Martin Heidegger - Zeit und Sein (Vortrag aus dem Jahr 1962)

[Applause]

Ladies and

gentlemen, the following

lecture requires a brief

preface. If we were now

shown two original paintings by Paul Klee, created in the year of his death:

the watercolor "Holy

from His Window" and "

Death and

Fire," then we would like to linger before them for a long time

and

relinquish any claim to immediate comprehensibility. If

the poet Georg Trakel himself were to recite

his poem "Seven Songs of Death" to us now,

then we would like to hear it often and

relinquish any claim to immediate comprehensibility. If Werner Heisenberg were now to present us with

an excerpt of his

theoretical-physical thoughts on the

path to the

world formula he sought,

then perhaps, at most,

two or three of the listeners might

follow him. The rest of us, however, can relinquish

any claim to

immediate

comprehensibility without argument.

Not so with regard to the thinking that is

called philosophy, for it is supposed to

offer world wisdom,

if not even a guide to a

blessed

life. Now, however, such thinking might

today be placed in a situation that

demands reflection far removed

from any useful wisdom for life. A kind of

thinking might have become necessary

that should Considerations arise

from which even the aforementioned painting and

poetry and the

mathematical-physical theory derive their

purpose.

We would then also have to relinquish the

claim to immediate

comprehensibility here.

We must

listen carefully because it is necessary

to

think about the unavoidable but provisional. Therefore, it should neither surprise

nor

astonish if most of the listeners are

put off by the lecture. Whether some will be led to further reflection by the

lecture now or later

cannot be determined. It is

important

to say something about the attempt that thinks of being without

regard to a justification of being from

beings.

The attempt

to think of being without beings becomes

necessary because otherwise, as it seems to me, there is no longer any

possibility of

bringing the being of what exists today around the globe into focus, let alone of adequately determining the relationship

of man to what has hitherto meant being.

A small hint for listening is

given: it is

not a matter of listening to a series of statements

but of following the course of the demonstration.

Time and

being—what gives cause to call time and being

together? Being has

meant the same thing since the beginning of

Western European thought until

today. As presence

speaks, so does being, which, according to

common understanding, forms

the characteristic of time along with past and future. Being is

determined by time; that it is so could already be

enough to bring about a

constant unease in thought.

This unease increases

as soon as we set out to

consider to what extent this

determination of being by time exists, to what extent it asks

why, in what

way, and from where. Being speaks in the

same way as

time. Every attempt to adequately think about the relationship between being

and time with the help of common

and approximate ideas of time

and being

soon becomes entangled in an

inextricable web of barely

considered

relationships. We call time when we

say everything has its time. This

means everything that exists at any given time. Every

being comes and goes at the right time

and stays for a time during

its allotted time. Every thing has

its time. But is being a thing? Is

being like a respective

being in time? Is being at

all? If it were to exist, then we would

inevitably have to consider it as something that exists. to

recognize and consequently find among the

rest of being as such,

this lecture hall is, the lecture hall

is illuminated, the illuminated lecture hall

we will recognize without hesitation as something that exists,

but where in the whole lecture hall do we find that, it is

nowhere among things, we find

that

being, every thing has its time, to be but

is not a thing, is not in time, nevertheless being

remains as presence,

presence through time,

determined by the temporal, that which is in time and whose

form is determined by time is

called the temporal.

We say, when a person

dies and is taken away from this here and

there, he has blessed

the temporal. The

temporal means the

transient, that which passes in the course of

time.

Our language says this even more precisely, that which

passes with time, for time itself

passes, but in that time constantly

passes, it remains as

time. To remain does not mean to disappear, so

presence, thus time is determined by a being,

how then should being remain determined by time? Being

is not a thing, nevertheless

nothing temporal, therefore nothing

temporal is determined in the nevertheless as

presence by time.

