The Time of the King | 21


gibt"], what "Being" means, which—It gives [das—Es gibt]; what "time" means, which—It gives [das—Es gibt]. Accordingly, we try to look ahead [vorblicken] to the It [Es] which—gives [gibt] Being [Sein] and time [Zeit]. Thus looking ahead, we become foresighted in still another sense. We try to bring the It [Es] and its giving [Geben] into view, and capitalize the “It.”10
And after having thus written the "It gives Being" and "it gives time," "there is Being" and "there is time," Heidegger in effect asks the question of what it is in this gift or in this "there is" that relates time to Being, conditions them, we would now say, one to the other. And he writes:
First, we shall think [in the trace of: nach] Being in order to think it itself into its own element [um es selbst in sein Eigenes zu denken].
Then, we shall think [in the trace of: nach] time in order to think it itself into its own element.
In this way, the manner must become clear how there is, It gives [Es gibt] Being and how there is, It gives [Es gibt] time. In this giving [Geben: in this "y avoir" qui donne says the French translation; in this "there Being" that gives, one might say in English], it becomes apparent [ersichtlich] how that giving [Geben] is to be determined which, as a relation [Verhältnis], first holds [hält] the two toward each other and brings them into being [und sie er-gibt; by producing them or obtaining them as the result of a donation, in some sort: the es gives Being and gives time by giving them one to the other insofar as it holds (hält) them together in a relation (Verhältnis) one to the other].12

In the very position of this question, in the formulation of the project or the design of thinking, namely, the "in order to" (we think "in order to" [um . . . zu] think Being and time in their "own element" [in sein Eigenes, in ihr Eigenes]), the desire to accede to the proper is already, we could say, surreptitiously ordered by Heidegger according to the dimension of “giving.” And reciprocally. What would it

10. We will come back to this point much later, in the second volume of this work, when we approach a reading of On Time and Being and related texts.
11. Heidegger's On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 5