Martin Heidegger, Über den Anfang / On Inception (GA 70) Written 1941

Translation of selected passagesTranslation by Daniela Vallega-Neu

PREFACEThe venturing word of the beginning can always only remain in the semblance of

a description and, contrary to its destination, it often sounds like a report.This is why the title suitable for such an attempt is only the heading:On InceptionThis title appears as if thinking now had still and already passed “beyond” the

inception; whereas this is never possible and can never be attempted.

[P.9] 1. What does “inception” say? From the picked-up meaning of a word, nothing can be extracted. And even if this

succeeded, the “word” would not be the word that here has to say something essential. The word is here the saying of the truth of beyng. Therefore the thinking of beyng must say and justify or even demand the word in as much as beyng itself beckons back into this “essence” that is to be called inception, and in as much as with the essence beyng determines its essential occurrence and essentiality.

The thinking of beyng as inception thinks ahead into the essence of beyng as event. Both essential occurrences, appropriating event [Er-eginis] and inception, belong together. Through this thinking, “beyng” is not erased as essential word; but it does indeed loose its exclusive priority that especially in the guise of the metaphysical coinage of its essence (“beingness”) did not allow any essential questioning of beyng itself insofar as that coinage reinforced the appearance that all determining of being is contained in the form of the question of the beingness of beings, the question to which all ‘ontology’ is limited.

If “inception” says the truth of beyng, how do we then now of being? At first through remembering that we know and understand being, without, of course, taking any special acknowledgment of this understanding. Understanding ‘being’ is essentially distant from a knowing of beyng, since the former understanding always is inclined to explain being out of beings. Knowledge of beyng can only be prepared by departing in a leap from the understanding of being, but even in this case it cannot be attained directly. For the human being, the inventive thinking of beyng in its essence remains what is most difficult and this out of reasons that otherwise let surmise the opposite. Because the – still too concealed – essence of the human being is strung and oscillates in the relation of beyng to humans, thinking enters only from afar this unique essential realm of what is most unique, that is, the truth of beyng as event and beginning.[P.10] According to the word, inception at first means something like “beginning” and this means a special place and phase in the sequence of a progression.

If here, however, the word “inception” is to name the essence of beyng and the essentiality of the essence, if at the same time beyng cannot be derived from beings, and if beyng nevertheless is not the absolute and unconditioned (which can only be asserted of beings) then “beginning” must name that which essentially occurs in itself and out of

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this essential occurrence precisely does not allow to take to itself like an unconditioned thing what occurs essentially. Beyng and its essential occurrence as inception (appropriating event) occurs essentially (begins, appropriates) outside the domains of the absolute and relative and their differentiation.

The thinking that thinks toward this outside is the proper thinking and the only “real” leap.

“Inception” therefore is not the beginning of an other; instead this word here thinks the taking-to-itself [An-sch-nehmen] and catching [Auffangen] of that which is appropriated [er-eignet] in the reaching out that takes on-to-itself [an-sich-nehmendes Aus-langen]: the clearing of the openness, the unconcealing. The taking on-to-itself is at once unconcealing and concealing.

Inception is the appropriation [Er-eignung] of this one [dieses Einen]. The beginning is inceptively the taking on-to-itself of the concealing and this means of the de-parture [des Ab-schieds] (cf. the departure). The in-ception [An-fang; note that “fangen” means to catch] is the taking a hold of itself [Sichfangen] and self-catching [Sichauf-fangen] in the event itself, as which occurs essentially the clearing that is veiled by the veil of nothingness.

Inception is the self-catching [Sich-auf-fangen] in the egress [Entgängnis] to the abyssal ground [Ab-grund].

The essence of the unconcealing – in which is concealing as a sheltering and veiling – has its distinction in the fact that it lets beings arise to themselves and thus takes in [aufnimmt] beings as such; and as what takes in [als dieses Aufnehmende] it [unconcealing] is the ground [Grund] in the sense of a “spatial” view in which we speak of what is staged ahead, in the middle, and in the back [Vorder-, Mittel- und Hinter-grund].

In the simplicity of a unique project [Entwurf], the essence of beyng thus throws itself to [wirft sich zu] knowledge:[P.11] In-ception is the taking on-to-itself of the departure into the abyss.

This taking on-to-itself is the inceptual seizing [Aneignung] and therefore ap-propriation [Er-eignung] of the initiation [Anfängnis].

In-ception is inceptively and this means in an abyssal way, the appropriating event [Er-eignis].

