175. The differentiation3
of being and beings. (With a view toward beings, dominated by them, we constantly say and name being: the “is” and the word in general.) When we designate these, it seems we are relating to two pregiven “objects.” A third, perhaps a consciousness and representation of these, seems to differentiate them and must thereby claim a “regard.” Why this is so, or even only that it is so, seems not to trouble us. We even believe ourselves justified in dismissing this differentiation or at least in neglecting it as the emptiest “product” of an unproductive abstraction. And ultimately it can without any difficulty be made clear to anyone that nothing can be represented with respect to this differentiation and what is differentiated in it. The differentiated elements are themselves without any place or soil, unless an empty activity of human understanding is claimed on their behalf.
Yet being differentiates itself from beings. Being does the differentiating and “is” the difference. We ourselves do not first make the differentiation. Instead, we follow it, and this following first gives us understanding in general. We can follow only insofar as we sojourn in this differentiation.
The differentiation is the inhabited place of our essence, an inhabited place indeed concealed from us.
But how does it eventuate that being itself differentiates itself? (that is the appropriating event itself)4.5 Is there a universal understanding, a world-reason? We, “we,” can “think” of the differentiating only as an activity of the understanding, so long as we merely stare at ourselves— without actually knowing the horizon (that of the metaphysical human being)—and explain beings as produced things.
Without having experienced the truth of beyng as event, we will be unable to know the difference and, thereby, the differentiation. For so long it will be alien to us that “being” differentiates itself; since being is to us only an empty concept and is itself the product of a differentiating; but this— once again let it be admitted to us, who are of the opinion—is our doing.
The difference, in which the differentiation essentially occurs, is the departure as the downgoing of the event into the beginning.
3. Cf. summer semester 41, especially recapitulation, pp. 7–8 {Grundbegriffe, GA51, p. 41ff.}
4. (not: being and then the event “with” it, but being itself the event and only this) {Marginal remark in typescript}
5. Not to ask “how,” but to experience the “that it is” in its essence. {Marginal remark in typescript}