c. The various paths to Appropriation.
Appropriation has already been spoken of in earlier writings:
1. In the Letter on Humanism where the Appropriation is already spoken of, but still with a conscious ambiguity.
2. Appropriation is spoken of more unequivocally in the four lectures given in 1949 under the collective title "Insight into that which is." These lectures, as yet unpublished except for the first and last ones, are entitled "The Thing, das Gestell, die Gefahr, The Turn." (Cf. Lectures and Essays 1954, pp. 163 ff. "The Thing").
3. In the lecture on technology which is nm merely another version of the lecture just mentioned, "das Gestell" (op. cit., pp. 13 ff. "die Frage nach der Technik"; further: Opuscula. "Die Technik und die Kehre" 1962).
4. Most clearly in the lecture on identity. Identity and Difference (Harper & Row 1969, trans. by Joan Stambaugh).
These passages were called to mind with the intention of stimulating reflection on the differences and the belonging together of the paths to Appropriation previously pointed out.
Next, the critical passage (on p. 5) which is important for the path and way of the lecture was the subject of more intensive consideration. It was a question of the paragraph: "Being, by which" up to "that is, gives Being."
At first the word "marked" ("Being, by which all beings as such are marked") was discussed, a word which was very carefully chosen in order to name Being's effect upon beings. To mark—related to showing—points to the contour, the gestalt, so to speak, the whatgestalt as it were, which is native to beings as such. With regard to beings, Being is that which shows, makes something visible without showing itself.
The paragraph in question continues: "Thought with regard to what presences, presencing shows itself as letting-presence insofar as presence is admitted."
The crux of the passage is the "But now" which sharply delineates what follows from what preceded and announces the introduction of something new.
To what is the difference related which becomes evident in the