165
§38 [246-47]

oppressiveness, in this telling refusal of beings as a whole? Which particular being held in limbo can belong to this particular being left empty? We became acquainted with the specific being held in limbo of profound boredom as our being impelled toward the extremity of that which makes Dasein possible as such, toward the moment of vision. We therefore ask: Which moment of vision can and must be simultaneously announced as that which properly makes possible in this telling refusal of any oppressiveness? To what must Dasein resolutely disclose itself as such, so as to rupture the entrancement of that need—the need of the absence of any oppressiveness as a whole—i.e., so as first to be at all equal to that profound need and to be open for it, so as to truly experience it as oppressive? Commensurate with that emptiness as a whole, the most extreme demand [Zumutung] must be announced to man, not some arbitrary demand, not this or that one, but the demand pure and simple made upon man. And what is that? It is that Dasein as such is demanded of man, that it is given to him—to be there.

Yet do we not all know this? Yes and no. We do not know it to the extent that we have forgotten that man, if he is to become what he is, in each case has to throw Dasein upon his shoulders ; that he precisely is not when he merely lets himself set about things in the general fray, however "spirited" this may be; that Dasein is not something that one takes for a drive in the car as it were, but something that man must specifically take upon himself. Yet because we are of the opinion that we no longer need to be strong or to expect to throw ourselves open to danger, all of us together have also already slipped out of the danger-zone of Dasein within which, in taking our Dasein upon ourselves, we may perhaps overreach ourselves. That any oppressiveness as a whole is absent today is perhaps most pointedly manifest in the fact that today presumably no one overreaches themselves in their Dasein, but that we at most manage to complain about the misery of life. Man must first resolutely open himself again to this demand. The necessity of this disclosive resolution is what is contained in the telling refusal and simultaneous telling announcement of the moment of vision of our Dasein.

To what therefore does Dasein have to resolutely disclose itself? To first creating for itself once again a genuine knowing concerning that wherein whatever properly makes Dasein itself possible consists . And what is that? The fact that the moment of vision in which Dasein brings itself before itself as that which is properly binding must time and again stand before Dasein as such. Before itself—not as a fixed ideal or rigidly erected archetype, but before itself as that which must first precisely wrest its own possibility from itself again and take itself upon itself in such a possibility.

What, therefore, is demanded by the moment of vision simultaneously announced in this absence of any oppressiveness as a whole? That the moment


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics