Chapter II

The second phase of the interpretation

§5. The unitary content of the pronouncement on the basis of its central core

a) The essential power of Being as noncompliance

We must at least attempt such a clarification before we dismiss the statement as unintelligible. That would be as arbitrary as the surely still more fatal approach which degrades it to a primitive poetic-moral outburst. We will therefore now proceed beyond commenting on the individual elements and grasp the unitary content of the pronouncement on the basis of its central core. For that, we must once again gather up what was said hitherto.

The pronouncement speaks about beings as a whole, how they are, how that which is is (Being), what the situation is with Being (how Being essentially occurs)—thus it speaks of the Being of beings. Specifically, in the first section: initial indication of the characters of Being—appearance, whose whence and whither are the same. In the second: why Being has this character, why the whither of disappearing is the same as the whence of stepping forth—because beings must bestow compliance and correspondence on one another and must do so in consideration of the noncompliance. In the third: for this bestowal, i.e., for this consideration of the noncompliance, time provides the allocation; time in each case measures out to beings their Being. Consideration of the noncompliance according to the power of time—the essential power of Being.

Such a clear structure to the statement—and yet it is basically inaccessible to us, alien. If pressed, we can clarify it this way: an alternating of coming and going can be found in beings. But that this reciprocal giving-way should have the character of a bestowal of compliance and correspondence, that precisely therein should lie the consideration of the noncompliance—there we take exception. Thus what we really find shocking is that beings persist in a noncompliance, that beings