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V. The Grounding [354-355]

11. The historically necessary paths of sheltering.

12. How, in sheltering, beings first become beings (cf. The leap, 152. The levels of beyng).

13. How, in meditatively traversing the foregoing way, there is unfolded the domain in which occurs the "difference" between beyng and beings, i.e., the domain which occurs as this difference (cf. The leap, 151. Being and beings). Da-sein essentially occurring as the "between."


*


In view of the ever-greater desolation and disfigurement of philosophy, something lastingly essential would already be won if the posing of the question of truth were achieved out of the necessity of the question and in the right way.

The necessity of this question arises out of the plight of the abandonment by being. The right way of posing the question is the transition to the originary essence through a clarification of the starting point, the dominant concept of correctness. At the same time, it must be grasped that along with truth what is determined in the turning is also the truth of the essence and of the essential occurrence. From the very beginning, therefore, we cannot strive for and demand a concept of "essence" in the sense of a genus, i.e., a correct synthesis of universal properties available immediately to everyone. Instead, what needs to be striven for and demanded is something higher, by which the already long-dominant uprootedness of the question of truth can at once be measured. In these terms, i.e., experienced in its necessity and historicality, truth is the dislodging into transposedness.

It is essentially a matter of the dominance of correctness that this transposedness is in a certain way always occurring, ever since the human being was and is historical, and that nevertheless the transposition remains hidden. In accord with the dominance of correctness, humans find themselves involved immediately and only in an opposition (ψυχή—ἀντικείμενον ["soul—what is opposed to it"], cogito-cogitatum, consciousness—object of consciousness). Out of this opposition, humans take and expect the fulfillment of their claims. In this opposition plays out everything of which humans believe themselves knowledgeable. Therein also belongs the dominance of "transcendence" (cf. The interplay, 110. The ἰδέα, Platonism, and idealism).

Here lies the deepest ground for the hiddenness and distortedness of Da-sein. For, despite all the antagonism against the "I," what is more clear and unquestionable than the fact that "I" and "we" are over and against objects? Thereby "I" and "we" are primarily what is unquestioned and what can be left serenely in the background.


Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) (GA 65) by Martin Heidegger