Then Cassirer’s counter-question with reference to the concept of truth is elevated in importance. For Kant, ontological knowledge is what is universally necessary, what all factical experiences anticipate, and in connection with this I might point out that in other passages Kant says that what makes experience possible, the inner possibility of ontological knowledge, is accidental. — Truth itself is unified with the structure of transcendence on the most intimate level in order for Dasein to be a being open to others and to itself. We are a being which holds itself in the unconcealedness of beings. To hold oneself in this way in the openness of beings is what I describe as Being-in-truth, and I go further and say: On the grounds of the finitude of the Being-in-truth of human beings, there exists at the same time a Being-in-untruth. Untruth belongs to the innermost core of the structure of Dasein. And I believe here to have found for the first time the root upon which Kant’s metaphysical “appearance” is metaphysically grounded.

Now to Cassirer’s question concerning universally valid eternal truths. If I say: truth is relative to Dasein, this is no ontic assertion of the sort in which I say: the true is always only what the individual human being thinks. Rather, this statement is a metaphysical one: in general, truth can only be as truth, and as truth it only has a sense in general if Dasein exists. If Dasein does not exist, there is no truth, and then there is nothing at all. But with the existence of something like Dasein, truth first comes in Dasein itself. Now, however, is the question: How does it stand with the validity of the eternality of truth? With respect to the problem of validity, this question always orients us toward the previously expressed statement, and from there we first come back to what is of value. And from there, we find worth or the like. I believe that the problem must be unraveled in another way. Truth is relative to Dasein. That is not to say that there would be no possibility for everyone to make the being evident as it is. But I would say that this transsubjectivity of truth, this breaking-out of the truth concerning the particulars themselves, as Being-in-truth, already means to be at the mercy of the being itself, to be placed into possibility to shape itself. What is redeemable here as objective knowledge has, according to the respective, factical, individual existence, a truth-content which, as content, says something about the being. The peculiar validity of which he spoke is poorly interpreted if we say: In contrast to the flow of experience there is a permanence, the eternal, the sense, and concept. I pose the counter-question: What, then, does the eternal actually mean here? From where, then, do we know of this eternity? Is this eternity not just permanence in the sense of the ἀεί <5>ἀεί can be translated as “forever” or “always.” of time? Is this eternality not just that which is possible on the grounds of an inner transcendence of time itself? My whole interpretation of temporality has the metaphysical intention of asking: Are all these headings from transcendental metaphysics, namely a priori, ἀεὶ ὄν, οὐσία<6>Being which always is, presence. — are they accidental, or from where do they come?

If they speak of the eternal, how are they to be understood? They are only to be understood and are only possible owing to the fact that an inner transcendence lies within the essence of time; that time is not just what makes transcendence possible, but that time itself has in itself a horizonal character; that in future, recollected behavior I always have at the same time a horizon with respect to the present, futurity, and pastness in general; that a transcendental, ontological determination of time is found here, within which something like the permanence of the substance is constituted for the first time. — My whole interpretation of temporality is to be understood from this point of view. And in order to emphasize this inner structure of temporality and in order to show that time is not just a setting in which experiences play themselves out to make manifest this innermost character of temporality in Dasein itself, the effort made in my book is required. Every page in this book was written solely with a view to the fact that since antiquity the problem of Being was interpreted on the basis of time in a wholly incomprehensible sense and that time always announced the subject. With a view to the connection of this question to time, with a view to the question concerning Being in general, it is first a matter of bringing out the temporality of Dasein, not in the sense that is now worked out with any theory, but rather in the sense that, in a wholly determined problematic, the question concerning human Dasein will be posed. — This whole problematic in Being and Time, which treats Dasein in man, is no philosophical anthropology. For that it is much too narrow, much too preliminary. I believe that there is a problem here of a kind which hitherto has not been brought up as such, a problem which has been determined by means of the question: If the possibility of the understanding of Being is itself to be possible, and with it the possibility of the transcendence of man, and with it the possibility of the formative comporting toward beings and of the historical happening in the world history of man, and if this possibility has been grounded in an understanding of Being, and if this ontological understanding has been oriented in some sense with respect to time, then the task is: To bring out the temporality of Dasein with reference to the possibility of the understanding of Being. And it is with respect to this that all problems are oriented. In one direction, the analysis of death has the function of bringing out the radical futurity of Dasein, but not of producing an altogether final and metaphysical thesis concerning the essence of death. The analysis of anxiety does not have as its sole function the making-visible of a central phenomenon in man, but instead it has the function of preparing for the question: On the grounds of which metaphysical sense of Dasein itself is it possible that the human being in general can have been placed before something like the Nothing? In answer to this question, the analysis of anxiety was provided so that the possibility of something like the Nothing is thought of only as an idea which has also been grounded in this determination of the disposition of anxiety. It is only possible for me to understand Being if I understand the Nothing or anxiety. Being is incomprehensible if the Nothing is incomprehensible. And only in the unity of the understanding of Being and Nothing does the question of the origin [Ursprung] spring up [springt . . . auf] from the why. Why can man ask about the why, and why must he ask? These central problems of Being, the Nothing, and the why are the most elementary and the most concrete of problems. They are those to which the whole analytic of Dasein has been oriented. And I believe that from this initial grasping we have already seen that the whole supposition under which the critique of Being and Time stands, the proper kernel of intent, has not been encountered. On the other hand, as we have also already seen, I can very well concede that if in some measure we take this analytic of Dasein in Being and Time collectively as an investigation of the human being and then pose the question of how, on the grounds of this understanding of man, the understanding of a formation of culture and a cultural sphere is to be possible — that if we pose this question in this way, then it is an absolute impossibility to say something about what is under consideration here.

