EARTH

and does so as the protruding of what is to be grounded. Ground: selfconcealing in a protruding that bears” (GA 65: 379/300). What this passage indicates is that concealment is something that itself must be borne. The same structure is operative here as was the case in “The Origin of the Work of Art”: the ground must itself be grounded and what protrudes or towers up from the ground must nonetheless be grounded in a self-concealment of the ground as a bearing. Bearing is a way of letting concealment show itself as such, a way of letting it shine.

The relationship of bearing that Heidegger articulates as central to the earth as bearer is extended to nothing less than the relationship between being and beings in “The Onto-Theological Constitution of Metaphysics” from Identity and Difference (1957). In this text tragen plays a leading role, though now as part of the Austrag, a “carrying out,” “execution,” or “performance.” In these pages, Heidegger seeks to understand a transitive sense of the verb “to be,” a transitive sense of the “is” in the statement “Being is beings” (see GA 11: 70–71/ID 64). He reads this transitive sense of “being” as indicating a “going-over” (übergehend) to beings on the part of being itself. This is, of course, not to claim that beings existed prior to being’s going-over to them, nor is one to assume that, in its going-over, being leaves its proper place behind. The case is quite the contrary. Being’s proper place is in this going-over. Being comes disclosively over that which first arrives at unconcealment through such a coming over. Being comes over beings and beings endure (ertragen) this being. What being comes-over are beings, but these beings are not to be thought of as separated from being before this over-coming. Beings must likewise motion toward being, if we are to avoid thinking of them as themselves extant prior to being. Heidegger seeks to articulate this reciprocal relation of being and beings toward each other. For this reason, beings must be described in terms of “arrival”: “Arrival means: sheltering oneself [sich bergen] in unconcealment: thus sheltered enduring

[anwähren]: to be a being [Seiendes sein]” (GA 11: 71/ID 64, tm). Thus we have here a disclosive over-coming (Überkommnis) on the part of being coupled with a self-sheltering arrival into that disclosure on the part of beings.

This is where bearing arises in the text. Since the two belong so intimately together, Heidegger will talk of them as the differing partners of a differentiation (Unter-Schied; GA 11: 71/ID 65). The space of differentiation between them (which Heidegger designates as the “between”; GA 11: 71 n. 92) is where the over-coming of being and arrival of beings “are born [getragen] apart-from-one-another-to-one-another [auseinanderzueinander]” (GA 11: 71/ID 65, tm, em). Austrag names the performance or carrying out of this peculiar separating relation: “The difference of being and beings is, as the differentiation of coming-over and arrival, the