principle as a spring into the essential origin of identity, thinking has undergone a transformation. Thus looking toward the present, beyond the situation of man, thinking sees the constellation of Being and man in terms of that which joins the two—by virtue of the event of appropriation.
Assuming we could look forward to the possibility that the frame—the mutual challenge of man and Being to enter the calculation of what is calculable—were to address itself to us as the event of appropriation which first surrenders man and Being to their own being; then a path would be open for man to experience beings in a more originary way—the totality of the modern technological world, nature and history, and above all their Being.
As long as reflection on the world of the atomic age, however earnestly and responsibly, strives for no more than the peaceful use of atomic energy, and also will not be content with any other goal, thinking stops halfway. Such halfwayness only secures the technological world all the more in its metaphysical predominance.
But what authority has decided that nature as such must forever remain the nature of modern physics, and 'that history must forever appear only as subject matter for historians? We cannot, of course, reject today's technological world as devil's work, nor may we destroy it—assuming it does not destroy itself.
Still less may we cling to the view that the world of technology
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