Source: Research in Phenomenology
Vol. 37, No. 1, February 2007, Page 75 - 94
Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Rethinking Selfhood: From Enowning

Francois RaffoulLouisiana State University

INTRODUCTIONMEANING OF BEING AND TRUTH OF BE-INGSELF-MINDFULNESSTHE WHO-QUESTIONWHO ARE WE?SELF-BEING AND OWNHOODCONCLUSION

I propose in this paper to explore Heidegger's thought of selfhood in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) through a close reading of key paragraphs. It is often assumed that after the "turning" in his thinking, when Heidegger engages in a thought of Ereignis no longer centered on human Dasein as the locus of the meaning of being, the reference to selfhood would fade away. However, a close reading of the Contributions reveals that a renewed thinking of selfhood, of what Heidegger calls "self-being" (Selbst-sein), is enacted precisely at the same time that the subjectivistic understanding of the self is more radically abandoned. I attempt to delineate how Heidegger undertakes to rethink selfhood no longer from the paradigm of the ego, but from the event of Ereignis, or enowning.

Keywords: Selfhood, Ereignis, Human being, ego, subjectivity

IntroductionI propose in this essay to delineate Heidegger's thought of selfhood in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). From the very inception of his thought, Heidegger has attempted, on the "way" (if, as he remarks, "stumbling and getting up again can be called that")[1] to a genuine thinking of being, its meaning and its truth, to rethink the proper selfhood of human beingsthat is, what is ownmost to themaway from the traditional inadequate categories of subjectivity, reflection, I-ness, and self-consciousness. This led him in the late twenties to forge the notions of ek-static Dasein and transcendence in order to think the self. However, in Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger considers that these notions are still too attachedreactively or "defensively"to the metaphysical subjectivistic way of thinking, and attempts to think now, beyond transcendence and beyond the very ontological difference, the truth of be-ing out of itself.[2] Selfhood is thus approached from the key word in his thought, Ereignis, enowning, i.e., from the happening of the truth of be-ing. Many a reader would assume that, once Heidegger no longer deploys a fundamental ontology in the guise of an analytic of Dasein, and after the turning in his thinking engages in a thought of Ereignis, the reference to the human self would fade away.[3] However, a close reading of the Contributions will reveal that a renewed thinking of selfhood, of what Heidegger calls "self-being" (Selbst-sein), is enacted precisely at the same time that the subjectivistic understanding of the self is more radically abandoned. As Heidegger stresses: "Be-ing is nothing 'human', and no human product; and nevertheless the essential swaying of be-ing needs Da-sein and thus the inabiding of man" (GA 65: 265; CP, 187). Two propositions, or two threads, will thus need to be held together when attempting to gain access to the thought of selfhood in the Contributions: 1) Any thinking of be-ing is at once a thinking of selfhood. 2) Such a selfhood is to be taken in a radically non-subjectivistic sense and rethought from what is ownmost to the human being, i.e., its belongingness to the event of be-ing.

Meaning of Being and Truth of Be-ingIn paragraph 4 of the Preview, entitled "From Enowning," Heidegger makes the following statement:The question concerning the 'meaning' [of being], i.e., in accordance with the elucidation in Being and Time, the question concerning grounding the domain of projecting-openand then, the question of the truth of be-ingis and remains my question, and is my one and only question; for this question concerns what is most sole and unique. In the age oftotal lack of questioning anything, it is sufficient as a start to inquire into the question of all questions. (GA 65: 10-11; CP, 8) It is therefore appropriate that we dwell a moment on this expression, "truth of be-ing," especially since, as we will observe, it includes in an eminent way the question of selfhood. More precisely, it is the difference, as Heidegger understands it, between the expressions "meaning of being" and "truth of be-ing" that will prove crucial for a rethinking of the Selbst in the thought of the truth of be-ing. Indeed, how does Heidegger explain the shift from "meaning of being" to "truth of be-ing"? In terms of a turning of the question of being, a turning that would have the question part from a certain subjectivism and anthropocentrism still dangerously threatening to affect the analyses of Being and Time. Heidegger himself admits it plainly: "In Being and Time Da-sein still stands in the shadow of the 'anthropological,' the 'subjectivistic,' and the individualistic,' etc" (GA 65: 296; CP, 208). Heidegger gives examples of such a "turning in thinking," when, for instance in paragraph 41, he explains that the word "decision" can be taken first as an anthropological human act, "until it suddenly means the