The course given by Heidegger from January to April of 1919,1 during the Kriegsnotsemester (which one might translate as the “postwar emergency makeup semester”), in no way constitutes a debut for Heidegger, who, at this period, had already traversed a rather long and complex philosophical itinerary. But it nevertheless constitutes a new beginning: certainly because it offers to a young veteran the opportunity to introduce other veterans to philosophy. A risky opportunity, considering that what it was to be about—the gap between academic theoretical philosophy and life itself—had just been endured by everyone, in their souls, and thus in their flesh, and all the more since this was under the figure of death. Above all, a new beginning because Heidegger made this existential gap his theme and expounded upon it in a resolutely dramatic manner: “Already in the opening of the question ‘Gibt es—Does it give?,’ it gives something. Our entire problematic has arrived at a crucial point, which, however, appears insignificant and even miserly. [. . .] We are standing at the methodological cross-road which will decide on the very life or death of philosophy. We stand at an abyss: either into nothingness, that is, absolute reification, pure thingness [absoluten Sachlichkeit], or we somehow leap into another world, more precisely, we manage for the first time to make the leap into the world as such” (GA 56/57, §13, 63; TDP, 51, trans. modified). Thus, the philosophical question, in this dramatic postwar context, is decidedly posed under the heading of the es gibt, which is to say givenness, Gegebenheit.
In other words: by saying “Es gibt—it gives,” one reaches a point that is certainly determinant, but determinant precisely insofar as it remains through and through indeterminant; for the issue is not that of a conquest, but of a test, where one must choose between two orientations, all the more incompatible with one another in that each one claims to decide everything. On one side, philosophy as the knowledge of things, and on the other, philosophy as the entryway into the experience of the world—and between the two, no compromise. Moreover, confirming this dilemma, the winter 1919–20 course will formulate the same choice in terms that are almost just as pressing: “The problem of givenness [der Gegebenheit] is not a particular [and] specific problem. With it, the paths of the modern doctrines of knowledge diverge from one another and, at the same time, [they diverge] from phenomenology, which must first deliver the problem from a restricted problematic of epistemology [aus einer verengenden erkenntnistheoretischen Problematik].”2 The destiny of philosophy thus would turn upon givenness and upon the simple “It gives”; philosophy would become either one of the doctrines of knowledge, or phenomenology.
How then could the ever-so-simple question, “Gibt es . . . ?” become so radical and all encompassing? In order to attempt to glimpse an answer, let us note first of all that the lines that we have just read open section 13 of the course from 1919; they therefore must be placed alongside the last lines of section 12, which immediately precede them. Now, this section 12 in fact concludes with a double question: “Does it give [gibt es] even a single thing, if it only gives things? Then it gives absolutely no thing at all; it gives not even nothing, because with the sole supremacy of the sphere of things it no longer even gives ‘it gives.’ Does it give the ‘it gives’—Gibt es das ‘es gibt’?” (GA 56/57, §12, 62; TDP 48, trans. modified). This prior questioning thus confirms the subsequent thesis that neither the Es gibt nor Gegebenheit constitutes, as such, a solution or an advance, but offers indeed only a question. Moreover, Heidegger will name it, in 1919–20, as such, as the “problem of givenness.”3 Even more than a question, the issue is ultimately the indication that, henceforward, one can no longer dodge a question, which nevertheless has yet to be formulated: “What does it mean to say ‘given,’ ‘givenness’—this magic word of phenomenology, and the ‘stumbling block’ for the others?”4 How does Gegebenheit come to separate first of all the theories of knowledge [Erkenntnistheorie] among themselves (in the above quotation, “the others”), and then these from phenomenology—the former entangling themselves in Gegebenheit and the latter invoking it without truly understanding it? How does the question about Es gibt indicate the crossroads where the paths cross that lead either toward thingness or toward the world? The seriousness of this question is confirmed in the continuation that Heidegger assigns it in 1919, when he asks whether, in the end, the question itself, “Does it give [gibt es]?” might not contradict itself to the point of preventing that it give, if it merely gives.5
