say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.1 For the moment we have only changed the idiom with this expression. Instead of saying "it is," we say "there is," "It gives."
In order to get beyond the idiom and back to the matter, we must show how this "there is" can be experienced and seen. The appropriate way to get there is to explain what is given in the "It gives," what "Being" means, which—It gives; what "time" means, which—It gives. Accordingly, we try to look ahead to the It which—gives Being and time. Thus looking ahead, we become foresighted in still another sense. We try to bring the It and its giving into view, and capitalize the "It."
First, we shall think Being in order to think It itself into its own element.
Then, we shall think time in order to think it itself into its own element.
In this way, the manner must become clear how there is, It gives Being and how there is, It gives time. In this giving, it becomes apparent how that giving is to be determined which, as a relation, first holds the two toward each other and brings them into being.
Being, by which all beings as such are marked, Being means presencing. Thought with regard to what presences, presencing shows itself as letting-presence. But now we must try to think this letting-presence explicitly insofar as presencing is admitted. Letting shows its character in bringing into unconcealment. To let presence means: to unconceal, to bring to openness. In unconcealing prevails a giving, the giving that gives presencing, that is, Being, in letting-presence.
(To think the matter "Being" explicitly requires our reflection to follow the direction which shows itself in letting-presence. But from unconcealing speaks a giving, an It gives.)
1. "There is" is used here to translate the German idiom "es gibt," literally "it gives," but with the idiomatic meaning "there is'" as in the French "il y a." In his Letter on Humanism, commenting on the use of the idiom "there is," and in Being and Time, Heidegger writes: "The 'it' which here 'gives' is Being itself. The 'gives,' however, indicates the giving nature of Being granting its truth." (Tr.)