“if we assume the impossible point of view of looking at the universe from a safe distance, we see a universal texture of beings just not deranged by catastrophes (since man is a catastrophe only from his own standpoint, as the exception that grounds his access to beings)? In this case, we are back at the Kantian position: reality “in itself,” outside the Clearing within which it appears to us, is unknowable, we can only speculate about it the way Heidegger himself does when he plays with the idea that there is a kind of ontological pain in nature itself. Or should we take Heidegger’s speculation seriously, so that the catastrophe is not only man but already nature in itself, and in man as the being-of-speech this catastrophe that grounds reality in itself only comes to word?”