Page numbers refer to the GA 40 pagination, followed by the pagination of this translation.
Bits from the translator's outline are interspersed in antiquewhite. Passages from the book are in powderblue. My notes are in lightgreen.
CHAPTER ONE
The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics
§1. The question that is first in rank because it is broadest, deepest, and most originary: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” (3/1)
A. The why-question as the first of all questions
Finally, as the broadest and deepest question, it is also the
most originary. What do we mean by that? If we consider our
question in the whole breadth of what it puts into question, beings
as such and as a whole, then it strikes us right away that in
the question, we keep ourselves completely removed from every
particular, individual being as precisely this or that being. We do
mean beings as a whole, but without any particular preference.
Still, it is remarkable that one being always keeps coming to the
fore in this questioning: the human beings who pose this question.
And yet, the question should not be about some particular,
individual being.
P. 4
For through this
questioning, beings as a whole are first opened up as such and
with regard to their possible ground, and they are kept open
in the questioning.
P. 5
§2. The asking of the question that is first in rank as philosophy. Two misunderstandings of the essence of philosophy (10/9)
B. Philosophy as the asking of the why-question
1. The untimeliness of philosophy
2. Two misinterpretations of philosophy
a. Philosophy as a foundation for culture
b. Philosophy as providing a picture of the world
3. Philosophy as extra-ordinary questioning about the extraordinary
One believes that one has had the experience oneself, and readily hears it confirmed: “nothing comes” of philosophy; “you can’t do anything with it.” These two turns of phrase, which are especially current among teachers and researchers in the sciences, express observations that have their indisputable correctness. When one attempts to prove that, to the contrary, something does after all “come” of philosophy, one merely intensifies and secures the prevailing misinterpretation, which consists in the prejudice that one can evaluate philosophy according to everyday standards that one would otherwise employ to judge the utility of bicycles or the effectiveness of mineral baths.
It is entirely correct and completely in order to say, “You can’t do anything with philosophy.” The only mistake is to believe that with this, the judgment concerning philosophy is at an end. For a little epilogue arises in the form of a counter-question: even if we can’t do anything with it, may not philosophy in the end do something with us, provided that we engage ourselves with it? Let that suffice for us as an explication of what philosophy is not.
P. 13
§3. The inception of questioning about beings as such and as a whole among the Greeks, guided by the fundamental word φύσις (14/14)
C. Φύσις: the fundamental Greek word for beings as such
1. φύσις as the emerging, abiding sway - aufgehende Walten
2. The later narrowing of the meaning of φύσις
Philosophizing is questioning about the extra-ordinary. Yet, as we merely intimated at first, this questioning recoils upon itself, and thus not only what is asked about is extraordinary, but also the questioning itself. This means that this questioning does not lie along our way, so that one day we stumble into it blindly or even by mistake. Nor does it stand in the familiar order of the everyday, so that we could be compelled to it on the ground of some requirements or even regulations. Nor does this questioning lie in the sphere of urgent concern and the satisfaction of dominant needs. The questioning itself is out-of-order. It is completely voluntary, fully and expressly based on the mysterious ground of freedom, on what we have called the leap. The same Nietzsche says: “Philosophy … means living voluntarily amid ice and mountain ranges”. Philosophizing, we can now say, is extra-ordinary questioning about the extra-ordinary.
P. 14
In the age of the first and definitive unfolding of Western
philosophy among the Greeks, when questioning about beings
as such and as a whole received its true inception, beings were
called φύσις.
P. 15
Now, what does the word φύσις say? It says what emerges from itself
(for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding
that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such
unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in
short, the emerging-abiding sway.
P. 15
Φύσις is Being itself, by
virtue of which beings first become and remain observable.
It was not in natural processes that the Greeks first experienced
what φύσις is, but the other way around: on the basis of
a fundamental experience of Being in poetry and thought, what
they had to call φύσις disclosed itself to them. Only on the basis
of this disclosure could they then take a look at nature in the
narrower sense. Thus, φύσις originally means both heaven and
earth, both the stone and the plant, both the animal and the
human, and human history as the work of humans and gods;
and finally and first of all, it means the gods who themselves
stand under destiny. Φύσις means the emerging sway, and the
endurance over which it thoroughly holds sway. This emerging,
abiding sway includes both “becoming” as well as “Being”
in the narrower sense of fixed continuity. Φύσις is
the event of standing forth,
arising from the concealed and thus enabling the
concealed to take its stand for the first time.
P. 16
§4. The question that is first in rank as the fundamental question of metaphysics. Introduction to metaphysics as leading into the asking of the fundamental question. The conscious ambiguity of the title of the lecture course (19/19)
D. The meaning of “introduction to metaphysics”
1. Meta-physics as questioning beyond beings as such
2. The difference between the question of the Being of beings
and the question of Being as such (addition, 1953)
3. Introduction to metaphysics as leading into the asking of
the fundamental question
Metaphysics stands as the name for the center and core that determines all philosophy.
P. 19
For this introduction, we have intentionally presented all this in a cursory and thus basically ambiguous way. According to our explanation of φύσις, this word means the Being of beings.
If one is asking περὶ φύσεως, about the Being of beings, then the discussion of φύσις, “physics” in the ancient sense, is in itself already beyond τὰ φυσικά, on beyond beings, and is concerned with Being. “Physics” determines the essence and the history of metaphysics from the inception onward. Even in the doctrine of Being as actus purus (Thomas Aquinas), as absolute concept (Hegel), as eternal recurrence of the same will to power (Nietzsche), metaphysics steadfastly remains “physics.”
P. 19-20
According to the usual interpretation, the “question of Being” means asking about beings as such (metaphysics). But if we think along the lines of Being and Time, the “question of Being” means asking about Being as such. This meaning of the expression is also appropriate both in terms of the matter at stake and in terms of language; for the “question of Being” in the sense of the metaphysical question about beings as such precisely does not ask thematically about Being. Being remains forgotten.
P. 21
But if we think the question of Being in the sense of the question about Being as such, then it becomes clear to everyone who accompanies us in thinking that it is precisely Being as such that remains concealed, remains in oblivion—and so decisively that the oblivion of Being, an oblivion that itself falls into oblivion, is the unrecognized yet enduring impulse for metaphysical questioning.
P. 21
The fundamental question of the lecture course is of a different kind than the guiding question of metaphysics. Taking
Being and Time as its point of departure, the lecture course asks about the “disclosedness of Being”.
Disclosedness means: the openedness of what the oblivion of Being closes off and conceals.
