We must now consider the meaning of "Appropriation." Heidegger suggested that he hardly intended the essay as an argument of logical coherence. He says at the beginning: “Let me give a little hint on how to listen. The point is not to listen to a series or propositions, but rather to follow the movement of the showing.” The truth, however? is that the essay, written long after Heidegger had declared language inadequate to the thinking of Being, proceeds conceptually. Insofar as we are to understand, we must understand “Appropriation.” In the earlier essay, “The Way to Language” (1959), Heidegger explains “Appropriation” in this way: “The moving force in the Showing of Saying is Owning... This owning which brings them there, and which moves Saying as Showing, we call Appropriation.” Appropriation is “the moving force” that moves language and thus accounts for the Being of beings. But because to think Being without beings is the purpose of “Time and Being,” there is little concern with the role of language in the bringing about of beings. Furthermore, we are now told that we must not think of Appropriation as "an indeterminate power which is supposed to bring about all giving of Being and of time.” Heidegger’s treatment of Appropriation consists basically in demonstrating that what it is cannot be revealed in logical discourse. The question “What is Appropriation?” becomes a question about the Being of Appropriation, while the logic in which the question is approached requires that Appropriation be antecedent to Being. Eventually it is possible, not to define Appropriation, but only to identify its peculiar properties. The first of these is that "Appropriation withdraws what is most fully its own from boundless unconcealment." This would seem to rest upon Heidegger’s earliest explanation of truth, or aletheia, as being always both unconcealment and concealment. Another peculiar quality of Appropriation is that it brings “man into his own as the being who perceives Being by standing within true time.” In Heidegger’s earliest terminology “standing within true time" is achieved by the resolve which establishes authenticity, and man always has at least an ontic perception of Being. Standing within true time, man is “thus Appropriated” and “belongs to Appropriation.” But in belonging to Appropriation man is also "assimilated" by Appropriation. This means that man is “admitted to the Appropriation” and “this is why we can never place Appropriation in front of us, neither as something opposite us nor as something all-encompassing.” This parallels Heidegger’s argument that because we live within language we can never know language. If we might now argue that in belonging to Appropriation man, in language and in knowing, Appropriates beings, then again a Plotinian configuration of Heidegger’s thought would emerge. That, however, would mean that “Being” is language, of which Heidegger never admits, and the text of “Time and Being” does not legitimate such an argument. We have only the argument that because man is "admitted to appropriation” neither discursive argument nor simple statement can “correspond” to Appropriation. Eventually all we can say is: "Appropriation appropriates." In the sentence which immediately follows, Heidegger returns to the point at which his thinking of Being began: “Saying this, we say the Same in terms of the Same about the Same.” The Same, says Heidegger, is “the oldest of the old in Western thought: that ancient something which conceals itself in aletheia.” In the end, logical discourse can identify Being only as “that ancient something.”

P. 54-6

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