19
TIME AND BEING
"It gives time," we are not dealing with statements that are always fixed in the sentence structure of the subject-predicate relation. And yet, how else are we to bring the "It" into view which we say when we say "It gives Being," "It gives time".? Simply by thinking the "It" in the light of the kind of giving that belongs to it: giving as destiny, giving as an opening up which reaches out. Both belong together, inasmuch as the former, destiny, lies in the latter, extending opening up.
In the sending of the destiny of Being, in the extending of time, there becomes manifest a dedication, a delivering over into what is their own, namely of Being as presence and of time as the realm of the open. What determines both, time and Being, in their own, that is, in their belonging together, we shall call: Ereignis, the event of Appropriation. Ereignis will be translated as Appropriation or event of Appropriation. One should bear in mind, however, that "event" is not simply an occurrence, but that which makes any occurrence possible. What this word names can be thought now only in the light of what becomes manifest in our looking ahead toward Being and toward time as destiny and as extending, to which time and Being belong. We have called both-Being and time-"matters." The "and" between them left their relation to each other indeterminate.
We now see: What lets the two matters belong together, what brings the two into their own and, even more, maintains and holds them in their belonging together-the way the two matters stand, the matter at stake-is Appropriation. The matter at stake is not a relation retroactively superimposed on Being and time. The matter at stake first appropriates Being and time into their own in virtue of their relation, and does so by the appropriating that is concealed in destiny and in the gift of opening out. Accordingly, the It that gives in "It gives Being," "It gives time," proves to be Appropriation. The statement is correct and yet also untrue: it conceals the matter at stake from us; for, unawares, we have represented it as some present being, whereas in fact we are trying to think presence as such. But could it not be that we might suddenly 'be relieved of all the difficulties, all these complicated and seemingly fruitless discussions