P. 21-22
“Introduction to metaphysics” accordingly means: leading into the asking of the fundamental question. But questions, and above all fundamental questions, do not simply occur like stones and water. Questions are not given like shoes, clothes, or books. Questions are as they are actually asked, and this is the only way in which they are. Thus, the leading into the asking of the fundamental question is not a passage over to something that lies or stands around somewhere; instead, this leading-to must first awaken and create the questioning. Leading is a questioning going-ahead, a questioning-ahead.
P. 22
§5. The development of the question, “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” (22/23)
a) The questioning attitude as willing to know (22/23)
Open resoluteness is no mere resolution to act; it is the decisive inception of action that reaches ahead of and through all action. To will is to be resolute. [The essence of willing is traced back here to open resoluteness. But the essence of open resoluteness <Ent-schlossenheit>
lies in the de-concealment <Ent-borgenheit>
of human Dasein for the clearing of Being and by no means in an accumulation of energy for “activity.”
P. 23
Truth is the openness of beings. To know is accordingly to be able to stand in the openness of beings, to stand up to it.
P. 24
b) The linguistic formulation of the interrogative sentence. The break in the question and the suspicion against the “instead of nothing” (24/25)
E. Unfolding the why-question by means of the question of Nothing
1. The seeming superfluity of the phrase “instead of nothing”
2. The connection between the question of Nothing and the
question of Being
Now, whoever goes so far as to talk about Nothing within philosophy, which after all is the home of logic, deserves all the more to be accused of offending against the fundamental rule of all thinking.
P. 26
c) The linguistic formulation of the question as respect for tradition (26/27)
3. The superiority of philosophy and poetry over logic and
science
§6. The question of Being and “logic.” True speaking of Nothing in thinking and poetry (27/28)
Of course, the misunderstanding that is being played out here is not accidental. Its ground is a lack of understanding that has long ruled the question about beings. But this lack of understanding stems from an oblivion of Being that is getting increasingly rigid.
P. 28
Whoever truly wants to talk of Nothing must necessarily become unscientific. But this is a great misfortune only if one believes that scientific thinking alone is the authentic, rigorous thinking, that it alone can and must be made the measure even of philosophical thinking. The reverse is the case. All scientific thinking is just a derivative and rigidified form of philosophical thinking. Philosophy never arises from or through science.
P. 29
4. An example of poetic talk of Nothing: Knut Hamsun
§7. The elucidation of the abbreviated question in contrast to the complete question. The “instead of nothing” makes beings waver (30/31)
5. The wavering of beings between Being and the possibility of not-Being
The ground in question is now questioned as the ground of the decision for beings over against Nothing—more precisely, as the ground for the wavering of the beings that sustain us and unbind us, half in being, half not in being, which is also why we cannot wholly belong to any thing, not even to ourselves; yet Dasein is in each case mine.
P. 32
§8. Questioning as opening up the domain of the proper questionability of beings: their oscillation between not-Being and Being (32/33)
Our questioning just opens up the domain, so that beings can break open in such questionworthiness.
What we know about how such questioning happens is all too little and all too crude. In this questioning, we seem to belong completely to ourselves. Yet it is this questioning that pushes us into the open, provided that it itself, as a questioning, transforms itself (as does every genuine questioning), and casts a new space over and through everything.
P. 33
§9. The twofold meaning of the term “being.” The apparent superfluity of the distinction between Being and beings and the ambiguity of the “fundamental question” as a question about the ground of Being (33/34)
this question should just open up beings, in their wavering between not-Being and Being.
P. 34
§10. The development of the prior question: “How does it stand with Being and with our understanding of Being?” (36/36)
F. The prior question: How does it stand with Being?
Being remains undiscoverable, almost like Nothing, or in the end entirely so. The word “Being” is then finally just an empty word. It means nothing actual, tangible, real. Its meaning is an unreal vapor.
P. 39
§11. The more precise determination of the question: “How does it stand with Being? Is Being just the sound of a word or is it the fate of the West?” (40/41)
the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man. When the farthest corner of the globe [29|41] has been conquered technically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes accessible as fast as you like
P. 41
1. The mysteriousness of Being
§12. Clarification of the fact: Being a word-vapor! The question of Being and “ontology” (42/43)
2. Nietzsche: Being as a vapor
§13. Elucidation of the relation between the fundamental question of metaphysics and the prior question: the new concept of the prior question—the question that runs ahead and is thus historical through and through (45/46)
3. Our destroyed relation to Being and the decline of the West
a. The geopolitical situation of the Germans as the metaphysical
people
§14. Philosophy and “the science of history” (46/47)
b. The failure of traditional ontology to explain the emptiness of Being
history is not equivalent to what is past; for this is precisely what is no longer happening.
But much less is history what is merely contemporary, which also never happens, but always just “passes,” makes its entrance and goes by. History as happening is determined from the future, takes over what has been, and acts and endures its way through the present. It is precisely the present that vanishes in the happening.
P. 48-49
§15. The inner belonging of the intrinsically historical asking of the question of Being to the world history of the earth. The concept of spirit and its misinterpretations (48/49)
Our asking of the fundamental metaphysical question is historical because it opens up the happening of human Dasein in its essential relations, that is, its relations to beings as such and as a whole—opens it up to possibilities not yet asked about, futures to come <Zu-künften>, and in this way also binds it back to its inception that has been, and thus sharpens it and gives weight to its burden in its present.
P. 49
c. Philosophical questioning as essentially historical
d. The darkening of the world and the misinterpretation
of spirit
e. The genuine essence of spirit: the empowering of the
powers of beings
§16. The factuality of the fact of the oblivion of Being as the real ground for our misrelation to language (53/55)
f. Our destroyed relation to Being and our misrelation to language
CHAPTER TWO
On the Grammar and Etymology of the Word “Being”
§17. The illumination of the essence of Being with regard to its essential link to the essence of language (56/57)
A. The superficiality of the science of linguistics
A. The Grammar of the Word “Being”
How such an undertaking gets carried out and to what extent it is valid clearly depends on the fundamental conception of Being that guides it.
The determination of the essence of language, and even the act of asking about it, regulates itself in each case according to what has become the prevailing preconception about the essence of beings and about how we comprehend essence. But essence and Being speak in language.
