Reading Us
(schickt) for itself, in that he ecstatically sustains it, that is, in care takes it upon himself, he at first fails to recognize the nearest (das Nächste) and attaches himself to the next nearest (das Übernächste). He even thinks that this is the nearest. But nearer than the nearest and at the same time for ordinary thinking farther than the farthest is nearness itself: the truth of Being."31 "The one thing (das Einzige) thinking would like to attain and for the first time tries to articulate in Being and Time is something simple (etwas Einfaches). As such, Being remains mysterious, the simple (schlicht) nearness of an unobtrusive governance. The nearness occurs essentially as language itself."32 "But man is not only a living creature who possesses language along with other capacities. Rather, language is the house of Being in which man ek-sists by dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it (hütend gehört)."33
This proximity is not ontic proximity, and one must take into account the properly ontological repetition of this thinking of the near and the far.34 It remains that Being, which is nothing, is not a being, cannot be said, cannot say itself, except in the ontic metaphor. And the choice of one or another group of metaphors is necessarily significant. It is within a metaphorical insistence, then, that the interpretation of the meaning of Being is produced. And if Heidegger has radically deconstructed the domination of metaphysics by the present, he has done so in order to lead us to think the presence of the present. But the thinking of this presence can only metaphorize, by means of a profound necessity from which one cannot simply decide to escape, the language that it deconstructs.35
31. Ibid., pp. 211—12 {Pathmarks, p. 253}.
32. Ibid., p. 212 {Pathmarks, p. 253}.
33. Ibid., p. 213 {Pathmarks, p. 254}.
34. "The 'Introduction' to Being and Time says simply and clearly, even in italics, 'Being is the transcendens pure and simple (das Transcendens schlechthin).' Just as the openness of spatial nearness seen from the perspective of a particular thing exceeds all things near and far, so is Being essentially broader than all beings, because it is the lighting (Lichtung) itself. For all that, Being is thought on the basis of beings, a consequence of the approach—at first unavoidable—within a metaphysics that is still dominant." "Letter," p. 216 {Pathmarks, p. 256}.
35. Several examples of the predominance granted to the value of ontological proximity: "This destiny comes to pass as the lighting of Being (Lichtung des Seins), as which it is. The lighting grants nearness to Being. In this nearness, in the lighting of the Da, man dwells as the ek-sisting one without yet being able properly to experience and take over this dwelling. In the lecture on Holderlin's elegy 'Homecoming' (1943) this nearness 'of' Being, which the Da of Dasein is, is thought on the basis of Being and Time ... it is called the 'homeland'" (ibid., p. 217 {Pathmarks p. 257}). "The homeland of this historical dwelling is nearness to Being" (ibid., p. 218 {Pathmarks p. 258}). "In his essential unfolding within the history of Being, man is the being whose Being as ek-sistence consists in his dwelling in the nearness of Being (in der Nähe des Seins wohnt). Man is the neighbor of Being (Nachbar des Seins)" (ibid., p. 222 {Pathmarks p. 261}). "'Ek-sistence,' in fundamental contrast to every existentia and 'existence,' is ecstatic dwelling in the nearness of Being" (ibid.). "Or should thinking, by means of open resistance to 'humanism,' risk a shock that could for the first time cause perplexity concerning the hutnanitas of homo humanus and its basis? In this way it could awaken a reflection (Besinnung)—if the world-historical moment did not itself already compel such a reflection— that thinks not only about man but also about the 'nature' of man, not only about his nature but even more primordially about the dimension in which the essence of man, determined by Being itself is at home" (ibid., p. 225). "Thinking does not overcome metaphysics by climbing still higher, surmounting it, transcending it somehow or other; thinking overcomes metaphysics by climbing back down into the nearness of nearest (in die Nähe des Nächsten)" (ibid., p. 231).
To destroy the privilege of the present-now (Gegenwart) always leads back, on the Heideggerian pathway, to a presence (Anwesen, Anwesenheit) that none of the three modes of the present (present-present, past-present, future-present) can exhaust or terminate, but which, on the contrary, provides their playing space, on the basis of a fourfold whose thinking entirely informs what is at stake in our question. The fourfold can be maintained or lost, risked or reappropriated—an alternative always suspended over its "own proper" abysm—never winning except by losing (itself). It is the text of dissemination.
Now this presence of the fourfold, in turn, is thought, in On Time and Being notably, according to the opening of propriation as the nearness of the near, proximation, approximation. Here we will refer to the analysis of the four-dimensionality of time and of its play. "True time is four-dimensional ... For this reason we call the first, original, literally incipient extending (Reichen) in which the unity of true (eigentlichen) time consists 'nearing nearness,' 'nearhood' (Nahheit), an early word still used by Kant. But it brings future, past and present near to one another by distancing them." On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 15. "In the sending of the destiny of Being (Im Schicken des Geschickes von Sein), in the extending (Reichen) of time, there becomes manifest a dedication (Zueignen), a delivering over (Übereignen) into what is their own (in ihr Eigenes), namely of Being as presence (Anwesenheit) and of time as the realm of the open. What determines both, time and Being, in their own, that is in their belonging together, we shall call: Ereignis, or event of Appropriation" (ibid., p. 19). "What the name 'event of Appropriation' (Ereignis) names can no longer be represented by means of the current meaning of the word; for in that meaning 'event of Appropriation' is understood in the sense of occurrence and happening—not in terms of Appropriating (Eignen) as the extending and sending which opens and preserves" (ibid., p. 20).
The facility, and also the necessity, of the transition from the near to the proper will have been noticed. The Latin medium of this transition (prope, proprius) is lost in other languages, for example in German.
131