Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) Quotes

“Nietzsche did track down Platonism in its most covert form: Christianity and its secularizations are thoroughly "Platonism for the people".”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)

“The last god has his own most unique uniqueness and stands outside of the calculative determination expressed in the labels “mono-theism,” “pan-theism,” and “a-theism.” There has been “monotheism,” and every other sort of “theism,” only since the emergence of Judeo-Christian “apologetics,” whose thinking presupposes “metaphysics.” With the death of this God, all theisms wither away. The multiplicity of gods is not subject to enumeration but, instead, to the inner richness of the grounds and abysses in the site of the moment for the lighting up and concealment of the intimation of the last god.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“On this “way,” if to keep falling down and getting up can be called a way, it is always and only the same question of the “meaning of beyng” that is asked.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“Do we know ourselves—our “self”? How are we supposed to be ourselves if we are not our selves? And how can we be our selves without knowing who we are, such that we are certain of being the ones we are?”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“On this “way,” if to keep falling down and getting up can be called a way,”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“(What counts as that which is is the present, the actual, to which the necessary and the possible are at first merely related—the usual example from the history of the first beginning.) The sheltering is itself carried out in and as Da-sein. That happens, and gains and loses history, in the steadfast care-taking which in advance pertains to the event though scarcely has knowledge of the event. This care-taking, conceived not on the basis of everydayness but from the selfhood of Dasein, abides in various mutually requisite modes: the fabrication of implements, the instituting of machinations (technology), the creation of works, the acts that form states, and thoughtful sacrifice. In all of these, in each one differently, a pre-forming and co-forming of cognition and of essential knowledge as the grounding of truth. “Science” only a remote scion of a determinate permeation of implement-production, etc.; nothing autonomous and never to be brought into connection with the essential knowledge of the inventive thinking of being (philosophy).”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“Here, the asking of the question who we are is in fact more dangerous than any other opposition found at the same level of certainty about man (the final form of Marxism, which has essentially nothing to do with either Judaism or even with Russia; if somewhere a non-developed spiritualism is still slumbering, it is in the Russian people; Bolshevism is originally Western; it is a European possibility: the emergence of the masses, industry, technology, the extinction of Christianity; but inasmuch as the dominance of reason as an equalizing of everyone is but the consequence of Christianity and as the latter is fundamentally of Jewish origin (cf. Nietzsche's thought on the slave revolt with respect to morality), Bolshevism is in fact Jewish; but then Christianity is also fundamentally Bolshevist! And what are the decisions that become necessary on that basis?). But the danger of the question "Who are we?" is at the same time--if danger can necessitate what is highest--the sole path by which to succeed in coming to ourselves and thus in initiating the original salvation, that is, the justification of the Occident on the basis of its history. The danger of this question is in itself so essential for us that it loses the appearance of opposition to the new German will.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)