P. 59
§18. The form of the word “Being”: verbal substantive and infinitive (58/59)
B. The grammar of “Being”
1. The derivation of the noun das Sein from the infinitive sein
a) The origin of Western grammar in the Greek meditation on Greek language: ὄνομα and ῥῆμα (60/61)
2. The derivation of the Latin term modus infinitivus from Greek philosophy and grammar
a. Ὄνομα and ῥῆμα as examples of the dependence of Greek grammar on Greek philosophy
Above all we must consider the fact that the definitive differentiation of the fundamental forms of words (noun and verb) in the Greek form of ὄνομα and ῥῆμα was worked out and first established in the most immediate and intimate connection with [44|61] the conception and interpretation of Being that has become definitive for the entire West.
P. 62
The fact that both terms originally governed an equally wide domain is important for our point that the much-discussed question in linguistics of whether the noun or the verb represents the primordial form of the word is not a genuine question. This pseudo-question first arose in the context of a developed grammar rather than from a vision of the essence of language itself, an essence still free of all grammatical dissection.
Thus, the two terms ὄνομα and ῥῆμα, which at first indicated all speaking, narrowed their meaning and became terms for the two main classes of words.
P. 63
b) The Greek understanding of πτῶσις (casus) and ἔγκλισις (declinatio) (63/64)
b. Ἔγκλισις and πτῶσις as based on the Greek understanding of Being as presence and constancy
§20. The Greek understanding of Being: Being as constancy in the double sense of φύσις and οὐσία (63/64)
i. Standing and φύσις
ii. Πόλεμος and φύσις
iii. The degeneration of φύσις
this standing-there, this taking and maintaining a stand that stands erected high in itself, is what the Greeks understood as Being. Whatever takes such a stand becomes constant in itself
P. 65
the self-restraining hold that comes from a limit, the having-of-itself wherein the constant holds itself, is the Being of beings; it is what first makes a being be a being as opposed to a nonbeing.
P. 65
This is the key to understanding the highest term that Aristotle used for Being: ἐντελέχεια, something’s holding-(or maintaining)-itself-in-its-completion-(or limit). What was done with the term “entelechy” by later philosophy (cf. Leibniz), not to mention biology, demonstrates the full extent of the decline from what is Greek.
P. 65
What grounds and holds together all the determinations of Being we have listed is what the Greeks experienced without question as the meaning of Being, which they called οὐσία, or more fully παρουσία. The usual thoughtlessness translates οὐσία as “substance” and thereby misses its sense entirely. In German, we have an appropriate expression for παρουσία in our word Anwesen <coming-to-presence>.
We use Anwesen as a name for a self-contained farm or homestead. In Aristotle’s times, too, οὐσία was still used in this sense as well as in its meaning as a basic philosophical word. Something comes to presence. It stands in itself and thus puts itself forth. It is. For the Greeks, “Being” fundamentally means presence.
P. 66
What we have said helps us to understand the Greek interpretation of Being that we mentioned at the beginning, in our explication of the term “metaphysics,” that is, the apprehending of Being as φύσις. The later concepts of “nature,” we said, must be kept away entirely: φύσις means the emergent self-upraising, the self-unfolding that abides in itself. In this sway, rest and movement are closed and opened up from an originary unity. This sway is the overwhelming coming-to-presence that has not yet been conquered in thinking, and within which that which comes to presence essentially unfolds as beings. But this sway first steps forth from concealment, that is, in Greek, ἀλήθεια (unconcealment) happens, insofar as the sway struggles itself forth as a world. Through world, beings first come into being.
P. 67
[Confrontation does not divide unity, much less destroy it.
It builds unity; it is the gathering (λόγος). Πόλεμος and λόγος are the same.]
P. 67-68
With these works, the sway, φύσις, first comes to a stand in what comes to presence. Beings as such now first come into being. This becoming-a-world is authentic history. Struggle as such not only allows for arising and standing-forth; it alone also preserves beings in their constancy. Where struggle ceases, beings indeed do not disappear, but world turns away. Beings are no longer asserted [that is, preserved as such]. Beings now become just something one comes across; they are findings.
P. 68
§21. The Greek understanding of language (68/70)
We said that language, too, is conceived by the Greeks as something in being and thereby as something in keeping with the sense of their understanding of Being. What is in being is what is constant, and as such, it is something that exhibits itself, something that appears. This shows itself primarily to seeing. The Greeks examine language optically in a certain broad sense, namely, from the point of view of the written word. In writing, what is spoken comes to a stand. Language is—that is, it stands in the written image of the word, in the written signs, in the letters, γράμματα.
P. 70
a) The infinitive as no longer manifesting what the verb otherwise reveals (69/71)
3. Modus infinitivus and ἔγκλισις ἀπαρεμφατικός
a. παρεμφαίνω as appearing-with
b. The inadequacy of the translation in-finitivus
b) The infinitive of the Greek word εἶναι (72/74)
4. The infinitive as abstract and blurred
c) The fixing and objectification of the most general emptiness (73/75)
5. An attempt to understand Being through finite forms of the verb
B. The Etymology of the Word “Being”
We say das Sein. Such a manner of speaking results when we transform the abstract infinitive form into a substantive by placing the article in front of it: to εἶναι. The article is originally a demonstrative pronoun. It means that what is indicated stands and is for itself, as it were. This naming that demonstrates and indicates always has a preeminent function in language. If we just say sein, then what we have named is already indefinite enough.
But through the linguistic transformation of the infinitive into the verbal substantive, the emptiness that already lies in the infinitive, is, as it were, further fixed; sein is posed like a fixed, standing object. The substantive das Sein implies that what is so named, itself “is.” Being now itself becomes something that “is,” whereas obviously only beings are, and it is not the case that Being also is.
P. 75-76
If we really want to arrive at the “to be” along the path of language, let us keep to forms like these: I am, you are, he, she, it is, we are, and so forth; I was, we were, they have been, and so forth.
P. 76
§22. The three stems of the verb “to be” and the question of their unity (75/77)
But through the linguistic transformation of the infinitive into the verbal substantive, the emptiness that already lies in the infinitive, is, as it were, further fixed; sein is posed like a fixed, standing object. The substantive das Sein implies that what is so named, itself “is.” Being now itself becomes something that “is,” whereas obviously only beings are, and it is not the case that Being also is. If Being itself were something in being about beings, then it would have to be something that we find before us, all the more so because we encounter the Being-in-being of beings, even if we do not definitely grasp their particular characteristics in detail.
P. 76
According to the more original interpretation, which stems from the confrontation with the inception of Greek philosophy, this “growing” proves to be an emerging which in turn is determined by coming to presence and appearing. Recently, the radical φυ- has been connected with φα-, φαίνεσθαι <to show itself>. φύσις would then be that which emerges into the light, φύειν, to illuminate, to shine forth and therefore to appear.
