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Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics [210, 211, 212]

only not occupied with this or that being, not only left standing by ourselves in this or that respect, but as a whole. Dasein is now merely suspended among beings and their telling refusal of themselves as a whole. The emptiness is not a hole between things that are filled, but concerns beings as a whole and yet is not the Nothing.


b) Being held in limbo as being impelled toward what originally
makes Dasein possible as such. The structural unity of being left
empty and being held in limbo as a unity of the expanse of beings'
telling refusal of themselves as a whole, and of the singular
extremity of what makes Dasein possible.


And yet, this 'it is boring for one'-from whatever depths it may arise-does not have the character of despair. This being left empty as being delivered over to beings' telling refusal as a whole does not singularly dominate Dasein, it alone does not constitute boredom, but in itself it is associated with something else, as we know formally: with a being held in limbo, together with which it first constitutes boredom. Without an essential transformation of itself, in which it leaps over into another attunement, this profound boredom never leads to despair.

It is now a matter of seeing how, in boredom, being left empty is associated with this other structural moment. Yet once again we may not simply presuppose this association on the basis of what has gone before. It is rather a matter of seeing this association of being left empty and being held in limbo anew and from out of the essence of this boredom itself Therefore-almost as though we knew nothing at all of the second structural moment-we must ask: To what extent is the specific being left empty of this third form of boredom in itself associated in general with something else? Boredom and its being left empty here consist in being delivered over to beings' telling refusal of themselves as a whole. What lies in the fact that there is a telling refusal on the part of beings as a whole with respect to the possibilities of doing and acting for a Da-sein in their midst? All telling refusal [Versagen] is in itself a telling [Sagen], i.e., a making manifest. What do beings in this telling refusal of themselves as a whole tell us in such refusal? What do they tell us in refusing to tell? It is a telling refusal of that which somehow could and was to be granted to Dasein. And what is that? The very possibilities of its doing and acting. The telling refusal tells of these possibilities of Dasein. This telling refusal does not speak about them, does not lead directly to dealings with them, but in its telling refusal it points to them and makes them known in refusing them. Accordingly this telling refusal on the part of beings as a whole merely indicates indeterminately the possibilities of Dasein, of its doing and acting, it merely tells of them indirectly and in general. This indeed corresponds to that which


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

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