Vallega-Neu - 2015 - Heidegger's Reticence From 'Contributions' To 'Da

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Heidegger’s Reticence: From Contributions

to Das Ereignis and toward Geiassenheit
Daniela Vallega-Neu
University of Oregon
Abstract
Using as guiding thread the difference between being (beyng) and beings, this article
traces and questions the movement of Heidegger’s thinking in his non-public writings
from Contributions to Philosophy (1936-38) to The Event (1941-42) and ends with refer
ences to the thought of Geiassenheit (1944/45). In 1941-42 this movement takes the
form of a “downgoing” into the abyssal, withdrawing dimension of being. Heidegger
rethinks the event in terms of inception (Anfang) as he attempts to let go of any form
of representational thinking more radically than in Contributions and seeks to respond
in imageless saying to nothing but the silent call of beyng. Heidegger’s downgoing
brings with it a transformed relation to history and to what he calls “machination,’’ as
well as a shift from dispositions marked by decision, strife, and endurance to thinking
in terms of releasing, following, and thanking.
Keywords
Heidegger - event - Contributions to Philosophy - inception - ontological difference -

history - language
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Introduction1
Heidegger’s The Event (Das Ereignis)2 begins with a quotation from Sophocles’
Oedipus at Colonos taken from the following context:
Having blinded himself after discovering that he had killed his own father
and married his own mother, old Oedipus, finally exiled from the city of Thebes,
wanders around with the help only of his daughter and half-sister Antigone in
order to find a place where he can die. Finally Oedipus and Antigone reach
Athens and more specifically the temple of the Eumenides at Colonos where a
quite mysterious death awaits Oedipus. An Oracle had told him about his final
destiny and after long wanderings, having heard where he had arrived (namely,
at the place an Oracle had foretold), he finally knows what awaits him. At that
point, Oedipus asks a stranger to call for the king of Athens, Theseus, as he,
Oedipus, could help Theseus reap great gains.
It is then that the stranger asks the old blind Oedipus: “And what is the
warrant, then, of a man who cannot look [(3X£7T£iv]?” And Oedipus answers:
“Whatever we might say, we see in all that we say [6 p a v ].”3 Heidegger interprets
this passage as saying that the man who cannot look does not see beings; he is
blind to beings. Whereas the phrase “we see” means to have an eye for being,
for the “destiny” and “truth of beings.” This seeing of being is, says Heidegger,
“the sight of the pain of experience” and “the capacity to suffer, up to the afflic
tion of the complete concealment of the departure [Z)as Leidenkonnen bis
zum Leid der volligen Verborgenheit des Weggangs]” (GA 71: 3; E, xxiii). Blind to
beings but seeing being, Oedipus suffers the complete concealment of depar
ture (literally “going away”).
The way Oedipus dies or, rather, “goes away into complete concealment,” is
also quite mysterious. After receiving the signs from the sky (Zeus’ thunder),
Oedipus, who up to that point is depicted as not being able to go one step with
out the help of his trusted Antigone— this blind Oedipus gets up and walks
ahead alone and quite assuredly to his destiny. He knows where he is going.
1 This essay is a condensed and slightly altered version of a lecture course I gave at the
Collegium Phaenomenologicum in 2013.
2 Martin Heidegger, The Event, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Indiana University Press, 2013),
henceforth cited as E followed by the page number. Originally published as Das Ereignis, ed.
F.-W. von Herrmann, vol. 71 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2009), hence
forth cited as ga 71.
3 See “Forewords,” in E, xxiii (translation modified here and below). In the translation by David
Grene, this sentence reads: ‘There shall be sight in all the words I say” (Sophocles’ Oedipus at
Colonos, trans. David Grene, in Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore,
vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 80.
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It is a god who summons Oedipus to his final destiny. What happened in the
end, nobody knows. Sophocles writes: “it was some messenger sent by the
gods, or some power of the dead split open the fundament of earth, with good
will, to give him painless entry.”4 Thus Oedipus suddenly disappears into the
earth, leaving no trace, no corpse behind.
It is telling that Heidegger begins The Event with reference to this tragedy.
W hathappens to Oedipus has some similarities to the movement of Heidegger’s
thinking in his non-public writings (I call them as well Heidegger’s “poietic”
writings in reference to the Greek word bringing forth) between 1936
and 1942. In the attempt to let go more and more of representational thinking
and thus of beings insofar as we look at them and represent them, and in the
attempt to purely think in response to the silent call of imageless beyng, per
haps following the intimation of a god, Heidegger’s thinking goes down (geht
unter) into concealment.
In what follows, I will trace the movement of Heidegger’s thinking in his poi
etic writings from Contributions to Philosophy5 (1936-38) to The Event (1941-42)
(including Besinnung6 [1938] and Uber den Anfang 7 [1941]), and I will end with
references to the thought of Gelassenheit in the Country Path Conversations
(1944/45).8 My guiding thread is the difference between being (or beyng) 9 and
beings that Heidegger so forcefully brings into play in his reference to blind
Oedipus. I will place emphasis on how from 1936 to 1944 Heidegger articulates
in different ways the simultaneity and difference of beyng and beings by focus
ing as well on the dispositions or attunements of Heidegger’s thinking.
4 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonos, line 1880.

5 Contributions to Philosophy [Of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012) henceforth cited as C. Originally published as
Martin Heidegger, Beitrage zur Philosophy (Vom Ereignis), ed. F.-W von Herrmann, vol. 65 of
Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1989), hereafter cited as ga 65.
6 Martin Heidegger, Mindfulness, trans. by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (New York:
Continuum, 2006), henceforth cited as M. Originally published as Martin Heidegger,
Besinnung, ed. F.-W von Herrmann, vol. 66 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann,
t997), hereafter cited as ga 66.
7 Martin Heidegger, Uber den Anfang, ed. P.-L. Coriando, vol. 70 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt
a. M.: Klostermann, 2005), hereafter cited as GA 70.
8 Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret Davis (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2010). Originally published as Feldweg-Gesprache, vol. 77 of Gesamtausgabe
(Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1995), hereafter cited as ga 77.
9 Heidegger writes Seyn with a “y" to indicate that beyng is thought seinsgeschichtlich, i.e.,
being-historically.
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A striking change occurs in Heidegger’s thinking from Contributions to

Philosophy to Country Path Conversations, a change in the mood or attunement
of Heidegger’s thinking from a period that emphasizes decision, strife, and
endurance (a period in which Heidegger is, so to speak, in the trenches with
Nietzsche) to a period that emphasizes releasing (Gelassenheit) and takes on
quasi-mystical tonalities. In Heidegger and The Will, Bret Davis thoughtfully
traces this shift along the notion of “will” and interprets it as a shift to a more
mature thinking in which Heidegger finally lets go of the will.1 0 1 myself am not
sure whether Heidegger’s thinking becomes more mature or overcomes some
previous stances in his thinking, which then would allow him to respond to
beyng’s historicality more adequately. But, for sure, something very puzzling
happens in Heidegger’s meditative exercises between 1936 and 1942, which
are marked by a further and further retreat into the abyssal, withdrawing
dimension of being.
Although in my essay I am not addressing directly Heidegger’s political
engagements in these years of World War 11, tracing the question of the dif
ference between beyng and beings may reveal something about Heidegger’s
engagement with his times, which—by common standards—mostly takes the
form of a disengagement. For sure, the task for Heidegger is a deeper engage
ment with history, but according to him, this requires a certain blindness with
respect to beings or a disengagement with respect to our common approach
to things. Whether Heidegger is successful in thereby engaging his times more
deeply is an issue that perhaps needs to remain open.
To be blind to beings may be necessary for a thinking as Heidegger
attempts in Das Ereignis, a thinking that goes against the grain of traditional
thought. In his poietic writings, Heidegger actively directs his thinking away
from beings as much as he can (we might say that he blinds himself) in the
attempt to respond to nothing but the silent call of beyng itself. Yet the task
of Contributions to Philosophy is precisely to prepare another beginning of his
tory, which requires grounding the truth of beyng in Da-sein by sheltering it
in beings. In other words, another (or rather “the” other) beginning of history
requires beings; it requires that the concealed origin of all appearing and of
all that appears somehow permeate beings (words, works, deeds, for instance)
and through them find a concrete site, there, in the openness of a historical
world, grounding at the same time a historical people. In 1933 Heidegger was
blinded to think that such a grounding was on its way for the German people.
10 Bret W. Davis, Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit (Evanston, il: North
western University Press, 2007). See especially the introduction and chapter 7: "Twisting
Free of the Domain of the Will: On the Way to an Other Beginning of Non-Willing.”
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By 1936 he thought differently; although he did not let go of thinking the neces
sity and possibility of such a grounding.
There is, then, a tension in Heidegger’s thinking of the thirties between, on
the one hand, thinking in the necessity of the grounding, and thus simulta
neity, of beyng and beings, and on the other hand, and precisely in view of
that necessity of grounding, a thinking that withstands a directedness toward
beings. In other words, Heidegger at once seeks and resists being in its con
crete singular articulation through beings, things, works, words, and deeds.
1 The Difference of Beyng and Beings in Contributions to Philosophy
Contributions to Philosophy and the volumes following it are an attempt at