P. 78
From the three stems we derive three initial and vividly definite meanings: living, emerging, abiding. Linguistics establishes them. Linguistics also establishes that today these initial meanings have died out, that only an “abstract” meaning, “to be,” has survived. But here a decisive question announces itself: how are the three stems above unified? What carries and leads the saga of Being?
What is our speaking of Being based on—after all its linguistic inflections?
This speaking and the understanding of Being, are they the same, or not? How does the distinction between Being and beings essentially unfold in the saga of Being?
P. 79
Can one explain the happening that opens itself up here—the fact that different meanings, which also imply experiences, grow together into the inflections of one verb, and not just any verb—simply by saying that something has been lost in the process?
P. 79
C. The etymology of “Being”
1. The three stems: es, bhu¯, wes
2. The question of the unity and blending of the three meanings
§23. The result of the twofold elucidation of the word “Being”: the emptiness of the word as blurring and blending (78/80)
D. Summary
As the fundamental question of metaphysics, we ask: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” In this fundamental question there already resonates the prior question: How does it stand with Being?
What do we mean by the words “to be,” “Being”? In our attempt to answer, we immediately run into difficulties. We grasp at the un-graspable. Yet we are constantly impinged upon by beings, related to beings, and we know about ourselves “as beings.”
“Being” now just counts as the sound of a word for us, a used-up term. If this is all we have left, then we must at least attempt to grasp this last remnant of a possession.
P. 80
CHAPTER THREE
The Question of the Essence of Being
§24. The unavoidable fact: understanding Being yet not understanding it (80/82)
A. The priority of Being over beings
§25. The uniqueness of “Being,” comparable only to Nothing (81/83)
1. Being as presupposed by every identification of a being as such
Everything else besides Being, each and every being, even if it is unique, can still be compared with another being. These possibilities of comparison increase every being’s determinability. Because of this, every being is multiply indeterminate. But Being, in contrast, can be compared to nothing else. Its only other is Nothing.
P. 86
§26. The “universality” of “Being”; “beings” as “the particular.” The necessary priority of the understanding of Being (85/87)
2. The “universality” of Being and its uniqueness
§27. The fundamental attempt. The understanding of Being as indispensable: no saying without the understanding of Being, no human Being without saying (87/89)
3. Being as a precondition for language
§28. The understanding of Being as “ground” of human Dasein (88/90)
4. Being as higher than all facts
§29. The understanding of Being and Being itself as the question that is most worthy of all questioning. The question of the meaning of Being (89/91)
We understand the word “Being,” and hence all its inflections, even though it looks as if this understanding were indefinite. We say of what we thus understand, of whatever opens itself up to us somehow in understanding, that it has meaning <Sinn>. Being, insofar as it is understood at all, has a meaning. To experience and conceive of Being as what is most worthy of questioning, to inquire especially about Being, then means nothing other than asking about the meaning of Being.
P. 91
That we understand Being is not just actual; it is also necessary. Without such an opening up of Being, we could not be “human” in the first place.
P. 92
§30. Review of the preceding discussion: the decisive step from an indifferent fact to the happening that is most worthy of questioning (91/93)
5. Review
it is not just that the object of philosophy does not lie at hand, but philosophy has no object at all. Philosophy is a happening that must at all times work out Being for itself anew [that is, Being in its openness that belongs to it]. Only in this happening does philosophical truth open up. So it is of decisive importance here that one follow the individual steps in the happening, and share in taking these steps.
P. 93
For the much-invoked particular beings can open themselves up as such to us only if and when we already understand Being in advance in its essence.
P. 94
By questioning in this way, we complete the decisive step from an indifferent fact and the supposed emptiness of the meaning of the word “Being” to the happening that is most worthy of questioning: that Being necessarily opens itself up in our understanding.
P. 94
§31. The distinction of the word “Being” in contrast to all words for “beings”: the more essential directedness of Being and word to each other (92/95)
B. The essential link between Being and the word
From this it follows that ultimately, in the word “Being” and its inflections, and in everything that lies in the domain of this word, the word and its meaning are bound more originally to what is meant by them—but also vice versa. Being itself relies on the word in a totally different and more essential sense than any being does.
P. 96
§32. The distinct definiteness of our understanding of Being and its arrangement enjoined by Being itself. The “is” in various examples (95/97)
C. The inclusion of the manifold meanings of “is” within the Greek understanding of Being as presence
However we may interpret the individual examples, this saying of the “is” shows us one thing clearly: in the “is,” Being opens up to us in a manifold way.
P. 98
§33. The manifold sense of the “is.” The understanding of Being on the basis of the “is” in the sense of constant presence (οὐσία) (97/99)
CHAPTER FOUR
The Restriction of Being
§34. The formulaic ways of saying Being in distinctions (Being and …) (100/102)
A. Seven points of orientation for the investigation of the restriction of Being
§35. The seven guiding principles regarding the distinctions of Being from some other (101/103)
the oppositions that initially strike us as mere formulas did not come up on arbitrary occasions and enter language as figures of speech, as it were. They arose in close connection with the shaping of Being whose openness became definitive for the history of the West. They had their inception with the inception of philosophical questioning.
P. 103
The third distinction (Being and thinking), which was foreshadowed in the inception no less than the first two, unfolds definitively in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle
P. 104
A. Being and Becoming
§36. Being as opposed to becoming. Parmenides and Heraclitus: Being—the inner perdurance of the constant that is gathered in itself (103/105)
B. Being and becoming
1. Parmenides on Being as constancy
2. The agreement of Heraclitus and Parmenides
We conclude from all this that Being indicates itself to this saying as the proper, self-collected perdurance of the constant, undisturbed by restlessness and change.
P. 106
Heraclitus, to whom one ascribes the doctrine of becoming, in stark contrast to Parmenides, in truth says the same as Parmenides.
P. 107
B. Being and Seeming
§37. The self-evidence and ordinariness of this distinction—the lack of understanding of its original separation and its belonging together. Three ways of seeming (105/107)
C. Being and seeming
At first the distinction appears clear. Being as opposed to seeming means what is actual as distinguished from and opposed to what is not actual—the genuine versus the ungenuine. This distinction also implies an appraisal in which Being takes precedence. As we say: the wonder and the wonderful, likewise, the seeming and what seems. One often traces the distinction between Being and seeming back to the one we first discussed, Being and becoming. In contrast to Being as the constant, what seems is what surfaces at times, and just as fleetingly and unsteadily disappears again.
