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Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics [505-506]

to the sum of trees which we believe to be all that is given. The forest is not only quantitatively more than a collection of many trees. Nor, however, is this 'something else' something that is simply at hand besides the many trees. Rather, it is that out of which the many trees belong to a forest. To return to our example: we do not yet understand or grasp at all the pre-logical manifestness of beings if we take it to be the way in which many kinds of beings are simultaneously manifest. Instead, everything depends on already seeing, in the apparently narrow and limited character of the assertion 'The board is badly positioned', how what the assertion is about (namely the badly positioned board) is manifest from out of a whole, out of a whole that we do not at all explicitly or specifically grasp as such. Yet precisely this realm within which we always already move is what we initially designate schematically as the 'as a whole'. It is nothing other than what we see to be the pre-logical manifestness of beings in the λόγος. We can now say quite generally: The pre-logical being open for beings, out of which every λόγος must speak, has in advance always already completed beings in the direction of an 'as a whole'. By this completion we are not to understand the subsequent addition of something hitherto missing, but rather the prior forming of the 'as a whole' already prevailing. (Moreover, what is essential in the case of any completion in the sense of craftmanship is not the addition of the missing piece. Rather the central achievement of completion is seeing the whole and forming it in advance, making it into a whole.) All assertion occurs on the basis of such completion, i.e., on the grounds of a prior forming of this 'as a whole'. This 'as a whole' varies in its expanse and transparency and in the richness of its contents, and it changes more or less constantly for us in the everydayness of our Dasein, even though here too we see a peculiar averageness of the 'as a whole' maintain itself That is a question in its own right. Man's pre-logical being open for beings is accordingly not only a prior holding oneself toward the binding character of things, but together with this it is this completion we have just characterized.

This completion that is a holding oneself toward the binding character of things is furthermore—as we can already see—a being open for beings such as to make it possible to express oneself about beings, i.e., to speak of what-being, being such and such, that-being, and being true. Accordingly, the being of beings must also already be unveiled in a certain way in and through this completion we have characterized.

Our going back into the originary dimension of the λόγος ἀποφαντικός has thus provided a rich, intrinsically articulated structural context which evidently characterizes a fundamental occurrence in the Dasein of man, one we can record in three moments: [1.] holding the binding character of things toward us; [2.] completion; [3.] unveiling the being of beings. These three moments represent a unitary, fundamental occurrence in the Dasein of man,


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

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