thinking from within an authentic disclosure of beyng in Da-sein such that
beyng and beings are transformed into their "simultaneity."11 As Heidegger
writes in section 5 of Contributions; “beyng is not something ‘earlier’—
existing in itself, for itself. Instead, the event is the temporal-spatial simulta
neity for beyng and beings.”12 One might say, indicatively, that the ontic and
ontological dimensions that Heideggerdifferentiated in BeingandTime merge.13
In an originary disclosure of beyng— if humans are authentically there (Da) in
the abyssal openness of truth— humans find their ownmost being, and beings
(things or words, for instance) “shelter” truth. Beyng occurs in a certain way
through beings such that being become “more being.”14
There are a number of major difficulties that challenge thinking beyng and
beings in their simultaneity. One is that authentic or proper being-there can
not be willed, cannot be “made to happen” at will. It must be appropriated
by beyng. The other difficulty is that the simultaneity of beyng and beings,
if we can think in it, does not abolish the difference between beyng and
11 “Simultaneity” here is not meant in the sense of “at the same time” such that we take time
in a linear sense but rather in the sense of “at once.”
12 c, 13; ga 65:13. See also c, 13-14; ga 65:14.
13 With respect to the overcoming of the ontological difference in thinking of Contributions,
see Daniela Vallega-Neu Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. An Introduction
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 24-26.
14 In Heidegger and the Romantics: The Literary Invention o f Meaning (New York: Routledge,
2012), Pol Vandevelde reads Heidegger's work of the ’30s and ’40s as attempting an ontol
ogy under the dictum “Poetry makes a being more being” (“Dichtung macht das Seiende
seiendeP’). For my response to his book, see Daniela Vallega-Neu, “Inventing Heidegger’s
Fluid Ontology” in Research in Phenomenology 44, no. 1 (2014) 143-59.
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beings, which means that we need to think the difference of beyng and beings
from within their simultaneity.
In Heidegger’s view, overcoming the ontological difference takes his think
ing of beyng one step further in the transition away from metaphysics (the
first beginning) where beyng and thinking are set apart such that thinking
merely represents being as beingness on the basis of the presence of repre
sented beings. In the transition to the other beginning, the reunion of beyng
and thinking needs to happen not by virtue of thought but through beyng
itself, since Heidegger’s thinking finds itself to be appropriated or to eventuate
(iereignet) by the event as which the truth of beyng occurs.
The task for Heidegger is to think of beyng or out of beyng as event (Ereignis).
This cannot be a decision we make but must be something happening to and
with us insofar as we are responsive in what occurs with us. An authentic
responsiveness to the event requires that one be unsettled from a subjective
stance, exposed, dislodged into the abyssal opening of beyng where beyng
occurs as appropriating event. Otherwise one remains deaf to the call of being.
At the same time, the dislodging is made possible, according to Heidegger, now
that all the possibilities of metaphysical thinking have been exhausted, by the
plight of beyng’s withdrawal. This plight, if it is sustained (if the dislodging is
sustained in restraint), initiates the transition into another beginning of the
history of beyng and thus into another thinking.
This is why Contributions begins with the junction “The Resonating”— the
truth of beyng resonates when the plight of the abandonment of beings by
beyng is sustained— that together with the juncture “The Interplay”—which
is the interplay between the first and the other beginning or a meditation on
historical inception— prepares for the “Leap” (third juncture) into the truth
of beyng.15 “The Leap” is followed by “The Grounding,” “The Future Ones,” and
“The Last God" whose passing by (Vorbeigang) would mark the other begin
ning for a people.
15 See Contributions, section 3. In the Appendix to Heidegger’s 1937-38 lecture course Basic
Questions of Phenomenology, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), Heidegger writes: “Access to the essence always has about
it something of the immediate and partakes of the creative, the freely arisen. We therefore
speak of a leap, a leap ahead into the essentialization [Wesung] of truth. Admittedly, this
terminology does not at first contribute a great deal toward the clarification or justifica
tion of our procedure. But it does suggest that this procedure must in every case be car
ried out by the individual expressly for himself. Whoever does not take this leap will never
experience what it opens up. Speaking of a ‘leap’ is also meant to intimate, however, that
a preparation is still possible and necessary here: the securing of the approach run for the
leap and the predelineation of its direction” (Basic Questions, 173; ga 45:203).
The task for Heidegger in Contributions is to ground Da-sein, which is the

sustaining of the opening of the event of beyng such that a historical ground
ing, another beginning would occur. Da-sein here names not simply human
being, since the Da, the “there" of being-there (Da-sein), exceeds humans; it is
the abyssal disclosure of the truth of beyng. As indicated earlier, Da-sein or the
grounding of truth occurs in the simultaneity of beyng and beings such that,
for instance, the words of the philosopher or poet shelter truth.
In Geschichte des Seyns Heidegger criticizes Contributions for being “still
frame, but not a conjunction” (g a 69: 5).16 Contributions are an attempt at
saying the truth of beyng. In Contributions he writes: “although already and
exclusively a speaking of the essence of beyng, i.e., of the ‘appropriating event,’
[Contributions] are not yet able to join the free conjuncture of the truth of
beyng out of beyng itself” ( g a 65:4; c, 6). Furthermore, the difficulty of think
ing being through Da-sein (as thinking is there) has to do with the fact that
there is not something called beyng that Heidegger may speak about; there
is, rather, nothing, no thing, to speak about. Thinking of the event has noth
ing already there to see and describe; it is, so to speak, initially blind. Beyng
discloses, conceals, and disguises itself in the saying that is appropriated. This
means that appropriation does not come from thinking, but neither is it prior
to thinking. Appropriation occurs in thinking as thinking is responsive in this
event.17 Thinking occurs inceptively (anfanglich) as erdenken, as inventive
thinking such that what gives itself to thought gives itself in the saying, first
discloses or unconceals and thus is, in the responsive saying.18
What does this mean with respect to the simultaneity of beyng and beings?
Does it mean that it is not yet occurring because in our epoch beings remain
abandoned by beyng, as Heidegger writes? Or does there occur a simultane
ity of beyng and beings— at least at some moments— in Heidegger’s thinking
through his words? Perhaps yes and no. One may differentiate between a his
torical grounding of the truth of beyng through what Heidegger calls its “shel
tering” in beings (which would initiate another epoch in the history of beyng)
and a grounding happening in Heidegger’s own thinking inasmuch as (and
if) he is able to say beyng as it eventuates in the saying. And yet, Heidegger
will always maintain a difference between beyng and beings, both in his own
16 Martin Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, ed. Peter Trawny (Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann, 1998).
17 See section 122 of Contributions.
18 The er- in erdenken has a transitive sense. In the translation of erdenken as “inventive
thinking” we should hear “inventive” not in the sense of making something up but more
literally in its Latin meaning as “in-coming”.
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thinking and in “what” he thinks. Reflecting on how attunement works in

Heidegger’s thinking may give us insight into this difference.
According to Heidegger, his saying attempts to get its direction from how
he finds his thinking disposed or attuned (gestimmt) historically, in the in-
between of what he calls the first and the other beginning. The basic disposition
of Contributions in transition from the first to the other beginning oscil
lates, Heidegger tells us in section 5, in a variety of dispositions: Erschrecken,
Verhaltenheit, and Scheu, i.e., shock, restraint, and diffidence. Shock is an impor
tant moment of the basic disposition because it addresses implicitly the dif
ference between beyng and beings. Shock unsettles us from our everydayness
and entanglement with beings (this is similar to the function of Angst in Being
and Time) and discloses beyng as withdrawal through the experience of the
abandonment of beings by being. “Shock lets us be taken aback by the very
fact that beings are (whereas, previously, beings were to us simply beings), i.e.,
by the fact that beings are and that beyng has abandoned and withdrawn itself
from all ‘beings’ and whatever appeared as a being” (ga 65:15; c,14). Shock
dislodges us from being simply involved with beings and discloses the being of
these beings as withdrawal; in other words, beings are disclosed in their aban
donment by being. Here a differencing between beyng and beings occurs that
has the character of a withdrawal. This withdrawal and thus the differencing is
what Heidegger attempts to hold open, to keep somehow manifest, by sustain
ing it and saying it, which requires an acknowledgement of the withdrawal, a
turn towards it, or as Charles Scott puts it in Living with Indifference, it requires
staying in the draft of the withdrawal.19The turn toward the withdrawal occurs
at the same time in an un-settling move “away from” beings.
Staying in the draft or draw of the withdrawal without losing the relatedness
to beings requires a certain effort, a certain “active” stance that Heidegger curi
ously addresses as “will” in quotation marks. He writes:
[B]ecause in this shock it is precisely the self-concealing of beyng that

opens up, and because beings themselves as well as the relation to them
want to be preserved, this shock is joined from within by its own most
proper ‘will,’ and that is what is here called restraint, (ga 65:15; c, 14)
To restraint belongs Scheu, “diffidence,” not in the sense of shyness or a lack

