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Basic Principles of Thinking [121–22]

being, a belonging that hearkens to being because it is delivered into the ownership of this.

And being? Let us think being according to its inceptual sense as presencing [An-wesen]. Being does not presence for the human incidentally or as an exception. Rather, being essences and endures only in that it concernfully approaches [an-geht] the human. For it is the human, open for being, who first lets this arrive [ankommen] as presencing. Presencing needs the open of an illuminated clearing and is thereby transferred into the ownership of the human essence. This by no means says that being would be posited first or solely by the human. On the contrary, the following becomes clear:

The human and being are both pervaded by a belonging-toone- another. From this belonging-together, which has not been considered more closely, the human and being have first received those essential definitions by which they are metaphysically conceptualized in philosophy.

Yet we never experience the prevailing belonging-together of the human and being as long as we reside within the mere representation of classifications and mediations. Such representing only ever shows us a knot that is tied from either being or the human and it thinks the together of the two as defined in this way. Representation does not let us enter into the belonging-together. How has it come to this? How can we experience this more closely? In this way, that we set ourselves apart from the bearing that merely conceives of such ties. This setting oneself apart [Sichabsetzen] is a principle [Satz] in the sense of a leap, one that leaps away, away from the current conception of the human as animal rationale and a subject for objects, away from being as the ground of beings.

Where does this leap of departure leap to, if it leaps away from the ground? Does it leap into an abyss? Yes, insofar as we still conceive the leap within the horizon of metaphysical thinking. No, insofar as we leap and let ourselves loose. To where? To there where we are already admitted: into a belonging to being, but to a being [Sein] that itself belongs to us, in that only with us can it essence, i.e., presence [an-wesen], as being.

Thus, in order to properly experience the belonging-together of the human and of being, a leap is necessary. This leap is the suddenness of a bridgeless entrance into that belonging which


Martin Heidegger (GA 79) Bremen and Freiburg Lectures