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Lecture Eleven [147-148]
with the wherewithal to bring to language beings in their being. Basically, what has just been said is nothing other than an interpretation, thought through from the point of view of the question of being, of the old definition of human nature: homo est animal rationale; humans are the creatures endowed with Reason.
Only insofar as humans are en-dowed by the Geschick with the wherewithal to think beings as such can one say that whatever is proffered in the Geschick is the history of thinking. Within this history, being proffers itself to the thinking of Kant as the objectness of the objects of experience. Intrinsic to this objectness is the fact that a cognition replies to it, a reply in which objectness first gains its full determination. This reply is the sort of cognition that Kant calls the transcendental method.
In the introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant says the following, which is a clearer formulation of the same sentence from the first edition:
I call all knowledge transcendental that in general occupies itself not with objects, but with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as this can possibly be a priori.41
The transcendental method is intrinsic to the manner in which objects can be objects for us. Cast as objectness, being clears and lights itself in a novel manner. For the Greek thinkers beings were never objects; rather, they were that which continues on towards us from what lies over against us.[46] Beings were more [war seiender] than our objects. Indeed, we may be of the opinion that beings appear most purely as what is present in its own right when they show themselves as objects, which means, objectively. This opinion is errant, granting that we think the concept of an object in a manner that does it justice.
In terms of the history of being, it is important to sharply distinguish between what comes to presence in what is over-against us and what comes to presence in objectness. The status of an object is determined by cognition on the basis of the a priori conditions for the possibility of cognition. It is by referring back to a subject that cognition, so determined, goes about rendering the sufficient reasons for the presencing of what comes to presence as Objects. By rendering sufficient reasons this cognition receives the unique character that determines the modern relationship of humans to the world, and that means, makes modern technology possible.
The rendering of sufficient reasons resounds more clearly in Lessing's translation of objectum by Gegenwurf ["counter-throw"] as a throwing-forth which is thrown forth by a subject. Lessing's word Vorwurf [motif] still retains, in the language of an and the artist , the sense of the subject of a work. Vorwurf is actually the literal translation of the Greek word πρόβλημα.[47] Incidentally, in order to mention it as food for thought , today everyone uses, in our much