23
TIME AND BEING

Expropriation belongs to Appropriation as such. By this expropriation, Appropriation does not abandon itself-rather, it preserves what is its own.

(We catch sight of the other peculiar property in Appropriation as soon as we think clearly enough what has already been said. In Being as presence, there is manifest the concern which concerns us humans in such a way that in perceiving and receiving it we have attained the distinction of human being. Accepting the concern of presence, however, lies in standing within the realm of giving. In this way, four-dimensional true time has reached us.

(Because Being and time are there only in Appropriating, Appropriating has the peculiar property of bringing .man into his own as the being who perceives Being.by standing within true time. Thus Appropriated, man belongs to Appropriation.

(This belonging lies in the assimilation that distinguishes Appropriation. By virtue of this assimilation, man is admitted to the Appropriation. This is why we can never place Appropriation in front of us, neither as something opposite us nor as something all-encompassing. This is why thinking which represents and gives account corresponds to Appropriation as little as does the saying that merely states.)

Since time as well as Being can only be thought from Appropriation as the gifts of Appropriation, the relation of space to Appropriation must also be considered in an analogous way. We can admittedly succeed in this only when we have previously gained insight into the origin of space in the properties peculiar to site and have thought them adequately. (Cf. "Building Dwelling Thinking" in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper & Row 1971.) The attempt in Being and Time, section 70, to derive human spatiality from temporality is untenable.

True, as we look through Being itself, through time itself, and look into the destiny of Being and the extending of time-space, we have glimpsed what "Appropriation" means. But do we by this road arrive at anything else than a mere thought-construct? Behind this suspicion there lurks the view that Appropriation must after all "be"


On Time and Being (GA 14) by Martin Heidegger