GUIDE: By taking into consideration that thinking is in no way a releasement subsisting by itself; rather, releasement to the open-region is thinking only as the enregioning of releasement, an enregioning that has let releasement into the open-region.
SCHOLAR: But now the open-region also brings the thing to abide in the abiding-while of the expanse. How should we name the regioning of the open-region in relation to the thing?
SCIENTIST: After all, it presumably cannot be named enregioning since this names the relation of the open-region to releasement; and, whereas releasement is said to shelter in itself the essence of thinking, things do not think.
GUIDE: Things are evidently things by means of the regioning of the open-region, as was shown with the abiding of the jug in the expanse of the open-region. Yet the regioning of the open-region does not cause and effect things, any more than the open-region [139] effects releasement. The open-region is, in enregioning, also not the horizon for releasement; and neither is it the horizon for things, insofar as we don’t experience them as objects for ourselves. Yet we also do not experience things as “things in themselves,” but rather as things for themselves.
SCHOLAR: What you now say seems to me to be to be so decisive that I would like to try to get a grip on it with scholarly terminology. Of course I know that terminology not only rigidifies thoughts, at the same time it also makes thoughts once again ambiguous, corresponding to the ambiguity that inevitably adheres to customary terminologies.
GUIDE: After that scholarly reservation you may freely speak in a scholarly manner.
SCHOLAR: According to your explanation, the relation of the open-region to releasement is neither a connection of cause and effect nor the horizonal-transcendental relationship. To say it still more concisely and more generally: the relation between open-region and releasement, if it is still a relation at all, can be thought of neither as ontic nor as ontological.
GUIDE: But only as enregioning.
SCIENTIST: Similarly, the relation between open-region and thing is also now neither a connection of cause and effect nor the transcendental- horizonal relationship, and therefore also neither ontic nor ontological.
SCHOLAR: But the relation of the open-region to the thing is evidently also not enregioning, which concerns the essence of the human.
GUIDE: So how should we name the relation of the open-region to the thing, if the open-region lets the thing abide in itself as the thing?