“Beyng, as the most unique and most rare, in opposition to nothingness, will have withdrawn itself from the massiveness of beings, and all history—where it reaches down to its proper essence—will serve only this withdrawal of being into its full truth. Yet the successes and failures of everything public will swarm and follow closely one upon the other, whereby, typical of that which is public, nothing will be surmised of what is actually happening. It is only between this reigning of the massive and the genuinely sacrificed that the few and their allies will seek and find one another in order to surmise that something concealed—namely, that passing by—is happening to them in the midst of all the tearing away of every “happening” into what is of high speed yet at the same time completely graspable and thoroughly consumable. The perverting and confusing of the claims and of their domains will no longer be possible, because the truth of beyng itself, in the sharpest falling apart of the fissure of beyng, has brought the essential possibilities to decision. This historical moment is not an “ideal situation,” because the latter will always be incompatible with the essence of history. Instead, this moment is the eventuation of that turning in which the truth of beyng comes to the beyng of truth, since the god needs beyng and since the human being, as Da-sein, must have grounded the belonging to beyng. Beyng as the innermost “between” is then akin to nothingness for this moment; the god overpowers the human being, and the latter surpasses the god—immediately, so to speak. Yet both are only in the event, and the truth of beyng itself is as this event. Nevertheless, a long, often relapsing, and very concealed history will transpire up to this incalculable moment which of course could never be as superficial as a “goal.” The creative ones, in the restraint of care, must already prepare themselves hourly for stewardship in the time-space of that passing by. Thoughtful meditation on this that is unique (namely, the truth of beyng) can only be a path on which what is unable to be thought in advance is nevertheless thought, i.e., a path on which there begins the transformation of the relation of the human being to the truth of beyng.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“Historiology, always understood in its claim to possess the character of modern science, is a constant avoidance of history. Yet even in this avoidance, it still maintains a relation to history, and that makes historiology and the historiologist bivalent.     If history is not explained historiologically and calculated in terms of a particular image for the specific ends of supporting a position and imparting a conviction, if history is instead placed back into the uniqueness of its inexplicability, and if, through this inexplicability, all historiological bustle and all the opinions and beliefs that arise from it are placed into question and into decision with respect to themselves, then what is being carried out is what could be called historical thinking.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The meditation of inceptual thinking concerns us (ourselves) and yet does not. It does not concern us so as to bring out from us the prescriptive determinations; but it does concern us as historical beings and concerns us specifically in the plight of the abandonment by being (at first, decline in the understanding of being, and then forgetting of being). It concerns us, who thus are initially posited in our exposure amid beings; it concerns us in this manner in order that we find our way beyond ourselves to selfhood.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The idolizers of "facts" never realize that their idols shine only in a borrowed light. They are indeed not supposed to realize that, for it would immediately make them perplexed and, accordingly, useless. But idolizers and idols are used only when the gods are absconding and so are announcing their nearness.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)

“The most frightful jubilation must be the dying of a god. Only the human being "has" the distinction of standing in front of death, because the human being is steadfastly in Beyng; death the highest testimony to Beyng.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)

“Those few single ones who, on the essential paths of grounding Dasein (poetry—thinking—deed—sacrifice), ground in advance the sites and moments for the realms of beings. In this way they create the essentially occurring possibility for the various shelterings of truth in which Da-sein becomes historical. Those numerous affiliated ones to whom it is given, in virtue of their understanding of the knowing will and of the groundings of the single ones, to surmise and to make visible, by carrying them out, the laws of the re-creation of beings as well as the laws of the preservation of the earth and of the projection of the world in the strife between earth and world. Those many who are referred to one another according to their common historical (earthly-worldly) origin, through whom and for whom the re-creation of beings and thereby the grounding of the truth of the event acquire constancy. The single ones, the few, and the many (not taken in terms of their numbers, but with respect to their distinctiveness) still partially stand in the old, common, and planned orders, which are either only a shell-like safeguard of the precarious continuance of the single ones, the few, and the many or the guiding power of their will.     The agreement among these single, few, and many ones is hidden, is not fabricated, and grows suddenly and for itself.     This agreement is pervaded by the essential occurrence (different in each case) of the event, wherein an original gathering is prepared. In this gathering and as this gathering, that which may be called a people becomes historical. In its origin and destiny this people is unique, in accord with the uniqueness of beyng itself, whose truth this people must ground once and for all in a unique site and a unique moment. How can this decision be prepared? Do knowledge and will have a space at their disposal, or would that amount merely to a blind intrusion into hidden necessities? Yet necessities shine forth only in a plight. The preparing of a preparedness for the decision certainly stands in the plight of merely hastening, in the end, the snowballing lack of history and of hardening its conditions, whereas this preparing indeed wants the opposite. Whoever does not know about this plight cannot surmise a shadow of the impending decisions. The decision takes place in stillness. In that way, however, the destruction of the possibility of decision results afortiori, through the impending inexorability of the uprooting. The decision and its necessity and even its preparation remain all the more difficult to perceive, the more the incidents of “world-historical” revolutions require clamor and the more exclusively all hearing and listening respond only to the gigantic and loud and allow everything in the opposite condition, even the great stillness, to sink into nullity.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The rigorousness of restraint is other than the one of the “exactitude” of a loose, indifferent “reasoning” which belongs equally to everyone and whose results are compelling within the sphere of its own claims to certainty. Such results are compelling, however, only because the claim to truth is content with the correctness that comes from deduction and from insertion into a regulated and calculable order.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The god wholly other than past ones and especially other than the Christian one.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)

