86 The Emergency of Being
I suggested above that appropriation might be neither general nor concrete in the traditional sense, but a wide-ranging possibility that can be discerned only by embracing a unique happening—the happening in which “we” (Westerners) cross from the first to the other inception. This happening is broad enough to embrace an entire age, an extensive juncture in Western history. Thinking of it could also shed light on other radical events, without aiming at a universal form or a transcendental condition. An interpretation of das Ereignis will not yield a conceptual scheme that can be used by historians or anthropologists. There is no essence of appropriation that will simply transfer, say, to an interpretation of ancient Taoism—or even to an interpretation of the Greek first inception. However, the essential happening of the appropriation may find resonance in other events. Although we cannot mediate between the first and the other inception by finding their common properties, they are in a dynamic relation, which Heidegger calls the Zuspiel—an interplay or “pass,” as in a ball game (169). We may not find universals, but we can engage in an interpretive exchange with other singular places and times, retrieving their singularity. To say that (the) appropriation is unique is not to isolate it from all communication or meaning—in fact, “Only the singular is re-trievable” (55). And in this retrieval, we may find that what we share with others is precisely ownness.
Another question looms: has the event of appropriation happened at all, or is it reserved for the future? We cannot answer the question adequately until we look more closely at inception (chapter 2), consider being-there and time-space (chapter 3), and reflect on the idea of a futural philosophy (chapters 2 and 4). But consider these statements: “be-ing as ap-propriation is history” (494); “be-ing needs man in order to happen essentially” (251); and “so far, man has never yet been historical [or historically]” (492, cf. 454). We are syllogistically drawn to the surprising conclusion that be-ing has never taken place, at least not as appropriation. Heidegger’s discourse here seems to lie between philosophy and prophecy. It evokes and awaits the crucial event.
This stance is highly puzzling. If appropriation is the giving of the being of beings, and if we already understand the being of beings, then surely appropriation must have already (or even “always already”) happened. As Heidegger himself puts it at one point, as soon as we have thrown ourselves free of beings toward being, ap-propriation has already occurred, though in a concealed way (452–53). But have we truly thrown ourselves free? And has being truly been given to us if we have not actively received it—taken it up as a question, instead of taking it for granted? Perhaps true giving and true history would take place only as a problem, only as an emergency, when we truly experienced “the estrangement of the open” (454).
Das Seyn west als das Ereignis: this formula points to be-ing’s intimate happening,