In the inceptive appropriating event the inception catches itself above its abyss and thus lets the latter plunge as abyss into its depth and rise to its height.

The inceptive appropriating event, however, has its full essence only in the fact that by occurring as appropriating event and thus as a carrying out [als Er-eignung austragend], it clears the inceptive clearing and thus appropriates the openness. Such an appropriating is the coming-in-between [Dazwischenkunft] of the clearing as time-space. The appropriating appropriates the in-between (as in-the-midst and meanwhile) to that which [is] the nothingless [das Nichtslose] – until the time span [Frist] that occurs essentially out of the appropriating – that then arises as a being.

But this in-taking [aufnehmende] and safekeeping grounding only occurs essentially in such a way that the ground itself no longer is a ground and essentially and always turns away from what has the character of ground; it thus remains abyssal ground. The concealment in which unconcealment essentially occurs, is egress [Entgängnis] into the abyssal ground.

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The occurrence of in-ception begins the inception in each case more inceptively. [Das An-fangen fängt den Anfang je anfänglicher an.]

This “increase” is not of the kind belonging to beings according to degrees, steps, and sequences. It is inceptive and therefore always unique; not continually [unstetig]; a beginning ruptures [klafft] against the other.

In the event occurs essentially the self-catching in the fissure [Klüftung] of the abyssal ground.

Beyng as inception and event uniquely has that essence that allows to say: “Beyng is”. All beings only arise into being; beings never are; but always only “are” beings.

A being is not, in so far as it is to have its circumstances [Bewenden], i.e. here the inception, in the “is”. A being only is as a being; and this means: a being reaches being only at times, but a being is not itself being.

A being remains so decisively differentiated [unterschieden] against, through, and from beyng, that a being has as its own not even nothingness [das Nichts]; because only beyng has the essential occurrence of nothingness.[P.12] A being is the nothingless.

In beings inception can never be found.Inception does not determine its essence from going away [Fortgang], but going

away is a possibility of inception. From the point of view of going away, inception easily has the appearance of mere “beginning”. But inception occurs essentially as well in the going away. The latter is only inceptively. And in this alone consists its history.

Inception [Anfang] is in each case [je] as inception. The uniqueness [Einzigkeit] breaks itself out [zerklüftet sich] into beginnings [Anfänge] and in this way alone reaches the simplicity of initiation [Anfängnis]. The talk of multiple beginnings is correct because it already comes from outside. But it becomes untrue when beginnings are counted up historically. To think inceptively in the sense of initiation means to properly think, if thinking here means the steadfastness of the projection of beyng, a projection that is thrown out of the throw that oscillates in all appropriation.

We intimate the inception in the recollecting to the truth of beyng and we call the inception thusly recollected the “first beginning”. We intimate the initiation [Anfängnis] and according to it think ahead into the inceptiveness of the inception [Anfänglichkeit des Anfangs] and thus intimate the “other beginning”. “Other” it shall be called in order not to fall into counting and not to impress the first with the number 1. The first is “the one that it at first” [der “erstmalige”], from which all essential occurrence [Wesung] of beyng comes. The beginning that is at first is “once” [“einmal”]; it is at once “one time” and “unique”. And therefore remaining in itself [the beginning is] the carrying out [Austragsamkeit] of the clearing, in the carrying out of which inception takes into itself the departure [in welcher Austragung der Anfang den Abschied an sich nimmt].

The reaching out [Auslangen] into departure carries ahead to it [the departure] and endures this essential taking-into-itself of the departure. The inception carries itself out into its initiation and thus carries all that can be decided into the simplicity of the one decision (either beygn or beings). Inception is carrying out. [Anfang ist Austrag.]

What belongs to inception therefore is carried out and ripe.Only what is inceptive is ripe.

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[Section 4, p.18, second full paragraph]The event is the differentiation of the appropriating event against that which can arise to its manifestness in what is appropriated, against beings.Yet this differentiation occurs as the inception.

Das Ereignis ist die Unterscheidung des Er-eignisses gegen das, was im Ereigneten zu seiner Offenbarkeit erstehen kann, gegen das Seiende.Diese Unter-scheidung aber ereignet sich als Anfang.-------------------------------------------------------[Section 5. Seyn?, p.19]

[…]The thinking of the other beginning is the twisting free of beyng [Verwindung des

Seyns]. What here is called “twisting free” can only be understood out of the initiation of the inception: out of [the fact] that the inception lets step back into itself, catch over itself and lets beyng occur essentially in departure.

