Off

Beaten Track

FD1"rED AND

"rRANS El) BY

LIAN YO

AND KENNE IIA Y"NES

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

A fourth modern action realization of the

It

7

counts for "nl111"rtl1no'

time confirms the known that unknown.

In the natural sciences this

{'{,,",!In{, to the nature of the field of aimed at. However, natural science does not first It is rather the other way round: transformed itself

~~r ~

they behave as a rule. But observation directed toward

kind, the different from that which

ent even where ancient and medieval observation also

and measure, and even where it use of

struments, For what is experiment. This IIp an experiment is to represent a condition

nexus of motions can become of

course, which is to say that it can be The setting up of the ground-plan of the strains the anticipatory

with and within which the PV1.""lt"

apparatus and indecisive about the of a law. 'I() set

followed in its necessary by calculation.

invention. 'This

is w hy Newton says not arbitrarily thought up. They are, rather, plan of nature and are sketched into it.

are

61

m thinner and

will still able to

and therefore the

a power emanating by it. The reality of

eulation, either

of nature and the same way. They become

66

such a way that a

are now taken in set in

IE

19.50: by

68

'r,HE AGE 0,1'

WORLD PICTL:RE

the way he is to is that mode of human

of human as the domain of

and execution for the purpose of the of

that is determined this event is not only new in """,.""",,',..<n',·

with what had preceded it. It is new, in that it as the new. '1() be "new" belongs to a world that has

then, we wish to the pictorial character of the world as the

representedness then in fully to grasp the modern essence of

representedness we must scent out the naming power of that worn-

out word and concept "to represent": to put forth and relate to oneself. It is through this that the being comes to stand as an object and so first receives the seal of being. That the world becomes picture is one and the same process whereby, in the midst of beings, man becomes subject (Appendix 9).

Only because and insofar as man, altogether and essentially, has become subject is it necessary for him to confront, as a consequence, this explicit

which takes us

but over which

The "constant

rative sense. Yet because the essence

is constant

n First edition, I usage

OFF THE

business is not the book trade) have business of a

work conot only become

. j.. through series and collee-.

Inlme( latelv .... .

. t11C1r Intended

IS not

74

sw er to it. It

determines a transformation

,-n'I"l'rOlnnn of

creates the preconditions for the

knowledge. realism is for

rBon of of the external

essential modifications

have been German thinking since Leibniz in

fundamental position. the all the centuries up to now, position in a form that

on that account, any the real.

with its rationalism, of the character of

is yet not,

contrast, mere Cartesian

has lost power for the further

With there the

completion

With the interpretation of man Descartes created the meta-

future anthropology of every kind and

In the rise of anthropologies he celebrates his Through

anthropology, the transition of into the event of the

cessation and of all inaugurated. That

avowed rnetaphysics-- that, at bottom, he no understood its

and stood helpless before metaphysical the inner consequence of

the anthropological character of his fundamental position. His "philosophy of philosophy" is a leading example of anthropology's away with as

opposed to overcoming -- philosophy. This is every anthropology that

makes use of philosophy as the occasion simultaneously declares

it to be, as philosophy, superfluous, has the advantage what

is demanded by the affirmation of anthropology. this, the intel-

lectual situation is somewhat 'The laborious fabrication of such absurd entities as "National Socialist philosophies, on the other merely creates confusion. The world view indeed needs and makes use philosophical erudition, but it needs no philosophy since, as world view, it has already adopted its own interpretation and structuring of what is. But one thing, surely, even anthropology cannot do. It cannot overcome Descartes, nor even resist him. For how could the consequence ever attack the ground on which it stands?

"'1e

B

overcoming of that which

means, at the same (and that

however, the primal asking of the

of projection and with it the truth of

as, at salHe time, the question of the being of truth.

conception of the world 'IS

""Pd"'.' . . . (. In

only within the perspective of the

for its part, closely connected the meaning of being (not of

we together of the

rure within that which is

belongs standmg-(og~ther, system, By this, SIll1phhc:Jtion and collecting unity of struc-