Time is not A

thing, therefore, is nothing that exists, but

in its passing away, it constantly remains without itself being

something temporal, like being in time. Being

and time determine each other

reciprocally, however, so that the former, being, can be

addressed neither as temporal nor the latter, time, as being. Considering

all this,

we drift about in

contradictory statements

[music].

But how should we

properly engage with the matter mentioned by the titles Being and Time, Time, and its state of affairs? The

answer is that we

carefully consider the things mentioned here. Carefully,

this means

not rushing things with

unexamined ideas, but rather pondering them carefully.

But may we be, may

we consider time as things?

They are not things. If "

thing" means something that

exists, the word "thing" should

now mean to us what it is about in

a decisive sense,

insofar as something

incomprehensible is concealed in it. Being is

presumably the thing

of

thinking. Time is presumably the

thing of thinking. If otherwise, in being,

as presence, such as time

speaks. Being and Time,

Time and Being call the relationship of

both things, the state of affairs of both

things. To hold together and to endure their

relationship, to ponder

this state of

affairs is the task of thought, provided

that it

remains inclined to wrestle with its matter. To be

a thing but nothing that exists;

time, a thing but nothing

temporal of being, we say it is.

In relation to the thing, to be,

and to the thing of

time, we remain cautious; we do

not say being is time is, but rather there is being

and there is

time. Initially, through this

turn of phrase, we have only changed the usage;

instead of "it is," we say "it exists." In order to

return to the matter via linguistic expression, we must

demonstrate what this "it exists"

says. We arrive at the matter by

discussing what being says, that there is,

by discussing what time says, which there is.

Accordingly, we try to

anticipate that it exists, that being and time exist.

Thus,

looking ahead, we become

cautious in another sense as well; we try to

bring the "it" and "being" into view and

capitalize that "it."

We first think about being in order to

think it into its own; we

think about time in order to

think it into its own. Finally,

we see to what state of affairs in the

relationship of both things, in the insight

through them, is revealed. insofar as

every being

is marked as such, its presence signifies

specifically conceived presence,

namely, present.

Now, we think of the being thus

conceived, no longer merely in its

relation to

being. If we conceive of presence, let it be more truly present

from itself, then

it tells us that

letting presence is thereby

determined in its own way by

bringing it into the unconcealed, into being, letting it be means to unconceal. In unconcealing, a giving

plays a role, namely, that which is in

presence, letting presence, that is,

being, gives. However,

for us, giving remains just as

obscure as the "it" mentioned here, that which

gives. Being itself requires thinking its own way of being. To disregard being,

as in all metaphysics, is only understood

and interpreted from being and for being as its ground. To

disregard that being its own way

requires letting go of being as the ground of being in

favor of the

giving that plays in the unconcealed, that is, of "

it is," being

belongs as the gift. This "it is"

into giving. The gift is not given away but

transformed, namely,

as unconcealing. In giving,

being retained is not being. There is,

as the unconcealing of

presence, that there is being. It could become

considerably clearer as soon as we To give more

decisive thought to what is meant here,

and this is achieved by paying attention to the

richness of transformation of what is

indeterminately called being, which is

simultaneously misunderstood in its very essence

as long as it is considered the most fundamental of

all concepts.

An attempt to reflect on the transformative fullness of being gains its

first

and at the same time groundbreaking support by

thinking of being as presence. But where do we get the

right to characterize being as presence?

The question comes too late, for this

characterization of being has long since been decided without

our involvement or even merit.

Accordingly, we are bound to the

characterization of being as presence.

It derives its binding force

from the beginning of the unveiling of being

as something sayable, that is,

conceivable. Since the beginning of

Western thought among the Greeks,

all saying is based on being and is

in remembrance of the determination of being

as

presence that binds thought. This also applies to the most

modern technology and industry-leading

thinking, albeit only to a certain extent.

After modern technology has established its

spread and dominance over the

entire earth, it is

not only the Sputniks and their

offshoots around our planet, but

being as a presence in the sense of a

calculable

entity, addresses

all inhabitants of Earth in a uniform way, without the

inhabitants of the European continents being

specifically aware of it or even of the

origin of this determination of being.