of confidence but in the sense of a hesitant approach toward something to
which we find ourselves drawn. Diffidence, writes Heidegger, “even surpasses
the ‘will’ of restraint and does this out of the depth of the ground of the uni-
19 Charles Scott, Living with Indifference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 41.
tary basic disposition. From diffidence in particular arises the necessity of reti
cence [Verschweigung]”(g a 65:15; c, 15).
Restraint (together with diffidence) articulates a tension by virtue of which
shock and, with it, a dislodgment of thinking away from everyday relatedness
to beings is sustained. The tension marks a spacing, a bodily spacing I want to
say, that provides a site for the withdrawal of beyng such that this withdrawal
is held, maintained, kept manifest in this hesitation. Hesitancy (Zogerung)
names the spacing, the opening as which truth occurs. Truth is the unconceal
ing of the concealment of beyng, the open site of beyng as withdrawal, held in
hesitancy through restraint. Thus restraint allows the "there” of beyng’s with
drawal to “be.” It allows for Da-sein, for “there-being” to occur as an in-between
in the differencing of beyng and beings.20
This holding open of the temporal spacing of Da-sein is not yet a historical
grounding of a people, which can be granted only by beyng itself. In his essay
“On the Origin of the Work of Art,” which Heidegger wrote at the same time as
Contributions, he thinks ahead (or perhaps back) in the possibility of a histori
cal grounding. He envisions here beings, works of art no longer abandoned by
beyng but that have become, or are in a fuller sense such that through them
truth finds a worldly-earthly site. Heidegger speaks of a shoe painting by van
Gogh, of a temple, of stone, sky, and of animals. In Contributions Heidegger
hardly mentions any specific thing. Why not? Is it that Heidegger cannot think
the truth of beyng by speaking of sky, rocks, animals, and other concrete things
surrounding him because— following what he says— things in our epoch are
deprived of truth? Is it because beings are abandoned by being, and it is not up
to Heidegger to initiate a change for a people? This may indeed be something
he realizes more sharply after his experiences of 1933.
Heidegger’s disenchantment with the current political events of his time
must have something to do with why and how Heidegger continuously medi
tates on the abandonment of beings by beyng, on its origin and history. The
truth of beyng is occurring not yet as appropriating event but as dis-propriation.
The possibility for beings to be more fully has to be sought in the dark depths
of concealed historical beyng, because beyng occurs as withdrawal. It seems
that Heidegger needs to find a way to spread awareness of the plight of the
abandonment of beings by beyng in our epoch; somehow he needs to pre
pare the possibility of a fundamental transformation of how beyng occurs and
20 Heidegger sometimes speaks of Da-sein as the open center for the truth of beyng. Section
95 of Contributions: “The truth of beyng is nothing less than the essence o f truth, grasped
and grounded as the clearing-concealing; it is the occurrence of Da-sein, the occurrence
of the axis in the turning as self-opening center” (ga 65:189; c, i48f.). Cf. section 191.
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determines our relation to world, earth, and things. This is the reason, I believe,
why in Contributions and even more in Besinnung and Geschichte des Seyns,
he places emphasis on the junctures of Anklang and Zuspiel (resonating and
interplay) in the transitional thinking of the other beginning. Heidegger medi
tates extensively on the abandonment of beings by beyng, the forgetfulness of
being in machination, and on the difference between the metaphysical think
ing of the being of beings and a more inceptive historical thinking of beyng.
And yet, it is not up to Heidegger to initiate another beginning of history; it is
up to being itself.
2 Three Possibilities of History (Besinnung)
In 1933 Heidegger believed there to be an opening toward a transformation

of the history of beyng. By the time he writes Contributions, he limits himself
to thinking of the possibility or, more precisely, of holding open the possibil
ity of a revolution in our basic dispositions and worldly relations. But he also
continuously keeps in sight the possibility that no grounding of truth will hap
pen. In section 70 of Besinnung, Heidegger speaks of three possibilities of his
tory “through which, and in different ways, the differentiation of beings and
beyng is held open as the decision” ( ga 66: 229; M, 204).21 The order in which
Heidegger presents them is, so he emphasizes, of no importance:
1. One possibility is that the revolution of beyng occurs and that Da-sein
and, through it, beings are inceptively grounded. Through the grounding
of Da-sein “beyng and truth, divinity and humanity, history and art
first find in poetry and thought the origin of their essence” ( ga 66: 230;
M, 204).
2. Another possibility is that beings remain stuck in the “shackles” and
“common paths" of beingness and “compel to a complete lack of deci
sion” ( ga 66: 230; m , 204). It would be the endless continuation of the
dominion of machination and lived experience.
3. The remaining possibility is a hybrid situation. The grounding of Da-sein
does not happen, but “in the unknowable concealedness, the history of
beyng... begins in the successive battles [Kampffolge] of the lonely
ones, and beyng enters into the most proper and estranging history
21 My translation here and below. 1 am nevertheless indicating (here and below) where, in
the published English version, the sentences I am quoting and translating may be found.
whose jubilations and mourning, victories and falls carry over into the
region of the heart [Herzensraum] only of the most rare ones” (GA 66:
230; M, 204f.).
Heidegger speaks of these possibilities in a section titled “Gods. The Essential

Knowing.”We should understand essential knowing (wesentliches Wissen) here
more in terms of a disposition than a cognitive grasp of something. (It may
remind us of the knowledge of blind Oedipus walking to his final destiny.)
To use Heidegger’s language, essential knowing addresses an alert, thought
ful steadfastness in Da-sein, in being-there unsettled from the everyday rela
tion to beings, dis-lodged into the draw of beings’withdrawal. In this essential
knowing Heidegger’s questioning unfolds, a questioning that honors (verehrt),
he says, what is most question-worthy. Especially when it comes to meditat
ing on the gods, he says, thinking must occur in relation to the first possibility,
that of the grounding of the truth of beyng. Yet even here the other two pos
sibilities are known as well, since questioning, in the first possibility, cannot
claim to begin the history of beyng in a decisive way. And yet, this originary
questioning is, Heidegger stresses here, unsettled or dislodged (entsetzt) from
beings, from the precedence (Vorrang) of beings in the forgetfulness of being;
and this unsettlement must be “withstood” (ausgestanden). “Essential know
ing in its honoring questioning already is too close to the distant proximity of
beyng to tolerate a perturbation by what is merely a being” (ga 66:232; m , 206).
It appears that when thinking questions farthest toward the gods and the pos
sibility of a grounding of truth in beings, the distancing from what are “only
beings” is most pronounced.
At the same time that Heidegger questions the possibility of a historical
grounding, this questioning must remain open to the second possibility, that
of no grounding, and in his reflections in Besinnung, Heidegger ends up giving
this second possibility much more space than the other possibilities. He writes
that this second possibility is hardest to sustain while carrying out inceptive
questioning in the stance of essential knowing and that historiographical
viewpoints keep sliding in between (die historische BlickstelLung schiebt sich
dazwischen) (ga 66:233; m , 2o6f.).
I would say that here Heidegger’s thinking is always in danger of remain
ing determined by what it seeks to overcome. Precisely when he thinks about
machination and lived experience, he often writes in the mode of warding
off metaphysical thought, of differentiating himself from it. Yet in this way he
remains tied to what he differentiates himself from, and this includes beings
in their actual “machinational” occurrence. One could say that, according to
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Heidegger’s own standards, he slips back into metaphysical or representa

tional thinking.22
According to Heidegger, through the three possibilities of history “the dif
ferentiation of beings and beyng is held open as the decision” (ga 66: 229;
M, 204). The differentiation is opened up through the unsettlement or dislodg
ing from the general way beings “are” or rather “are not” truly in our epoch.
Within this unsettlement that opens the differencing of beings and beyng, the
disposition of thinking might be turned either more toward the “positive” pos
sibility of grounding beings, or toward the “negative” possibility that they may
stay ungrounded endlessly, or toward some hybrid situation where, in terms
of the general way the Western world unfolds, beings remain ungrounded but
where, in an untimely hidden realm, the history of being takes its course only
with a few individuals.
In Besinnung and Die Geschichte des Seyns, Heidegger emphasizes the sec
ond possibility (that the history of being ends in the total domination of mach
ination) more pronouncedly. The possibility of the closing down of the other
possibilities of being and thus of essential history, resonates in Heidegger’s
language that emphasizes resistance, standing, withstanding, steadfastness,
decision, and knowing.
Here are a few examples of what I call Heidegger’s language of resistance:
The necessity of philosophy as meditation consists in the fact that it must

not do away with that plight but must instead withstand it, ground it, and
make it the ground of the history of mankind, (ga 65: 45; c, 37; transla
tion altered)
Da-sein: withstanding the openness of self-concealing, (ga 65:301; c, 238)
Da-sein is humanly endured and sustained in the steadfastness that with

stands the “there” and belongs to the event, (ga 65:31; c, 26)
The steadfast withstanding of the abyssal “there” of being-there (Da-sein) at

the same time carries out the differencing of being and beings such that phil
osophical questioning occurs as a “resoluteness for meditation and for with
standing the plight” (ga 65: 60; c, 48). In this way thinking holds itself in the
22 This applies especially to Heidegger’s polemic remarks in his non-public writings, includ
ing the Schwarze Hefte, when he attacks Christianity, Judaism, Bolshevism, Americanism,
National Socialism and many other—isms. These are hardly instances of poietic thinking.
See David F. KrelTs review of the Schwarze Hefte in this issue.
H E I D E G G E R ’S RETI CE NCE 13
decision regarding the possibility of history. Heidegger’s thinking in Besinnung

