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§173 [125–126]

Metaphysics does not know the difference, because it indeed uses and must use the difference, inasmuch as metaphysics deals with ὂν ᾗ ὄν, yet immediately misinterprets the difference in what is differentiated from beings, insofar as metaphysics explains even “being” immediately on the basis of beings and the highest being.

On the other hand, in the first beginning the difference purely emerges in emergence (φύσις), is indeed experienced (Parmenides), but is not grounded. This inceptual lack of grounding is, however, more inceptual than all groundings since Plato, ones that lose beforehand what is to be grounded and postulate as the ground (the highest being amid beings) something that is already a consequence and is never the abyssal ground.


173. The difference


(on the use of the word)


The differentiation of beings and being (ground).

The difference of (genitivus subiectivus) being with respect to beings.

Beyng as the difference—essentially occurring as the departure.

The twisting free of the difference into the departure.

The difference is the resonating of the departure and is how the latter should be thought.

The thinking of beyng as the enduring of the differentiation.

“The differentiation” is ambiguous:

1. seen from the viewpoint of metaphysics, it is the blind carrying out of the representation of beingness as what is universal to beings, thought on the basis of beings. Thus the differentiation is the representational presentification of an objectively present (!) difference.

2. understood in terms of the history of beyng, it is the obedience to the pure difference, an obedience which protects for this difference the twisting free into the departure and achieves this only through steadfastness in the difference itself and in its essential occurrence (which is a matter of the event and, at first, a matter of the turning).

To that extent—and thought in the respective distinct dimensions— we can say: enduring of the difference and enduring of the differentiation. The first denomination pays heed to the fact that the enduring is appropriated; the second, to the fact that the enduring, as appropriated, follows the difference while “differentiating.”


Martin Heidegger (GA 71) The Event