E

up for fact that we attribute to the object and the thus-interpreted a value; in general, we assess beings according to values and make them the goal of all action and activity, Since this latter conceives itself

culture, values "cultural values" these

the of

of it short step values

Values become the objectification of needs as brought about by a representing self-establishment within the world as picture. Values appear to be the expression of the fact that, in relation

to them, man strives to promote In

No one dies for mere values. the nineteenth century, we should note, here, the intermediate position of Hermann Lotze. At the same time as he was

Plato's ideas as values, Lotze under the

Attempt at an still

of German idealism

at to

zsche's remains imprisoned in value-representation, he has to ex-

press what is essential to him in a retrospective form as the revaluation of all values, Only when we succeed in grasping Nietzsche's

dently of value-representation, achieve

work the last thinker

cise lt1 history.

and

feature of the

of

the

the pattern the very definite possibilities and ways in

"which the truth of this being of beings, within beings, sets itself into the work. The artwork of the Middle Ages and the absence of a world picture during this age belong together.

(8) But did not a Sophist at about the time of Socrates venture to say that "Man is the measure of all things, of what are, that they are, of what are not, that they are not"? Docs nor this statement of Proragoras sound as

77

THE HEAI"EN

we lJave term, of a modern

, . . . to us to think heing as it

Jt III a way that it

ITeXV1c.vV Xpl)f1(h0.lV W, OVK ECJ"TIV.

(those, namely, that vr;"",·)_. \ JUan is

of that,

rn usc ano llS'I"e .'

f '. '" z- , XPTJ-

o wklt IJresence<' .h ...

' .. j . "', , <It it

IS (e!Hed, that it does

. . is understood here

. arnvlng-in this ,-,

us 111 the sam.C

he (Proragoras) not tunc, something whatever it shows lust as much ,IS L

as f()llow'~ I}/h"t

o , " a ever

.'ill.ell. an aspect is it ('lj"(l)' f' .'

.. "j , • ' .. '.. or me'

Sue 1 111 turn /(')1' vc '1). '

. XOll:' .}[It

IH

F

RE

1 ever. For in every essential respect, what with equal necessity is different. Whar is

The essential interpretation of the being of beings.

The essential truth.

the measure."

None essential moments of the position

can be understood apart from the others. indicates the

ofa fundamental metaphysical position. For what reason, and to what extent,

these four moments bear and structure a fundamental metaphysical

position in advance is which no be asked or answered

out of or through metaphysics. 'Ill ask it to out of the

of metaphysics. to be sure, to the I?

remain related to man as I:yw.

the of that

which is apportioned to it as this particular unconcealment, everything that presences wi thin this sphere as in being. The ap-

of what presences is in this staying within the sphere

of unconcealment, The I to what presences I~I'

this staying alongside what presences, This presences in the open draws the boundary between what is present and what absent.

From out of man and preserves the measure of that

which presences and which absences. In his that which

is unconcealed at a particular time, man gives himself the measure confines a self in each case to this and that. Man does not set the measure to which all their here to of a detached I-ness. One who stands in the and their unconcealmentis

r-s-c.t-r-t r-t-r s'vrv to the of unconceaiment limited after the manner

consequence, the concealment of

and that their presence or with the visible

'what is present, lies beyond his power of decision. This is der Vot:\'okratiker) ov6' orroiot TIVSS IOEav. "Con-

not in the to for the

7Q

comes to demand

This liberation, Ilf)W!'\7['

the bonds the truth

made certain and salvation disclosed

certain from itself must, at the same

as certain that from which such

and through which knowable is made

essence of the

true, dom is new as the the

becomes

. dominion over the

IS absorbed into the

I .. ". . . . man cannot abandon this . f

ie cannot abolish it ti-lt 13 I .' o

I '" I... ,. ut 1e can, Il1

t1IS. t 1:11 is not the only

there has ever bee;l hidden land that is (a truth nrr.n.'~L"l

(13) Everyday opinion sees in the its complete denial. But, in truth, the etrable, testimony of hidden illumination. way, we experience the incalculable as that which C~\ .. ,!lJC'"

yet is manifest in beings points to the hidden

dis-

(14) But what if the closure of being? Conceived from out of

of being in the form "What is the refusal, itself first of as

But the nothing, as the nothing is the keenest opponent

negating, The nothing is never nothing, and IS It a the sense of'm object; it is being whose truth will be

man when he has overcome represents beings as "r·.",,··<c

111

(IS) This open word in the sense of the

of being.