out. Here we need not look far. All we need is the plain, sudden, unforgettable and hence forever new look into something which we—even though it is familiar to us-do not even try to know, let alone understand in a fitting manner. This unknown familiar something, all this pointing of Saying to what is quid and stirring within it, is to all present and absent beings as that first break of dawn with which the changing cycle of day and night first begins to be possible: it is the earliest and most ancient at once. We can do no more than name it, because it will not be discussed, for it is the region of all places, of all time-space-horizons. We shall name it with an ancient word and say:
The moving force in Showing of Saying is Owning. It is what brings all present and absent beings each into their own, from where they show themselves in what they are, and where they abide according to their kind. This owning which brings them there, and which move. Saying as Showing in its showing we call Appropriation. It yields the opening of the clearing in which present beings can persist and from which absent beings can depart while keeping their persistence in the withdrawal. What Appropriation yields through Saying it never the effect of a cause, nor the consequence of an antecedent. The yielding owning, the Appropriation, confers more than any effectuation, making, or founding. What is yielding is Appropriation itself—and nothing else.* That Appropriation, seen as it is shown by Saying, cannot be represented either as an occurrence or a happening-it can only be experienced as the abiding gift yielded by Saying. There is nothing else from which the Appropriation itself could be derived, even less in whose terms it could be explained. The appropriating event is not the outcome (result) of something else, but the giving yield whose giving reach alone is what gives us such things as a "there is," a "there is" of which even Being itself stands in need to come into its own as presence.**
* See my Identity and Difference (tr. Joan Stambaugh; New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 37 ff. (M.H.)
** See my Being and Time (tr. Macquarrie & Robinson; New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 255. (M.H.)