All these questions are inadequate with respect to my central problem. At the same time, I pose a further methodological question: How, then, must such a metaphysics of Dasein, which has the ground for its determination in the problem of winning the foundation for the problem of the possibility of metaphysics, be put forth? Is a determinate world-view not taken as a basis for it? I would misunderstand myself if I said that I gave a philosophy free of points of view. And here a problem is expressed: that of the relationship between philosophy and world-view. Philosophy does not have the task of giving world-view, although, again, world-view is the presupposition of philosophizing. And the world-view which the philosopher gives is not a direct one in the sense of a doctrine or in the sense of an influencing. Rather, the world-view which the philosopher gives rests in the fact that in the philosophizing, it succeeds in making the transcendence of Dasein itself radical, i.e., it succeeds in making the inner possibility of this finite creature comport itself with respect to beings as a whole. To turn it another way: Cassirer says: We do not grasp freedom, but only the ungraspability of freedom. Freedom does not allow itself to be grasped. The question: How is freedom possible? is absurd. From this, however, it does not follow that to a certain extent a problem of the irrational remains here. Rather, because freedom is not an object of theoretical apprehending but is instead an object of philosophizing, this can mean nothing other than the fact that freedom only is and can only be in the setting-free. The sole, adequate relation to freedom in man is the self-freeing of freedom in man.

In order to get into this dimension of philosophizing, which is not a matter for a learned discussion but is rather a matter about which the individual philosopher knows nothing, and which is a task to which the philosopher has submitted himself — this setting-free of the Dasein in man must be the sole and central [thing] which philosophy as philosophizing can perform. And in this sense, I would believe that for Cassirer there is a wholly other terminus ad quem in the sense of a cultural philosophy. Further, I believe that for Cassirer this question of cultural philosophy first gets its metaphysical function in the happening of the history of humankind, if it is not to remain and to be a mere presentation of the various regions. Rather, at the same time within its inner dynamic, it is so deeply rooted that it becomes visible in the metaphysics of Dasein itself as basic happening, and so deeply rooted that it does so expressly and from the first, not after the fact.

Questions for Cassirer:
1. What path does man have to infinitude? And what is the manner in which man can participate in infinity?
2. Is infinitude to be attained as privative determination of finitude, or is infinitude a region in its own right?
3. To what extent does philosophy have as its task to be allowed to become free from anxiety? Or does it not have as its task to surrender man, even radically, to anxiety?

Cassirer: As for the first: In no way other than through the medium of form. This is the function of form, that while man changes the form of his Dasein, i.e., while he now must transpose everything in him which is lived experience into some objective shape in which he is objectified in such a way, to be sure, that he does not thereby become radically free from the finitude of the point of departure (for this is still connected to his particular finitude). Rather, while it arises from finitude, it leads finitude out into something new. And that is immanent infinitude. Man cannot make the leap from his own proper finitude into a realistic infinitude. He can and must have, however, the metabasis which leads him from the immediacy of his existence into the region of pure form. And he possesses his infinity solely in this form. “From out of the chalice of this spiritual realm, infinity flows to him.” The spiritual realm is not a metaphysical spiritual realm; the true spiritual realm is just the spiritual world created from himself. That he could create it is the seal of his infinitude.