has a similar tonality.23
This language of resistance, of steadfastness in being-there is sometimes
contrasted with a phrase we find in Contributions and Besinnung, namely,
"letting loose into machination” (Loslassung in die Machenschaft) beings. In
Mindfulness Emad and Kalary translate Loslassung nicely as “unleashing.”24
Beings are unleashed into the overpowering at work in machination; beings cir
culate groundlessly in the continuous movement of production that Heidegger
finds announced in Nietzsche’s will to power that he interprets as a will to will.
Yet it would be too reductive to characterize all of Heidegger’s language in
Contributions and Besinnung as a language of resistance against machination
and the letting loose of beings. In those passages in Contributions that meditate
toward the first possibility of history, its grounding, another gravitational pull
seems to structure Heidegger’s language, and that gravitation comes from what
Heidegger calls “stillness,” which is related to the basic disposition of Scheu,
diffidence. Heidegger writes: “From diffidence in particular arises the necessity
of reticence;” and “diffidence is the way of drawing near and remaining near
to what is most remote as such (cf. The Last God). Yet the most remote, in its
intimations, provided these are held fast in diffidence, becomes the closest and
gathers up into itself all relations of beyng" (g a 65:16; c, 15).
Diffidence is, then, the moment in the grounding disposition of Contributions
that directs especially to the first possibility of history. It disposes into a gather
ing into stillness, a stillness that, Heidegger intimates, would mark the passing
by of the last god, which is the moment of historical transformation, i.e., the
inception of the other beginning of history for a people.
One cannot simply reduce thinking in the disposition of diffidence and
bearing silence to a language of resistance, but neither can one simply dis
sociate diffidence and silence from what I call Heidegger’s language of resis
tance. Silence and reticence (Erschweigung und Verschweigung) always remain
bound to restraint. In section 13, for instance, Heidegger writes how “the great
stillness must first come over the world for the earth. This stillness arises only
23 The emphasis is on the decision over history and section 8 articulates this decision even
in terms of “battle.” The German word here is Kampf as in the title of Hitler's book Mein
Kampf. Section 8 of Besinnung also reveals that Heidegger had his own take on war and
peace. He writes: “War is only the uncontrolled machination of beings, peace only the
seeming quieting down of that uncontrolledness. Battle, however, is the mirroring of the
free gifting of essence [Wesensverschenkung] out of the mildness of the proudness of
refusal. ‘Battle’here is thought out of the stillness of the essential occurring” ( ga 66: 15).
24 See ga 65:406,416,132; c, 322,329,104; and section 12 in ga 66: i7f. and in m , 13.
14 VALLE GA-NEU
out of keeping silent. And this bringing into silence grows only out of restraint”
('ga 65: 34, c, 29). When Heidegger writes how the grounding disposition of
Contributions is complex, he seems to address an oscillation between stillness
and unsettlement or shock.
The oscillation of the basic attunement can also be found in the way
Heidegger articulates the originary experience of language. Again in section
13, in the subsection titled “Restraint, silence, and language,” we find a silence
that goes along with the unsettlement in shock; it is the moment when lan
guage fails us: “Words do not yet come to speech at all, but it is precisely in
failing us that they arrive at the first leap. This failing is the event as intima
tion and incursion of beyng.” The failing of words marks the first moment of
the language of being in transition from the first beginning, but ultimately, the
language that Heidegger seeks, the language of the event, would not simply be
a failing of words although it would be made possible by this failing and would
let it resonate at the same time. Heidegger writes: “This failing us is the incep-
tual condition for the self-unfolding possibility of an original (poetic) naming
of beyng” (ga 65:36; c, 30). In such naming beyng and beings would be trans
formed into their simultaneity; the word, a being, would arise out of beyng and
bespeak it at the same time.
Retrospectively, Heidegger would criticize the language of Contributions as
being still too much bound to metaphysics. Already at the time he completed
Besinnung, Heidegger voiced a criticism with respect to Contributions.25 In The
Event, Heidegger critiques Contributions as being “too didactic,” as depending
too much on the quasi-metaphysical differentiation between grounding ques
tion and guiding question, as grasping the beginning “as something carried out
by thinkers,” and as thinking Da-sein “too unilaterally in relation to the human
being” (ga 71:4f.; e , xxiv).
What Heidegger calls at times the “didactic” character of Contributions
probably is what allows the reader some better access to the book. As I see it, a
large part of the thinking of Contributions is devoted to the preparation of the
transition to the other beginning. He sets up parameters through the sequence
of junctures and places emphasis on the first two junctures (The Resonating
and The Interplay). The leap also suggests a sense of break between prepa
ratory reflections and preliminary experiences, on the one hand, and the full
immersion into the thinking of the event, on the other hand. (This parallels the
differentiation between the guiding question of metaphysics and the ground
ing question of the other beginning.) Heidegger himself “leaps” back and forth
between different levels of engagement with a saying of the event. In liber den
25 See “A Retrospective Look at the Pathway (1937/8)” (ga 66:427; M , 377).
RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 45 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2
Anfang, however, the volume immediately preceding The Event, Heidegger

ventures more radically into thinking “from” the event.
3 Departure, Abyss, and Inception in Tiber den Anfang
With Uber den Anfang, the turn toward concealment intensifies and takes
on a different character. Thinking occurs less as a withstanding in the draw
of beyng’s withdrawal than as a following, an “egress into the abyssal ground”
(.Entgdngnis in den Ab-grund) (g a 70:11, §1). And as Heidegger’s thinking goes
down, it lets go of something; something that we may preliminarily think of
as a tension that held his thinking back in Contributions. In his downgoing,
Heidegger thinks even beyond beyng and beyond the nothingness belonging
to being; he does this through the notions of the “nothingless" and the “being
less” (das Nichtslose and das Seinlose) that bespeak a limit he had not thought
before such that beyng “loses its exclusive priority” ( g a 70:9).
In Uber den Anfang Heidegger thinks the event as inception (Anfang)
without giving priority to the relation to thinking. Concerning “inception,”
he writes: “this word here thinks the taking-to-itself [An-sich-nehmen] and
catching [Auffangen] of that which is appropriated [er-eignet] in the reach
ing out that takes on-to-itself [an-sich-nehmendes Aus-langen]-, what reaches
out and takes on-to-itself is not thinking but: the clearing of the openness, the
unconcealing. The taking on-to-itself is at once unconcealing and concealing”
( g a 70:10). The word A nfang has the root meaning fangen, “to catch.”26 What
catches, here, is not a human, not thinking, not even in the guise of Da-sein.
(Note how this differs from section 122 of Contributions where Heidegger
speaks of thought catching what is thrown to “it”.) There is, strictly speak
ing nothing and nobody that catches. We rather should think as in the Greek
middle-voice: a “catching itself” occurs of what is appropriated. In the catch
ing, what is unconcealed is held in concealment. The movement of thinking is
not one of withstanding the abyss but rather one of departure, Abschied, a new
essential word for Heidegger:
In-ception is the taking on-to-itself of the departure into the abyss.

This taking on-to-itself is the inceptual seizing [Aneignung] and there
fore ap-propriation [Er-eignung] of the initiation [Anfangnis].
26 “In-ception” has the same root meaning (“-ception” comes from the Latin capere,
“to catch”) as An-fang. That is why it makes sense to translate Uber den Anfang as On
Inception.
RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 45 (2015) 1-32

i6 VALLEGA-NEU
In-ception is inceptively and this means in an abyssal way the appro

priating event, ( g a 70:11)
The German word for what 1 translate as “seizing” has the root meaning
eignung, just like appropriation (Ereignung), which is a cognate of Ereignis,
event. In-ception is thus thought as a seizing of what is appropriated. Another
new basic word we find in the context of thinking the event as in-ception
(.Anfang) is Anfangnis, a neologism Heidegger coins, which makes a noun
out of the occurrence of beginning or inception. I translate it as initiation.
Heidegger speaks of the initiation of the inception, die Anfdngnis desAnfangs,
thus emphasizing the actual occurrence of the in-ception he is thinking. It is
not an accident that Heidegger speaks simply of inception without specifying
“other inception” (other beginning), since he is moving in a realm of thinking
where the inception is one, or rather where it is the unique occurrence of the
event in the departure into the abyss.27
Heidegger describes the relation between the seizing-appropriating incep
tion and beings as follows:
The inceptive appropriating event, however, has its full essence only in
the fact that by occurring as appropriation and thus as a carrying out
[als Er-eignung austragend], it clears the inceptive clearing and thus
appropriates the openness. Such an appropriating is the coming-in-
between [Dazwischenkunft] of the clearing as time-space. The appropri
ating appropriates the in-between (as in-the-midst and meanwhile) to
that which—until the time span [Frist] that occurs essentially out of the
appropriating— [is] the nothingless [das Nichtslose] which then arises as
a being, ( g a 70:11)
The inceptive appropriating event clears an openness, with which Heidegger

rethinks the “there” of being-there, the open site (or time-space) for the truth
of beyng. It is interesting that now, in the first section of Uber den Anfang,
Heidegger thinks this openness right away in relation to the becoming being
of beings out of the nothingless, which “is” (“is” needs to be crossed out here)
precisely a “being” before it becomes a being, before it is differentiated into
becoming a being. He writes that the in-between is appropriated to the noth
ingless that in this appropriation becomes a being. He calls this event (here
comes another basic word) Dazwischenkunft, the “coming in between” in both
a spatial and a temporal sense.
27 Compare, for instance, section 42, or the end of the first section of Uber den Anfang.
In Contributions the relation between the event as the occurrence of truth of

beyng, on the one hand, and beings, on the other hand, was held at a distance
by thinking first the necessity to prepare Da-sein such that then a sheltering
of truth in beings may occur; but now Heidegger brings beings into play right
away. They are brought into play, however, in a most radical way, namely, as
that which cannot be named because it is not yet something, so little that not
even nothingness can be applied to it, given that we think nothing in relation
to something. Beings before they are, are the nothing-less.
The nothingless becomes a being through the clearing of the in-between
Heidegger calls Dazwischenkunft (coming-in-between). In this in-between
happens the arising of beings into being, which is at the same time the move
ment of differentiation of being from beings. Although the appropriating event
has its full essence in the coming in-between of beings, Heidegger at the same
time sharply differentiates being from beings:
A being remains so decisively differentiated [unterschieden] against,