Knowledge, ability, and knowledge

may be perceived as being,

but by no means only and only in remembrance of

the early

representation of the unveiling of

being accomplished by Greece. We perceive the presence of every

simple, sufficiently unprejudiced

reflection on the presence and

readiness-to-hand of

being. Readiness-to-hand as well as

presence

are modes of being.

The

far-reaching nature of being reveals itself to us most compellingly when we

consider that even and especially

absence remains determined by a presence

heightened to the uncanny.

However, we can

also historically ascertain the transformative nature of being

by pointing out that being reveals itself

early on as the unifying, the unique, the

Logos, the all-preserving

assembly,

as the idea Usia energa

substania akualitas perception. mon as

objectivity, as the positing of self-

positing in the sense of the will of reason, of love, of the

spirit, of power,

as will to will to will in the

eternal recurrence of the

same, the historically

ascertainable can be found within

history.

The unfolding of the

transformative fullness of being initially looks

like a history of being,

but being has no history in the way

a city or a people has its

history. The historical nature of the

history of being is

evidently determined by this and only by how being

happens. This means, according to what has been

presented so far, by the way in which being exists.

At the beginning of the unveiling of being, being is

indeed

conceived as an entity, but not that it exists.

Instead, Parmenedes says, "It is, for it is."

Before

1947, in the Letter on Humanism, it was

noted regarding the aforementioned saying of Parmenedes that "it is" is

still

unconsidered today. This remark is intended to

point out that we must not hastily ascribe to the aforementioned saying, "

It is, for it is,"

an obvious interpretation

that renders inaccessible what is conceived in it—

everything, for it, of which we say it. "

Be" is conceived as something that exists,

but "being" is not something that exists. Thus, the "

esti" emphasized in the saying of the Paramides cannot be conceived as

something that exists. The emphasized "esti"

literally translates as "it

is alone," but one hears from the "esti"

what the Greeks

already thought of in the emphasized "esti," and

what we can paraphrase as "it is

capable."

However, the meaning of this capacity remained

unthought then and later, just as unthought as the fact that it is

capable of being. Its capacity means yielding and

giving. Concealed in the "esti" is that there is.

At the beginning of Western

thought, being is conceived, but not

that there is as such. This

withdraws in favor of

the gift that exists, which gift will

henceforth be conceived and conceptualized exclusively as being, and

indeed in relation to being. A giving

that only gives its gift,

yet holds itself back

and

withdraws. We call such a giving "sending,"

according to the sense

of giving being, that there is, the skillful one, skillful in form,

every one of its

transformations, the historical, the

history of being, is determined. From

the fateful destiny of a

sending, not from an indeterminate

event, the history of being is called the

fate of being, in which destinies both

the sending and that which

sends it retain themselves with a

declaration and thus withhold themselves from thought. Retaining oneself

means, in

Greek,

epoch; hence the talk of epochs of the

fate of being. Epoch

here does not mean a

period of time in the event but the

fundamental characteristic of sending, the respective

retention of itself for the benefit of the

perceptibility of the gift, that is, of being, with

regard to the investigation of being.

The sequence of epochs in the

fate of being is neither accidental

nor can it be calculated as necessary;

nevertheless, the appropriate manifests itself

in fate, the proper in the belonging together

of

epochs. If Plato presents being as eidos

and as kinonia of ideas,

Aristotle as

inergeier, Hegel as

the absolute concept, and nche as will

to power, then these are not accidentally

presented teachings but words of

being as answers to an affirmation

that speaks in the self-concealing

sending,

in the "there is" being. Retained

in the eluding

destiny, being, with

its epochal abundance of change, remains

hidden from thought in the tradition of the

epochs of being's

destiny. Thought remains

bound even then, and especially then, when

it becomes a remembrance of how and from

where each being itself

receives its own determination,

namely from that which there is being. The

giving now showed itself as

sending, but how is it that it is to think

that being gives?

