In the difference is the resonating of the twisting free, and the twisting free eventuates inceptually as consonance.
To think being means to endure the differentiation in questioning it and to experience the differentiation as the inceptual distinction of the departure—pain as the essence of the difference.
176. The differentiation and the difference
The term “differentiation” calls attention first of all to what lies at the basis of all metaphysics, in that metaphysics makes use of it everywhere inasmuch as metaphysics thinks the beingness of beings, i.e., beings as beings. In advance, unobserved, unconsidered, and thus unquestioned and ungrounded, the differentiation of beings and being essentially occurs in metaphysics. And if metaphysics does not invent things, but only comes upon them, then it testifies in its own way that indeed the difference between being and beings is what is essential in the differentiation. Yet at the start of metaphysics, notwithstanding the fact that now and then in its history the difference could become questionable as such, what is differentiated within the structure of the differentiation is at the same time indeed determined thus: being in terms of the ἰδέα, κοινόν, γένος: ἕν; and “beings” in terms of what is properly not a being inasmuch as it does not essentially occur as pure beingness: the μὴ ὄν. Beingness is the πρότερον τῇ φύσει and is what makes beings possible; to be sure, beingness, because constantly thought on the basis of beings as present-produced (εἶδος-τέχνη), must also be interrogated with regard to its αἰτία, and an ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας must be conceived.
Insofar as the differentiation is expressly said, thinking has already gone through metaphysics to its ground and is no longer metaphysical. Admittedly, at first everything remains indeterminate; indeed there arises the appearance that the differentiation itself and the differentiated even allow themselves to be made into objects of representation, whereby the differentiating is assigned to the familiar way of thinking (representation), and being, along with the beings differentiated from it, is objectified into a relation. As a consequence of this representation, which can attach itself immediately to the making prominent of the differentiation, it can then be asked further: if being and beings are here differentiated, in what respect are they different and in what do they agree? The second part of the question is necessary, for otherwise being and beings could not be brought together for the sake of setting off one against the other. If we once pursue this objectification and the differentiation and in turn the differentiated and interrogate within