through, and from beyng, that a being has as its own not even nothing
ness [das Nichts]; because only beyng has the essential occurrence of
nothingness, (ga 70:11)
Only being (not beings) has the essential occurrence of nothingness. Perhaps
we may think this nothingness of being out of the draw of being’s withdrawal
or out of the horizon of death that determines our being. Beings do not have
that dimension. They are not in the draw of being’s withdrawal as we are when
we face our mortality. As beings rise into being they only or simply “are” beings.
The word are, however, is not appropriate in relation to beings. In fact, beings
are not, even when they arise into being:
Beyng as inception and event uniquely has that essence that allows say
ing: “Beyng is”. All beings only arise into being; beings never are; but
always only ‘are’ beings.
A being is not, in so far as it is to have its circumstances [Bewenden], i.e.
here the inception, in the “is”. A being only is as a being; and this means:
a being reaches being only at times, but a being is not itself being, (
ga 71:11)
Trees, rocks, birds, words (can we include radios, cups, and chairs too?) are not
but at times rise into being, presumably at those times, when the event appro
priates the in-between. But even then they are not, if we take the “are” in the
strong sense that includes nothingness. Even when beings rise into being, they
are precisely differentiated from being.
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We need to distinguish, then, the not-being-of-beings, on the one hand, in

metaphysics and, on the other hand, in the event of inception. In section 9
of Uber den Anfang Heidegger describes the movement of how in rising into
being beings may seize being for themselves such that being becomes being
ness (Seiendheit) and beings end up covering over the truth of being.28 If we
think this differentiation from the vantage point of beyng, it is the event of
the withdrawal of beyng such that beings remain abandoned by being. Beyng
differentiates itself and withdraws, leaving beings to themselves, groundless,
without being. In the first beginning (in metaphysics), this is the event of the
“unleashing of beings into being ‘only’ beings.’’29
But when the event appropriates, the rising of beings into being does not
necessarily end up in the unleashing of beings. When beings rise into the open
ness of being without covering over this event, beings “come into the saying
and into the word. But saying and word are not expression and conceptualiza
tion [Fassung]; rather, they are the essential occurrence of being [Wesung des
Seins]” (ga 70:117). Saying and word are the essential occurrence of being such
that the formerly nothingless comes into being. Beings only rise into being in
the saying and the word. Heidegger continues:
The rose blooms in the poem of the poet and only there, but this ‘bloom
ing’ is not simply what is said afterwards about a so-called real thing, a
being, instead it alone [the blooming] is the being. That is why according
to the uniqueness and rareness of being, inventive poetizing [Er-dichtung]
happens rarely. (GA 70:117)
The blooming of the rose here addresses the be-ing of the rose. There is not
first a thing, the rose, that then is brought into being. The being, the rose in the
how of its being, i.e. in the blooming, rises into its be-ing in the saying or in
the word. Beyng, thought as the event of appropriation is the rising into being
of beings.
The rising up of non-beings into be-ing is always unique, says Heidegger.
It “is always different depending on beings being propriated (an-geeignet) to
being as stone, tree, animal, human, god.” Furthermore, “rising is not repre-
sentedness and not mere appearing; rising is emerging [Aufgehen} and yet at
the same time staying back in the beingless” ( g a 70:119).
28 GA 70: 27.
29 ga 70, se ctio n 44.
What Heidegger says here in the end— that beings at the same time that
they arise stay back in the beingless is crucial, since only thus is the relation to
being preserved. Again, what is preserved is not nothingness but the beingless.
4 The Last Downgoing: The Beingless, Inceptive Dis-propriation

(Enteignis), and the Passing By of First and Other Beginning
Perhaps we can think the beingless in terms of emptiness rather than a sense of
withdrawal or passing or lack. As I understand it, with the beingless, Heidegger
thinks a more inceptive letting be of “not yet or no longer be-ing beings,”which
occurs in the most extreme downgoing into the abyss. I also believe that it
is related to a new historical disposition in Heidegger’s thinking, that of let
ting the abandonment of beings by being (the historical unfolding and install
ment of machination at the end of the first beginning) pass by, of not resisting
it. His thinking thus enters into what I called above the hybrid situation, the
in-between the never ending epoch of machination and the estranged realm
where being is appropriated for the few. All this happens in 1941.
The notion of beinglessness is, if I may say so, a positive notion for Heidegger
and needs to be sharply differentiated from the abandonment of beings by
being.30 Together with beinglessness, Heidegger thinks also a positive notion of
Enteignis, of dispropriation, where dispropriation again is not the movement
of withdrawal of beyng that unleashes beings into machination but points to
the most inceptive moment in the downgoing into the abyss of inception.
In section 98 of Uber den Anfang, Heidegger writes that thought as the
beingless, beings “are in a certain sense ‘prior’ and older than being":
Since, however, being comes in-between into the beingless [ Weilaber das
Sein in das Seinlose dazwischen ankommt] and begins as the inception of
beings, therefore beings— namely as the subsequently be-ing beingless
[als das nachmalige seiende Seinlose]— are in a certain sense “prior” and
older than being. (ga 70:121)
Heidegger is not saying that beings are things in themselves before we think
them and that in thinking them we attribute being to them. But he also does
not want to say that beings arise from beyng such that beyng somehow would
generate beings. This is why he writes: “Although beinglessness is still conceived
coming from being, it does not originate from being” ( ga 70:121). Perhaps this
30 See section 98 of ga 70:121.
RE SEARCH IN P H E N O M E N O L O G Y 45 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2
20 VALLEGA-NEU
is also related to the fact that Heidegger first spoke of the not-yet-being beings
as the nothingless. Beings before they rise into being are not even nothing.
“Neither can be said [that] the beingless is, nor that it is not” (g a 70:121).
The beingless are beings before and after they rise into being, i.e., before a
clearing of being is appropriated, i.e., before Da-sein! We should wonder how
Heidegger can think such a thought. Is not his thinking in Contributions and
in the following writings precisely an attempt at thinking o/being, i.e., out of a
basic attunement that already is a being in the there, i.e., in Da-sein? How can
Heidegger think prior to Da-sein?
Heidegger does not say anything about the beingless as being experienced
in restraint or withstood in Da-sein. The beingless is conceived in a movement
of departure and allows Heidegger to think something most extreme belong
ing to the essence of being.31 This is not the concealment belonging to truth
that is held in hesitation; it is not the nothing that we experience in the draw of
beings withdrawal or in the face of our mortality. It is the not-yet and no-longer
begun inception of being as event.32
Let us consider how he thinks this most extreme thought— the “unsayable”
(das Unsagliche), as he calls it in section 68 (p. 85)— in the last downgoing:
This [the last downgoing] determines an inceptive time in-between

[.Zwischenzeit], in which history does not necessarily continue in the
same manifestness [Offenbarkeit]__
When the inception of beyng is and beyng essentially occurs only
inceptively, then beyng itself (as event) must once bring forth the "time”
(temporal-spatial-playing field) in which and with which it [beyng]
essentially attains [erwest] its downgoing.
“Then” every possibility of a “then” has disappeared; then— spoken
still again and only out of the transitional letting alone [aus der iibergang-
lichen Uberlassung gesprochen]— there also are no “beings”. Non-beings,
31 “But in beinglessness can be conceived something most extreme belonging to the essence
of being (inception— downgoing—departure).
“Here—in the ‘beinglessness’ and in the ‘beingless’—lies a challenge [eine Zumutung]
in the face o f which no metaphysics finds a way" ( ga 70:121).
32 “The beingless ‘is’ the prior-inceptive and the post-inceptive and this not insofar as it
has the character of inception but insofar as it only ‘becomes’ a being in the inception
and ceases to be [entwird] in the downgoing.... Yet only here the innermost nihiliation
[Nichtung] of being itself is revealed, that in itself it is not only concealment and refusal
but the disappropriation in the manner of downgoing [untergdnglich die Enteignung]’’
( ga 70:122).
RESEARCH IN PH EN O M E N O LO G Y 45 (2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2
which— said transitionally— continue, are neither nothingness nor not

nothingness, ( g a 70:51)
Heidegger qualifies the last downgoing of his thought as a transitional iiberlas-

sen, which has the sense of letting something alone. In Heidegger’s context,
we may think of it as a letting go that leaves beings to machination where
beings are non-beings (which is not the beingless but very much related to
it). This is, as I already pointed out, a new move in Heidegger’s thinking. In
Das Ereignis ( g a 71) Heidegger articulates this move as a letting-pass-by, ein
Vorbeigehen, namely, “the passing each other by of [on the one hand] the aban
donment of beings by being and [on the other hand] the twisting free of beyng
[■Seynsverwinching] into the beginning” ( g a 71:84; e , 71).
At the same time that Heidegger lets go of machinational beings, he thinks
his most extreme thought of the beingless. This most inceptive moment in
Heidegger’s inceptual thinking marks a time outside of time, a suspension of
history in an in-between. As I just mentioned, there is an intrinsic connec
tion between the letting be of abandonment and the beingless. Heidegger
writes that in the abandonment of beings by being, the beinglessness of
beings is prepared and with it, the possibility of the other beginning ( g a 71:
103; e , 87). The notion of the passing by intrinsically relates to the beingless
and to a new conceptual pair that Heidegger works with: Entwindung and
Verwindung. Rojecwicz translates Entwindung with “disentanglement”; I will
translate it with “twisting out” in order to keep a cognate with “twisting free,”
i.e., Verwindung.
When Heidegger’s thinking departs into the abyss of inception, he thinks
the event as inception (Anfang) in-between the first and the other beginning.
In the departure into the abyss, thinking twists free from metaphysics by twist
ing into its hidden essential occurrence, i.e., the event, which he now calls, in
its most inceptive occurrence, the “Kranz der Kehre” the “wreath of the turn
ing” ( g a 71:50; e , 40). Twisting free is, says Heidegger,
the twisting up into the winding (the wreath) of the event, such that
beyng and its turning purely and essentially occur in the event. Thereby
the twisting free is a circulating in the event, wherein a constancy pre
vails which is itself determined out of the event. Thus within the event
beyng is ultimately sheltered and also concealed; twisted free from but
not “sublated”. ( g a 71:141; e , 121)
From here, from the abyss of the inceptual event, Heidegger thinks the
inception or beginning of metaphysics as a “twisting out” (Entwindung), the
22 VALLEGA-NEU
not-yet-experienced turning in the first beginning.33 Twisting out is a