The introductory remark about the

juxtaposition of time and being indicated

that being, as presence, is

characterized in a not yet determined sense by a temporal character and thus by time.

Therefore, the assumption suggests itself

that being exists. Being, as

presence and letting be,

could be determined and found in

what is called in the title Being and Time, Time

and Being, Time.

We follow this assumption and

think of time

according to time. Time is known to us in the same way

through familiar ideas

as being, but also in the same way

unrecognized. As soon as we intend to

discuss the time-specific, while we were just reflecting on being, the

peculiarity of being, that to which it goes, has been shown. What

belongs and what it retains is

shown in "it exists" and its giving

as

sending. The peculiarity of being is

nothing like being. If

we think of being specifically,

then the thing itself leads us in a certain

way away from being, and we

think of fate as something that being gives as a gift.

Insofar as we take this into account,

we prepare ourselves for the fact

that even the peculiarity of time can

no longer be determined with the help of the familiar

characteristics of the usually

conceived time.

The juxtaposition of time and

being, however, does contain the

instruction to discuss

time in its

peculiarity with a view to what has been said about being. Being

means presence. Being means presence.

Presence. We read, for example, somewhere the announcement "

in the presence of numerous

guests

the festival was

celebrated." The sentence could also read "in the

presence or in the company of numerous

guests."

Present—hardly have we named it for itself—when

we already think of

past and future, the earlier and

the later, in contrast to the

now. Only the

present understood from the now is by no means the

same as the present in the sense of

the presence of the

guests. We never say, and cannot say, "in the

now

numerous guests the festival was

celebrated." However, we understand time to be

characterized from the perspective of the present. We

usually understand the present as the now, in contrast to the

no-longer-now of the past and the not-yet-now of

the future. But the

present also implies

presence. However, we are not

accustomed to defining the essence of time from the perspective of the present

in the sense of

presence. Rather,

time, the unity of present, past,

and future, is

conceived from the perspective of the now. Even Aristotle says

that which is present in time, that is, is

the respective

now. Past and future are a time,

something not

being, not absolutely nothing, but rather something present, in which

something is lacking. This lack is

called now by the no-longer and the not-yet. Seen in

this way, time appears as

the succession of the now, of which

each scarcely mentioned already

vanishes into the just now and is already

followed by the immediately. One can say of

time thus conceived: it has only one

dimension, which is known as succession in the

now-sequence. When one

measures and

calculates time, we have the calculated time. It

seems immediately tangible

before us when we take the clock, the time-measuring device,

look at the position of the hands, and determine that now it is

8:50

PM we say now and mean the time,

but nowhere on the clock that

tells us the time do we find the time

neither on the dial nor in the

movement. Likewise, we find the time

on modern technical

chronometers. The assertion is compelling: the more

technical, that is, in effect, the more

precise and productive the

chronometers, the less reason there is to even think about our

own concept of

time.

But where is time? Does it

even exist, and does it have a place?

Obviously, time is not

nothing. We therefore remain cautious and

say that time exists. We become even more

cautious and carefully examine

what presents itself to us as time by looking ahead

to its being in the sense of

presence.

Presence alone is so fundamentally different from the present in the

sense of now

that the present as

presence cannot in any way be determined from the

present as now.

Rather, the reverse seems

possible. If this were true, then the

present as presence, and everything that

belongs to such presence, would have to be

called actual time, even though it

directly bears no relation to the time usually

conceived as

succession. The predictable

consequence in itself

has, however, so far we have failed to

demonstrate more clearly what

presence means in the sense of being there;

through this, it will be

uniform as being present and being present,

that is to say, dispensed with

The question of presence determines what we think of when we say "presence." However, we would be too quick to reassure ourselves that this is merely duration, and duration is guided by our usual conception of time as a distance from one "now" to the next. The discourse on presence,

however, requires us to perceive it as "while," as in "enduring," as in "

lingering" and "

dwelling." Presence concerns us in the

present, that is, dwelling before us, us, the

human being. Who are we?

