Letting-be became one of the most important concepts in the later Heidegger, denoting a hands-off way of attending to things. It sounds straightforward. ‘What seems easier’, asks Heidegger, ‘than to let a being be just the being that it is?’ Yet it is not easy at all, because it is not just a matter of turning indifferently away and letting the world get on with its business. We must turn towards things, but in such a way that we don’t ‘challenge’ them. Instead, we allow each being to ‘rest upon itself in its very own being’.
