Ten Theses on Heidegger

6. Heidegger sholarship should abandon the word "Sein" as a marker for die Sache selbst.

a. Heidegger's focal topic is not "being" in any form ("das Sein [ist] nicht mehr das eigens zu Denkende," SD 44.6-7). Rather, his topic is that which makes possible all Seinsverständnis and thus any appearance of Sein/ist.

b. Even when die Grundfrage is designated as "the question of being-itself," the crucial distinction between das Ermöglichte (= das Sein selbst) and das Ermöglichende (= the open as das Woher und Wodurch das Seins selbst) is all too frequently overlooked.

c. Heidegger scholarship tends to hypostasize das Sein into a non-phenomenological, quasi-metaphysical Something ("Big Being") that we can allegedly pursue and relate to, an "X" that performs such mystical tasks as revealing and concealing itself, dispensing epochs of itself, and so on.

Glossary:
die Sache selbst: the things themselves.
Seinsverständnis: understanding of being.
die Grundfrage: the basic question.
das Ermöglichte: the made possible.
das Ermöglichende: the making possible.
hypostasize: to make into a distinct entity.

The quote from Zur Sache des Denkens may be translated as "being [is] no more than the particularly of thinking".

And the "das Woher..." quote as "the from where and whereby of being itself".

[Thesis 7]  ¶ 5:14 PM