thinking in manifold modifications, to such a degree that even the overcoming of ‘metaphysics’ toward an inceptual understanding cannot do without this way of thinking” (GA 65/CP, §44). And yet, if one cannot but go a stretch of this way—as indeed we have—one must also break with it, recognizing that “the a priori is really only there where ¥dèa is—and that is to say that beingness (koinín) as ÊntwV Ên is more-being [seiender] and thus, first of all, a being” (GA 65/CP, §112). In other words, to think being as a priori is ultimately to place it in the purview of beings and would be simply to repeat the obliteration of the difference. In the crossing to the other beginning, there must come a point at which one breaks decisively with thinking beyng as the a priori.
Beyond this point one will no longer, on the way to beyng, engage a regress that merely redoubles the metaphysical regress from beings to a priori beingness. If there should eventually prove to be a way in which beyng grounds beings so as to let them come forth in their being, that way will depend on—will be itself grounded by—the grounding of beyng itself. If, in this grounding, as Heidegger writes, “the ground grounds as a-byss” (GA 65/CP, §9),16 then everything will hinge on the grounding—or grounders—of the abyss.
Heidegger writes of them almost at the very outset of Contributions, sketching in broad strokes what comes about with them: “At times those grounders of the abyss must be consumed in the fire of that which is safeguarded [das Verwahrten], so that Da-sein becomes possible for man [Menschen] and thus constancy [Beständigkeit] in the midst of beings is rescued, so that in the open of the strife between earth and world beings themselves undergo a restoration” (GA 65/CP, §2).
Who are the grounders of the abyss? Among them are those who question: “Those who question have set aside all curiosity; their seeking loves the abyss, in which they know the oldest ground” (GA 65/CP, §5).17 For those who question, being grounders of the abyss does not mean installing a ground that would cancel the abyss as such but rather apprehending the abyss as archaic ground, as an abysmal ground older than beingness as ground. Yet, before all else, what these grounders ground is beyng in its truth; their accomplishment—indeed the accomplishment of all grounders of the abyss—is to ground the truth of beyng in this abysmal ground.
Those who question are not the only grounders of the abyss. Indeed in what he says of them—that at times they must be consumed in the ¤re of that which is safeguarded—Heidegger’s reference is primarily to the poet, to the poet of poets. For Hölderlin, poetizing the essence of poetry, depicts the poet as exposed to the danger of being consumed by the ¤re of that which otherwise would go unbequeathed but which the poet can receive and hand down to the people. Cited and discussed in