P. 108
§38. The inner connection between Being and seeming. “Being” understood in the Greek way as φύσις: the emerging, abiding sway and the appearing that seems (108/110)
If we pay attention to what has been said, then we will discover the inner connection between Being and seeming. But we can grasp this connection fully only if we understand “Being” in a correspondingly original way, and here this means in a Greek way. We know that Being opens itself up to the Greeks as φύσις.
P. 110
Here it may be enough to indicate that for Pindar, for example, φυά5 is the fundamental characteristic of Dasein: τὸ δὲ φυά κράτιστον ἄπαν, that which is from and through φυά is wholly and fully the most powerful (Olympian Ode IX, 100); φυά means what one originally and authentically already is: that which essentially unfolds as having been <das Ge-Wesende>, in contrast to the subsequently forced and enforced contrivances and fabrications.
P. 111
§39. The unique, essential connection between φύσις and ἀλήθεια—truth as belonging to the essence of Being (109/111)
1. The connection between φύσις and ἀλήθεια
For the Greek essence of truth is possible only together with the Greek essence of Being as φύσις. On the grounds of the unique essential connection between φύσις and ἀλήθεια, the Greeks could say: beings as beings are true. The true as such is in being.
P. 112
§40. The ambiguity of δόξα—the struggle for Being against seeming (110/113)
2. The connection between appearing and semblance
In order to see correctly from the very start here, we must guard ourselves against cavalierly taking seeming as something just “imaginary,” “subjective,” and thereby falsifying it. Instead, just as appearing belongs to beings themselves, so does seeming.
P. 115
This seeming is not nothing. Neither is it untrue. Neither is it a mere appearance of relationships that in nature are really otherwise. This seeming is historical and it is history, uncovered and grounded in poetry and saga, and thus an essential domain of our world.
P. 115
Only with the sophists and Plato was seeming explained as, and thus reduced to, mere seeming. At the same time, Being as ἰδέα was elevated to a super sensory realm. The chasm, χωρισμός, was torn open between the merely apparent beings here below and the real Being somewhere up there.
P. 116
§41. The poetic shaping of the struggle between Being and seeming among the Greeks (113/116)
3. The struggle between Being and seeming: Oedipus Rex
This seeming is not just Oedipus’s subjective view of himself, but that within which the appearing of his Dasein happens. In the end, he is unconcealed in his Being as the murderer of his father and the defiler of his mother. The path from this beginning in brilliance to this end in horror is a unique struggle between seeming (concealment and distortion) and unconcealment (Being). The city is besieged by what is concealed in the murder of the former king, Laios. With the passion of one who stands in the openness of brilliance and who is a Greek, Oedipus goes to unveil what is concealed. In doing so, he must, step by step, place himself into an unconcealment that in the end he can endure only by gouging out his own eyes, that is, by placing himself outside all light, letting the veil of night fall around him, and then by crying out, as a blind man, for all doors to be flung open so that such a man may be revealed to the people as the man who he is.
P. 117
The concealed will to transform beings for the openness of Dasein calls for more. In order to bring about a change in science—and this first means bringing about a change in originary knowing—our Dasein needs an entirely different metaphysical depth. It once again needs a fundamental relation to the Being of beings as a whole, a relation that is well founded and built truly.
P. 118
§42. The belonging of seeming to Being as appearing. Errancy as the interlocking of Being, unconcealment, and seeming (116/119)
4. Errancy as the relation among Being, unconcealment, and seeming
§43. Thinking in the inception of philosophy (Parmenides) as the opening up of the three paths: to Being and into unconcealment, to not-Being, to seeming (117/120)
5. Parmenides and Heraclitus on thinking as laying out three paths: Being, seeming, and not-Being
But self-deception is only one of many modes in which human beings move in the interlocking triple world of Being, unconcealment, and seeming.
The space, so to speak, that opens itself up in the interlocking of Being, unconcealment, and seeming, I understand as errancy. Seeming, deception, delusion, errancy stand in definite relations as regards their essences and their ways of happening, relations that have long been misinterpreted for us by psychology and epistemology, relations that we therefore in our everyday Dasein barely still experience and barely recognize with adequate perspicacity as powers.
P. 120
The human being must distinguish among these three paths and, accordingly, come to a decision for or against them. At the inception of philosophy, to think is to open up and lay out the three paths. This act of distinguishing puts the human being as one who knows upon these paths and at their intersection, and thus into constant de-cision. With de-cision, history as such begins. In de-cision, and only in de-cision, is anything decided, even about the gods.
P. 121
§44. The inner connection between the separations “Being and seeming” and “Being and becoming” (122/126)
6. The relation between the separation of Being and seeming and the separation of Being and becoming
C. Being and Thinking
§45. The preeminence of this distinction and its historical meaning (123/128)
D. Being and thinking
1. Thinking and Being in the Western tradition
2. Superficial interpretations of thinking
§46. The definition of “thinking.” Thinking as re-presenting (126/130)
a. The representational interpretation of thinking
To think in an emphatic sense means to think something over, to deliberate on something, a situation, a plan, an event.
P. 130
§47. “Logic” and its provenance (127/132)
b. The logical interpretation of thinking
What does “logic” mean? The term is an abbreviation for ἐπιστήμη λογική, the science of λόγος. And λόγος here means assertion. But logic is supposed to be the doctrine of thinking. Why is logic the science of assertion?
Why is thinking defined by assertion? This is by no means self-evident. Just above, we explicated “thinking” without reference to assertion and discourse. So meditation on the essence of thinking is a truly unique sort of meditation when it is undertaken as a meditation on λόγος, thereby becoming logic.
“Logic” and “the logical” are simply not the ways to define thinking without further ado, as if nothing else were possible. On the other hand, it was no accident that the doctrine of thinking became “logic.”
P. 132-133
Thus, “logic” must be put in quotation marks. We do so not because we want to abjure “the logical” (in the sense of correct thinking). In the service of thinking, we seek to attain precisely that which determines the essence of thinking, ἀλήθεια and φύσις, Being as unconcealment, and this is precisely what was lost due to “logic.”
P. 133
§48. The original meaning of λόγος and λέγειν (131/135)
3. The original connection between φύσις and λόγος
This means laying one thing next to another, bringing them together as one—in short, gathering; but at the same time, the one is contrasted with the other.
This is how Greek mathematicians used the word <λόγος>.
A coin collection that one has gathered is not just a heap that has somehow been thrown together.
P. 137
Keeping all this firmly in view, we say: Being as φύσις is the emerging sway. In opposition to becoming, it shows itself as constancy, constant presence. This presence announces itself in opposition to seeming as appearing, as manifest presence.