An initial conclusion is evident at the outset: it is not enough simply to appeal to the syntagm “it gives—es gibt” to wrest philosophy from the primacy and the fascination, in short, from the “omnipotence of thingness.” “The domain of originarity [das Ursprungsgebiet] must not be given; it remains first to be conquered.”6 For, if by es gibt one believes that he will reach givenness, Gegebenheit, directly, without taking care to define it, or even to interrogate it more deeply, then, since givenness itself already holds a common and well-known philosophical meaning, even the pure springing forth of “it gives” could easily lead back, ultimately, only to thingness. And Heidegger does not hesitate to draw this conclusion, when he stigmatizes the “ ‘given—gegeben,’ ” saying that it “already signifies an inconspicuous but genuine theoretical reflection inflicted upon the environment. Thus ‘givenness—Gegebenheit’ is very well already a theoretical form,” because, put another way, “ ‘givenness—Gegebenheit’ signifies the initial objectifying infringement of the environment [Umweltlichen]” (GA 56/57, §17, 89; TDP 69). In short, “it gives—es gibt” might very well not open, but instead prevent access to itself and to givenness. We will understand better why if we see that here, quite evidently, Heidegger is alluding to Natorp and to Rickert, respectively.
How does the 1919 course consider Natorp, to whom all of its section 19 is devoted? Clearly, givenness plays a role, but within the theoretical attitude, so as to ensure to the constitution of objects (and its activity) a (passive) given at the outset, which only remains a given by confirming itself in the position that thought then assigns it, as is evident in the following, singled-out quotation: “To a givenness there must correspond an active giving,”7 that is to say, the spontaneity of the understanding reconstructing the object beginning from the pre-theoretical immediacy, but provisionally so. The 1919–20 course soon specifies this verdict: for Natorp, “Nowhere is it a question of speaking of a finished and given object. Before every givenness stands thought and its conformity to law [Gesetzlichkeit].”8 Such that the “givenness springs forth only from the determination. The establishing thought has an absolute privilege. [ . . . T]o set up in thought. It gives nothing pre-given.” Givenness is only established by letting itself be taken up by the thought that objectivizes it and thus cancels it: “The given itself is a given-up [Das Gegebene selbst ist ein Aufgegebenes].”9 Indeed, if one turns directly to other texts of Natorp, the subordination of givenness to thought, and thus to the spontaneity of the legislating understanding, is confirmed without any ambiguity: “Nor can the I of pure consciousness be properly called a ‘datum’ of psychology. Datum means problem; but the pure I is absolutely not a problem. It is a principle; a principle is never ‘given,’ but, the more radical it is, the more distant from every given. ‘Given’ would moreover mean ‘given to someone [Einem gegeben],’ and, as we see again, to someone conscious. The conscious being is what, in its very concept, the given already presupposes. But it is precisely as the presupposition of any givenness that pure consciousness cannot itself be said to be ‘given’; no more than the appearing could itself be said to be an appearance [das Erscheinen . . . eine Erscheinung].”10 The I, or rather what is always already the “pure consciousness,” precedes the given and allows its appearing—thus it exempts itself from the appearing as from the given. It is indeed necessary to go that far: the I effectively has no relation whatsoever with phenomenality, nor with givenness, because it grounds them. The grounding does not appear in what it grounds, just as it does not give itself, because the given presupposes it. Natorp does not hesitate to draw, with the utmost clarity, this “paradoxical consequence, that the original I, the pure I, the I of consciousness [Bewußtheit] [. . .] is neither a fact, nor an existent, nor a phenomenon. But the paradox disappears as soon as one realizes that it is the ground of all facts, the ground of all existence, of all being-given [alles Gegebenseins], of all appearing; it is only for that that it cannot itself be either a fact, nor an existence, nor a given, nor something that appears [ein Erscheinendes sein].”11 Thus, givenness is only mobilized to submit itself to pure consciousness, which, through the activity of “reconstruction,” raises it to the rank of an object. It only appears in order to disappear in its double contrary. Thus, according to Heidegger, or rather according to Natorp, for the school of Marburg, givenness only emerges in order to be, in fact, immediately dissolved, because thought and its primacy do not, within the objectity of the theoretical attitude, leave it any rightful legitimacy.