essential sway of be-ing" (GA 65: 84; CP, 58). Thinking "from enowning" will thus involve that "man [be] put back into the essential sway ofbe-ing and cut off from the fetters of 'anthropology'" (GA 65: 84; CP, 58). In other words, in the attempt to think the truth of be-ing at issue is the "transformation of man himself" (GA 65: 84; CP, 58). In what way? The initial position of the question of being in Being and Time in terms of "meaning of being" and "understanding of being" suffers, Heidegger tells us in paragraph 138 of Contributions (GA 65: 259; CP, 182-83), from an excessive dependence upon the language of subjectivity. To that extent, it exposed itself to a series of misunderstandings, all sharing the same subjectivism: "Understanding" is taken in terms of the "inner lived-experiences" of a subject; the one who understands is taken in turn as "an I-subject"; the accessibility of being in an understanding is taken as an indication of the "dependency" of being upon a subject and therefore as a sign of idealism, etc. It is in this perspective that we are to understand Heidegger's moving from the expression "meaning of being" to that of "truth of be-ing." In 1969, in the Thor seminar, Heidegger returned to this question in order to clarify it. In contrast with the metaphysical question concerning the beingness of being, Heidegger acknowledges that he attempted in Being and Time to pose the question concerning the "is-ness" of the "is" in terms of the meaning of being. For, precisely, metaphysics does not ask about the meaning of being, but only about the beingness of beings (itself ontically determined as ground). The expression "meaning of being" is thus to be taken as a first attempt to step out of the metaphysical conflation of being with beingness (Seiendheit). "According to the tradition, the 'question of being' means the question concerning the being of beings, in other words: the question concerning the beinghood of beings, in which a being is determined in regard to its being-a-being [Seiendsein]. This question is the question of metaphysics. With Being and Time, however, the 'question of being' receives an entirely other meaning. Here it concerns the question of being as being. It becomes thematic in Being and Time under the name of the 'question of the meaning [Sinn] of being.'"[4]Now, "meaning of being" is further clarified inBeingand Time in terms of the project or projecting unfolded by the understanding of being. "Here 'meaning' is to be understood from 'project,' which is explained by 'understanding'" (FS, 40). At this point, Heidegger notes that this formulation is inadequate because it runs the risk of reinforcing the establishment of subjectivity:[5] "What is inappropriate in this formulation of the question is that it makes it all too possible to understand the 'project' as a human performance. Accordingly, project is then only taken to be a structure of subjectivitywhich is how Sartre takes it, by basing himself upon Descartes" (FS, 41). In the Contributions, on the contrary, Heidegger is very careful in stressing that "the projecting-open of the essential sway of be-ing is merely a response to the call" (GA 65: 56; CP, 39). Any projecting-open is thus revealed to be thrown, and in the Contributions, thrownness is decidedly understood as belongingness to be-ing (that is, not as the project of the subject!), so that to be thrown now means to be en-owned.[6] Thus in paragraph 134, Heidegger explains that the "relation" between Da-sein and be-ing was first grasped in Being and Time as "'understanding of being,' whereby understanding is grasped as projecting-openand the opening-throwing as thrown, and that means: belonging to en-ownment by be-ing itself" (GA 65: 252; CP, 178; last emphasis mine). It was thus in order to avoid the subjectivizing of the question of being that the expression "truth of being" was adopted. "In order to counter this mistaken conception and to retain the meaning of 'project' as it is to be taken (that of the opening disclosure), the thinking after Being and Time replaced the expression 'meaning of being' with 'truth of being'" (FS, 41). Heidegger is then able to conclude that "The thinking that proceeds from Being and Time, in that it gives up the word 'meaning of being' in favor of 'truth of being,' henceforth emphasizes the openness of being itself, rather than the openness of Dasein in regard to this openness of being. This signifies 'the turn,' in which thinking always more decisively turns to being as being" (ibid.). It has often been concluded from this that Heidegger abandoned any reference to human selfhood after the turn, insofar as his thinking increasingly turned towards the truth of be-ing as such (and no longer beingness), as it inquired into the truth of be-ing "out of be-ing itself" (GA 65: 4; CP, 3). However, nothing could be further from the truth. For the turning in the question leads not to an abandonment of the reference to the human being but rather, as we alluded above, to its transformation.[7] This can easily be attested by a simple reading of a few key sections of the Contributions.

