225
§165 [286-287]


164. The essential occurrence of beyng17


If beyngs [das Seyende] "are," then being cannot also be. Being would then have to be posited as a being and therefore as a property of beings or something added to beings. The question of being would thereby have sunk back behind the first beginning. Thus beyng would still not be questioned at all; instead, it would be denied. Yet in this way "beings" would be veiled as well.

Being is not; nevertheless, we cannot equate it with nothingness. On the other hand, we must indeed resolve to posit beyng as nothingness, provided "nothingness" refers to what is not a being. Beyond this sort of "nothingness," however, beyng "is" not again "something," whereby we could rest assured that it can be represented and encountered. In saying that beyng "essentially occurs" [west], we once again lay claim to and use an expression that, linguistically, pertains properly to beings (cf. having been [Gewesen]-presencing [An-wesen]).

Yet here, in this extremity, the word needs to be violent, and "essential occurrence" [Wesung] is not supposed to name something that lies beyond beyng; instead, it utters what is innermost to beyng, namely, the appropriating event, that oscillation between beyng and Da-sein in which the two are not objectively present poles but are the pure coming to be of the oscillation itself.

The uniqueness of beyng and the fact that it cannot be represented in the sense of something that is simply present constitute the most pointed warding-off of determinations of beingness as ἰδέα and γένος, ["genus"], determinations that are necessary initially, when the breakthrough to beyng from "beings" as φύσις first comes to pass.



165. Essence as essential occurrence18


"Essence" no longer the κοινόν and the γένος of οὐσία and of the τόδε τι (ἔκσταστον) ["the this-what (the particular)"]; instead, essential occurrence as the coming to pass of the truth of beyng and specifically in the full history of beyng, which always includes the sheltering of truth in beings.

Because truth must be grounded in Da-sein, however, the essential occurrence of beyng can be attained only in the constancy which withstands the "there" in a knowledge determined accordingly.



17. The leap, The essence of beyng.

18. Cf. "The differentiation."