As to the second. It is not just a privative determination, but is instead a stranger sphere, although it is not one obtained in a purely negative way in addition to the finite. In infinitude, it is not just an opposition to finitude which is constituted but, in a certain sense, it is just the totality, the fulfillment of finitude itself. But this fulfillment of finitude exactly constitutes infinitude. Goethe: “If you want to step into infinitude, just go in all directions into the finite.” As finitude is fulfilled, i.e., as it goes in all directions, it steps out into infinitude. This is the opposite of privation, it is the perfect filling-out of finitude itself.

As to the third. That is quite a radical question, to which one can answer only with a kind of confession. Philosophy had to allow man to become sufficiently free, to the extent that man can just become free. While it does that, I believe, it frees man — to be sure, in a certain radical sense — from anxiety as mere disposition. I believe, even according to Heidegger’s explanations earlier today, that freedom can properly be found only along the path of progressive freeing, which indeed is also an infinite process for him. I believe that he can agree with this interpretation. Granted, I see that the most difficult problem is found here. I would like the sense, the goal, in fact the freeing, to be taken in this sense: “Anxiety throws the earthly from you.” That is the position of idealism with which I have always been acquainted.

Pos<7>Pos is apparently the Dutch scholar H. J. Pos, one of the participants in the Davos course. I am indebted to Prof. O. Pöggeler for his help with this identification.: Philological remark: Both men speak a completely different language. For us, it is a matter of extracting something common from these two languages. An attempt at translation was already made by Cassirer in his “Space for Action” [“Aktionsraum“]. We must hear the acknowledgment of this translation from Heidegger. The translational possibility extends to the point at which something emerges which does not allow translation. Those are the terms which demarcate what is characteristic of one of a group of languages. In both of these languages, I have attempted to gather several of these terms which I doubt would allow for translation into the other language. I nominate Heidegger’s expressions: Dasein, Being, the ontic. On the other hand, I nominate Cassirer’s expressions: the functional in spirit and the transformation of original space into another one.<8>The German terms of Heidegger are: das Dasein, das Sein, das Ontische. The German terms of Cassirer are: das Funktionale im Geist, die Umwandlung des ursprünglichen Raumes in einen anderen. Should it be found that there is no translation for these terms from both sides, then these would be the terms with which to differentiate the spirit of Cassirer’s philosophy from Heidegger’s.

Heidegger: In the first lecture, Cassirer used the expressions terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. One could say that for Cassirer the terminus ad quem is the whole of a philosophy of culture in the sense of an elucidation of the wholeness of the forms of the shaping consciousness. For Cassirer, the terminus a quo is utterly problematical. My position is the reverse: The terminus a quo is my central problematic, the one I develop. The question is: Is the terminus ad quem as clear for me? For me, this occurs not in the whole of a Philosophy of Culture, but rather in the question: τί τὸ ŏv, or rather: what in general is called Being? For me, it was from this question that the problematic of a Metaphysics of Dasein arose in order to win a foundation for the basic problem of metaphysics. Or, in order to come once more to the core of the interpretation of Kant: My intention was not to bring up something new in contrast to an epistemological interpretation and to bring honor to the power of imagination. Rather, it should be clear that the inner problematic of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., the question concerning the possibility of Ontology, is relegated to a radical bursting-open of the concept in the traditional sense, which was the end result for Kant. In attempting to lay the ground for Metaphysics, Kant was pressed in a way that makes the proper foundation into an abyss [Abgrund].<9>The words “relegated to a radical . . . Kant was pressed” were added by the editor in the GA edition. If Kant says: The three basic questions are allowed to lead back to the fourth: What is man?, then this question in its character as question has become questionable. I attempted to show that it is not at all self-evident to start from a concept of logos, but instead that the question of the possibility of metaphysics demands a metaphysics of Dasein itself as possibility of the fundament of a question of metaphysics. In this way, the question of what man is must be answered not so much in the sense of an anthropological system, but instead it must first be properly clarified with regard to the perspective from within which it wants to be posed.