The twisting free is the allowing of beyng (not first of beings), which allowing, however, does not only arise into beyng and toward beyng, but rather is downgoing into the departure in order to remain an allowing.

Das Denken des anderen Anfangs ist die Verwindung des Seyns. Das hier “Verwindung” Genannte läβt sich nur aus der Anfängnis des Anfangs begreifen: daraus, daß er in sich selbst zurücktreten, sich überfängt und im Abschied das Seyn wesen läβt.

Die Verwindung ist die Zulassung des Seyns (nicht erst des Seienden), welche Zulassung aber nicht in das Seyn und zum Seyn nur aufgeht, sondern, um Zulassung bleiben zu können, Untergang in den Abschied ist.

[Section 9. Anfang und Aufstand, p.27]The appropriating event is as coming-in-between of the in-between [als

Dazwischenkunft des Inzwischen] the calling forth of the nothingless [des Nichtslosen] into being, in order to be as a being. Beings thus stand up to themselves. By being appropriated to being [übereignet], beings seize [aneignen] being in such a way that from now on beings give themselves as that which carries and brings forth being in themselves, such that beings also must become the measure and foundation for the determination of being, which [being] thus has already enjoined itself to beingness. Beings thus stand up against being (as appropriating event). This rising up occurs out of the inception and belongs to it such that the inception incurs the danger that out of this rising up the covering over of the truth of beyng installs itself. This danger has its urgency in the fact that it disguises itself in the semblance that only now being is brought into its dignity. Metaphysics carries out this semblance.

[Section 31 Das Seyn, p.48][…]Beyng as incursion reveals the abyssal negligence [abgründige Unbekümmertheit]

of being toward beings

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This is why humans, steadfast in Da-sein, can attain the highest safekeeping of truth while still in the surrounding of total non-beings [Un-seiendes] that are precisely never nothingness [nie das Nichts].

[Section 34, p.51][…]In the essence of inception and its downgoing [Untergang] lies concealed – and

sheltered as the most extreme intimacy – a last downgoing. This determines an inceptive time in-between [Zwischenzeit], in which history does not necessarily continue in the same manifestness [Offenbarkeit]. This highest possibility of its inception, however, its downgoing, must in it [in the downgoing] be thought into the highest.

When the inception of beyng is and beyng essentially occurs only inceptively, then beyng itself (as event) must once bring forth the “time” (temporal-spatial-playing field) in which and with which it [beyng] essentially attains [erwest] its downgoing.

“Then” every possibility of a “then” has disappeared; then – spoken still again and only out of the transitional letting alone [aus der übergänglichen Überlassung gesprochen] – there also are no “beings”. Non-beings, which – said transitionally – continue, are neither nothingness nor not nothingness. They “are” (but thought only in a more inceptive sense) the meden Parmenides thought (but differently) in the first beginning.

---------------------------------------------------[Section 40. Vom Anfang, p.54f]

“The inception” is the essential occurrence of the truth of being. Inception occurs in all respects more essentially [Anfang ist wesender] than being. In the saying of inception, which is first appropriated in the other beginning, the step must be ventured to let behind not only the beingness of beings and beings, but also being.

Also the question of being still moves in the preliminary stage [Vordergrund] of history.

The thinking of beyng in its historicality [das seynsgeschichtliche Denken] transforms into the inceptive thinking.

---------------------------------------------------[Section 44. Der Anfang (Eigentümlichkeit), p.57]

[…]That the inception deposits [ablegt] what begins out of the essential going back,

harbors the possibility of unleashing [Loslassung] into itself what began.The unleashing of beings into being only “beings”, and into not needing being any

longer.[…]

---------------------------------------------------[Section 57. Die Unterscheidung, p.68]

Meant here is the differentiation of being and beings. [It is] the first in the order of rank […]. Indeed the differentiation addresses here the basic trait of beyng itself that comes forth as appropriating event out of the separateness of being-separated-off into the

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initiation [aus der Geschiedenheit der Abgeschiedenheit in die Anfängnis] and that [as appropriating event] only remains in this provenance.

---------------------------------------------------[Section 68. Der Untergang und das Seiende, p.85]

The downgoing leaves beings [überläβt] in beinglessness [Seinlosigkeit]. This “leaving” that occurs in the downgoing is the last that can still be said out of the inception. The beingless is the name for the unsayable [das Unsägliche]. In it the semblance [Schein] reigns as if beings should indeed continue to persist out of their own consistency; this semblance lets seep in a view that in truth is only a falling back into the metaphysically groundless representation of something present, to which one gives – and believes to have to give – a proper distinction, [namely,] that one can find it extant at whatever moment.