The 1919 course opposes to Natorp above all the already legendary figure of Lask. Nevertheless, we will not dwell on this development here, first of all precisely because Lask’s very importance renders his figure ambiguous, so much does Heidegger see in Lask what the war prevented Lask from becoming: “one of the strongest philosophical personalities of our time, [. . .] who in my view was on the way to phenomenology” (GA 56/57, §9, 180; TDP 137); and also, because an examination of Lask’s position and his relation to Heidegger, which remains to be completed, would require work of a very different scope.12 We shall instead line up Rickert, rather than Lask, against Natorp, first of all because Lask himself (as much as Heidegger) derives from Rickert and in part leads back to him;13 and, next, because the 1919–20 course refers to him in order to establish a contrast to Natorp. Indeed, Rickert is different from Natorp, according to Heidegger’s assessment, because he recognizes that “the factual, the ‘perceived’ [‘Wahrgenommene’] is given—it is what is experienced immediately [. . .] something ultimate, underivable, ‘irrational’ ”;14 for example, blue or red, which can never more, once given, “vanish in a rationalist mode.”15 For, after all, and definitively, it must be agreed that: “It gives [es gibt] particular givennesses [bestimmte Gegebenheiten], that one cannot fail to recognize.”16 And for Rickert, in fact, it is necessary to say, beyond the object in general (which Erkenntnistheorie, like ontologia, privileges), it gives such an object in its actual facticity, for “that there be a color means nothing other than: the color is a fact, is given, is perceived.”17 Thus, this implies not only an aiming at the this as such, but accepting the this itself as a form which is universally applicable to every fact, and thus accepting “the form of the individual real given or the form of affirmation of judgment, which establishes a real given that is factual, individual, and determined each time.”18 At issue, then, is not a category of the given in general (another name for the object in general), but a universal category of the given as individual and unique: “it certainly does not give any [es gibt zwar keine] individual forms and norms, but it gives forms and norms of the individual,”19 not a category of actuality in general, but “a category of real this-being-here [des realen Diesseins].”20
And yet, what exactly is involved in Rickert’s attempt to “understand givenness as a category”21 or, more precisely, as a “category of givenness or of factuality”?22 Heidegger marks out two different conclusions. First, this debate allows one to distinguish in reality two primary meanings of givenness: on one side that of Natorp, who only allows “a givenness [Gegebenheit] that derives in a precise sense from the accomplishment of science [der Leistung der Wissenschaft],” and thus remains within it without exempting itself from it; on the other that of Rickert, who allows “a givenness [Gegebenheit] that is anteriorly-given [vorgegeben], by necessity of meaning, to this accomplishment [of science] and its possible use [ihrem möglichen Einsatz].”23 Thus we understand better in what way givenness was marking out a crossroads in philosophy, a crossing of paths, where two accepted meanings of Erkenntnistheorie diverge, according to whether the given is inscribed within the knowledge of the object or precedes and determines it irreducibly. There remains another conclusion: Heidegger said that the crossing of paths distinguishes not only two postulations of Erkenntnistheorie from one another but also these two from phenomenology.24 Can we now articulate this second opposition? Certainly, if we pay attention to a “confusion [eine Verwechslung]” made by Rickert: the given having remained for him a given of judgment, and thus for the knowing subject, he thinks of it only in terms of the immanent, of the “content of consciousness” (the datum of color), and “confuses” it with “the color on the wall (transcendent)”—or rather prefers it and substitutes it for the color on the wall. Thus, givenness regresses from the transcendence of “factical experience” to the peaceful, banal, and representative immanence of a lived experience of consciousness (to the “givenness of an immanent [eines Immanenten], or a content of consciousness”). Here is precisely where Rickert turns away from the path of phenomenology. Neither he nor Natorp “procedes from factical experience [faktischen Erfahren].” They thus miss “the new fundamental experience of life in and for itself.”25 How can we explain this disqualification of givenness, no sooner accepted?
