SCIENTIST: Now indeed, proper releasement consists in that the human in his essence belongs to the open-region—that is, he is released precisely to it. [146]
SCHOLAR: Not occasionally, but rather—how should we say it—previously [im vorhinein].
SCIENTIST: In advance [Zum voraus], out to which we really cannot think.
GUIDE: Because the essence of thinking begins there.
SCIENTIST: It is thus in the unprethinkable54 that the essence of the human is released to the open-region.
SCHOLAR: Which is why we also at once added: and indeed by the open-region itself.
GUIDE: The open-region appropriates [ereignet] the essence of the human to its own [eigenen] regioning.
SCIENTIST: This is how we explained releasement. Yet at the same time it occurs to me that we have also neglected to consider why the essence of the human is enregioned to the open-region.
SCHOLAR: Evidently the essence of the human [Wesen des Menschen] is released to the open-region because this essence so essentially belongs to the open-region that the latter cannot essentially occur as it does without the human-being [Menschenwesens].
SCIENTIST: This is hardly thinkable.
GUIDE: It cannot be thought at all so long as we will to represent it to ourselves, and that means to violently bring it before ourselves as an objectively present-at-hand relation between an object called “human” and an object called “open-region.”
SCIENTIST: That may be. But even if we are mindful of that, nevertheless, in the statement about the essential relation of the human-being to the open-region, doesn’t there remain an insurmountable difficulty? We just characterized the open-region as the concealed essence of truth. If for a moment, to be concise, we say [147] “truth” instead of “open-region,” the statement about the relation between open-region and the human-being says this: The human-being is
54. This striking and unusual term, “the unprethinkable” (das Unvordenkliche), was probably first used by Schelling (see for instance, F. W. J. Schelling, The Ages of the World, trans. Jason M. Wirth [Albany: SUNY Press, 2000], p. 12), and has been variously translated in other contexts as “the immemorial” and “the unpreconceivable.” For Heidegger, the word presumably indicates both “that which cannot be thought in advance (i.e., that which cannot be preconceived)” and “that prior to which we cannot think.” In other words, as what he calls “the coming” (see below, p. 150), the unprethinkable is that before and beyond or behind which we cannot think.—Tr.