Let us begin with the image of the quarry — an image that has much to do with beginning. Heidegger introduces the themes of “Be-ing” (part 8, originally part 2) with the words, “Here lie the boulders of a quarry in which bedrock is broken” (421). In the other inception. philosophy is "no edifice of thoughts anymore, but boulders apparently fallen at random in a quarry where bedrock is broken and the rock-breaking tools remain invisible. Are the blocks closed forms, or the unwieldy supports of an invisible bridge—who knows?" (436). As a quarry, the Contributions try to reach primordial bedrock, Urgestein(187,421,436). The bedrock is appropriation as the giving of being. But this giving is not simply handed to us; it is given as a task and a challenge, given only to and in questioning. This ground-as we will see in chapter 3—is an Abgrund, an abyss. So we cannot begin with a self-evident first principle that serves as a foundation for an edifice. We must begin at the beginning and stay there, continually digging into the bedrock. Each moment needs to he a new beginning, in which we reinterpret and rediscover whar is primary. The thoughts have to be “mined” from the basic mood on each occasion (21). The text is repetitive because Heidegger is trying, again and again, to stay with the same (82), to start from the beginning in confronting the problems at stake. This is repetition as renewed retrieval, not as reproduction. Heidegger's aim is to inceive—-to perform and re-form his concepts and words on each occasion. He envies poets, who manage to capture the essential in a single, surveyable form (59-6o). He tries to do the same himself, struggling to sum up everything in a nutshell-—while fully realizing that this cannot be done, that no single sentence can convey the whole.

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¶ 3:26 PM