And here I come back to the concepts terminus a quo and terminus ad quem. Is this just a heuristic questioning, or does it lie in the essence of Philosophy itself that it has a terminus a quo which must be made into a problem and that it has a terminus ad quem which correlates to the terminus a quo? This problematic does not yet appear to me to have been coined clearly in Cassirer’s philosophy up to now. Cassirer’s point is to emphasize the various forms of the shaping in order, with a view to these shapings, subsequently to point out a certain dimension of the shaping powers themselves. Now, one could say: this dimension, then, is fundamentally the same as that which I call Dasein. But that would be erroneous. The difference is clearest in the concept of Freedom. I spoke of a freeing in the sense that the freeing of the inner transcendence of Dasein is the fundamental character of philosophizing itself. In so doing, the authentic sense of this freeing is not to be found in becoming free to a certain extent for the forming images of consciousness and for the realm of form. Rather, it is to be found in becoming free for the finitude of Dasein. Just to come into the thrownness of Dasein is to come into the conflict which lies within the essence of freedom. I did not give freedom to myself, although it is through Being-free that I can first be I myself. But now, not I myself in the sense of an indifferent ground for explanation, but rather: Dasein is the authentic basic occurrence in which the existing of man, and with it every problematic of existence itself, becomes essential.

Based on this, I believe we can answer the question by Pos concerning translation. I believe that what I describe by Dasein does not allow translation into a concept of Cassirer’s. Should one say consciousness, that is precisely what I rejected. What I call Dasein is essentially codetermined — not just through what we describe as spirit, and not just through what we call living. Rather, what it depends on is the original unity and the immanent structure of the relatedness of a human being which to a certain extent has been fettered in a body and which, in the fetteredness in the body, stands in a particular condition of being bound up with beings. In the midst of this it finds itself, not in the sense of a spirit which looks down on it, but rather in the sense that Dasein, thrown into the midst of beings, as free, carries out an incursion into the being which is always spiritual and, in the ultimate sense, accidental. [It is] so accidental that the highest form of the existence of Dasein is only allowed to lead back to very few and rare glimpses of Dasein’s duration between living and death. [It is] so accidental that man exists only in very few glimpses of the pinnacle of his own possibility, but otherwise moves in the midst of his beings.

The question concerning the type of Being of what is set into his Philosophy of Symbolic Form, the central question concerning the inner constitution of Being, is what the Metaphysics of Dasein determines — and it does not determine it with the intention of a previously given systematic of the cultural jurisdiction and of the philosophical disciplines. In the entirety of my philosophical efforts, I left completely undecided the traditional shape and division of the philosophical disciplines, because I believe that the orientation to these is the greatest misfortune in the sense that we no longer come back to the inner problematic of philosophy. To an equal degree, neither Plato nor Aristotle could have known of such a division of philosophy. A division of this sort was the concern of the schools, i.e., of a philosophy that has lost the inner problematic of its questioning; and it requires exertion to break through these disciplines. What is more, that is why if we pass through the disciplines of aesthetics, etc., we again come back to the specific metaphysical mode of Being of the region concerned. Art is not just a form of consciousness which shapes itself; rather, art itself has a metaphysical sense within the basic occurrence of Dasein itself.

I have intentionally singled out these differences. It is not suitable to the task at hand if we come up against a process of leveling. Rather, because it is only in and through the rigor of what has been brought forth that the problem gains clarity, I would like once more to place our entire discussion in terms of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and to fix once more the question of what man is as the central question. At the same time, however, [I would like to fix it] as the question which we pose not in some isolated ethical sense, but instead so that both positions become clear on the basis of the problematic, so that the question of man is only essential for the philosophers in the way in which the philosopher simply disregards himself, so that the question may not be posed anthropocentrically. On the contrary, it must be shown that: because man is the creature who is transcendent, i.e., who is open to beings in totality and to himself, that through this eccentric character man at the same time also stands within the totality of beings in general — and that only in this way do the question and the idea of a Philosophical Anthropology make sense. The question concerning the essence of human beings is not to be understood in the sense that we study human beings empirically as given objects, nor is it to be understood in such a way that I project an anthropology of man. Rather, the question concerning the essence of human beings only makes sense and is only justifiable insofar as it derives its motivation from philosophy’s central problematic itself, which leads man back beyond himself and into the totality of beings in order to make manifest to him there, with all his freedom, the nothingness of his Dasein. This nothingness is not the occasion for pessimism and melancholy. Instead, it is the occasion for understanding that authentic activity takes place only where there is opposition and that philosophy has the task of throwing man back, so to speak, into the hardness of his fate from the shallow aspect of a man who merely uses the work of the spirit.