Human looking as self-showing is a primarily responsive activity. It occurs as a responding to and catching sight of, namely, of what Heidegger here calls the "originary look" that solicits and addresses us in its appearing, in its coming to shine (erscheinen). This originary look, as the looking of that which is more originary than the human look, is that of the "extraordinary," of the presencing of das Ungeheure, as that looking which ''shows" or points to being itself (to the possibility of presence), but as such is "nothing human" (GA 54, 154). And yet—this more originary look is not simply other than human. It is the look of that which appears only in and through the look of the other human being, of human beings themselves as those who have always already been, always already come to presence. As Heidegger already indicated above, it is within the essential domain of human looking that the look of the divine is ''gathered": "Human beings themselves are those beings that have their distinction in being addressed by being itself, so that in the self-showing of human beings, in their looking and in their look, the extraordinary itself, the god, appears" (GA 54, 155). Likewise, in the present context Heidegger emphasizes that "We must, however, understand looking in the originary Greek manner, as the way in which a human being encounters us in looking at us and in looking gathers himself into this self-disclosive emergence and, without holding back a remainder, lets himself 'emerge' in presenting his essence" (GA 54, 158). In a human being's looking at us (anblicken) there is already a more originary looking (blicken)—neither purely human nor purely divine, but "daimonic," that is, monstrative—that is a gathering into self—disclosure. The presence and presencing of the human being is decisive for the appearance of the divine, of das Ungeheure. And this also implies that the first emergence of the human being into presencing by way of "looking" would always already be a response to the presencing of the Other, specifically, to the originary looking of the "extraordinary" in the Other, in the radiant shining and appearing of other human beings. Such shining would be the look and address of being itself, of "the being of [i.e., addressed to] that being which those looking themselves are" (GA 54, 153).
Yet have we not indicated that das Ungeheure can in principle come to appear in any being? Have we not seen the presence of das Ungeheure as distinctive of the work of art? What is so distinctive about the look and looking of another human being? Presumably, such distinctiveness lies in the fact that no other being has been "addressed" by being itself, by presencing as such. Presumably it lies in the fact that no other being has gathered itself in the face of such an address. What is meant by such an address, and what constitutes its uniqueness?
According to Heidegger's interpretation here, this subliminal human looking that is itself responsive to das Ungeheure is "more originary than