Doubtless it is precisely because Gegebenheit was thematized as a “category.” Now, a category can only allow a judgment and a predication; it thus can only bear upon things (“the category of givenness or of factuality, Tatsächlichkeit”). Henceforward, even if it finds itself being thought as Tatsächlichkeit, how could givenness not fall back immediately under “the supremacy of the sphere of things [der Sachsphäre]” (GA 56/57, §12, 62; TDP 48)? It never left it.
Thus the true difficulty emerges: if givenness still decides nothing, since it can also lead, or indeed most often leads, to the “nothingness” of thingness rather than to a leap in the world’s direction, it must be granted that the “it gives—es gibt” itself remains undecided. If from the outset it is allowed to be taken back by the horizon of things alone (put otherwise, if it only gives things), then, to the extent that a thing can be phenomenalized fully only in a world, will it give even one single thing if it only gives things without the world, according to thingness alone? What is more: if no thing is found to be truly given, then it will in fact give “nothing” (GA 56/57, §12, 62; TDP 48), and thus it will give “nothingness” (§13, 63; TDP 51). And if it gives nothing, it will not give at all—not even the “it gives.” In the end, it is unavoidable to ask whether, in the already theoretical and thingly meaning of “it gives,” the “it gives” itself does not disappear. Indeed, one might elaborate a bit by saying that if “it only gives this ‘it gives,’ then it doesn’t even give a true ‘it gives.’ ” In other words, the choice, the border, and the crossing of paths pass not between givenness and es gibt, on the one hand, and the thing, on the other, but, instead, within the “it gives” itself, according to whether it opens upon the thing or upon a world. At the outset, Heidegger thus frees himself from the myth of the given,26 from the fetishism of givenness as a category, and even from the nevertheless radical appearance of the operation of “it gives.” From the beginning, he stigmatizes their undecided status and requires that a decision be made about them from a point of view transcendent to them. Which point of view? We will answer, provisionally and approximatively: from a point of view that is as strictly phenomenological as possible.
The point, then, is to conceive what “it gives” might mean: “Was heißt: ‘es gibt’?” (GA 56/57, §13, 67; TDP 54). Not existing, valuing, duty, accomplishing, contradicting (all cardinal terms of neo-Kantianism), but “giving” in an “it gives.” Not the being in general, nor such and such a being (a Rembrandt, a Mozart sonata, a chair or a table, houses or trees, a submarine or a religious power), but that which gives itself in “it gives.” Indeed, “it gives” gives nothing in particular, and the point is not “to return to understand [or grasp] particular objects” (68; TDP 54, trans. modified), even if this regressive movement, which causes the “it gives” to be missed, may seem almost inevitable. We must, on the contrary, grant that “it gives” as such is equivalent to asking, “does it give something [etwas]?” (67; TDP 54, trans. modified). And this question in turn involves envisaging an “anything whatsoever [etwas überhaupt]” (68; TDP 54). In absolute terms, with what generality are we here concerned? How do we not unavoidably think of formal ontology’s “something in general = X,” or of its equivalents, “the formal objective something of knowability [, . . . the] something of formal theoretization” (§20, 116; TDP 88)? How do we avoid inscribing it right away, ever and again, within the most abstract relation between object and subject, precisely as the minimum abstract object for a particular subject? So much does it seem obvious that “ ‘it gives’ means: it gives for me the questioner” (§13, 68; TDP 55, trans. modified).
