But the thought of Ereignis is not just the adequate response to the dramatical and dramatized historical moment of thinking. In a deeper sense, I read it as a philosophical refiguration of this moment itself. On a few occasions Heidegger suggests such a connection himself. In the context of a discussion of space and time in Contributions to Philosophy, section 239, he insists that space-time must be reflected from out of the "Augenblicks-stätte" of Da-sein, its "momentary-places." The remark is partly in line with the analysis in Being and Time, even though it points to the later thinking in that it accords an irreducible role to spatiality. What is important here, however, is that in the same section he states that this existential origin of time-space corresponds to the unicity of being as Ereignis. As we learned from Being and Time, the Augenblick is the temporal mode that does not fit into the linear structure of chronological time, which it both shatters and gathers. Likewise, Ereignis belongs outside or beyond the generality of time and space, as well as every organized ontological conceptuality.

Another indication of the proximity between these two key concepts is the curious correlation of Ereignis and Er-äugnis that is mentioned in several later texts, such as "Der satz der Indentität." There he speaks of the Er-eignen as in fact an Er-äugnen, that is an er-blicken. These somewhat elusive indications should make us attentive to the underlying philosophical motivation that brings these two themes together. For they do indeed emerge from what we could perhaps describe--borrowing a term from Heidegger himself--as a common philosophical basic Stimmung.

P. 244-245

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