195. Da-sein and the human being
Who is the human being? The one needed by beyng for the sake of withstanding the essential occurrence of the truth of beyng.
As so needed, however, humans "are" humans only inasmuch as they are grounded in Da-sein, i.e., inasmuch as they themselves, by creating, become the ones who ground Da-sein.
Yet beyng is also grasped here as appropriating event. Both belong together: the grounding back into Da-sein and the truth of beyng as event.
We grasp nothing of the direction of the questioning that is opened up here if we casually base ourselves on arbitrary ideas of the human being and of "beings as such" instead of putting into question at one stroke both the "human being" and beyng (not simply the being of the human being) and keeping them in question.
196. Da-sein and a people10
Only on the basis of Da-sein is it possible to grasp the essence of a people, which means at the same time to know that a people can never be a goal and a purpose. To hold the opposite opinion is merely a "popular" expansion of both the "liberal" thought of the "I" and the economic idea of the conservation of "life."
The essence of a people, however, is its "voice." This voice does precisely not speak in the so-called immediate outpourings of the common, natural, unspoiled, and unrefined "man." For this summoned witness is already very spoiled and for a long time has not been moving in the original relations to beings. The voice of a people seldom speaks and speaks only in a few individuals. Can this voice still be brought to resound?
197. Da-sein-domain of what is proper-selfhood11
Being a self is the essential occurrence of Da-sein, and the self of the human being is attained only through steadfastness in Da-sein.
The "self" is customarily grasped only in the relation of an I to "itself." This relation is taken as representational. And ultimately the selfsameness of the one who is representing with that which is represented
10. Cf. The future ones.
11. Cf. Prospect, 16. Philosophy (meditation as meditation on oneself).