The forethought "relationship" of behooving, i.e., of the to chre of the first beginning, is called the appropriating event [Ereignis]. This "key word" of forethinking is called upon now to determine the distribution of "power and impotence" between Being and the essence of man. It is intended to indicate how, corresponding to the original sense of the word, the "focused" essence of man as "glimpsed" can only "respond" to that which addresses itself to him in the realm of language, in an address that comes soundlessly as a claim aand appeal of Being or the world of essence. But in this "constellation" of Being and the essence of man, man himself retains much more "power" than the tradition had ever consigned to him. As the "prelude" of the event of appropriation, which essences as com-posite, already indicates, the noncreative human labor is itself a cocreating within the occurrence of Being. For being could never come forth within the currently prevailing unconcealment as the disposibility of stock if man could not listen to the currently prevailing demand and produce what is present through his labor. The creative modes of human response already designated by Heidegger in forethinking, namely, poetizing, thinking, building, and dwelling, are all no longer violent, but they are nonetheless, each in its own way, the expression of an enormous power of man.

P. 226-7

¶ 11:32 PM