Self-MindfulnessIn fact, Heidegger claims that "as mindfulness of be-ing (Besinnung auf das Seyn), philosophy is necessarily self-mindfulness (Selbstbesinnung)." That statement is repeated like a leitmotif in various forms and in several places in the text (for instance: paragraphs 16, 19, 30). How are we to understand this proposition? Heidegger notes that in the history of metaphysics, the motifs of soul, reason, spirit, thinking, representing, etc. have come to the fore for essential reasons. What this situation reveals, although in an unclarified way, is that human Dasein is required, implicated in, needed, in the question of be-ing and that, as he puts it, "somehow man and then again not manand indeed always through an extending and a displacingis in play in grounding the truth of be-ing. And it is this question-worthy matter that I call Da-sein" (GA 65: 313; CP, 220). Mindfulness is necessarily self-mindfulness because, first and above all, Dasein is necessarily "in play" in the event of be-ing. What is "mindfulness"? It is, Heidegger tells us in paragraph 16, the "inquiring into the meaning (cf. Being and Time), i.e., into the truth of being" (GA 65: 43; CP, 31). As such, it is inceptual thinking, and in fact, Heidegger claims, the essence of philosophy itself (GA 65: 49; CP, 34), if philosophy is indeed to be understood as an inquiring into being. This indicates straightaway that Besinnung cannot be rendered by "reflection," nor Selbst-besinnung by self-reflection. We are indeed no longer within the context of the tradition of reflection, as it has structured modern philosophy from Descartes through Husserl. To think be-ing and its truth is not about the thinking ego reflecting upon itself. And yet, Heidegger immediately insists, mindfulness is necessarily self-mindfulness. Why? Certainly not because in some sense the question of the truth of being would be directed back to us for our cogitationes, but rather because we are called by the sway of be-ing, because the essential sway of being "needs" us. One could not emphasize enough the importance of such a neediness for a thinking of the self and for a redefinition of the human itself, as well as for the determination of the essence of be-ing itself: Heidegger goes so far as to state that this needing (Brauchen) "makes up what is ownmost to be-ing" (GA 65: 251; CP, 177). Needing as essence of be-ing reveals the co-belonging between man and be-ing. In a remarkably compact saying, Heidegger writes: "Be-ing needs man in order to hold sway; and man belongs to be-ing so that he can establish his utmost vocation (Bestimmung) as Da-sein" (ibid.; translation modified).[8] As such, this represents what Heidegger calls the "counter-resonance" (Gegenschwung) of needing and belongingmaking up be-ing as enowningor the "mirroring of call and belongingness" (GA 65: 311; CP, 219). This constitutes the "between" as the very dimension of selfhood, approached in the Contributions under the expression of "ownhood" (Eigen-tum), a notion to which I will return. Be-ing needs us, Heidegger clarifies further, because "be-ing comes to truth only on the ground of Da-sein" (GA 65: 293; CP, 207). To that extent, "the essential swaying of be-ing needs the grounding of the truth of be-ing and that this grounding must be enacted as Da-sein" (GA 65: 176; CP, 124). In fact, Da-sein is defined by Heidegger, no longer as that entity who has, and is, an understanding of being as "projecting," but rather as being "the grounding of the truth of be-ing" (GA 65: 170; CP, 120).[9]The way in which "we" are needed by the truth of be-ing (and who "we" are is precisely nothing other than such a being-needed), and claimed by it, the manner in which the truth of be-ing can only "happen" in such a claim,[10] reveals the following: first, that indeed mindfulness is necessarily self-mindfulness; second, that the question of the essential sway of be-ing is inseparable from the question of our "belongingness" to be-ing; and third, that "who" we are, our proper selfhood, is to be approached in terms of that belongingness, and no longer in terms of the Cartesian I. As we will see further, the self, selfhood itself, belongs to, is grounded, granted, enowned by, the truth of be-ing, and called to itself by it, though not in an anthropological way. Man's ownmost "being" is thus grounded in belonging to the truth of being as such; and this, in turn, because being's essential sway as suchand not what is ownmost to mancontains in itself the call to man, the call which attunes man to history. (GA 65: 51; CP, 36). As we can see, being a self does not lie in some clinging to the I, but in an "event" that enowns us. This is why Heidegger refers to our selfhood, not in terms of the reflexive ego, but in terms of what he calls, suggestively, "self-being" (Selbst-sein), a self given by being, as it were, or better, enowned by be-ing in the event of its truth. Heidegger writes: "Hence mindfulnessleap into the truth of beingis necessarily self-mindfulness. This does not mean (cf. Grounding) an observation turned back upon us as 'given.' Rather, it is grounding the truth of self-being (Selbstseins) according to Da-sein's own-hood (Eigentum)" (GA 65:44; CP, 31). Some further clarifications are given in paragraph 19, which is appropriately called: "Philosophy (On the Question: Who Are We?)