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SUMMARY OF A SEMINAR


demarcating "But now"? It is a difference in the letting-presence, and that means above all in letting. The two sides of the distinction are:

1. Letting-presence: Letting-presence: what is present.

2. Letting-presence: Letting-presence (that is, thought in terms of Appropriation).

In the first case, presence as letting-presence is related to beings, to what is present. What we mean is the difference underlying all metaphysics between Being and beings and the relation of the two. Taking the original sense of the word as our point of departure, letting means: to let go, let go away, put away, let depart, that is, to set free into the open. What is present, which has been "freed" by letting-presence, is only thus admitted as something present for itself to the openness of co-present beings. Whence and how "the open" is given remains unsaid and worthy of question here.

But when letting-presence is thought explicitly, then what is affected by this letting is no longer what is present, but presencing itself. Accordingly, in what follows the word is also written as: letting-presence. Letting then means: to admit, give, extend, send, to let-belong. In and through this letting, presencing is admitted to that to 'which it belongs.

The determining double meaning thus lies in letting, accordingly in presencing, too. The relation of the two not-unrelated parts demarcated from each other by the "But now" is not without difficulties. Speaking formally, a determining relation exists between both members of the opposition: Only because there is letting of presence, is the letting·presence of what is present possible. But how this relation is explicitly to be thought, how the difference in question is to be determined in terms of Appropriation, was only hinted at. The main difficulty lies in the fact that from the perspective of Appropriation it becomes necessary to free thinking from the ontological difference. From the perspective on Appropriation, this relation shows itself as the relation of world and thing, a relation which could in a way be understood as the relation of Being and beings. But then its peculiar quality would be lost.

The third session, on the second day, began with some references.


On Time and Being (GA 14) by Martin Heidegger