[269]
ON THE ELUCIDATION OF BEING AND TIME
(1941)
(Being and Time as an attempt to find a way—as “underway.” Strangely, what was genuine remained unnoticed and, at first, also inconspicuous: the ontological difference, which is named, however, at the outset in the title. “Being”—as distinct from beings. The playing field and the clearing for the distinction. “Time”—“difference” (see the Lecture Course from the Summer Semester 1927 [GA 24]): beyng. Everything preliminary and based on the overcoming of metaphysics—which is itself still thought metaphysically. “Fundamental-ontology”.)
If we are going to arouse in thought the question that is posed in Being and Time, repudiating the criticisms that have been directed against the treatise will achieve very little, unless those aspects of the interpretation of Being and Time that are governing the criticism have been made clear beforehand and recognized in their origin. That these interpretations, prior to the specific mistakes of the critical responses, must in themselves already be misinterpretations, to recognize this is sufficient for appreciating the frailty of the “criticism” that is built upon them and for refraining from a formal repudiation of the criticisms themselves. The interpretations all agree in this, that they grasp Being and Time from out of metaphysics and that they take what is being asked there back into a metaphysical line of thinking and, insisting on metaphysics, measure Being and Time according to its standards.
Viewed according to their chief characteristics, the interpretations are of four kinds: 1. the anthropological interpretation, 2. the existential interpretation, 3. the ontological interpretation, 4. the theological interpretation. The sole assertion of each one of these four views is simply the misinterpretation itself.
Yet, insofar as the metaphysical interpretation of Being and Time that expresses itself here knows itself with certainty as the prevailing truth, the misinterpretation of Being and Time that emerges along with it loses its sense of being accidental. It proves to be necessary. Therefore, the “criticism” does not even need to be guilty of any particular mistakes. The confrontation with the “criticism” does not have to do with [270] this itself; rather, it has to do with the essence of metaphysics, in whose dominion the criticism remains. But metaphysics is not an error; it is rather the truth of beings, a truth that is not yet (and can never be) the truth of Being and that cannot ever replace it.
1. The Basic Experience in the Thinking of Being and Time
The consideration attempted under this title emanates from a single, yet in itself manifold, basic experience of thinking. (What does basic experience of thinking