If the principle of Ereignis is a truly mutual belonging together of man and being, such mutuality or reciprocity is admissible only at the price of a false symmetry. For if the essence of man consists only in belonging and corresponding to being, how can this belonging be equal on the side of man's relation to being, given that being can never truly "belong" to man in the way in which being possesses man, since being cannot depend on man as much as man depends on being? Ereignis, as equality and reciprocity of the two sides of the double relation, contradicts the absolute preponderance and antecedence of being over man. Heidegger fails to attain the simplicity that ought to characterize Ereignis, as singulare tantum. Indeed the "co-appropriation" (to attempt a translation of Ereignis) is, in the description given, doubled once more into two modes of appropriation that repeat the two asymmetrical sides of the relation. On the one side, " man is appropriated unto being [dem Sein...vereignet]"; on the other "being however is appropriated unto (zugeeignet) the essence of man." It must be conceded that the leap into Ereignis, as an Identity in which the terms founding themselves lose their previous identity, that is, "those determinations that metaphysics has conferred on them," has not been successful, because being has not been removed and man still retains a distinct essence. To be called the mortal, must he not continue to be differentiated--from being, from the world, or from the gods? Strictly speaking, the priority of being renders unthinkable any true reciprocity of its relation to man.

P. 66

¶ 6:21 PM