All of Heidegger’s paradoxical and almost impracticable effort consists in establishing that, precisely here, such is no longer the case: in the “it gives,” contrary to the evidence of the theory of knowledge, it is no longer (or not yet) a question of a relation of subject to object. First of all, because we no longer find here even the slightest “subject” to master a knowledge: “nothing like an ‘I’ is found [nicht so etwas wie ein ‘Ich’]” (66; TDP 53, trans. modified), “I do not find anything like an ‘I’ ” (68; TDP 55). Let us take the example of the lectern, from which the professor addresses his students—and here Heidegger describes the very situation in which he and his students find themselves at the moment in which he is speaking, such that they become for themselves the phenomenological example to consider; let us ask whether, in this case, the fact that it gives the lectern implies that it gives it either to any old I, or to such and such other I, to such and such master’s or doctoral student, to a certain doctor of philosophy, or to a postdoc in law. Clearly (or at least according to the clarity that Heidegger sees and wants to make visible), the fact that it gives the lectern opens no relation whatsoever to an I, no more to mine than to that of any other person: “the meaning of the lived experience has no relation with any particular I” (69; TDP 55, trans. modified). Certainly, it does give itself to me—the lectern as that which becomes visible to me also indeed appears to me—but without any relation to any particular I being required and implied in this “ex-perience of something [Er-leben von etwas]” (68; TDP 55). In short, “I experience it vitally [er-lebe], it belongs to my living [Leben], but it is still so detached from me in its sense, so absolutely far from the ‘I,’ so ‘I-remote’ [absolut Ich-fern]” (69; TDP 55, trans. modified), that it convokes no I, nor does it submit itself to one. In other words, the phenomenon that nevertheless directly implies in itself the orator and his auditors, that is to say the lectern, nevertheless does not refer to the least I as the necessary condition for its appearance or its meaning; as a consequence, neither does it open any access to one in return. The phenomenon, such that “it gives [it],” does not depend upon an I, any more than it leads back to one. “The ‘it gives’ is indeed an ‘it gives’ for an I—and yet it is not I to and for whom the question relates” (69; TDP 55, trans. modified). The lectern gives itself, and so it is assigned to no one. Thus a first characteristic of “it gives” emerges (which definitively distinguishes it from the theoretical attitude): the I, which remains affected by the lectern, nevertheless remains the simple addressee of givenness, but not its author; it finds itself there as that to whom the lectern befalls, though not as the one who determines its movement or its stakes. In short, I depend upon the “es gibt,” but it depends no more on me than does that which it gives me to experience. Thus, as under the blow of a reduction, a first term of the theoretical relation, the subject, falls and finds itself bracketed.
But, more essentially, there is no longer any subject to be found because there is already no longer any object to be found here. What, precisely, appears when the lectern that none of them, neither students nor professor, constitutes rises up before their eyes? What do they really see? Do they see planks, a frame, or even a stand and a box laid upon the desk? In fact, they no more see these elements (which nevertheless are there) than they see colors, shadows, and supposed secondary qualities (§16, 81; TDP 64), nor, inversely, than they see pieces of such and such wood (of such “essences”), ligneous molecules or atoms of carbon, and so on (which are also there). They see “in one fell swoop” (§14, 71; TDP 57) the lectern itself. And in fact, they see it precisely because they perceive from the outset what its function is (it is for the course), who presides there (the professor), what goes with it (the book and notes), what it delivers (concepts, information, etc.); in short, they see it because they perceive there from the outset the action of the professor teaching students. What thus appears has nothing of an object about it, nor even of a thing; from the outset, and first of all, what is at issue is an “object as fraught with meaning [als mit einer Bedeutung behaftet]” (71; TDP 57), with “a meaning [. . .], a moment of signification [ein bedeutungshaftes Moment]” (72; TDP 58); because “the meaningful [das Bedeutsame] is primary and immediately given to me without any mental detours across thing-oriented apprehension” (73; TDP 58). The meaning is given, because it shows itself without an object and before every objectification.27
Let us suppose a counterexample: that it gives the lectern to someone (Heidegger supposes a Senegalese—why this strange choice?) who has never seen one, and thus does not know by any experience what it is for, nor what it has to do with—who thus does not recognize this precise signification of a university lectern; indeed, one cannot say that he sees the lectern by first seeing its signification, because in effect he has absolutely no notion at all of this signification. But must we therefore conclude that he sees nothing at all, or again an object, reducible either to secondary qualities or to its material components? Clearly, no. Either he will see another signification, proper to his culture and his customary environmental milieu (for example, an element of domestic worship, a sign of social recognition, a marker of religious power, etc.)—in short, another signification acceptable for him, who is “not culture-less” (§15, 72; TDP 58), even if that signification doesn’t match mine. Or, he will see nothing more than the “instrumental strangeness [zeuglichen Fremdseins]” itself; but this still remains, at its core, identical to that which I see as the lectern, the lectern seen as signification, because the issue is still that of a “meaningful character [Bedeutungshafte]” (§14, 72; TDP 58, trans. modified)—even a negative one.
