THINGS
with greater instantiation now in relation to the gesturing things. This relationship between thing and world “entrusts world to things and at the same time shelters the things in the radiance [Glanz] of world. This grants to the things their essence. Things gesture [gebärden] world. World grants [gönnt] things” (GA 12: 21/PLT 199, tm {1971 PLT 202}). The gesture of the thing that opens out onto world is not simply a gesture of offering; it is also a gesture capable of receiving, one capable of receiving this grant of world.
In tandem with the gesture of things, there is the granting of world. The thing asks and receives, the world is solicited and bestows, and the two do so together. The granting of world is no simple giving; rather this granting (Gönnen) is a sending of grace (Gunst), as etymology attests, and Heidegger makes the connection himself, speaking at times of the “gestures of things and the grace [Gunst] of world” (GA 12: 24/PLT 202, tm {1971 PLT 204}). The granting of grace was thematized by Heidegger a few years earlier in the 1943 lecture course Heraclitus: The Beginning of Western Thinking, where at issue is fragment 123, physis kryptesthai philei, traditionally rendered “nature likes to hide.”24 Heidegger takes up the notion of philein expressed there, and rather than understand this as “like” or “love,” opts for a more periphrastic rendering as “to give grace [die Gunst schenken]” (GA 55: 128), to make a gift of one’s grace, to bestow favor. But as Heidegger warns, “we understand grace here in the sense of an originary granting and affording [Gönnens und Gewährens], and therefore not in the mere accessory meaning of ‘benefit’ [Begünstigen] and ‘patronage’ [Begönnern]” (GA 55: 128). Granting, in other words, and per the world’s granting of things, is not a simple equipping, outfitting, or supplying. Rather, as Heidegger points out, “the originary granting [Gönnen] is the affording [Gewähren] of that which is due to the other because it belongs to his essence insofar as it bears his essence. . . . through this granting the granted essence blossoms into its own freedom” (GA 55: 128). Since this originary granting is a giving to the other of what is already their own, it does not “benefit” the other in the sense of something that would additionally accrue to them. Rather, it first lets the other be the other, gives them the space to blossom into their own freedom, the spacing of their relations. But let us also not lose sight of the fact that what is so granted is something that “bears” (trägt) the essence of the other. I give, or rather “grant,” to the other that which bears his/her essence. That is to say, I give the other to themselves, precisely as that which must be borne by another (me). I grant the other their relational essencing. In so doing, I do not make the other into anything he or she is not, nor do I make the other into what he or she is. Instead I let the other come forth in his/her freedom through this granting. As such, “granting is an ability to wait” (GA 55: 129). In waiting I do not demand full presence from the other
24 Heraclitus, DK 22 b 123/Freeman, Ancilla, 33.