§16 [93-94]
does liberation from shelter mean? Into what are humans placed? Liberation to existence, understanding of Being, Being. That occurs only in a stance and in self-comportment to oneself. Stance and selfhood! The latter to be understood not in a moral or religious sense but, instead, on the basis of Being and the un-concealedness of beings as a whole.
The letting-be in comportment toward beings in the midst of beings is freedom (not ethically!—letting-be). There is freedom only out of and as liberation. According to its essence, the liberation to freedom can be guided only by that toward which it properly liberates, thus by existence and by what has the priority therein—the understanding of Being and what manifests itself in this understanding. The matter at issue here is the Being of beings. Only if the issue is Being in the understanding of Being and in its sovereignty can this liberation to the freedom of existence occur.
b) The asking of the question of Being as
the closest proximity of existence
But why and for what end should Being and the understanding of Being be at issue? What happens when they are at issue? Nothing less than this: beings as a whole, previously concealed from self-manifestation, find for the first time and henceforth, in one way or another, the site and the amplitude in which they can step forth out of their concealedness in order to be at all as the beings they are. In this way, for the first time concealment is also provided them. Prior to that, they lacked it.
Thereby beings come by their Being.14 They do so only if and insofar as the understanding of Being occurs. And the condition of possibility for it, namely, that this occurrence becomes history, is the transition to the existence of humans. But, again, that beings as such come to themselves is not intrinsically necessary, even if there are already humans.
Beings can remain sunk in the full night of self-shrouded nothingness, such that they are never granted the possibility of being concealed. For there is concealment only if the site of disconcealment holds good. |
If, however, beings as such are to come to the light of day, if this day is to dawn for beings, then, as was shown by our attempt at a complete dis-esteeming of the understanding of Being, Being must come to be understood in advance. Yet Being can never simply be found amid beings as one being among others. Nor can it first be drawn out of “beings” by way of abstraction. Being can therefore nowhere and never
14. This coming together as “provenance” (appearance).