[…]The downgoing recollection is the farewell into beinglessness; through this

departure precisely being [das Sein] is once again and in its “last” [noch einmal und in seinem Zuletzt] sheltered back into the refusal.

-----------------------------------------------------[Section 97. The Event and beings, p.117]

When beings are appropriated [Wenn das Seiende er-eignet], i.e. when they are consigned into the unconcealedness of the clearing of the ‘there’ [Da], then this does not only mean that “beings” now enter consciousness and that they become objects as the beings they are. For until then they never are beings. “Be-ing” [“seiend”]; that is appropriated at the same time with the appropriating event.

That {beings} come into the open, however, does also not simply mean that they enter into the possibility of objectification; instead it says: they come into being [in das Sein]. And they come into the saying and into the word. But saying and word are not expression and conceptualization [Fassung]; rather they are essential occurrence of being [Wesung des Seins].

The rose blooms in the poem of the poet and only there, but this “blooming” is not simply what is said afterwards about a so-called real thing, a being, instead it alone [the blooming] is the being. That is why according to the uniqueness and rareness of being, inventive poetizing [Er-dichtung] happens rarely.

[…][118] When we think beings themselves in their domain inceptively and in the

historicality of beyng, then it is equally wrong to dream up beings in themselves or to admit beings for [being] in consciousness alone. In each case, the truth character of being is not thought inceptively and therefore beings are either again closed off from the openness (within the same openness) and made independent, or they are only explained through it [the openness] (in the sense of representation).

But if beings once are experienced and preserved in being (as appropriating event), then it is revealed as well in what sense, out of Da-sein, attunement thoroughly disposes humans [die Stimmung den Menschen durchstimmt] and at the same time remains enclosed [beschlossen] in beings. Being, however, is for beings not simply an overthrow of a luminousness [Helle] that temporarily glides over “beings”.

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Being neither makes nor effects beings.Being neither objectifying-representing beings.Beings neither overthrow of a luminousness –but rather being as ap-propriation is the consignment of nonbeings [das Sein ist

als Er-eignung die Übereignung des Unseienden] – or of beings that are abandoned by being – into being [in das Sein]. This entails that beings themselves become what emerges [das Aufgehende] and that in emerging (now physis is thought more inceptively) they become a rising up [Erstehen] into a permanence [Verweilung].

Everything that is said essentially of being, brings beings themselves, in so far as they “are”, in each case into what is assigned to them.

The claim of beings to have at their disposal [verfügen] the essence of being out of themselves and to explain being as their determination, this has hardened so much through metaphysics, that any [119] attempt to say being itself in a saying, is each time apprehended from the direction of metaphysics and is arranged and calculated according to metaphysics.

Being, however, is not the translation of beings (i.e. of the “world” [der “Welt”]) into the interiority of the human being that thus is conceived out of the “I-ness” because the interiority of the human being is already posited as representing subjectivity.

If here a counter-position could suffice at all, when what counts is the transition to the other beginning, one rather should say: not translation into the interiority of the human being, but transformation of the essence through the appropriation into being as event.

Beings are dislodged from their priority and still are not dissolved into being; on the contrary, they become more be-ing than before. [Inserted here is a marginal note: (what is propriated into its proper // das in sein Eigenes Ge-eignete)]

[…]Also, being is not a being once more so that a being repeats itself in being [so daß

im Sein das Seiende sich wiederholte], but a being is in being [im Sein] that one time and thus rises into the uniqueness of being. The rising [Ragen], however, is always different depending on beings being propriated to being as stone, tree, animal, human, god.

The rising as a “being be-ing” [Seiendsein] of beings in the event. Rising is not representedness and not mere appearing; rising is emerging [Aufgehen] and yet at the same time staying back in the beingless [zurckbleiben im Seinlosen].

Rising – as rising up and into the clearing also is not a mere illumination but rather what is incipient and always unique.

[120] In the appropriating event beings are not exchanged into being [nicht umgewechselt in das Sein] as the interiority of the “I”. The intimacy [Innigkeit] of being is far from all human sentimentality.

Rather it is the case that beings are exchanged from the temporay beinglessness into the exteriorizing of the rising, into the incursion of the coming-in-between and of its [the coming-in-between’s] being carried out [in die Entäußerung des Ragens in den Einfall der Dazwischenkunft und ihres Austrags].