We remain cautious with the

answer, for it could be that what distinguishes human beings

as human beings is determined

precisely from what

we now have to consider: the human being, approached

by presence, who, from

such approach, is himself present in his own way to all that is present

and

absent; the human being standing in the

approach of presence,

but in such a way that he receives the presence that

exists as a gift

by perceiving what appears to him as

presence. If

human beings were not the

constant recipient of the gift from which

presence exists, if what is offered in the gift did not reach human beings,

then, in the absence of

this gift,

being would not only remain

hidden, nor only

closed off, but human beings would remain

excluded from the reach of what exists.

Man would not be

man. Now it seems as if, with our

reference to man, we have strayed from the path on which

we actually

want to reflect on our own time. In a certain way, this is true;

nevertheless, we are closer to the thing

called time, which is supposed to show itself specifically in the present

as presence,

than we think. Presence means

that which pertains to

man, reaches him, and is given to

him; dwelling.

But where does this reaching, this coming,

belong to the present as presence, insofar as presence exists?

Although man is always pertaining to the

presence of a respective being,

without paying particular attention to the

presence itself, just as

often—that is, always—absence

also concerns us,

so that many things are no longer present

in the way we know them from

presence in the sense of presence,

and

yet this no-longer-present thing also directly concerns us

in its absence,

namely according to the nature of what concerns

us.

This does not fall away like the merely

past from the former now; what was is

much more important, however, in its

own way in what was, does

justice to presence. But absence also concerns us in the

sense of what is not yet

present, according to the nature of presence

in the sense of...

The phrase "coming towards us"

has become a common expression, so

one hears it said that the future has already

begun, which is not the case because the future

never truly begins, insofar as

the absence of what is not yet

present always already concerns us in

some way. That is to say, presence is just as

immediate as what has been

in the future. In the

coming towards us, presence is granted. If

we pay even closer attention

to what has been

said, then we find in essence—be it what has

been or what is the future—a

mode of presence and

beginning that by

no means coincides with presence in the sense of the

immediate present.

Accordingly, it must be

noted that not every presence is

necessarily present.

In this, we find such presence,

namely, that which reaches us. Even

in the

present, presence is also

justified. How are we to determine this presence, which plays out in the present, in the past, in

the future? Does

this reach lie in the fact

that it

reaches us, or does it reach us because it is in

itself a reach?

However,

arriving as not yet present is sufficient

and at the same time no longer brings

present, the past, and conversely,

this reaches itself to the future. The reciprocal

relationship of both is sufficient and at the same time brings present. At the

same time, we say and thus

speak of the mutual reaching

of future, past. And

the present, that is, to assign a

temporal character to its own unity,

this approach is evidently not

appropriate, that we must call the now

demonstrated unity of realm, and

precisely this, time, for time itself

is not

temporal, just as it is not something that exists.

Therefore, we are forbidden

to say that future, past, and present are

simultaneously present.

Nevertheless, they belong together,

reaching out to one another. Their unifying element

can only be determined from their own,

from the fact that they reach out to one another.

But what do they reach out to one another?

Nothing other than themselves. Through this, what

we call the period becomes clearer.

With the word "time," however, we no longer mean

the succession of the present.

Accordingly, period

no longer signifies only the distance between two present

points of the calculated time, for we mean, for example, when

we determine that in the

period of 50 years this and that happened, we

call the open period that becomes clearer in the mutual reaching

of

arrival, past, and

present.

Only this openness, and only it, grants the

space we usually know its

possible expansion. The clearing mutual reaching

of future, past,

and present is itself

pre-spatial; only for this reason can it

grant space, that is,

give space to the usually understood

period. In terms of the measured

distance between two points in time, the

result of

time reckoning is that time,

conceived as a line and parameter, is

numerically measured according to one-dimensional time. The

dimension of

time thus conceived as succession of the present

is borrowed from the idea of

three-dimensional space prior to

and independent of all time reckoning.

