234
V. The Grounding [296-297]

out of itself of the being, its coming to presence from itself ἀλήθεια falling more and more into forgottenness).

The prevalent meaning of "Dasein" is nothing else. Accordingly, one can speak of the Dasein ["existence"] of things, of animals, of humans, of time, etc.

Altogether different from this, semantically and substantively, is the word "Da-sein" in the thinking of the other beginning, so different that there is no mediating transition from that first usage to the other.

Da-sein is not the mode of actuality of just any being; instead, it is itself the being of the "there" [das Sein des Da]. The "there," however, is the openness of beings as such and as a whole, the ground of the more originally conceived ἀλήθεια. Da-sein is a way to be which "is" the "there" (taking "is" in an active-transitive sense, so to speak) such that in accord with this preeminent being [Sein], and as this being [Sein] itself, Dasein is a unique being (that which essentially occurs in the essential occurrence of beyng).

Da-sein is the properly self-grounding ground of the ἀλήθεια of φύσις, the essential occurrence of that openness which first opens up the self-concealing (the essence of beyng) and which is thus the truth of beyng itself.

Da-sein, in the sense of the other beginning that asks about the truth of beyng, can never be encountered as a characteristic of beings which are simply to be found present at hand nor as a characteristic of beings which allow present at hand beings to become objects and which stand in various relations to objects. Furthermore, Da-sein is not some characteristic of the human being, as if this name that previously extended to all beings were now simply restricted, as it were, to the role of designating the presence of human beings.

Nevertheless, Da-sein and human being are essentially related, inasmuch as Da-sein signifies the ground of the possibility of future human being, and humans are futural by accepting to be the "there," provided they understand themselves as the stewards of the truth of beyng. This stewardship is indicated by the term "care." "Ground of possibility" is still a metaphysical expression, but it is thought out of the abyssal and steadfast belongingness.

Da-sein, taken in the sense of the other beginning, is still altogether strange to us. We never simply come across it; instead, we reach it only in a leap by leaping into the grounding of the openness of what is self-concealing, the openness of that clearing of beyng in which the human being to come must stand in order to keep it open.

Only from "Da-sein" in this sense does "Dasein" in the sense of the presence of what is simply extant become "understandable." That is, presence proves to be one particular appropriation of the truth of


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