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.