However, the light of the mutually reaching

future, past, and

present rests in the very essence of actual

time.

Accordingly, it, and only it, possesses what

we easily

misinterpret as

dimension through measurement.

This rests in the

marked, illuminating reach, as

which arrival, past, this, that,

and the mutual interrelation of both, the

clearing of open

yielding. Thought from this threefold reach,

actual

time proves to be a

three-dimensional dimension. Let it be

repeated: here, it is not only

conceived as the domain of possible measurement

but as the illuminating reach of the realms,

which first permits the delimitation and representation of a domain of

measurement.

But from where is the unity of the three dimensions

of actual time determined, that is, its

three interplaying modes of

reaching from presence?

We have already heard both in the

arrival of the not-yet-present and

The past of what is no longer

present, and even in the present

itself, each plays a kind of

beginning and attachment, that is,

presence.

We must not assign this presence, conceived in this way, to any one of the three

dimensions of time, namely

not, as is obvious, to

the present. Rather, the

unity of the three dimensions rests in the

interplay of each for each. This interplay proves to be

the actual,

playing within its own time, thus reaching, as it were, as

the fourth

dimension. Not only as it were, but in essence,

actual time is

four-dimensional. What we, however, call

the fourth in the enumeration is, in essence, the

first, that is, the all-

determining reach. It brings about, in the

arrival in the past in the present, that

their respective own presence keeps them

illuminatingly separate and thus keeps them close to one another, from which

the three

dimensions remain approached.

Therefore, we call the first, initial, in the

literal sense,

beginning reach, in which the unity of

actual time rests, the approaching

proximity. But it approaches arrival,

past, present

by removing it, for it keeps the past

open by refusing its arrival

as present.

The approaching proximity keeps the

arrival of the future open by containing

the present in the coming.

The approaching proximity withholds the

character of refusal and

withholding; it holds in advance the

ways of reaching from past,

arrival, and present to one another

in

unity. Time is not; there is

time. The giving that it yields is determined

by the refusal, withholding

proximity. It grants the openness of the

period and awaits what has been,

what remains withheld in arrival.

We call this giving

that actual time gives, the

illuminating, concealing reaching. Insofar as

the reaching itself is given, the

giving of a giving is concealed in actual time.

But where is time and the

period,

however pressing the question may seem at first

glance, we may

no longer ask in such a way about a "where," about the

place of time, for

actual time itself,

the realm of its

threefold reaching determined by approaching proximity, is

the pre-spatial locality through which a

possible "where" first gives itself.

Indeed, since its

beginning, philosophy, whenever it has reflected on time, has

also asked where it belongs. In doing so, it has

primarily considered time as the

sequence of successive events.

In view, it was explained

that the measured time we

reckon with cannot exist without the

psyche, not without the animus, not without the

soul, without consciousness, without the

spirit. Time does not exist without

humankind. But what does this "not

without" mean? Is humankind the giver of time

or its

receiver? And if so, how does

humankind receive time? Is humankind

first and foremost human, only to finally receive

time at some point

and take up the relationship to it?

The real time is

its

threefold illumination of the richness, unifying

presence, present, past,

and future. Playful, playful

richness. This time has

already reached humankind as such in such a way that it can only

be human by standing within the

threefold richness and enduring the determining, refusing, withholding

proximity. Time is not a power of

humankind. Humankind is not a power of

time. There is no making here; there is

only giving in the sense of the

aforementioned, illuminating richness of the period.

But once the

mode of giving, in which time exists, is conceded,

demands the depicted

characterization. We still stand before

the enigmatic "

it" that we call in discourse. There is

time; there is

being.

The danger grows that By

naming E, we arbitrarily

posit an indeterminate power that is supposed to accomplish everything of being and

of time.

