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§185 [170–171]

         in relation to the nothingness of beyng and becomes the origin of all experience of beyng. The domain of what is proper is the consummation of the event, in which guise the uniqueness of beyng eventuates into the more inceptual beginning. The history of beyng in the other beginning is the historiality of the domain of what is proper. The human history of the nobility of indigence corresponds to the domain of what is proper. The inaugural domain of what is proper, belonging to the event, harbors and confers the inceptual richness which first lets all “possessions” arise and which remains unassailable to any wasting, depleting, or corroding. The inaugural richness of the preservation of beings out of the domain of what is proper “of” beyng is the treasury of that which disposes every truth of beings into appropriateness. What inceptually disposes is the still-soundless voice of the word.

185. The treasure of the word


The word is a treasure enclosed by the beginning. Only occasionally does beyng itself light up. Then a search pursues this inceptual richness through human history; for, in the word, beyng is within the proper domain of its truth by way of the event. The event is the inceptual word, because its arrogation (as the unique adoption of the human being into the truth of beyng) disposes the human essence to the truth of beyng. Inasmuch as the appropriating event is in itself this disposing, and since disposition eventuates as an event, the event-related beginning (i.e., beyng as abyssal in its truth) is the inceptually disposing voice: the word. The essence of the word resides in the event-related beginning.

The voice disposes in that it adopts the essence of the human being to the truth of beyng and thus attunes that essence to the disposition in all the attitudes and comportments which are thereby first awakened. With respect to the event, “disposition” is not a human state of feeling, but is the event of the word as self-arrogating adoption. The word, in its event-related essence, is soundless. In addition, however, inceptually the word does not have the property of “meaning” or “sense,” because, as the self-arrogating clearing of beyng, the word first becomes the ground of the subsequent formation of “word meanings”


Martin Heidegger (GA 71) The Event