specific dimension of possible actualization. Every projection raises us away into the possible, and in so doing brings us back into the expanded breadth of whatever has been made possible by it.
The projection and projecting in themselves raise us away to possibilities of binding, and are binding and expansive in the sense of holding a whole before us within which this or that actual thing can actualize itself as what is actual in something possible that has been projected. This expansion that raises us away and binds us—something that occurs simultaneously in the projection—also shows, however, its intrinsic character of opening. Yet—as we can now easily perceive—it is not some mere or fixed remaining open for something: neither for what is possible, nor even for what is actual. Projecting is not a gaping at what is possible, and cannot be such, because whatever is possible as such is precisely stifled in its being possible if we merely observe and talk about it. What is possible only essentially prevails in its possibility if we bind ourselves to it in its being made possible. Making-possible, however, as making-possible, always speaks into what is possibly actual—making-possible is a prefiguring of actualizing—and indeed in such a way that in the projection we do not in turn accept and take possession of what is actual as something in the possibility that has been actualized. The object of the projection is neither the possibility nor the actuality—the projection has no object at all, but is an opening for making-possible. In making-possible the originary relatedness of the possible and the actual, of possibility and actuality in general and as such, is revealed.
Projecting as this revealing that pertains to making-possible is the proper occurrence of that distinction between being and beings. The projection is the irruption into this 'between' of the distinction. It first makes possible the terms that are distinguished in their distinguishability. The projection unveils the being of beings. For this reason it is, as we may say in borrowing a word from Schelling,1 the look into the light of a possible making-possible [Lichtblick ins Mögliche-Ermöglichende] in general. The look into the light tears darkness as such along with it, gives the possibility of that dawning of the everyday in which at first and for the most part we catch sight of beings, cope with them, suffer from them, and enjoy ourselves with them. The look into the light of the possible makes whatever is projecting open for the dimension of the 'either/or', the 'both/and', the 'in such a way', and the 'otherwise', the 'what', the 'is' and 'is not'. Only insofar as this irruption has occurred do the 'yes' and 'no' and questioning become possible. The projection raises us away into
I. Cf. Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (1809). Sämmtliche Werke. Ed. K. F. A. von Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg, 1856ff.). Part I, Vol. 7, p. 361. [Trans. J. Gutmann, Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (Illinois: Open Court, 1986), p. 36.]