man he comports himself to beings as such. Being bestows itself by betaking itself into its unconcealment—and only in this way is It Being—along with the locale of its advent as the abode of its default. This "where , " as the "there" of the shelter, belongs to Being itself, "is" Being itself and is therefore called being-there [Da-sein].
"The Dasein in man" is the essence that belongs to Being itself. Man belongs to that essence in such a way that he has to be such Being. Da-sein applies to man. As his essence, it is in each case his, what he belongs to, but not what he himself makes and controls as his artifact. Man becomes essential by expressly entering into his essence. He stands in the unconcealment of beings as the concealed locale within which Being essentially occurs in its truth . He stands in this locale, which means that he is ecstative in it, because he is as he is always and everywhere on the basis of the relationship of Being itself to his essence; that is, to the locale of Being itself.
As the relation to Being, whether it is to the being as such or to Being itself, ecstative inherence in the openness of the locale of Being is the essence of thinking. The essence of thinking experienced in this way, that is, experienced on the basis of Being, is not defined by being set off against willing and feeling. Therefore, it should not be proclaimed purely theoretical as opposed to practical activity and thus restricted in its essential importance for the essence of man .
If in our meditation on the essence of nihilism we have been talking about the unthought, it is always the unthought of a thinking that is determined by the essence of Being. Thinking is taken as the activity of the intellect. The issue for the intellect is understanding. The essence of thinking is the understanding of Being in the possibilities of its development, which a re conferred by the essence of Being.
From the abode of its advent—It being this abode—Being itself applies to man along with his essence. As the one approached by Being, man is the one who thinks. The "whether it be this, whether it be that, " in which the essential possibility of being one way or the other is revealed for thinking, stands in a certain way in man's thinking; but it rests on Being itself, which can itself withdraw as such and does withdraw by showing itself in beings as such. But because it concerns the essence of man, even that possibility of thinking is in some sense