceptual (Greek) thought, which promotes the misunderstanding that this return to the Greeks is striving for some sort of "classicism" in philosophy. In truth, however, the "retrieval"—i.e., the more originary launching—of this questioning opens the solitary remoteness of the first beginning to everything that follows it historically. Ultimately, the other beginning stands to the first in a necessary, intrinsic, though concealed relation which includes at the same time the complete isolation of both, in accord with their character as origins. Thus, precisely where preparatory thinking most readily attains the sphere of the origin of the other beginning, the illusion arises that the first beginning is merely renewed and that the other beginning is simply a historiologically improved interpretation of the first.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 396
What holds in general for "metaphysics" also applies to meditation on the "origin of the work of art" (a meditation that prepares a historically transitional decision), and what is early of the first beginning can be chosen as the most apt illustration in this case as well.
Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) page 397
Unconcealment
First beginning: things unconcealed as presence, then transformed to metaphysics.
Other beginning: Dasein shepherds the unconcealed, keeps the open open.
Created 2024/3/15
Last updated 2025/10/15