22 | Chapter One

mean to think the gift, Being, and time properly in that which is most proper to them or in that which is properly their own, that is, what they can give and give over to the movements of propriation, expropriation, de-propriation or appropriation? Can one ask these questions without anticipating a thought, even a desire of the proper? A desire to accede to the property of the proper? Is this a circle? Is there any other definition of desire? In that case, how to enter into such a circle or how to get out of it? Are the entrance and the exit the only two modalities of our inscription in the circle? Is this circle itself inscribed in the interlacing of a Geflecht of which it forms but one figure? These are so many threads to be pursued.

The only thread that we will retain here, for the moment, is that of plan. Whether it is a matter of Being. of time, or of their deployment in presence (Anwesen), the es gibt plays (spielt), says Heidegger, in the movement of the Enthergen, in that which frees from the withdrawal [retrait], the withdrawal of the withdrawal, when what is hidden shows itself or what is sheltered appears. The play (Zuspiel) also marks, works on, manifests the unity of the three dimensions of time, which is to say a fourth dimension: The “giving” of the es gibt Zeit belongs to the play of this "quadridimensionality," to this properness of time that would thus be quadridimensional. "True time [authentic time: die eigentliche Zeit]," says Heidegger, "is four-dimensional [Vierdimensional]." This fourth dimension, as Heidegger makes clear, is not a figure, it is not a manner of speaking or of counting; it is said of the thing itself, on the basis of the thing itself (aus der Sache) and not only "so to speak." This thing itself of time implies the play of the four and the play of the gift.