-------------------------------------------------------

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[Section 98. Das Seinlose und das Seiende / Enteignung, p.121]Both can be experienced only in the truth of being. But how do they themselves

occur essentially and what does here ‘to occur essentially’ still mean? Beings are not – as the beingless and therefore they are also not “nothing”.

Neither can be said, the beingless is, nor that it is not.Since, however, being comes in-between into the beingless [Weil aber das Sein in

das Seinlose dazwischen ankommt] and begins as the inception of beings, therefore beings – namely as the subsequently be-ing beingless [als das nachmalige seiende Seinlose – are in a certain sense “prior” and older than being. Beings are the “a priori” to being, if here confusion does not occur because of the use of metaphysical titles for being and be-ing beings [Sein und seiende Seiende] outside of all metaphysics.

Yet beinglessness does not mean the abandonment of beings by being; for in the abandonment of beings by being, beings are indeed in be-ing [ist das Seiende gerade seined], but in such a way that they appear to be uniquely themselves without needing being.

In the abandonment of beings by being, beings are left to themselves and placed into the appearance of not needing being.

In beinglessness beings are neither be-ing nor not be-ing [weder seined noch unseiend].

The abandonment of beings by being is an essential occurrence of being itself, the appropriating event of the unleashing of beings into machination.

Although beinglessness is still conceived coming from being, it does not originate from being in so far as the beingless does not need being.

But in beinglessness can be conceived something most extreme belonging to the essence of being (inception – downgoing – departure).

Here – in the “beinglessness” and in the “beingless” – lies a challenge [eine Zumutung] in the face of which no metaphysics finds a way, but where can be predisposed [angestimmt] the courage [Mut] of beyng-historical thinking, [122] and where at the same time the uniqueness of being occurs [ereignet sich] in its rarity.

In the abandonment of beings by being (i.e. in the machination of beings) beings are completely outside of beinglessness.

The beingless is outside of nothingness, for in nothingness beings are already in being and are at first only non-beings.

But the beingless is as well essentially different and more than the non-being, it is beings themselves, that are not – beings (i.e. what is appropriated).

Beinglessness is dis-appropriation [Enteignung] of beings – disappropriation, however, is not simply annihilation, for dis-appropriation is more essential and inceptive than mere annihilation and elimination.

Dis-appropriation lets “stand” in the being-less.But what does “standing” mean – consistency?And the letting stand and the beinglessness – does this belong into the event [of

appropriation] as disappropriation?Such that disappropriation only is in the event. Or is disappropriation the event as departure and is farewell also of the

disappropriation – ? [Oder ist Enteignung das Ereignis als Abschied und die Verabschiedung auch noch der Enteignung—?]

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Compared to all this the through of “nothing” is a harmless and easy thought, a familiar “essence” [Wesen here has the sense of “something” in a vague sense] of metaphysics.

The beingless “is” the prior-inceptive and the post-inceptive and this not insofar as it has the character of inception but insofar as it only “becomes” a being in the inception and ceases to be [entwird] in the downgoing.

The beingless can be known only in being and can be know only in the manner of its “essential occurrence” [“Wesens”].

But only here the innermost nihiliation [Nichtung] of being itself is revealed, that in itself it is not only concealment and refusal but the disappropriation in the manner of downgoing [untergänglich die Enteignung].

Disappropriation is what is last in the intimacy of refusal [Die Enteignung ist das Letzte der Innigkeit der Verwehrung], it is departure, not only of beings, but departure of the proper essence.

Thus, coming from the beingless, a sharper gaze is allowed into the essential occurrence of being and of inception.

[123] Yet what does this say for humanity and divinity? The event of disappropriation? [Das Ereignis der Enteigung?]

All this is so essentially in being [im Sein] and untouchable by any annihilation of beings and their devastation. Because we were strung up for too long and too blindly with the beings of metaphysics, therefore precisely the beingless and departure seek to appear as that against which we must close ourselves off first; since here nihilism indeed seems to be exceeded into infinity.

And yet, here begins uniquely and for the first time the uniqueness of being, and its rarity is not confined into uniqueness [seine Seltenheit wird in die Einzigkeit nicht engeschränkt], but rather is unlimited [entschränkt] into the pure essence of the downgoing [Untergänglichkeit] as the consummation of the inception.

-----------------------------------------------------[Section 103. Da-sein, p.128]

[…]Although it appears that representing [Vor-stellen] carries out an opening, yet it

[representing] precisely closes itself off from the clearing of being and wards off the releasing of beings into being [verwehrt die Entlassung des Seienden in das Sein].

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