." In that section, Heidegger returns to what he terms the "interconnection" between mindfulness and self-mindfulness. The very first line reiterates: "As mindfulness of be-ing, philosophy is necessarily self-mindfulness" (GA 65: 48; CP, 34). He then proceeds to carefully distinguish self-mindfulness from inadequate representations drawn from the tradition. First, self-mindfulness is "essentially" different from the concern for the self-certainty of the I (here again Heidegger wants to firmly separate his thinking from any lingering Cartesian motif), and he in fact contrasts explicitly a thinking performed "for the sake of 'certainty'" with a thinking enacted "for the sake of the truth ofbe-ing" (ibid.). A few pages later, Heidegger continues this critique of Descartes by stating that self-mindfulness "is far removed from that clara et dis-tincta perceptio in which the ego rises and becomes certain" (GA 65: 52; CP, 37). But this negative first characterization is immediately counterbalanced by a positive assertion regarding the reach of self-mindfulness. It is not, however, from Descartes that Heidegger now separates himself, but from his own, earlier effort in Being and Time! Self-mindfulness is said to reach "deeper," into a "domain that is more originary than the one which the 'fundamental ontological' approach to Da-sein in Being and Time had to set forth in crossing" (ibid.), a domain that the expressions "self-being" and "own-hood" clearly wish to name. It appears here that self-mindfulness has nothing in common with anthropology. Secondly, one finds implicitly a severe critique of Husserl's phenomenology, in which Heidegger claims that self-mindfulness has "nothing in common" with what he describes as "a curious ego-addicted lostness in the full-fledged brooding over 'one's own' lived-experiences" (GA 65: 51; CP, 36). Far from indicating a return to the lived-experiences of the ego, self-mindfulness needs to be resolutely situated in that domain that is the truth of be-ing itself. Any originary thought of the self, one that will grasp the very origin and possibility of selfhood, will thus have to go through a topological revolution by which the self will be dis-placed from the ego cogito and resituated within the event of the truth of be-ing, as exposed to it. Already at the time of Being and Time, this revolution was attempted through the notion of ek-stasis: standing outside (of the ego), and, thought further: standing out in the truth of being. Once thought from enowning, and no longer from the ego, ek-stasis will be rewritten as in-stancy in the truth of be-ing, Instndigkeit. Self-mindfulness is further distinguished from self-reflection in the following way: Whereas self-reflection implies a return upon the self, mindfulness implies a self-displacement, indeed even a self-sacrifice (GA 65: 52; CP, 37). The self will be a self when standing out in the openness of be-ing, away from all "reflective posture," sustaining the "exposedness" (GA 65: 302; CP, 213) of the truth of be-ing. In short: "This self-mindfulness has left all 'subjectivity' behind" (GA 65: 52; CP, 37).What is most striking is that it is through this very abandonment of subjectivity that the self will come to itself/or the first time, for "Da-sein as overcoming (berwindung) of all subjectivity arises from the essential swaying of be-ing" (GA 65: 303; CP, 214). Ultimately, what has to be left behind is the reliance on any certainty about man, for the issue is to render man questionable by setting him "beyond himself into an unentered domain" (GA 65: 53; CP, 38). The question concerning who we are indicates, first and foremost, that the who of human beings must essentially remain a question, that our essence is questionable:[11] To that extent, the issue is to render the essence of man "dangerous." Here one glimpses the intimate relation between the questionableness (Fraglichkeit) of Dasein in Being and Time with the dangerousness (Gefhrlichkeit) of man in the Contributions. Just as Dasein was accessed in Being and Time in terms of the questionableness of being, here the dangerousness of the question "who are we?" is "the one and only way to come to ourselves" (GA 65: 54; CP, 38).

The Who-QuestionThe presence of the who-question in the Contributions is revelatory of the inescapable necessity of the presence of the self in the thought of the truth of be-ing as enowning, the necessary interconnection between mindfulness and self-mindfulness, and ultimately the co-belonging of Da-sein with be-ing. The question "who" is certainly not a new one in Heidegger's trajectory and, in fact, can be found throughout his work. Let us briefly reconstitute that history, before focusing on its treatment in the Contributions. In Being and Time, the issue was to provide access to a specific being, whose ontological constitution was fundamentally different from that of intra-worldly beings. The question that inquired into Dasein's proper being had to be distinguished from the question that interrogates beings that are simply present-at-hand. Those beings answer to the question, quid? what?, the question of essence. Now, for a being whose "essence" lies solely in its existence, the question cannot be "what," as if such a being would exhibit properties; instead it can only be accessed by the question "who?" Heidegger emphasizes that the "who" points towards an entity who, in its Being has a relation to that Being, that is, who is each time mine (je meines), which explains why one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it: "I am," "you are." The question "who?" aims at a particular entity, whose mode of Being is existence, and which is characterized by selfhood. This is why in the Contributions, Heidegger would remark that Dasein's what-being is its who-being, that is, its selfhood (GA 65: 300; CP, 212). The question "who?" appears very early in Heidegger's work, in fact as early as the 1923 Summer Semester course, Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Fak-tizitt), where Heidegger undertakes to put forward the question of the self, of a "world of the self" (Selbstwelt), on the basis of a critical interpretation of the traditional and theological concept of man and of the person.[12] In the 1924 lecture, The Concept of Time, the question "who?" is explicitly opposed to the question "what?" against the background of a critique of objective, measured, scientific time: "If we inquire into what time is, then one may not cling prematurely to an answer (time is such and such), for this always means a 'what.' Let us disregard the answer and repeat the question. What happened to the question? It has transformed itself. What is time? became the question: Who is time? More closely: are we ourselves time? Or closer still: am I my time?"