Loslassung, a letting go, of being into truthlessness.34 It is a twisting out of
the event such that beings are let go to themselves and the truth of beyng
remains concealed.
The twisting out and unleashing of beings is experienced and becomes vis
ible only in the twisting free of beyng as thinking goes under into the incep-
tual dimension of the event. Thinking thus occurs inceptively in between the
first and other beginning where first and other beginning are the same.35 This
being in-between the beginnings, suspended as it were, in a time in-between
(should we say an a-historical time?) has a distinctly different character than
the withstanding of the withdrawal that marked the thinking of Contributions.
The beginnings pass by each other: The beginning of metaphysics passes by in
its ending or demise (this is how Rojcewicz translates “Verendung") whereas
the other beginning passes by as transition:
The demise and the transition pass each other by; according to the law
of the releasing [Loslassung] of being into its extreme distorted essence
(i.e., into the will to willing), beyng lets the distorted essence go on. Beyng
overcomes the dominance of the distorted essence not by “engaging”with
it and overpowering it but, rather, by releasing the distorted essence into
its demise__ But his releasing is nothing “negative"; instead, it belongs to
the dispropriation characteristic of all metaphysics since the start. And
this dispropriation is proper to the event. (ga 71: 84, e,7of.)
Dispropriation [Enteignung] has a double ring to it: it is dispropriation lead

ing to the abandonment of beings by being, but it is also dispropriation as the
proper and most inceptual moment of the event. Heidegger begins to think
the beingless and beinglessness as he lets go of metaphysics in the departure
into the abyss; as he lets dispropriation happen or rather releases his think
ing into dispropriation. This means letting machinationally determined beings
go “into the fanaticism of [their] distorted essence.”
The word “fanaticism” sounds very much like an allusion to what happens
very concretely as Heidegger is writing this in 1941/42. All this he lets go of as
33 “The twisting out is the essence of emergence and of unconcealedness as disconceal-

m e n t” (Section 180 of g a 71:137 and of E, 117)
34 See beginning of section 164 of ga 71.
35 See section 39 of ga 71:28 and fi, 21.
H E I D E G G E R ’S R E TI CE NCE 23
he goes down into the abyssal occurrence of the event in the attempt to think
“beyond ground” the groundless inception.36
When Heidegger’s thinking moves beyond the limits of representation, as
it does in The Event, he thinks without images. There is no image for the being
less or for dispropriation. We should remind ourselves that what guides his
thinking is not a Gegenstand, an object standing against our perceptual experi
ence or the mind’s eye, which would provide a hold and directive for thinking;
there is nothing there that we could describe and think about. What he per
ceives in his surrounding world permeated by war is rather that of which he
lets go. What is it that gives directive to his thinking, then? It is an attunement
or a disposition (Stimmung). A main attunement guiding Heidegger’s thinking
in The Event is der Schmerz, pain.
5 Inceptive Dispositions
Pain is only one of the words marking the attunement of Heidegger’s thinking
in The Event. It is the most prominent one and in some sense takes the place of
restraint in Contributions. Just as in Contributions Heidegger spoke of restraint
as the middle of shock and diffidence, in The Event he speaks of pain as the
originary unity of Schrecken and Wonne, i.e., of horror and delight.37 There are
many other words that express dispositions. I will focus on pain first.
Pain gathers the horror of the abyss and the delight of departure.38 It char
acterizes the in-between of twisting out (or disentanglement) and twisting
free in the letting go of metaphysics in the departure into the abyss. Horror
relates to the twisting out that leads to the abandonment of beings by being
that makes possible the experience of the abyss that discloses the event as
originary dispropriation. While it is understandable that the experience of the
abandonment of beings by being and a sense of groundlessness come with
horror, the delight of which Heidegger speaks is more difficult to approach. It
relates to the twisting free into the event that is experienced as dispropriation
in the passing by of the two beginnings. How would that be delightful? Maybe
delight marks the moment of release, the letting go. Maybe it also relates to the
36 See GA 71:132; E, 112 and ga 71:237; e , 204.

37 Rojcewicz translates Wonne with “bliss,” which has a more religious connotation. He may
be right to emphasize this, but the German word Wonne has a “physical” connotation not
so prevalent in “bliss.”
38 ga 71:68,211; e , 55,181.
24 VALLEGA-NEU
intimation of a fuller sense of being in the light of utter loss. It would be, then,
a tragic pleasure.
Pain, which gathers horror and delight, is a disposition of being that occurs
in the differencing of being and beings in departure:
We must learn the enduring of the difference in the departure. In this

enduring, the pure essential occurrence of the difference is experienced
out of the departure, and this essential occurrence no longer needs
beings. (GA 71:132; E, 112)
Enduring, austragen, literally means “carrying out” and takes the place of
“withstanding,” ausstehen (literally translated “standing out”), which is more
characteristic of Heidegger’s thinking in Contributions (although we do find
Heidegger speaking of withstanding also in The Event). Enduring or carrying
out is what Heidegger emphasizes when he speaks of the experience of think
ing the event as inception and also when he speaks of pain, the pain of endur
ing the differencing in the departure into the abyss.39 Enduring is not so much
a resisting but a following:
Enduring? [Austragt] is submissiveness to [Folgsamkeit literally means

the disposition to follow] the twisting free of beyng toward departure.
What and who submits [or follows]? Thinking, as an enduring that
speaks. (g a 71:247; E, 213)
As the machinery of war unfolds and destruction waves over Europe,

Heidegger’s thinking follows the departure into the abyss. In this departure
there lies a delight, and I indicated above that we might understand this as a
tragic pleasure, perhaps a fuller sense of being in the face death. We do find
indeed this relation to death in The Event when Heidegger meditates on the
relation between the event and human being. Just as in Being and Time, in sec
tion 202 he speaks of death as “the extreme possibility of the relation to being."
He then continues: “What is death? The departure-like abyss with respect to
the beginning [Abschiedlich der Ab-grund zum Anfang]” (g a 71: 193, E, 165).
I would like to retranslate this fragmentary sentence the following way: “in
the manner of departure [death is] the abyss toward the beginning.” Death
is departure from beings and this departure is the fulfillment of the relation
39 See sections 256-259 of GA 71, which are gathered under the heading X.A. “The enduring
of the difference (distinction) / Experience as the pain ‘of’ the departure.”
to beyng: “Death is the going out into the pure nearness of beyng” ( g a 71:194,
E, 166).
There was death all around Heidegger in 1941. Safranski cites from a letter
Heidegger wrote to the mother of a former student of his who was killed in
action September 26,1941: “For us who are left behind it is a difficult step to the
knowledge that every one of the many young Germans who are today sacrific
ing their lives with a still genuine spirit and reverential heart may be experi
encing the most beautiful fate.”40 The connection to section 202 of The Event
is not hard to make.41
How should we understand the relation between Heidegger’s thinking in
The Event and the times in which he writes? Did the war influence his thinking
in a way that led him to withdraw more and more into the abyssal dimension
of being such that he somehow fled from concrete political engagement? (This
path down, however, had already begun earlier. One could argue that it was
predisposed already in Being and Time. ) 42 Or did the proximity of death allow
Heidegger to think the essence of being more deeply and to finally let go of his
resistance toward what happened? Or was he interpreting actual events from
the vantage point of his thinking that carried a certain blindness toward what
was actually happening, as so many interpreters of Heidegger are led to think?
Is all this, furthermore, permeated by an aftermath of Heidegger’s failure to
pull through with his private National Socialism; is it a repercussion of his own
sense of powerlessness to change the behavior of the Germans, to let them see
their true destiny?
These questions let show the difficulty I have to dissociate the pain, of
which Heidegger writes, from his life and the historical situation in Germany
in 1941, even if Heidegger does not want this pain to be misunderstood anthro
pologically and even if I do not want to fall into the all too trodden footsteps
of those who like to blame Heidegger for his political actions and reduce his
40 R. Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. Ewald Osers, 4th ed.
(Cambridge, m a : Harvard University Press, 2002), 328.
41 See also the following remark: “Death is the consummation of the steadfastness in
Da-sein; death is sacrifice” (ga 71:193; E, 165).
42 Notes from Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte are quite explicit about the fact that in 1931 (prior
to his infamous Rectorship) Heidegger rejects appeals to the situation (Situation) (Martin
Heidegger, Uberlegungen u - v i (Schwarze Hefte 1931-1938), ed. Peter Trawny, vol. 94 of
Gesamtausgabe [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2014] 7b) and emphasizes
“alone-ness” (Allein-heit) and bearing silence. This is the time that he intimates the neces
sity of a more radical leap (he speaks of Loswurfand Sichloswetfen, of “leaping off” [ga 94:
77-80]) into the beginning. A decisive date for Heidegger is March 1932, since it marks for
him a break from his previous path (see ga 94: ig).
RE SEARCH IN P H E N O M E N O L O G Y 45 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2
26 VALLE GA-NEU
thinking to his documented life. I want to make, here, an appeal to caution,