P. 138
§49. The demonstration of the inner connection between λόγος and φύσις in the inception of Western philosophy. The concept of λόγος in Heraclitus (134/139)
They do hear words and discourse, yet they are closed off to what they should listen to. The proverb bears witness to what they are: those who are absently present.
They are in the midst of things, and yet they are away.
P. 143-144
a. Λόγος as gathering
b. Heraclitus on φύσις and λόγος
c. The Christian concept of λόγος
Λόγος is constant gathering, the gatheredness of beings that stands in itself, that is, Being.
So κατὰ τὸν λόγον in fragment 1 means the same as κατὰ φύσιν. Φύσις and λόγος are the same.
P. 145
Ὄν and
καλόν <“in being” and “beautiful”> say the same thing for the
Greeks [coming to presence is pure seeming]. Aesthetics is of a
different opinion; it is as old as logic. For aesthetics, art is the display
of the beautiful in the sense of the pleasant, the agreeable.
And yet art is the opening up of the Being of beings. We must
provide a new content for the word “art” and for what it intends
to name, on the basis of a fundamental orientation to Being that
has been won back in an original way.
P. 146
The ordinary version of the philosophy of Heraclitus likes to sum it up in the saying πάντα ῥεῖ, “everything flows.” If this saying stems from Heraclitus at all, then it does not mean that everything is mere change that runs on and runs astray, pure inconstancy, but instead it means: the whole of beings in its Being is always thrown from one opposite to the other, thrown over here and over there—Being is the gatheredness of this conflicting unrest.
P. 148
§50. The inner necessity and possibility of the separation of φύσις and λόγος on the basis of their original unity. Λόγος in Parmenides and the “primal statement” (143/150)
d. Parmenides on thinking as νοεῖν
Being means: standing in the light, appearing, stepping into unconcealment. Where this happens, that is, where Being holds sway, apprehending holds sway too and happens too, as belonging to Being.
Apprehending is the receptive bringing-to-a-stand of the constant that shows itself in itself.
P. 154
Parmenides expresses the same statement still more sharply in fragment 8, verse 34: ταὐτὸν δ᾽ ἐστὶ νοεῖν τε καὶ οὕνεκεν ἔστι νόημα: apprehending and that for the sake of which apprehending happens are the same. Apprehending happens for the sake of Being. Being essentially unfolds as appearing, as stepping into unconcealment, only if unconcealment happens, only if a self-opening happens. In its two versions, Parmenides’s statement gives us a still more original insight into the essence of φύσις. Apprehending belongs to φύσις; the sway of φύσις shares its sway with apprehending.
P. 154
§51. The determination of human Being on the basis of the essence of Being itself in the saying of Parmenides: the happening of the essential belonging-together of Being and apprehending (148/155)
i. Νοεῖν as apprehending
ii. The determination of the human essence on the basis of Being
4. Only where Being opens itself up in questioning does history happen, and with it that Being of the human being by virtue of which the human being ventures the confrontation with beings
as such.
P. 159
6. Humanity first comes to itself and is a self only as questioning-historical. The selfhood of humanity means this: it has to transform the Being that opens itself up to it into history, and thus bring itself to a stand. Selfhood does not mean that the human being is primarily an “I” and an individual. Humanity is not this any more than it is a We and a community.
P. 160
§52. Thinking poetry as the essential opening of human Being. Interpretation of the first choral ode of Sophocles’ Antigone in three phases (153/160)
e. Antigone on the human being as the uncanniest
The thinking of Parmenides and Heraclitus is still poetic, and here this means philosophical, not scientific. But because in this poetizing thinking, thinking has precedence, thinking about human Being also acquires its own direction and measure. In order to clarify this poetic thinking sufficiently in terms of its proper counterpart, we will now interrogate a thinking poetry of the Greeks. This poetry is tragedy—the poetry in which Greek Being and Dasein [a Dasein belonging to Being] were authentically founded.
P. 161
a) The first phase: the inner contour of the essence of the uncanniest, the domains and the extent of its sway and its destiny (157/165)
i. The uncanny as the sway of Being and the violence of the human being
This saying about humanity grasps it from the most extreme limits and the most abrupt abysses of its Being. This abruptness and ultimacy can never be seen by eyes that merely describe and ascertain something present at hand, even if a myriad such eyes should want to seek out human characteristics and conditions. Such Being opens itself up only to poetic-thoughtful projection. We find no delineation of present-at-hand exemplars of humanity, no more than we find some blind and foolish exaltation of the human essence from beneath, from a dissatisfied peevishness that snatches at an importance that it feels is missing. We find no glorified personality. Among the Greeks there were no personalities yet. The human being is τὸ δεινότατον, the uncanniest of the uncanny.
P. 166
Everywhere humanity makes routes for itself; in all the domains of beings, of the overwhelming sway, it ventures forth, and in this very way it is flung from every route. Thus, the whole un-canniness of the human, the uncanniest, first opens itself up; it is not just that humans try what is, as a whole, in its un-canniness, not just that as violence-doing they drive themselves in this way beyond what is homely for them, but in all this they first become the uncanniest, because now, as those who on all ways have no way out, they are thrown out of all relation to the homely, and ἄτη, ruin, calamity, overtakes them.
P. 169
b) The second phase: the development of the Being of the human being as the uncanniest (162/170)
ii. A detailed interpretation of the choral ode
Because art, in a distinctive sense, brings Being to stand and to manifestation in the work as a being, art may be regarded as the ability to set to work, pure and simple, as τέχνη. Setting-to-work is putting Being to work in beings, a putting-to-work that opens up. This opening-up and keeping open, which surpasses and puts to work, is knowing. The passion of knowing is questioning. Art is knowing and hence is τέχνη. Art is not τέχνη merely because it involves “technical” skills, tools, and materials with which to work.
P. 170
But here, “sea” is said as if for the first time; it is named in the wintry swells in which it constantly drags up its own depths and drags itself down into them. Directly after the main and guiding saying at the beginning, the ode starts off harshly with τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ. It sings of breaking forth upon the groundless waves, of giving up firm land. This breakaway does not take place upon the cheerful smoothness of gleaming water, but amid the winter storm.
P. 171
For when human beings are everywhere underway in this sense, their having no way out does not arise in the external sense that they run up against outward restrictions and cannot get any farther. Somehow or another they precisely can always go farther into the and-so-forth. Their not having a way out consists, instead, in the fact that they are continually thrown back on the paths that they themselves have laid out; they get bogged down in their routes, get stuck in ruts, and by getting stuck they draw in the circle of their world, get enmeshed in seeming, and thus shut themselves out of Being. In this way they turn around and around within their own circle. They can turn aside everything that threatens this circuit.
