199
§134 [252-253]


134. The relation between Da-sein and beyng


was first grasped in Being and Time as an "understanding of being," where "understanding" is meant in the sense of projection and that in turn as thrown, i.e., as belonging to an ap-propriation by beyng itself

If we now fail to recognize the strangeness and uniqueness (incomparability) of beyng and, in unity with that, the essence of Da-sein, then we will all-too-easily lapse into the opinion that this "relation" corresponds to—or is even identical with—the one between subject and object. Da-sein, however, has overcome all subjectivity, and beyng is never an object, something we set over and against ourselves, something representable. Only beings can be objects and not even all beings.

What if "subjectivity" and, accordingly, the relation to the objectivity of the object are grasped in the Kantian manner as transcendental? Beyond that, what if the object "nature" counted as the only experienceable being, whereby objectivity would coincide with beingness? Would an opportunity not present itself here, and indeed a historically unique basic position, on the basis of which the relation between Da-sein and beyng could first be brought closer to our contemporaries by referring to the previous view in spite of all the essential differences? To be sure. And that is attempted in the "Kant book," although it was possible only by doing violence to Kant in the sense of working out a more original version of precisely the transcendental project in its unity, through an exposition of the transcendental imagination. This interpretation of Kant is, of course, incorrect "historiologically," but it is essential historically, i.e., as related to the preparation for future thinking and only as so related. It is a historical directive toward something wholly other.

Just as surely as Kant's work is "historiologically" misconceived in such an interpretation, so there also falls into the same misconception that which is supposed to be brought nearer as the other, viz., what is to come: it seems we have here nothing else than an "existential" ["existenziell"] sort of "Kantianism" or one modernized in some other way. Thus if one maintains, rightfully, that Kant is historiologically distorted here, then one must also forgo proposing as Kantian the basic position out of which and into which the distortion resulted. In other words, such historiological, comparative reckoning does not touch what is essential. Historical confrontation (cf. The interplay) is precisely a procedure that just as much places the earlier history back into its hidden greatness and to the same extent, but only to that extent, counterposes the other questioning—not for the sake of comparison but in order to carry it out as compliance to that greatness and to its necessities.


Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event) (GA 65) by Martin Heidegger