less than the open “between,” in which beings and non-beings stand forth as a whole, though still in their undifferentiatedness. Since the between is the whole of these undifferentiated beings, there is nothing outside to which an exit would be possible. And because it is a whole that is undifferentiated, there is nothing to which a way might lead to a standpoint inside. What here permits neither an out nor an in oscillates back to itself in an extraordinary sense as this “between.” Therefore this distress of not knowing the way out or the way in, this need, has an excess which raises it above every lack and lets something be which we have to express as the opposite of a lack, an abundance. This is the measurelessness of the undifferentiatedness between what beings as beings are as a whole and that which presses forth as inconstant, formless, and carrying away, which means here at the same time what immediately withdraws.
2) The compelling power of the need, its disposing as displacing man into the beginning of a foundation of his essence.
The need compels into the “between” of this undifferentiatedness. It first casts asunder what can be differentiated within this undifferentiatedness. Insofar as this need takes hold of man, it displaces him into this undecided “between” of the still undifferentiated beings and non-beings, as such and as a whole. By this displacement, however, man does not simply pass unchanged from a previous place to a new one, as if man were a thing that can be shifted from one place to another. Instead, this displacement places man for the first time into the decision of the most decisive relations to beings and non-beings. These relations bestow on him the foundation of a new essence. This need displaces man into the beginning of a foundation of his essence. I say advisedly a foundation for we can never say that it is the absolute one.
What we are now calling displacement is the essential character of what we know under the name of disposition or feeling. A deep-rooted and very old habit of experience and speech stipulates that we interpret feelings and dispositions—as well as willing and thinking—in a psychological-anthropological sense as