P. 175
δίκη. We translate this word as fittingness
P. 178
c) The third phase: authentic interpretation as the saying of the unsaid. The Being-here of historical humanity as the breach for the opening up of Being in beings—the incident (170/180)
But this necessity of shattering can subsist only insofar as what must shatter is urged into such Being-here. But the human being is urged into such Being-here, thrown into the urgency of such Being, because the overwhelming as such, in order to appear in its sway, requires the site of openness for itself. The essence of Being-human opens itself up to us only when it is understood on the basis of this urgency that is necessitated by Being itself. Historical humanity’s Being-here means: Being-posited as the breach into which the excessive violence of Being breaks in its appearing, so that this breach itself shatters against Being.
P. 181
iii. The human being as the in-cident
§53. The renewed interpretation of the saying of Parmenides in the light of Sophocles’ choral ode: the belonging together of νοεῖν and εἶναι as the reciprocal relation of τέχνη and δίκη. Unconcealment as uncanniness. Apprehending as decision. Λόγος as urgency and as ground of language (174/184)
f. The affinity between Sophocles and Parmenides
i. Δίκη (fittingness) in Sophocles, Heraclitus, and Parmenides
ii. Apprehending as de-cision
iii. Apprehending and logos as urgency
iv. Logos as fundamental struggle
What we still need in order to prove our assertion in general is this. We already indicated how in apprehending, as the taking up that takes in, beings as such are disclosed, and thus come forth into unconcealment. For the poet, the assault of τέχνη against δίκη is the happening through which human beings become homeless. When one is put out of the home in this way, the home first discloses itself as such. But at the same time, and only in this way, the alienating first discloses itself, the overwhelming as such. In the happening of uncanniness, beings as a whole open themselves up. This opening up is the happening of unconcealment. This is nothing other than the happening of uncanniness.
P. 186
[in the sense of πόλεμος and ἔρις <confrontation and strife>]
P. 186
The human essence shows itself here as the relation that first opens up Being to humanity. Being-human, as the urgency of apprehending and gathering, is the urging into the freedom of taking over τέχνη, the knowing setting-into-work of Being. Thus there is history.
The essence of λόγος as gathering yields an essential consequence for the character of λέγειν. Λέγειν as gathering, determined in this way, is related to the originary gatheredness of Being, and Being means coming-into-unconcealment; this gathering therefore has the basic character of opening up, revealing. Λέγειν is thus contrasted clearly and sharply with covering up and concealing.
P. 189
λέγειν means: to pro-duce the unconcealed as such, beings in their unconcealment. Thus, λόγος has the character of δηλοῦν, of revealing, not only in Heraclitus but still in Plato. Aristotle characterizes the λέγειν of λόγος as ἀποφαίνεσθαι, bringing-to-self-showing (see Being and Time, §7 and §44). This characterization of λέγειν as de-concealing and revealing bears witness to the originality of this determination—and it does so all the more strongly because it is precisely in Plato and Aristotle that the decline of the determination of λόγος sets in, the decline that makes logic possible. Since then, which means for two millennia, these relations among λόγος, ἀλήθεια, φύσις, νοεῖν, and ἰδέα have been hidden away and covered up in unintelligibility.
P. 190
The character of mystery belongs to the essence of the origin of language. But this implies that language can have begun only from the overwhelming and the uncanny, in the breakaway of humanity into Being. In this breakaway, language, the happening in which Being becomes word, was poetry. Language is the primal poetry in which a people poetizes Being. In turn, the great poetry by which a people steps into history begins the formation of its language. The Greeks created and experienced this poetry through Homer. Language was manifest to their Dasein as a breakaway into Being, as the formation that opens beings up.
It is not at all self-evident that language should be logos, gathering. But we understand this interpretation of language as logos on the basis of the inception of the historical Dasein of the Greeks, on the basis of the fundamental direction in which Being itself opened itself up to them, and in which they brought Being to stand in beings.
P. 191
Hence language as happening is always also chatter: instead of the opening up of Being, it is its covering up; instead of gathering to structure and fittingness, it is dispersion into unfittingness. Logos as language does not come about automatically.
P. 192
§54. The inceptive interpretation of the essence of humanity as φύσις = λόγος ἄνθρωπον ἔχον in contrast to the later formula: ἄνθρωπος = ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (183/194)
4. The original disjunction between φύσις and λόγος
We say that this inceptive opening up of the essence of Being-human was decisive. Yet it was not preserved and maintained as the great inception. This opening up had an entirely different consequence:
the definition of the human being as the rational living being—a definition that subsequently became the standard one for the West and that still remains unshaken in the prevailing opinion and attitude of today. In order to show the distance between this definition and the inceptive opening up of the essence of Being-human, we can contrast the inception and the end in a formulaic way. The end is evident in the formula: ἄνθρωπος = ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, the human being is the living thing equipped with reason. We grasp the inception in a freely constructed formula that also summarizes our interpretation up to now: φύσις = λόγος ἄνθρωπον ἔχον: Being, the overwhelming appearing, necessitates the gathering that pervades and grounds Being-human.
P. 194-195
§55. The disjunction of λόγος and φύσις and the priority of λόγος to Being. Λόγος becomes a court of justice over Being, φύσις becomes οὐσία (187/198)
a. Original λόγος and λόγος as a human faculty
b. The possibility of giving up Dasein as a surmounting of Being
Here begins the interplay of “rationalism and irrationalism,” which is playing itself out to this very day, in all possible disguises and under the most contradictory titles. Irrationalism is only the weakness and utter failure of rationalism become apparent, and thus it is itself a rationalism. Irrationalism is a way out of rationalism that does not lead us out into the open but only gets us stuck still farther in rationalism, because it promotes the opinion that rationalism is overcome by merely saying no to it, whereas in fact it now just plays its games more dangerously, because it plays them covertly and in a manner less vulnerable to interference.
P. 199
a) Φύσις becomes ἰδέα: ἰδέα as essential consequence becomes the essence itself. Truth becomes correctness. Λόγος becomes ἀπόφανσις and the origin of the categories (189/200)
c. The Platonic and Aristotelian interpretation of φύσις as ἰδέα
The look of a thing is that within which, as we say, it presents itself to us, re-presents itself and as such stands before us; the look is that within which and as which the thing comes-to-presence, that is, in the Greek sense, is. This standing is the constancy of what has come forth from itself, the constancy of φύσις. But this standing-here of the constant is also, from the human point of view, the foreground of what comes to presence from itself, the apprehensible. In the look, that which comes to presence, that which is, stands here in its whatness and its howness. It is ap-prehended and taken, it is in the possession of a taking-in, it is the holdings of a taking-in, it is the available coming to presence of what comes to presence: οὐσία.
