IV
With the attempt to determine more closely the “free-throw,” or “throwing-oneself free of a being unto be-ing,” we come upon the experience of a returnership that occurs as moving away from and returning to be-ing’s “enowning-throw.” We now suggest that the experience of this returnership constitutes the backbone of the entirety of the last part of Contributions, “Be-ing,” that it holds the key for grasping what Heidegger means when he says that with “Be-ing” he intends to grasp the whole once again, and that it is this experience that allows thinking to enter this last part of Contributions.
The experience of returnership sustains Heidegger’s accomplishments in each section of “Be-ing” because what he says in each section is understandable and co-enactable on the basis of what he calls “throwing-oneself free of a being unto be-ing.” But we must caution against confusing this “throwing-oneself free of a being” with a “freedom from” or detachment à la Buddhism, or with any other doctrine of liberation. Strictly speaking, thinking can never free itself from beings; it can only move away from disclosing a being toward be-ing’s “enowning-throw”—in short, it can only undergo the experience of returnership. This is the experience that sustains the entirety of “Being” when Heidegger addresses “the essential swaying of be-ing” (§§265, 266, 269, 270), “history” (§273), “calculation as the ground of the gigantic” (§§260, 274), “the ontological difference” (§§266, 268), “gods’ needfulness of be-ing” (§§259, 279), “transformation of man’s being by an originary thinking of be-ing” (§§259, 270, 271, 272)—a transformation that leads to what is ownmost to language and what is ownmost to the work of art, and to history (§§273, 276, 277)—and in particular when he lays out the “manifoldness of enownings” (§§267, 268, 269).
The experience of returnership also holds the key for understanding Heidegger’s intention to grasp the whole once again with “Be-ing.” In its entirety “Be-ing” is referentially dependent upon the experience of returnership—not because here Heidegger returns to the preceding six “joinings” and gathers together the “results” as a whole. As a quick look at “Be-ing” might show, he never enacts such a returning. Besides, were such a returning to occur, it would be reminiscent of the familiar surveys at the end of a work that are consummated in a summary and conclusion—it would be a far cry from the experience of returnership which shapes the last part of Contributions. Heidegger makes it quite clear that with “Be-ing” he does not intend to sum up the “results” of the preceding six “joinings” and conclude the work, since he indicates explicitly that this is an attempt which happens once again. He says