It would appear that, by virtue of its condition of liberating by way of tradition, what is proper to hermeneutic convalescence is a passing through proprietary, i.e., possession and ownership. We see something of this in Heidegger's use of the word Ereignis, but it applies equally to Gadamer as well. The word Ereignis literally means to make one's own, eigen, in a continuing fashion, er-eignen. In Being and Time, where the understanding of being is first explicitly thematized through the analytic of Dasein, the appropriation of Dasein's own being - the manner of taking possession of it - amounts to the possibility of authenticity. In his later writings where Heidegger shifts his focus to the "happening of being," this happening is itself an appropriation, as if to say that the issue of being is for Heidegger the issue of its self-possession. Within the history of philosophy, this self possession has been named οὐσία, as neing's enduring presence. For Heidegger, though, in being's heppening, i.e., historical occurring, there is no self-possession as such since being undergoes at the same time a dispossession. In its historical "sending," where the giving of being, in effect, enters the receiving necessary for possession, being also happens as a non-owning; Ereignis involves Ent-eignung, an expropriation and disowning. The donation, the giving, of the being of beings is withdrawn.

Pp. 20-1

¶ 5:15 PM