“If, through the event, Da-sein as the open center of the selfhood that grounds truth is first thrown to itself and becomes a self, then Dasein again, as the concealed possibility of the grounding essential occurrence of beyng, must belong to the event. And in the turning: The event must require Dasein and, in needing it, must place it in the call and thereby bring it before the passing by of the last god. The turning essentially occurs in between the call (to the one that belongs) and the belonging (of the one that is called): the turning is a counter-turning. The call to the leap into the appropriation is the great stillness of the most concealed self-knowledge. Every language of Da-sein originates here and is thus in essence silence (cf. restraint, event, truth, and language). As counter-turning, the event “is” therefore the highest reign over the advent and absconding of the past gods. The most extreme god needs beyng. The call is intrusion and remaining absent in the mystery of the appropriation. Playing out in the turning are the intimations of the last god as the intrusion and remaining absent of the advent and absconding of the gods and of their abode of sovereignty. In these intimations the law of the last god is intimated, the law of the great individuation in Da-sein, of the solitude of the sacrifice, and of the uniqueness of the choice regarding the shortest and steepest path. In the essence of the intimation lies the mystery of the unity of the innermost nearing in the most extreme distance, the traversal of the broadest temporal-spatial playing field of beyng. This extremity of the essential occurrence of beyng requires what is most intrinsic in the plight of the abandonment by being. This plight must belong and listen to the call of the reigning of that intimation. What resonates and spreads out in such listening is first able to prepare for the strife of earth and world, i.e., for the truth of the “there” and, through the “there,” for the site of the moment of the decision and so for the playing out of the strife and thus for the sheltering in beings. Whether this call of the extreme intimation, this most concealed appropriation, still happens openly, or whether the plight becomes mute instead and all reigning is withheld, and whether the call is still taken up, provided it does happen at all, and whether the leap into Da-sein and thus, out of the truth of the latter, the turning still become history—therein is decided the future of humans. They may for centuries still ravish and devastate the planet with their machinations, and the monstrousness of this drive may “develop” to an inconceivable extent, assume the form of an apparent strictness, and become the measuring regulation of the devastated as such; the greatness of beyng will remain closed off, since decisions about truth and untruth and their essence no longer arise. All that matters is the calculation of the success and failure of the machinations. This calculation extends into a presumed “eternity,” which is not such but is only the endless “and so on” of what is most desolate and most fleeting. Where the truth of being is not willed, not incorporated into a willing of knowledge and experience, into a questioning, there all timespace is withdrawn from the moment, i.e., from the flashing up of beyng out of the enduring of the simple and always incalculable event. Or else the moment still belongs only to the most solitary solitudes, although these are denied a grounding comprehension of the instituting of a history. Yet these moments, and they alone, can become the preparations in which the turning of the event unfolds into truth and joins truth. Indeed, only pure persistence in the simple and essential, which are uncompellable, is mature enough for the preparation of such preparedness; the fleetingness of the frenetically self-surpassing machinations is never so mature.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“What is last is what not only needs the longest ante-cedence [Vor-läuferschaft] but what itself is the most profound beginning rather than a cessation, the beginning which reaches out the furthest and catches up to itself with the greatest difficulty. What is last is therefore withdrawn from all calculation and for that reason must be able to bear the burden of the loudest and most repeated misinterpretation. How else could it remain what is surpassing?”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“All beings, as insistent, unique, autonomous, and paramount as they may appear to god-less and barbarous calculation and bustle, are merely the “standing into” the event. In such “standing into,” the site of the passing by of the last god and the stewardship of the human being seek a constancy in order to remain prepared for the appropriation and not to resist beyng, something which indeed the previous beings, ones in the previous truth, had to do exclusively. The inventive thinking of the truth of beyng will succeed only if, in the passing by of the god, the empowering of humans to their necessity becomes manifest and thus the appropriation in the excess of the turning between human belonging and divine needfulness comes into the open, in order for the appropriation to show its self-concealment as central and to show itself as the center of self-concealment and to compel the oscillation and thereby make leap forth the freedom toward the ground of beyng as grounding the “there.” The last god is the beginning of the longest history on the shortest path of that history. A long preparation is required for the great moment of the passing by of the last god. Peoples and states are too small for the preparation of that moment, i.e., already torn away too much from all growth and delivered over only to machination.