[13] The question "who?" here points towards Dasein's mineness (Jemeinigkeit) and betrays the individuating character of the question of Being and of time. This is why the entity that has an understanding of Being answers, in the context of an existential analytic in the texts contemporaneous to Being and Time, to the question "who?" One finds again this question in the thirties, on the basis of a meditation on the historical essence of man (for example, in the Introduction to Metaphysics in which the question "who?" aims at selfhood as the historical taking over of the opening of Being,[14] as well as, in the same perspective, in the 1934-1935 Winter Semester course on Hlderlin where the question "Who are we?" is addressed to the historical people[15]) and of course in the Contributions, where Heidegger stresses the importance of "recasting this question [what is man?] into the form: Who is man?" (GA 65: 245; CP, 173). That question is found up to the last lectures. In "Time and Being" (1962), for instance, a meditation on Being as presence (Anwesenheit) requires the question "Who are we?" because man himself is required by this gift of presence as the one "who is concerned with and approached by presence, who, through being thus approached, is himself present in his own way for all present and absent beings."[16] Finally, in the Zollikon seminar (1963), Heidegger once again addresses the "who" of Dasein, in contrast with the substantiality of subjectivity, insofar as Dasein designates the singular presence of a being (that I am) who is open to Being and to others. The "who," he explains, must be thought on the basis of a sojourn (Aufenthalt) in the open of the I, present to things and to oneself as presence to things.[17] Thus, up to the final determination of the thinking of being as a thinking of Ereignis, the question of the "who" is maintained as the question of man, of its essence and of what is proper to him, insofar as man is the very place where presence presences, insofar as man is "the constant receiver (der stete Empfdnger) of the gift given by the 'It gives presence' (Es gibt Anwesenheit)" (TB, 12). Man is the one "needed" by Being, the question of the "who" revealing him each time as recipient for the event of presence. This is why it is inaccurate to characterize the question "who" as only restricted to some subjectivist or metaphysical phase in Heidegger's thought, one that he later abandoned. On the contrary, the question of the who of Dasein, i.e., of Dasein's proper selfhood, is appropriated ever more through the abandonment of the anthropocentric and subjectivistic problematics.[18]The presence of the question "who?" therefore betrays no subjectivism, for selfhood is neither egohood nor subjectivity.[19] This is why any decentering with respect to the classical figure of the ego cogito (largely initiated in Being and Time with the characterization of the "who?" of Dasein as ek-static temporality and further realized in the Contributions) does not necessarily signify the abandonment of a thought of man in his authentic selfhood, which is here, on the contrary, assumed by the question "who? " It is precisely in this context that the question "who" appears in the Contributions: "The who-question asks the question concerning the self-being and thus the question concerning what is ownmost to selfhood" (GA 65: 51; CP, 36). In short, the Werfrage aims at the proper being of the self and seeks to reveal the specific being-a-self of Dasein, or its self-being. Let us, however, proceed step by step. First, the question reads: who are we?

Who Are We?A clarification is needed concerning the sense and role of that "we," which might be misconstrued, superficially, as the collective form of the people, as opposed to the individual I or singular "mine" of Being and Time. In fact, Heidegger seems to imply from the outset that perhaps neither the I nor the weunderstood within the opposition of the individual to the collectiveare adequate to determine the self, and even less what is ownmost to humans. He thus explains that the mindfulness enacted in inceptual thinking "does not assume that the self-being of today's humans can be immediately obtained by representing the T and the we and their situation" (GA 65: 67; CP, 47).[20]In fact, through the I or the we "the selfhood is precisely not obtained thus but rather definitely lost and distorted" (ibid.). One therefore needs to be careful when attempting too quickly to interpret the presence of the "we" as the sign of the passage from an individualistic problematic to a communal one, because it is neither. Both the individualistic and the communal orientations are for Heidegger nothing but two variants of the traditional metaphysics of subjectivity, and thus "there is nowhere here a place for the interpretation of man as 'subject,' neither in the sense of a subject with the character of an I nor in the sense of subject that belongs to a community" (GA 65: 48 8; CP, 344; my emphasis). Now what characterizes the tradition of the subject, whether understood as an I or as a we, is that it leaves the very ontological constitution of selfhood unclarified. This is why, as we saw, Heidegger's destruction of the subject cannot be taken as a renunciation in the thinking of the self, but on the contrary as an attempt to access for the first time what is ownmost to it.[21] To access such a constitution, a leap is neededfrom the subject to Da-sein. "No 'we' and 'you' and no T and 'thou,' no community setting itself up by itself, ever reaches the self; rather it only misses the self and continues to be excluded from the self, unless it grounds itself first of all on Da-sein" (GA 65: 322; CP, 226). In fact, any orientation towards the I or the we accomplishes the forgetfulness of self-being, of what coming-to-oneself or coming into one's own can mean. One might ask, then, how is the question, "who are we?" to be taken? And what does "we" mean, or, as Heidegger puts it: "whom do we mean with the 'we' "? (GA 65: 48; CP, 34). First, Heidegger clarifies, the "we" is not us ourselves as extant, some given present people. For, as he argues, the "we" cannot be our own people because "even then we are not the only ones but a people among other peoples," and thus the question remains of how what is ownmost to a people is to be determined.