This puzzlement goes to the heart of Heidegger’s project. So, as Aristotle
advises, “Let us make some distinctions.” Was Heidegger’s central and final
topic “being”? In his later years he said it was not. When it comes down to
“the thing itself” (die Sache selbst) of his work, he declared “there is no longer
room even for the word ‘being.’”4 Then was his topic something “being-er than
being” (wesender als das Sein)?5 And could that perhaps be “being itself,”
das Sein selbst, understood as “something that exists for itself, whose independence
is the true essence of ‘being’”?6 And if so, how exactly does “being itself”
differ (if it differs at all) from “being” as the being-of-beings (das Sein des Seienden)
or being as the beingness-of-beings (die Seiendheit des Seienden)?
Or was his topic not Sein but perhaps Seyn? Or was it rather Seyn qua Seyn7—and
if so, what might that mean?
Or was his topic not “being” in any of its instances or spellings but rather the meaning of being (der Sinn vom Sein)? But according to Heidegger we already know what the meaning of being is. From the ancient Greeks onward, the terms εἶναι, οὐσία, esse, das Sein (and so on) have all meant the “constant, steadfast presence” of things.8 And whereas the theme of presence occupies much of Heidegger’s thought, it was not his final focus. In that case, was he after the essence of being (das Wesen des Seins)? Or was it, rather, the essencing of the truth of being, die Wesung der Wahrheit des Seins?9 Or was it the truth of the essencing of being, die Wahrheit der Wesung des Seyns?10 Or was Heidegger’s topic none of the above but, instead, the clearing (die Lichtung)? Or “appropriation” (Ereignis)? Or ἀλήϑεια? Or perhaps the Λήϑη that lurks within ἀλήϑεια? Or was it the ontological difference?11
4. GA 15: 365.17–18 = 60.9–10, my emphasis: “ist sogar für den Namen Sein kein Raum mehr.” For “the thing itself” as τὸ πράγμα αὐτό: Plato, “Seventh Letter” (ἐπιστολή Z), 341c7; Protagoras, 330d5, cited at GA 14: 76.1–2 = 61.9. Husserl always used the plural: for example, Logische Untersuchungen, Husserliana XIX/1,10.13–14 = I, 252.11, where a “thing” is what is given in direct intuition.
5. GA 73, 2: 1319.23.
6. GA 33: 31.9–10 = 25.12–13: “etwas für sich Bestehendes und in dieser Eigenständlichkeit das wahre Wesen des Seins?” See also GA 66: 340.13–14 = 303.18–19.
7. GA 73, 2: 997.20:
“Seyn ist nicht Seyn.” Further on Seyn: ibid., 968.7; 1033.10; 1039.10;
1122.7; etc.;
also GA 9: 306 (g)
= 374 (a):
“Seyn ist . . . das Ereignis.” But cf. loc. cit., “Sein qua Ereignis.”
At GA 81: 76.18,
Sein and Seyn are equated,
but at GA 76: 49.15–19 they are contrasted.
8. GA 31: 113.22–23 = 79.18: “Anwesenheit und Beständigkeit.”
11. The ontological difference is “the central thought of Heideggerian philosophy” according to John Haugland, “Truth and Finitude,” I, 47. Compare that with GA 15: 366.27–28 = 60.44–61.1: “Mit dem Sein verschwindet auch die ontologische Differenz” and GA 73, 2: 1344.13–14: “‘Ontologische Differenz’ . . . von Seiendem und Sein, was der Onto-Logie das Thema gibt” (my emphasis). On the two senses of the ontological difference, see chapter 7.