P. 201
The interpretation of Being as ἰδέα in Plato is so little a departure, much less a downfall from the inception that instead it grasps this inception in a more unfolded and sharper way, and grounds it through the “theory of ideas.” Plato is the fulfillment of the inception.
P. 202
Considered in terms of the essence of space, the difference between the two types of appearing is this: appearing in the first and authentic sense, as the gathered bringing-itself-to-stand, takes space in; it first conquers space; as standing there, it creates space for itself; it brings about everything that belongs to it, while it itself is not imitated. Appearing in the second sense merely steps forth from an already prepared space, and it is viewed by a looking-at within the already fixed dimensions of this space. The aspect offered by the thing, and no longer the thing itself, now becomes what is decisive.
Appearing in the first sense first rips space open.
Appearing in the second sense simply gives space an outline and measures the space that has been opened up.
P. 203-204
Now, appearing takes on still another sense on the basis of the idea. That which appears, appearance, is no longer φύσις, the emerging sway, nor the self-showing of the look, but instead it is the likeness that rises to the surface.
Inasmuch as the likeness always falls short of its prototype, what appears is mere appearance, really a seeming, which now means a defect. Now ὄν and φαίνομενον <what is and what appears>
are disjoined. This involves still another essential consequence. Because the ἰδέα is what really is, and the ἰδέα is the prototype, all opening up of beings must be directed toward equaling the prototype, resembling the archetype, directing itself according to the idea. The truth of φύσις—ἀλήθεια as the unconcealment that essentially unfolds in the emerging sway—now becomes ὁμοίωσις and μίμησις: resemblance, directedness, the correctness of seeing, the correctness of apprehending as representing.
P. 205-206
Now we must trace what becomes of logos, in accordance with the reinterpretation of φύσις. The opening up of beings happens in logos as gathering. Gathering is originally accomplished in language. Thus, logos becomes the definitive and essential
determination of discourse. Language, as what is spoken
out and said,
and as what can be said again, preserves in each case the being that has been opened up. What has been said can be said again and passed on. The truth that is preserved in this saying spreads in such a way that the being that was originally opened up in gathering is not itself expressly experienced in each particular case. In what is passed on, truth loosens itself, as it were, from beings. This can go so far that saying-again becomes mere hearsay, γλῶσσα. Everything that is asserted stands constantly in this danger.
P. 206-207
b) The basis for the change of φύσις and λόγος into idea and assertion: the collapse of unconcealment—the inability to ground ἀλήθεια in the urgency of Being (198/211)
d. The basis of the Platonic turn: the collapse of unconcealment into correctness
This essence of truth could not be held fast and preserved in its inceptive originality. Unconcealment, the space founded for the appearing of beings, collapsed. “Idea” and “assertion,” οὐσία and κατηγορία were rescued as remnants of this collapse. Once neither beings nor gathering could be preserved and understood on the basis of unconcealment, only one possibility remained: that which had fallen apart and lay there as something present at hand could be brought back together only in a relation that itself had the character of something present at hand.
P. 212
§56. Indication of the happening of the collapse of unconcealment in its historical course: the conversion of truth into “correctness” in the wake of the establishment of the truth of οὐσία (200/213)
5. The interpretation of Being as οὐσία
a. Οὐσία as constant presence
b. Οὐσία as opposed to thinking, becoming, and seeming
Οὐσία means Being in the sense of constant presence, presence at hand. Consequently, what really is, is what always is, ἀεὶ ὄν. What is continuously present is what we must go back to, in advance, in all comprehending and producing of anything: the model, the ἰδέα. What is continuously present is what we must go back to in all λόγος, asserting, as what always already lies at hand, the ὑποκείμενον, subjectum. What always already lies at hand before us is, from the point of view of φύσις, of emergence, what is πρότερον, the earlier, the a priori.
P. 215
D. Being and the Ought
§57. The ought as the opposite of Being inasmuch as Being determines itself as Idea. Development and completion of the opposition. The philosophy of values (205/219)
E. Being and the ought
1. Being as ἰδέα and the opposition between Being and the ought
2. The concept of value
§58. Summary of the four distinctions with regard to the stated seven points of orientation (208/222)
F. Conclusion
a) The fundamental character of Being that runs through the four separations: constant presence, ὄν as οὐσία (210/224)
1. Review of the seven points of orientation
At first, “Being” appeared to us as an empty word with an
evanescent meaning. This appeared to be one ascertainable fact
among others. But in the end, that which apparently was not
open to question, which apparently was no longer questionable,
proved to be what is most worthy of questioning. Being and the
understanding of Being are not a present-at-hand fact. Being is
the fundamental happening, the ground upon which historical
Dasein is first granted in the midst of beings that are opened up
as a whole.
P. 224
b) The question concerning Being in contrast to Nothing as the first step toward truly overcoming nihilism (211/226)
2. The inadequacy of the traditional meaning of Being
c) The necessity of a new experience of Being in the full breadth of its possible essence. The transformation of Being, as encircled by the four separations, into the encompassing circle and ground of all beings: the distinction between Being and beings as the original separation (212/226)
3. The task of grounding Dasein and Being anew
Hence, if Being itself is to be opened up and grounded in its originary distinction from beings, then an originary perspective needs to be opened up. The origin of the separation between Being and thinking, the disjunction of apprehending and Being, shows us that what is at stake here is nothing less than a determination of Being-human that springs from the essence of Being (φύσις) that is to be opened up.
P. 228
§59. The essence of the human being (Being-here) as the site of Being. “Being and time”: time as the perspective for the interpretation of Being (214/229)
4. The problem of Being and time
Here, the “word” time has not merely been substituted for
the “word” thinking; instead, the essence of time is determined
according to other considerations, fundamentally and solely
within the domain of the question of Being.
But why time, precisely? Because in the inception of Western
philosophy, the perspective that guides the opening up of Being
is time, but in such a way that this perspective as such still remained
and had to remain concealed. If what finally becomes the
fundamental concept of Being is οὐσία, and this means constant
presence, then what lies unexposed as the ground of the essence
of stability and the essence of presence, other than time?
P. 229
Being able to question means being able to wait, even for a lifetime. But an age for which the actual is only whatever goes fast and can be grasped with both hands takes questioning as “a stranger to reality,” as something that does not count as profitable.
P. 229
From Introduction to Metaphysics (2nd).