[22] The "we" thus does not refer to an ontic presence or to an actual people or community. Instead, the "we" must be aligned with be-ing itself: "above all the question 'who are we'? must remain purely and fully enjoined with the inquiry into the grounding question: How does be-ing hold sway?" (GA 65: 54; CP, 38). The sentence we cited above ("The who-question asks the question concerning the self-being and thus the question concerning what is ownmost to selfhood") can now be clarified: in the question "who are we?" what is inquired about is not some given "us" but rather what is proper to being ourselves, that is, to being a self: to self-being. This is why any question concerning the "we" presupposes the question of the who. In the question "who are we?" the emphasis is on the "who." The "we" presupposes the who. The "we" will be determined in terms of the who, which itself asks about self-being in terms of the grounding question of be-ing. Asking about who we are "already contains a decision about the Who" (GA 65: 48; CP, 34), and Heidegger sees in this circle of the we and the who the very reverberation of the turning (Widerschein der Kehre). The question "who are we?" aims at determining the proper selfhood of historical Da-sein, a dimension that is said to be more originary than any I or we.[23] It thus remains for us to explore such an origi-nary selfhood, a self "in whose domain 'we,' I and you, each come to ourselves" (GA 65: 67; CP, 47).

Self-Being and OwnhoodFor such a clarification, let us focus on paragraph 197, entitled "Da-seinOwnhoodSelfhood." Next to this title, a note refers back to paragraph 16 in the Preview, where we read that the question of the truth of be-ing "has to be asked for the sake of the essential sway of being, which needs usneeds us, not as beings who happen to be extant, but insofar as we sustain and inabideby persevering inDa-sein, and ground Da-sein as the truth of being" (GA 65:44; CP, 31). All the elements that define Heidegger's thought of selfhood in paragraph 197 are here laid out, and in particular: the rejection of the reference to an extant self in the guise of the ego, the affirmation of the emergence of a self at the heart of the event of be-ing, the necessity of thinking what is ownmost to self. Paragraph 197 proceeds from this initial characterization and develops it by further distinguishing selfhood from both the extant presence of man and the paradigm of the I and its representational or self-reflexive structure. Proper self-being is not to be situated either in consciousness or in a particular I (any more than in a you or a we, as we saw above). Who "we" are is just not of the order of egohood, for, as Heidegger states bluntly and definitively: "The self is never I" (GA 65: 322; CP, 226). The self cannot be identified with some extant presence either, if it is the case that Dasein "never lets itself be described as something extant" (ibid.). There lies, we must note, the essential difference between man and Dasein in the Contributions: Dasein is never something extant, can only be accessed hermeneutically, and is "destined far in advance of all knowledge of man" (ibid.). Da-sein is not man: Da-sein is what is ownmost to man. If man is to become Da-sein, this implies a transformation, a displacing which means: a "becoming other in what is ownmost to him" (GA 65: 83; CP, 58), from the anthropological enclosure (man) to the belongingness to the truth of be-ing (Da-sein) where originary selfhood originates. Therefore, and in sum: "One is used to grasping the 'self' initially in the relation of the I to 'itself.' This relation is taken as a representing one. Then finally the self-sameness of representing and the represented is grasped as what is ownmost to the 'self.' But what is ownmost to self can never be obtained in this way, or correspondingly modified ways" (GA 65: 319; CP, 224). What is crucial here is that the selfhood of Da-sein cannot be presupposed as a pre-given or pre-constituted subject[24] but rather originates in and as an event. To originate means first: to come into being as coming into one's own, so that the self is not already constituted, whether in the inappropriate form of egohood or in extant "man." Instead, the self originates from a dimension (be-ing as enowning event or Er-eignis) in which man comes to his own being-a-self; for, indeed, as we saw: "Da-sein as overcoming of all subjectivity arises from the essential swaying of be-ing" (GA 65: 303; CP, 214). In turn, the I, the we, the you are possible from such an originary selfhood, but are not the measure of it since it is from such a domain of originary selfhood that they first come to themselves.[25] Instead of simply presupposing the self, in the traditional form of the I, what is at issue is to seize on its very possibility. The self is not to be presupposed as a given, precisely because it is not some extant presence; rather, one needs to think the possibility of a self as such, and to consider selfhood as an event: there is self: self-being. This is why the analysis in paragraph 197 consists in retrieving the origin of selfhood, a non-subjective origin of coming-to-oneself that Heidegger designates as Eigen-tum, ownhood. As essential swaying of Da-sein, selfhood springs forth from the origin of Da-sein. And the origin of the self is own-hood [Eigen-tum], [as in 'own-dom'] when this word is taken in the same way as the word king-dom [Frsten-tum]. (GA 65: 319-20; CP, 224). Let us state from the outset, in order to prevent possible misunderstandings, that ownhood is not a possessive appropriation but rather designates an "own" that is at play in the very event of be-ing, an event that has to be sustained as our very own. Such ownhood is thus an event, and Heidegger speaks indeed of the "occurrence" (Geschehnis) of own-hood, an event that eventuates us, enabling "man to come to 'himself' historically [geschichtlich] and to be with-himself" (GA 65: 320; CP, 225). In such an enowning event, there arises the original coming to oneself, ground of all selfhood, and from thence, of all possible I, you, and we.