Thus “that which it gives” is given with recourse neither to a subject nor to an object. The lectern, for instance, is not given by me, for I do not constitute it on the basis of some such (psychological) given immediate to my consciousness; it springs up and imposes itself, so to speak, beginning from itself as its pure signification. Neither does it give itself as an object, which I might reconstitute beginning from its most basic (physical) components, such as they are analyzed by the theoretical attitude (atoms, particles, molecules, etc.) (§17, 84–86; TDP 66–68). How, then, does “that which it gives” succeed in freeing itself from the two extremes between which is enacted not only the final state of metaphysics, as illustrated endlessly by Heidegger’s contemporaries before his very eyes, but also the whole theoretical attitude and its ever-so-powerful empire? First and above all insomuch as that which it gives, gives in no way an object to see, nor even a thing, but directly the surrounding world itself: “In the experience of seeing the lectern something is given to me from out of an immediate environment [gibt sich mir etwas aus einer unmittelbaren Umwelt]” (§14, 72; TDP 58); and it is by “living in an environment [einer Umwelt] [that] it signifies [bedeutet] to me everywhere and always” (§14, 73; TDP 58); for “the meaningful signification [das Bedeutungshafte]” is equivalent in the end to “the meaningful dimension of the environing world [Umweltcharakter]” (§17, 86; TDP 68). This term, neither subjective nor objective, precisely designates what all of metaphysics in its terminal phase (under the banners of realism or of idealism) does not want to, and cannot, grant.
And so, we can now understand the initial questioning of the reach of “es gibt.” For the “it gives [es gibt]” and, what is more, “givenness [Gegebenheit],” keep within themselves and in themselves as such, their dangerous ambiguity, because they are in no way enough to guarantee access to the Umwelt as such. Indeed, in their current, that is to say metaphysical, accepted meaning, the operation that these terms put into motion can easily function for the primacy of theory and thus of objectivity: “How do I live and experience [erlebe ich] the environment? How is it ‘given’ to me? No, for something environmental to be given is already a theoretical infringement. It is already forcibly removed from me, from my historical ‘I’; the ‘it worlds [es weltet]’ is already no longer primary. ‘Given’ already signifies an inconspicuous but genuine theoretical reflection inflicted upon the environment. Thus ‘givenness’ is already altogether a theoretical form” (§17, 88–89; TDP 69, trans. modified). Thus one speaks of immediate givens and of perceived qualities, “but all in the mode of the thing [dinghaft]. Space is thing-space, time is thing-time” (89; TDP 70, trans. modified). And the assumed immediacy of givens already destroys the Umwelt, to the benefit of the assumed elementary components of the object to come (85; TDP 67). In this context of an almost irrepressible and nearly imperceptible drift, “ ‘givenness’ signifies the initial objectifying infringement of the environment [vergegenständlichende Antastung des Umweltlichen], its initial placement before the still historic ‘I’ ” (89; TDP 69). For, in response to the thingification of the Umwelt and of the phenomenon that worlds itself in an immediate given, the I slowly but surely loses its historicity. In other words, “the historical ‘I’ is de-historicized [das historische Ich ist ent-geschichtlicht] into the residue of a specific ‘I-ness’ as the correlate of thingliness” (89; TDP 70). With the “it gives,” at least if one conceives it on the basis of givenness reduced to the rank of a category, the Umwelt loses its own (nontheoretical) phenomenality, which bursts into two parallel and originally indissociable secondary fragments: that of the I into a (constituent) correlate of the object, and that of the signification appearing at once in the reality of the thing, and then soon after as a (constituted) object.
