i.e., supposing that the human being had chosen the disclosability of the being of beings and by this choice was placed back into Dasein,3 must he then not proceed far into the stillness of the happening of being {Seinsgeschehnisses}, a happening which possesses its own time and its own silence?
Must he not have long been silent in order to find again the power and might of language and to be borne by them?
Must not all frameworks and specialties be shattered here and all worn-down paths be devastated?
Must not a courage, one which reaches very far back, attune the disposition here?
Someone who sticks fast to the foot of the mountain—how will he ever even see the mountain?
Only more and more rock faces.
But how to come upon the mountain?
Only through a leap from another mountain; but how to come upon that one?
Already to have been there; to be someone placed on the mountain and ordered to be there.
Who was already so? And is it still because no others can drive him away?
Beginning and re-beginning of philosophy!
2
We stand before nothingness*—to be sure, but in such a way that we do not put nothingness and this standing into effect, do not know how to put them into effect—cowardice and blindness before the opening of the being that bears us into beings.
* Indeed not before nothingness—instead, before each and every thing, but as nonbeings (cf. p. 50).
3. [Heidegger’s term, in the most literal sense “thereness,” for the beings we ourselves are, thematized specifically as places (da) where occurs an understanding of what it means to be (sein) in general. When hyphenated, Da-sein, this thematization is emphasized.—Trans.]