since I am putting my finger on a wound and woundedness that immediately
incites emotive responses or visceral rejection that can easily glide into moral
righteousness. This would mark the end of thinking. I want neither to defend
nor to attack Heidegger, neither to purify his thinking from contaminations
of historical and psychological considerations nor to reduce his thinking to
them. Instead, I would like to sustain, in the encounter with what he writes, a
pain and question-worthiness that are different from Heidegger’s (but perhaps
not unrelated) and that have to do with sustaining and questioning concrete
historical events determining also our own lineages and histories.
Not relating what Heidegger writes to his life becomes even more dif
ficult when I encounter these other words that occur more and more often
in his meditations. The words I have in mind have to do with courage, nobil
ity, dignity, poverty, and thankfulness, words that recur in the Country Path
Conversations where we find the move to releasement even more intensified
and transformed into a dialogical form of writing. I will take this as an occasion
to transition to Heidegger’s Country Path Conversations in order to compare
some words or concepts in The Event and the first of the Conversations.
To think the event requires attunements or dispositions and that one follow
what gives itself to thought in attunements. The origin of attunement is at the
same time the origin of language such that the spoken or written word arises
out of what Heidegger thinks as the silent word or the silent voice of beyng.
See, for instance, section 314 of The Event
The word is the origin of language__

What is the word? The soundless voice of beyng.
What is called voice [Stimme] here? Not “sound” but, instead, disposing
[.Stimmen], i.e., to let experience. How so?
Disposing toward the experience of the beginning (the beginning itself
cannot be experienced).
Disposing through determining [Be-stimmen\.
Determining through thinking of the voice of the word of the beginning.
Thinking—through the imageless saying of the beginning.
Saying through the experience of the (event). (ga 71:283; e,246)
What Heidegger is after in The Event is nothing but a saying of the event as
inception occurring in departure as his thinking descends into the abyss, let
ting beings go into their demise. In section 242 titled “Stimmung,”“Disposition,”
he writes
Disposition is the steadfast hearkening [innestehend.es Horen auf ]— (to

reply) to the voice of the dignity of beyng, a voice that disposes into the
pain of the question-worthiness of beyng. (g a 71:219; E, 188)
“The disposition of thinking is the voice of beyng,”43 and the attempt is to let
that disposition resonate in the thinking word. Words like Langmut, Grossmut,
Scheu, i.e. forbearance, magnanimity, and diffidence, and words like Adel, das
Edle, Armut, Mut, Wilrde, and Danken, i.e., nobility, the noble, poverty, courage,
dignity, and thanking— among others—these words bear affective dimensions
and determine the way Heidegger’s words resonate for the reader. They are not
so much words about attunement as they are attuning words. They do or can
possibly do what Heidegger attempts to do, namely, not to speak about being
or about disposition but to dispose. He says this in section 314, and it sounds
like a reminder for himself: “Disposing— instead of talking ‘about’ dispositions”
( g a 71:284, E, 247).
Another way Heidegger’s language carries attuning or disposing qualities is
through repetitive sound-iterations such that in these iterations words gain a
certain constancy. These iterations derive from the twisting free into the event,
and as Heidegger writes, “the twisting free is a circulating in the event, wherein
a constancy prevails which is itself determined out of the event” (g a 71:141;
E, 121). The constancy determined out of the event occurs through the repeti
tive thinking and saying that lets itself be attuned by the event and the silent,
abyssal voice of beyng. One needs to read the German text in order to get a full
sense of how Heidegger is thinking through word/sound iterations. See, for
instance, the beginning of section 314 quoted above in English:
314. Das Wort (die Sage)— das Stimmen__ Was ist das Wort? Die laut-
lose Stimme des Seyns. Was heiftt hier Stimme? Nicht ‘Laut’, sondern das
Stimmen, d.h. Er-fahren lasen. Wie dies?
Stimmen in die Erfahrung des Anfangs (der selbst unerfahrbar).
Stimmen durch Be-stimmen.
Bestimmen durch Denken der Stimme des Wortes des Anfangs.
Denken durch bildloses Sagen des Anfangs. ( g a 71:283; E, 246)
Heidegger continues to develop this move toward a disposing language to the

very end of his life and the intensified play with semantic roots that we find as
well in his later writings begins to surge precisely in Das Ereignis. One more
volume of Heidegger’s poietic writings has yet to appear, namely, Stege des
43 This is the title of section 243 of The Event.
28 VALLEGA-NEU
Anfangs (“Footbridges/docks of the inception”), written in 1944, shortly before

the Country Path Conversations, and one can only surmise that there Heidegger
is developing even more his poietic language and his move to Gelassenheit,
which is less a questioning and more a mode of thinking in “obedience” to what
disposes thinking. This is striking, since from Being and Time to Contributions
(up to the end of the ’30s), Heidegger has always emphasized questioning. In
The Event he begins to put questioning into question, given that thinking is
now more a disposed following, but he still keeps a sense of inceptive ques
tioning active.44 In the first country path conversation, he has made a clearer
decision: Proper thinking does not consist in questioning but in responding 45
There are many places in The Event where Heidegger speaks of obedience
either in the sense of Gehorsam (a word that has horen in it) or Folgsamkeit
(which relates to following).46 It is in this context that the words Langmut and
Grossmut (forbearance and magnanimity) appear. Langmut literally means
“long courage” or “long mood” and has a sense of endurance and submissive
ness in it. Grossmut literally means “great courage” or “great mood” and has a
sense of power in it. The two words are thus cognates, in one way, and opposed
to each other, in another way. They relate to the in-between of twisting out
and twisting free that are gathered in the pain of departure. In carrying out
the pain of departure, the thinking of The Event is obedient to the disposing
word. “Obedience as forbearance and magnanimity with respect to the incep-
tual pain,” writes Heidegger in a quasi-poem in section 69. Here he speaks of
Grofimut, magnanimity, with respect to the errancy of the abandonment of
beings by being. It thus relates to the letting go and letting pass by of machina-
tionally disclosed beings. Forbearance (“long mood”), on the other hand, quali
fies the character of inceptual thinking as a carrying out (Austragen) of the
departure in the in-between 47
In section 139 Heidegger relates forbearance (Langmut) to poverty (Armut)
and the graciousness of what is noble (die Anmut des Edten) .4 8 This web of
words reappears in sections 228-238 of The Event that address Instandigkeit
44 See The Event, sections 259, 262, 264. In section 259 Heidegger writes about the enduring
of the difference: “In this thinking, ‘questioning’ also is overcome.” And in the following
paragraph: “The enduring is, if speaking in this way is still possible, more o f a questioning
than any question, because the enduring belongs to the abyss and therefore does not stop
at a ground but goes back beyond it instead” ( g a 71:237; E, 204).
45 FG, 24b; CPC, 15.
46 Sections 69,139,173,246 of The Event.
47 g a 71:234; E, 202.
48 Rojecwicz translates Lang-mut (written with a hyphen) as “patience” and Armut as

“indigence.”
and Da-seyn. It also appears in the first country path conversation. Here the
scholar quotes what obviously is a thinking poem of Heidegger. The title of the
short thinking-poem is “Instdndigkeit,”which Bret Davis translates fittingly as
“indwelling.” The second half of the “poem” reads:
place the thinking heart

in the simple forbearance
of the single magnanimity
of noble recollecting.
( ga 77 : 145 ; cpc, 94)
The conversation addresses the indwelling in releasement to the open-region.

This indwelling is a noble-mindedness, says the guide, and a little later we hear
that what is noble “abides in the provenance of its essence.” The indwelling
in the open-region (Gegnet) relates to the in-between Heidegger speaks of in
The Event, the in-between thinking endures in obedience to the attunement
disposing it. Here, in forbearance and magnanimity, indwelling in-between,
thinking becomes a thanking.49
These few indications should suffice to see how the thinking of releasement—
and by this I mean the disposition that guides Heidegger’s thinking— begins in
some way already in The Event, one could say that it begins already in Uber den
Anfang, although at a dispositional level. The Event carries out the releasement
more clearly at the performative level of Heidegger’s thinking. The thinking
of Gelassenheit begins once Heidegger lets go of the withstanding disposition
characterizing Contributions and lets the abandonment of beings by being
pass by in departure.
6 Being and Beings
How do being and beings relate, then, in the thinking of releasement?

