Metaphysical thinking thinks beings in terms of their being grounded and caused by other beings, ultimately tracing everything back to a highest being and cause of itself. By contrast, Heidegger wants to take the leap of thinking, not of faith, into the ‘it is’, the ‘isness’ of beings. If being is not to be thought as some kind of being and not as nothing at all, then it must be thought as a dimension of beings inaccessible to metaphysical thinking. This is why Heidegger relinquished the conception of being as das transcendens schlechthin, absolute transcendence. But this does not mean that being is simply immanent. The traditional concepts of transcendence and immanence are incapable of expressing what Heidegger is trying to get at.
Everywhere and always and in the closest proximity of the most inconspicuous beings the Open of the possibility presences of explicitly thinking that “it is” of beings and the free in whose Opening unconcealed beings appear. The Open, into which every being is freed as into its free element (sein Freies), the Open is being itself. Everything unconcealed is as such sheltered in the Open of being, i.e., in the ground-less.
I have gotten to this point in the book in my second read-through. I am surprised that Amazon has no reviews of it yet, as I find it most helpful for understanding the later MH.
The citation offered here crams so much into such few words that I guess it explains so little attention. Along with today's other quotes re: subject/object, I cannot help wondering if we will ever get to a place where we can understand what MH is getting at.
"The Open is being itself"? Any possibility we will see that on an OWS sign?
