Last year's summer Bookforum had an essay on Giorgio Agamben from which this is taken:

Between 1966 and 1968, he studied with Martin Heidegger in Le Thor, France. He describes his early experience in Idea of Prose (1985): At Le Thor, Heidegger held his seminar in a garden shaded by tall trees. At times, however, we left the village, walking in the direction of Thouzon or Rebanquet, and the seminar then took place in front of a small hut hidden away in the midst of an olive grove. One day, when the seminar neared its end and the students crowded round him, pressing him with questions, Heidegger merely remarked: 'You can see my limit; I can't.' Years before he had written that a thinker's greatness is gauged by his fidelity to his own internal limit, and not to know this limit--not to know it because of its closeness to the unspeakable--is the secret gift that being, at rare times, can make.

This may sound like a pietistic and hagiographical description of Heidegger's own greatness. But Agamben actually invites us to think through and beyond Heidegger. It is an invitation he leaves open--wide open--throughout his work.

You can see my limit; I can't: Do not ask me how I know because I do not. Just accept that I believe in your ability to witness. Have faith that I am calling on you to believe in my blindness no less than my insight. This is probably closer to what Heidegger means to say, even if he did not know how--but does anyone?--to say what he means. Heidegger is speaking to those who will survive him; those he may have affectionately named his students; those who have been called on; you. Acknowledging this vocative address means listening to a call that cannot be heard otherwise. It is a call that, to use Heidegger's argot, stretches across time as it calls its calling. To hear it means accepting it as one's Bestimmung, or vocation. In German, Bestimmung is one of those words that just sounds preordained for philosophy. It can be found, for example, throughout the writings of Kant, Hegel, and their contemporaries. Philosophers rarely, if ever, attempt to gather together all its different valences of meaning: determination, mission, goal, destiny, fate. Heidegger did.

This blog: my vocation? Your call.  ¶ 12:36 PM