to the givenness of being1. The ultimate form of identity is neither the perfect self-coincidence of intelligibility (Parmenides) nor the perfect self-coincidence of the thinking ego (Descartes), but rather the exposition of being2 to the human being and the exposure of the human being to being2. The context of complicated presence within which any presence-in-oneself or presence-to-oneself can make sense is generated only in such an interplay. This interplay is structured by a reciprocal noncoincidence, i.e., by the ontological difference in the sense of the discharge (being3) of the foreground of presence (being1) by the withdrawing contextual background of nonpresence (being2) which is, in turn, “carried out” by meaningful presence. As receptivity to such differential presence, thinking must itself be differentially structured as the ecstatic “insistency” or “instantaneity” capable of entering the “clearing” or “disclosure” of meaningful presence in terms of its background dimensions. As Thomas Sheehan puts it, the “kinetic” structure of givenness and receptivity is based on a foregoing recess, which allows access to a present that is in excess of itself.18
Once this is clarified, a basic unifying feature in Heidegger’s work becomes visible. The event (Ereignis) is the correlation between the differential and complicated, i.e., temporal, structures of givenness (the temporality of being) and those of receptivity (the timeliness of Da-sein). The turn (Kehre) is the reciprocal dynamic of this correlation which the published part of Being and Time, taking its cue one-sidedly from Dasein, failed to articulate completely. The fourfold (Geviert) is a new articulation of the differential relationship between a multidimensional background and a simple foreground; it circumvents the impasse of Being and Time by refraining from distinguishing two differential structures—that of givenness (temporality) and that of receptivity (timeliness)—in need of a further synthesis. Heidegger now integrates the futural pole of “giving,” “granting,” and “forthcoming” (the gods or divinities) with the historical pole of “receiving,” “interpreting,” and “articulating” (the human being or the mortals) as two differential dimensions of the background (being2) itself. In Being and Time, the concept of the instant (Augenblick) gathers all of these dimensions together into a situated openness to the instantiation of complicated presence. In the Bremen lectures, this function is performed by the “while” (Weile), the temporary “arresting” (Verweilen) of the four dimensions by the thing as an instance of presence “for the while.”
The concord between event and discharge thus becomes visible: they are two aspects of being3 as the contextual and heterogeneous event of unified meaningfulness. A singular being is no longer simply a particular “instance” of being1 in the sense of pure presence. When being1 is considered