However, we escape

indeterminacy and avoid

arbitrariness as long as we adhere to the

determinations of giving that we

attempted to demonstrate, namely out of

caution regarding being as presence

and time as the realm of reaching the clearing of a

manifold

presence. The giving in "there is being"

revealed itself as sending and as the

destiny of presence in its

epochal transformation. The giving in "there is

time" revealed itself as a illuminating

reaching of the four-dimensional

realm. Insofar as something like

time manifests itself in being as presence,

the already

mentioned assumption is reinforced: the actual

time, the fourfold reaching of the open, could be found to be that being, that is,

presence,

gives us. The assumption seems to be fully

confirmed when we pay attention to the fact

that absence also manifests itself as

a mode of presence.

Now it was shown in being that the

no longer

present, through the refusal of

presence, allows presence. It was shown in

coming towards us that the not yet present,

through the withholding of The

present presence allows that kind of

illuminating reach which

gives all presence into the open; thus,

actual time appears as that which

we call in saying there is being,

the destiny in which there is being

rests in the reaching of time; it reveals itself

through this indication that time is not

at all as that there is being, for time itself remains

the gift of an "there is" whose giving

maintains the realm in which presence is

given;

thus, it remains

indeterminate and enigmatic.

In such a case, it is

advisable to determine that there is being from the already

indicated giving.

This showed itself as sending of being

as time in the sense of the illuminating reach; in sending the

destiny of being, in the

reaching of time, an appropriation, a transfer,

namely of being

as presence and time as realm into

their

own, which both being and time belong together in their

own, and that means in it.

We call the

event that this word calls,

we can now think from what is expressed in the

caution on being and on time as

destiny and as reaching; there,

time and being

belong, both being as well as time,

we called things, and that and between the

two, let their relationship to each other in

Indefinitely, it now becomes clear what makes

both things belong together,

what not only brings both things into their

own but belongs together within them, awaits

and holds

the relationship of both things. The state of affairs

is the event. The state of affairs does

not come

subsequently as an increased relationship, and

time is added. The state of affairs

only occurs when being and time move from their

relationship into their own, namely through

the occurrence that hides itself in fate and in the illuminating realm.

Thus, it is attested that there is something, there is being, there is

time as

the

event. The statement is correct and

yet simultaneously untrue, that is, it conceals

the state of affairs from us, for

suddenly we have imagined it as something present,

while we are

trying to think of presence as such.

But perhaps we will be

relieved at a stroke of all difficulties, all cumbersome and seemingly fruitless discussions, if

we

ask and answer the long-overdue simple question:

What is the

event? Let me ask an interjection here: What does "

answer" and "

answer" mean here? Answering means saying

that the state of affairs to be thought of here

corresponds to the event. However, if the state of affairs is

denied by To make a statement to him in this way,

then we must forgo the declarative sentence

expected in the posed question.

However, this means admitting the

inability

to say what is relevant to this thought appropriately.

Or is it more advisable to forgo not only the

answer but also the question itself? For

what about the

clearly justified, spontaneously

posed question, "What is

the

event?" In this, we ask about what

is, about the essence, about how the

event occurs? That is to say,

with the seemingly harmless question, "What

is the

event?", we demand information

about the being of the

event. But if being

itself proves to be what

belongs to the event and only receives the

determination of presence from it,

then with the

posed question we fall back on what

first demands its determination:

being out of

time. This determination revealed itself from

the caution that it exists in the

insight through the

interlocking modes of giving, namely, sending

and

reaching. Sending of being rests in the

illuminating, concealing reaching of the

manifold presence into the open

realm of

time. Reaching, however, rests in

one with sending in the

occurrence of this—that is, the

peculiar The

event of occurrence certainly also determines

the meaning of what we

repeatedly

call the basis here. What has now been said allows,

even compels, in a certain

respect, us to say how the event is not to be conceived.

