125
HEIDEGGER: When you say that the reference of the gods to humans' being bound to death is no mere consciousness, then {202} you mean that the reference is no mere human representation that humans are so and so. You said that the reference of the gods to humans is an understanding relationship, and you mean a self-understanding relationship.
FINK: The gods can have their being only in so far as they stand open for mortals. Standing open for mortals and the mortals' transient being cannot be lacking from the gods. We may not understand this, however, as Nietzsche says with Thomas Aquinas concerning the blissfulness of paradise, that the souls will view the torment of the damned, thereby suiting their blissfulness more. (Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, 15). The immortals are undoubtedly θνητοὶ They know their eternal being not only from viewing contemplation (θεωρία), but at the same time in ricochet back from the transient being of mortals. They are affected by humans' being bound to death. It is difficult to find the right term here.
HEIDEGGER: I want to get at precisely this point. Whether we find the terminologically appropriate form is another question. Standing open is not something like an open window or like a passageway. The standing open of humans to things does not mean that there is a hole through which humans see; rather, standing open for ... is being addressed by [Angegangensein von] things. I speak about this in order to clarify the fundamental reference which plays a role in the understanding of what is thought with the word "Dasein" in Being and Time. My question now aims at the relationship of consciousness and Dasein. How is that relationship to be clarified? If you take "consciousness" as a rubric for transcendental philosophy and absolute idealism, another position is thus taken with the rubric "Dasein." This position is often overlooked or not sufficiently noticed. When one speaks of Being and Time, one first thinks of the "they" or of "anxiety." {203} Let us begin with the rubric "consciousness." Is it not, strictly speaking, a curious word?
FINK: Consciousness is, strictly speaking, referred to the state of affairs. So far as the state of affairs is represented, it is a conscious being and not a knowing being. However, by consciousness we mean the fulfillment of knowing.
HEIDEGGER: Strictly speaking, it is the object of which we are conscious. Consciousness, then, means as much as objectivity, which is identical with the first principle of all synthetic judgments a priori in Kant. The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of objects of experience. With consciousness, we are concerned with a knowing, and knowing is thought as representation, as for example in Kant. And how does it stand now with Dasein? If we wish to proceed pedagogically, from where must we set out?