In Uber den Anfang and in The Event, Heidegger thinks again their simulta
neity and their difference, and both more radically, one could argue, than in
Contributions. In the later volumes, Heidegger thinks the event as the coming
in-between of being into the beingless such that the beingless is, in a hard to
think way, older than being, in the same way that dispropriation now character
izes the most inceptive moment of the event of appropriation. Beinglessness
is lost in machinationally disclosed beings just as truth and the inceptive
49 See section 245 of g a 71:148, CPC, 97 and ga 77:100, CPC, 64.
RESEA RCH IN P H E N O M E N O L O G Y 4 5 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2
30 VALLEGA-NEU
dispropriation get covered over. Beinglessness thus is something that needs

to be preserved if the event is to occur inceptively. This is what the thinking
in releasement allows to happen. In beinglessness, beings rise more fully into
being, Heidegger would say. When thinking departs into the groundlessness of
dispropriation, when thinking lets itself be attuned by the soundless voice of
concealed being and becomes a receiving thanking, then, for Heidegger, beings
are released into their essence.
Besides Heidegger’s own words, we do not find any examples of beings that
are released into their essence in The Event, but we do in the Country Path
Conversations where Heidegger begins to speak not just of beings, das Seiende,
but of things, Dinge. He also speaks of the woods, the field, and of night and
day, of earth and sky. This is the beginning of what often is called Heidegger’s
topological thinking. I like to call it as well a cosmological thinking. For many
readers of Heidegger, this is where Heidegger’s thinking becomes more con
crete. The word “concrete” comes from the Latin concrescere, “grow together.”
It brings to mind in some way the word Versammlung, “gathering.”50 In this
sense, Heidegger would have happily embraced the term “concrete.” But his
thinking certainly does not become concrete in the more common sense of
the term, since he does not speak of what we think of as real and solid things,
of things insofar as they resist our flesh or can be measured.
Consider for instance the jug of which the interlocutors of the first country
path conversation speak. The task in thinking the jug is not to represent it as an
object but to let it be what it is. Eventually, we find the thought that the essence
of the jug lies not in its so-called materiality but in its emptiness.51 In relation
to this emptiness, the interlocutors develop further relational determinations
of the jug. The emptiness is emptiness of the drink so that the containing qual
ity of the jug (das Fassende des Krugs) abides in the drink. The drink is further
developed in relation to what is drunk, i.e., the wine that gathers earth and sky,
and the one who drinks, the human.52Thus the emptiness of the jug is brought
to abide in this expanse of earth and sky and the relation to the human as well.
It is then that the jug is itself, the interlocutors conclude ( g a 77: i34fi; c p c , 87).
The scholar says: “The jug abides in itself in that it turns back to itself over and
through this expanse" ( g a 77:135; c p c , 88). This expanse is then identified with
the open-region, the Gegnet, which is the essential occurrence of truth. The
50 In the early use of the word concrete, it came to mean the descriptive quality of a sub
stance, e.g., white, as distinct from a quality per se, e.g., whiteness. Then it came to mean
something “existing in a physical form” {New Oxford American Dictionary, s.v. “concrete”).
51 g a 77:130, CPC, 84.
52 g a 77:134E, CPC, 87.
H E I D E G G E R ’S R E TICE N CE 31
relation of the drink to the human, furthermore, brings into play the festival
that also brings the human to abide. (Not explicitly named, but surmised, in
this context, is the relation to the divine.) In the open-region that emerges from
the emptiness of the jug, earth and sky and humans (and the divine) come to
abide in the festival. What is developed here is the thought of a being, a jug,
in the context of a relation to being where thinking is released into a relation
to the open-region such that this releasement is vergegnet, “enregioned.” With
recourse to the language of Contributions and The Event, we may rethink this
by saying that thinking is appropriated into belonging to the event of appropri
ation in which the truth of beyng occurs such that being comes in-between the
beingless, and beings (in this case the jug) become more being (wird seiender).
In my reading of Heidegger’s approach to the jug, the emptiness of the jug
mirrors and in the mirroring carries with it, so to speak, the beingless that is
preserved insofar as the open-region or the openness of truth is such only in
relation to the emptiness, i.e., the beingless that in turn reflects the dispropria-
tion as which the event inceptively occurs.
The jug has become more being through the thinking of its emptiness. This
is how thinking lets this thing rest in its being. Clearly such an approach to
things no longer looks at them as manipulable objects. But does it let beings
be what they are? Does it think them in their singularity? Or, rather, is not the
singularity— the Einzigkeit of being that Heidegger attempts to evoke— the
singularity of a moment of contemplation that has left the singularity of things
behind? Is Heidegger opening up for us the possibility of a deeper or more
essential relation to things or is he missing the relation to things as he lets pass
by machinationally determined beings?
For Heidegger, the experience of the emptiness or groundlessness that
comes with the experience of the abandonment of beings makes possible, if
we let ourselves be guided into it, a most inceptive, most essential sense of
being. The proximity to this being resonates through the distance that is the
distance of the beingless, of dispropriation, to which thinking has to continu
ously give itself. The war may have sharpened Heidegger’s sensibility for this
proximity of what is most distant and ungraspable; his disillusionment with
regards to National Socialism may have played a role too in letting himself
embark into the departure from the world of machination and to intimate a
fuller sense of being.
How is this relevant for us? Why does Heidegger’s thought capture us or
repel us or stir us (provided it does so)? We are still in times of war, although
the proximity of these wars is for most of us so distant that we hardly feel
them. Machination largely determines our relation to an ever more exploited
and endangered environment; it determines in many ways university life and
32 VALLEGA-NEU
daily affairs. The desert of which Nietzsche speaks continues to grow. In all
this Heidegger thinks a saving power, a saving power maybe not for all people,
maybe not even for one people, but for the few who become followers of the
silent call of beyng.
Let me end with words Heidegger takes from Holderlin’s hymn Patmos,
words to which I will add a twist such that the two phrases together may
express the ambiguity or unrest in which my engagement with Heidegger in
his poietic writings takes me.
“Wo aber Gefahr ist, wachst dasRettende auch.”

Und wo das Rettende ist, da wachst auch die Gefahr.
(“Where there is danger, there rescue grows too.”

And where there is rescue, there danger also grows.)
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RESEARCH IN P H E N O M E N O L O G Y 45 ( 2 0 1 5 ) 1 - 3 2 Research

Heidegger’s Reticence: From Contributions

Heidegger - event - Contributions to Philosophy - inception - ontological difference -

4 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonos, line 1880.

A striking change occurs in Heidegger’s thinking from Contributions to

1 The Difference of Beyng and Beings in Contributions to Philosophy

Contributions to Philosophy and the volumes following it are an attempt at

The task for Heidegger in Contributions is to ground Da-sein, which is the

thinking and in “what” he thinks. Reflecting on how attunement works in

[B]ecause in this shock it is precisely the self-concealing of beyng that

To restraint belongs Scheu, “diffidence,” not in the sense of shyness or a lack

RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 45 ( 2015 ) 1 -3 2

2 Three Possibilities of History (Besinnung)

In 1933 Heidegger believed there to be an opening toward a transformation

Heidegger speaks of these possibilities in a section titled “Gods. The Essential

RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 45 (2015) 1-32

Heidegger’s own standards, he slips back into metaphysical or representa­

The necessity of philosophy as meditation consists in the fact that it must

Da-sein: withstanding the openness of self-concealing, (ga 65:301; c, 238)

Da-sein is humanly endured and sustained in the steadfastness that with­

The steadfast withstanding of the abyssal “there” of being-there (Da-sein) at

decision regarding the possibility of history. Heidegger’s thinking in Besinnung

25 See “A Retrospective Look at the Pathway (1937/8)” (ga 66:427; M , 377).

Anfang, however, the volume immediately preceding The Event, Heidegger

3 Departure, Abyss, and Inception in Tiber den Anfang

In-ception is the taking on-to-itself of the departure into the abyss.

RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY 45 (2015) 1-32

In-ception is inceptively and this means in an abyssal way the appro­

The inceptive appropriating event clears an openness, with which Heidegger

In Contributions the relation between the event as the occurrence of truth of

A being remains so decisively differentiated [unterschieden] against,

We need to distinguish, then, the not-being-of-beings, on the one hand, in

4 The Last Downgoing: The Beingless, Inceptive Dis-propriation

30 See section 98 of ga 70:121.

This [the last downgoing] determines an inceptive time in-between

which— said transitionally— continue, are neither nothingness nor not

Heidegger qualifies the last downgoing of his thought as a transitional iiberlas-

not-yet-experienced turning in the first beginning.33 Twisting out is a

Dispropriation [Enteignung] has a double ring to it: it is dispropriation lead­

33 “The twisting out is the essence of emergence and of unconcealedness as disconceal-

36 See GA 71:132; E, 112 and ga 71:237; e , 204.

We must learn the enduring of the difference in the departure. In this

Enduring? [Austragt] is submissiveness to [Folgsamkeit literally means

As the machinery of war unfolds and destruction waves over Europe,

thinking to his documented life. I want to make, here, an appeal to caution,

The word is the origin of language__

Disposition is the steadfast hearkening [innestehend.es Horen auf ]— (to

Heidegger continues to develop this move toward a disposing language to the

43 This is the title of section 243 of The Event.

Anfangs (“Footbridges/docks of the inception”), written in 1944, shortly before

48 Rojecwicz translates Lang-mut (written with a hyphen) as “patience” and Armut as

place the thinking heart

The conversation addresses the indwelling in releasement to the open-region.

6 Being and Beings

How do being and beings relate, then, in the thinking of releasement?

49 See section 245 of g a 71:148, CPC, 97 and ga 77:100, CPC, 64.

dispropriation get covered over. Beinglessness thus is something that needs

52 g a 77:134E, CPC, 87.

“Wo aber Gefahr ist, wachst dasRettende auch.”

(“Where there is danger, there rescue grows too.”

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Heidegger’s own standards, he slips back into metaphysical or representa

Da-sein is humanly endured and sustained in the steadfastness that with

In-ception is inceptively and this means in an abyssal way the appro

Dispropriation [Enteignung] has a double ring to it: it is dispropriation lead