We can

no longer imagine what is called the event according to the common

meaning of the word,

because it understands event in the

sense of occurrence and

happening, not from the E

as the illuminating, preserving, rich,

and

sending. Thus, it was recently announced that the agreement

reached within the European Economic Community

was a European event

of world-historical

significance. Now, in the context of a

discussion of being, the word event comes up,

and if one hears the word only according to its

common meaning, then it is almost inevitable that we

speak of the event of being, for without being, no

being can be as such.

Accordingly, being can be presented as the highest, the

most significant

event in the

ordinary sense. However,

the sole intention of

this lecture is not to bring being itself

into focus as the event.

However, what is meant by the word

event says something quite

different. Accordingly,

the

inconspicuous And always, given the inherently ambiguous nature

of

thought, we abandon

the

ordinary meaning of the word "

event" for the discussion of being and time and instead follow the

meaning suggested by the act of presence and the illuminating realm of time. Then, even so, there remains the talk

of being as an event,

indeterminate as the

event. Previously, philosophy thought

of being from the perspective of being as idea, as

actuality, as will, and now this

could be thought of as

event. Understood in this way, "event" means

a modified interpretation of being, which it

rightly maintains represents a continuation

of metaphysics.

In this case, the All means

event as a kind of being

subordinate to being, which forms the

established guiding concept. However, if

we consider how it has been attempted to understand being in the sense of being present, that it exists in destiny, which in turn is based in the

illuminating

hidden realm of actual

time, then being belongs to the

event. From this, receiving, giving, and

its gift, their

determination, then being would become a kind of event,

and not the event a kind of being. Taking

refuge in such a reversal would be

too easy; it misses the point.

Event is not the The overarching

concept under which being and time could be classified,

logical

ordering relationships say nothing here, for by

reflecting on being itself, on its own continuation,

it reveals itself as the gift

of

destiny of

presence, the gift of being, the

property of occurrence,

disappearing in the event. In the turn to being

as the

event, it means that all of this is now being present, skillfully rendered in the occurrence,

time is granted in one's own being

and time

occur in the

event, and this

itself can be said even more about the event.

On the way, more was already thought of,

but it was not explicitly

stated, namely this, that to give as

sending, that to hold on to oneself, namely this, that in the reaching of

being and arriving, refusal of

presence and withholding of presence play the

now mentioned

holding on to oneself, refusal,

withholding, shows such things as a

withdrawal, in short, the final withdrawal,

insofar as the

modes of being determined by it, sending and reaching,

must be based in one's own, a

move to the peculiarity of the event must

belong. To discuss this is no longer the

business of this

lecture, although it has now been seen through Being

itself, through time

itself, became visible in the insight into the fate of

being and in the length of time.

What an event

says, yet on this path we arrive at

something other than a mere thought

construct. From the ambush of

this

suspicion speaks the opinion that the

event must be something that exists,

while the event is neither

one nor the other. To

say the event is both a reversal of the

facts, as if we wanted to steal the

source from the stream.

What remains to be said is only this:

the event

occurs. Thus we say from the same point to the same point.

Apparently, this says nothing. It says

nothing as long as we hear what is said as a

mere sentence and subject it to the interrogation of

logic. But what

if we

continually adopt what has been said as the basis for

reflection, bearing in

mind that this same thing

is not even something new, but rather the

oldest of the old in Western

thought, the

ancient one that is concealed in the name "

ala"?

From what is predicated by this

initial of all guiding principles of thought,

a binding

obligation speaks that binds all thought, provided

that it submits to the command of what is to be

thought. It was necessary to

think, in the insight through actual time, into one's own, from the

event without regard to the

relationship of being to being. To be without being

means to think

without regard to metaphysics.

Such regard,

however, still prevails in the intention to

overcome metaphysics. Therefore, it is necessary to

abandon the overcoming of metaphysics and to

leave metaphysics to itself. If an overcoming

remains necessary, then it concerns that thinking

which I specifically allow into the event

in order to say it from within it towards it. It is necessary

to continually overcome the obstacles

that easily render such saying

inadequate.

An obstacle of this

kind also remains the saying about the

event in the manner of a lecture he

only spoke in statements

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