[26] It is by belonging to this enowning event that Dasein is properly itself: "Insofar as Da-sein is owned-to itself as belonging to enowning, it comes to itself" (ibid.). Further, as we indicated, it does not come to itself as a separate self ("coming-to-oneself is never a prior, detached I-representation" [GA 65: 320, CP, 225]), since the self does not pre-exist the event from which it springs. This is why Heidegger insists that Da-sein comes to itself, but not "in such a manner as if the self were already an extant stock that has just not yet been reached" (GA 65: 320, CP, 224). The self is not already there, pre-given, and then returns to itself: The self first comes to itself from the enowning event, which indicates that it can only come to itself by first being exposed to the event of be-ing and by sustaining such an exposure. This is why ownhood designates Da-sein's belongingness to being, which constitutes its proper selfhood. The essential mode of being-a-self is one of taking-over (bernahme) such a belongingness to the truth of be-ing into which we are thrown; thrown, that is to sayonce rethought from be-ing-historical thinkingenowned. In paragraph 198, Heidegger would also speak of the ber-nahme der Er-eignung, a sort of primordial responsibility of the self, the taking-over of en-ownment as the way in which the self, the with-itself of the self, holds sway (west) (GA 65: 322; CP, 226). That with-itself, however, is entirely away from and outside of any interiority of an ego and happens instead by standing-in (Instndigkeit) in the open. Any "intimacy" (and thereby any with-oneself) can only happen in the open, that open dimension in which we are thrown and enowned, that is to say, always already struck, touched, called by be-ing. In fact, intimacy (Innigkeit) is rethought in such a way that "the more originarily we are ourselves, the further we are already removed into the essential swaying of be-ing, and vice-versa." Intimacy occurs when enowning "shines into selfhood" (GA 65: 265; CP, 187). Being-a-self then means: enowned by the truth of be-ing, and owning up to such enowning by inabiding it, enduring the exposure to it. Heidegger captures this correspondence or co-belonging between belongingness and taking-over (being owned-to, owning up to) through the expressions Zueignung and bereignung, owning-to and owning-over-to, which are said at the end of paragraph 197 to constitute the way in which what is ownmost to the self happens. The self is here no longer understood as a subject or a punctual ego, but solely as the "unfolding of the ownhoodship of the ownmost" (GA 65: 489; CP, 344). What appears here, most importantly, is that the self can no longer be said to constitute a separate sphere, distinct from the event of be-ing that it would represent to itself as an object. On the contrary, Da-sein is itself and its self by standing in the truth of be-ing, by belonging to be-ing in answering its call. This is why Heidegger parts with the motif of transcendence of Dasein, so prevalent in the writings surrounding Being and Time. Transcendence, as he explains in paragraph 199 (also already in paragraphs 7 and 110), is still too dependent on subjectivistic thinking (indeed, on Platonism!). It both presupposes beings, which it surpasses, and the sphere of the subject, as that which surpasses. In both cases, the truth of be-ing itself, and the proper self that belongs to it, are missed. The abandonment of transcendence on the way to an originary thinking of selfhood thus implies that proper selfhood not be understood as a proper subjective sphere. It is in this perspective that Heidegger insists that Da-sein is to be thought as the between, a "between" clearly marked in the new writing of Dasein with a hyphen, as Da-sein. That "between," which Heidegger, in paragraph 7, explicitly contrasts with transcendence, is of course the play between the enowning throwing call of be-ing and the belongingness of Dasein as standing in; it is what Heidegger calls the "counter-resonance" of Ereignis, because Ereignis itself is the resonance between the two: "En-ownment in its turning [Kehre] is made up neither solely of the call nor solely of the belongingness, is in neither of the two and yet resonates deeply in both" (GA 65: 342; CP, 240).[27] It is in that dimension that a self originates as response to the call of be-ing, and Heidegger speaks significantly of the "range in which the self resonates" (GA 65: 321; CP, 25) to stress the dimensionality of such a self enowned by be-ing. The self is not some subject-point but "the turning-point in the turning of enowning, the self-opening midpoint of the mirroring of call and belongingness, the ownhood or own-dom" (GA 65: 311; CP, 219). What is that turning? The turning lies in that being only holds sway where and when there is Dasein, and that, in turn, Da-sein "is" only where and when there is be-ing. The turning speaks to the self as co-belonging of Da-sein and be-ing. The self does not relate representationally to be-ing; in fact, the very term "relation" is explicitly excluded by Heidegger because it presupposes two distinct spheres entering a posteriori into a relation.[28] There is no representation of be-ing, but there is an intimation (Ahnung) of be-ing, because be-ing enowns Da-sein to itself. Enowned by be-ing, Da-sein belongs to it by inabiding its "reign" (ownhood) and by responding to its call. Dasein is itself by standing in be-ing and is exhausted in such a between. Who are we? We are the ones called by be-ing, needed by be-ingthe so-called Zuruf der Notschaftto sustain its essential sway. Be-ing is my own, indeed my ownmost. The ownmost of the self is to belong, not to beings, but precisely to be-ing. "[Man] draws out of this belongingnessand precisely out of itwhat is most originarily his ownmost" (GA 65: 499-500; CP, 351).