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The greatest nearness of the last god eventuates when the event, as the hesitant self-withholding, is elevated into refusal. The latter is essentially other than sheer absence. Refusal, as belonging to the event, can be experienced only on the basis of the more originary essence of beyng as lit up in the thinking”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The specific and unique presupposition for experimentation is, as remarkable as it may sound, that science become rational-mathematical, i.e., in the highest sense, not experimental. Initial positing of nature as such. Because modern “science” (physics) is mathematical (not empirical), it is necessarily experimental in”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The dissolution and joining together of the departments that uphold science The historiological human sciences are becoming newspaper science. The natural sciences are becoming machine science. “Newspaper” and “machine” are meant here in the essential sense as the impelling modes of that final objectification which consummates the modern era and which sucks all the substantiveness out of beings, leaving them mere occasions for lived experience. On account of this priority in the way of approach to organization and arrangement, both groups of sciences come into agreement with regard to the essential, i.e., with regard to their character as business establishments. This “development” of modern science, its coming into its essence, is visible today only to a few and will be rejected by most as nonexistent. It cannot be proven by matters of fact; instead, it can be grasped only out of a knowledge of the history of being. Many “researchers” will still think of themselves as belonging to the reliable traditions of the nineteenth century. Just that many will still find in relation to their objects new and richer content as well as satisfaction and will perhaps incorporate this content into their overall theory. Yet none of this disproves the procedure in which the entire institution known as “science” is irrevocably caught up. Not only will science never be able to extricate itself from that procedure, but it will also, and above all, never want to do so. The more science progresses, the less will it be able to want to extricate itself.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The essential occurrence of the decision is the leap into the decision or else is indifference; thus not withdrawal and not destruction. Indifference as non-deciding. The decision is originally about whether there is decision or non-decision. Yet decision is bringing oneself before the either–or and thereby is already decidedness, because here already there is belonging to the event. The decision about decision (turning). Not reflexivity, but its opposite: decision about the decision, i.e., already knowing the event. Decision and question; questioning as more originary: placing the essence of truth up for decision.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“What is decision anyway?”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“The truth of beyng is the beyng of truth—said in this way, it sounds like an artificial and forced reversal and, at most, like a seduction to a dialectical game. In fact, this reversal is merely a fleeting and external sign of the turning which essentially occurs in beyng itself and which casts light on what might be meant here by “decision.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“transporting and captivation can also harden into indifference, and then the open is taken as a place of common, objectively present things which seem to be the beings, because they are actual. On account of this concealed indifference deriving from the semblant absence of transporting and captivation, these (transporting and captivation) then appear as exceptions, as extraordinary, whereas they indeed show the ground and essence of truth. That indifferent validity [Gleich-gültigkeit] is also the domain in which all representing, opinion, and correctness play out (cf. The grounding: on space). That essence of truth, however, the transporting-captivating clearing and concealing as the origin of the “there,” essentially occurs in its ground which we experience as ap-propriation. The approach and absconding, the advent and retreat, or the simple remaining absent of the gods; for us in the sovereignty, i.e., beginning and dominion over this occurrence, the initial and final sovereignty which will show itself as the last god. In the intimations of the last god, being itself, the event as such, first becomes visible, and this shining requires both the grounding of the essence of truth as clearing-concealing and its final sheltering in the changed forms of beings.”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)

“It is indeed in no way settled that the “self” is ever determinable by means of a representation of the ego. Instead, it must be acknowledged that selfhood first arises out of the grounding of Da-sein, a grounding that is carried out as an appropriation of the belonging to the call. Accordingly, the openness and grounding of the self arise out of, and as, the truth of beyng”
― Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy: (Of the Event)