122 Engaging Heidegger
opens the way for us to see past prevailing economic and political systems – systems of all kinds – and to put into question their implicit or explicit claims to permanence.
makes room for the becoming of art.
is attuned by a calm and quiet wonder before the unceasing ebb and flow of all that is.
In the final session of his lecture course The Principle of Reason in 1955–6, Heidegger, reflecting on Heraclitus’ Fragment 52, likened Being to a child’s play (Spiel). Being, understood originarily and fundamentally, is simply the ‘play’ of presencing, of emerging, a play without ‘why.’ ‘It remains simply play,’ he observes, ‘but this “simply” is everything, the one, the only.’55 Similarly, we may say that Being is the ‘clearing’ that simply clears. We are cleared in the clearing. And in releasing ourselves to the clearing, we see through to the utter simplicity of our existence.