Now the Umwelt, on the contrary, can and must only be experienced (erleben); and that is only possible “in the essence of life in and for itself”; otherwise, the theoretical attitude can take it back under its sway—and so easily (88; TDP 69)! It is necessary to strive conversely to understand the “it gives” itself beginning from and under the aegis of “it worlds.” For it also remains “the basic statement of essence: all that is real can ‘world,’ but not all that ‘worlds’ need be real.” Such that what “worlds,” that which appears in the mode of “it worlds,” to wit, the worldhood of the environment (das Umweltliche), “has its own mode of self-demonstration in itself” (91; TDP 71, trans. modified). Which one? Only one answer, still provisional, and still negative, comes prior to Sein und Zeit: it demonstrates itself by allowing itself to be experienced: “The ‘something’ as the pre-worldly as such must not be conceived theoretically [. . .]. It is a basic phenomenon that can be experienced in the mode of understanding [ein Grundphänomen, das verstehend erlebt werden kann]” (§20, 115; TDP 88, trans. modified). Or again, the “ ‘it worlds’ is not established theoretically, but is experienced as ‘worlding’ ” (§17, 94; TDP 73). This can be formulated yet again negatively by saying: “All theoretical comportment [. . .] is de-vivifying [Alles theoretische Verhalten [. . .] ist ein entlebendes]” (§18, 100; TDP 78); and here ein ent-lebendes will be understood at the same time according to the meaning of that which rids itself of life and that which undoes the experience of the lived. But it can also be positively formulated by saying, “Leben ist historisch” (§20, 117; TDP 90), on the condition that we also understand in this Leben not only living but, in an essential counterpoint, Erleben, the experiencing that it (Leben) alone makes possible.
To mark the radical approach to “it gives” and tear it from its not only often possible but primarily and mostly inevitable theoretical drift, Heidegger resorts to a radical criterion. In fact, what we are talking about here is something like a marker, which anticipates with a rather stunning audacity the final steps of Heidegger’s path of thought. When I experience (Erlebnis), for instance, the professor’s lectern, which is phenomenalized at once as a signification and not as a thing or a constituted object, the “experience [. . .] is not a process but rather an event of appropriation [Ereignis] (non-process, or in the experience of the question a residue of this event, Ereignis). Lived experience [das Erleben] does not pass in front of me like a thing that I establish, like an object, but rather I appropriate it to myself [er-eigne es mir], and it appropriates [er-eignet] itself according to its essence” (§15, 75; TDP 60, trans. modified). In other words, “If the experiences of other subjects have reality at all, then this can only be as proper events of appropriation [Er-eignisse], and they can only be evident as such events, i.e. as appropriated [als Er-eignisse, als ge-eignet] by an historical ‘I’ ” (§16, 78; TDP 62). Indeed, more than a still-undetermined anticipation, the issue here is the same decision that seems to traverse and sustain Heidegger’s entire trajectory. For, in the quasi-conclusive text of 1962, Zeit und Sein, when Heidegger takes up for the last time the meditation upon “it gives, es gibt,” deploying there, it is true, a phenomenological mastery far outstripping the approximations of 1919, the task is still to think “it gives” not only independently of thingliness and theoretical objectity but especially, this time, beyond being and time. And, here again, the same marker, the Ereignis, comes in to guarantee the correct understanding of “it gives.” At issue is the strongest, and therefore the most debatable, thesis: “Being vanishes in the Ereignis.”28 The Ereignis would thus constitute the phenomenological correction that, from one extreme to the other, ensures, in Heidegger’s eyes, the phenomenological (and not the theoretical) approach to “it gives, es gibt.”
Thus it is this correction that should be discussed when measuring just how far Heidegger led the phenomenology of givenness, and at what point he foreclosed it.