ConclusionAs we saw, in the Contributions, selfhood, which is said to lie at the basis of every I and Thou and we, is no longer conceived of as a feature of Dasein projecting an understanding of being, as m Being and Time. Rather, selfhood is rethought "from enowning," out of the truth of be-ing itself as enowning, that is, on the basis of ownhood. Being-one's-own, or coming-to-oneself, are here approached in their ultimate possibility, as the taking over of the belongingness to the truth of Being, as leap into the There. The I then appears as an obstacle to think proper selfhood. It is on the basis of belongingness to be-ing that the non-subjective, non-anthropocentric, non-individualist being of the self would now be approached, i.e., in terms of the movement of coming to one's own, the movement and the event that delivers Da-sein to itself as it endures the between of call and belongingness. It is not "I" who am the subject of such enowning: on the contrary, I am thrown into it[29]that is, enownedby be-ing, in be-ing, and for the sake of be-ing, insofar as be-ing is my ownmost.[30] One can see to what extent the self no longer means ontical individuality, nor ego, nor self-consciousness, nor any form of subjectivity at all. The self, as self-being, now designates the belonging-together of man and Being. Man and Being are appropriated to each other and belong to each other: Being needs man to hold sway; man's own is be-ing. Ereignis is the name of such co-belonging, trans-propriation.[31]Some commentators, like Michel Haar, have worried that this characterization leads to the sacrifice of the self that I am, that is, of that irreducible "someone" who in each case has to be and assume this event of being. Commenting on what he considers to be a dangerous move towards "de-individualization" in Heidegger's work, Michel Haar thus writes: "to be oneself is to be human; to be human is to be the property of Being! I am no longer myself, I am merely my belonging to Being. But who accomplishes this sacrifice? Is it not necessarily someone who must follow the path from the ego to Being for himself or herself? "[32] One may nonetheless question the pertinence of this appraisal: The inquiry into what is ownmost to Selfhood certainly "brackets" the ontical (and traditional) characterizations of the I, not in order to cancel them or simply "pass over" them, but on the contrary, as we saw, in order to re-seize them, themselves, in their originary scope and in their very possibility. The I is an I because it is a self, and the self is here understood as belongingness to be-ing, and not as some pre-given extant I. Heidegger's analyses in the Contributions thus do not neglect the singularity of the individual or the "someone," but attempt to appropriate its possibility, as opposed to simply presupposing it as an ontic given. The I presupposes the self: the I can be an I only if it is first thrown into itself. Any projecting-open is a thrown projecting-open, which explains that the "projecting-open of the essential sway of be-ing is merely a response to the call" (GA 65: 56; CP, 39). That thrownness reveals that the origin of the I is not the I, and that therefore it must be dis-placed into that non-subjective event of throwing-enownment to first come to itself. Instead of securing the certainty of its position as sub-jectum, the I is dis-placed into be-ing, that "unentered domain," "in its utmost questionability, uniqueness, finitude, and strangeness" (GA 65: 206; CP, 144). One's own is no simple possessive appropriation of otherness in an absolute "at-home," since one's ownmost is to stand in the uncanniness of be-ing, and indeed Heidegger stresses throughout the Contributions the irreducible dis-owning (Enteignis) at the heart of enowning. What has been at stake in this extraordinary text was rather an attempt to retrieve the movement and non-subjective event that deliver the self to itself, something that can be done only when the tradition of subjectivity, I-ness, and self-consciousness, within the Western logic of machination, has been relinquished. It is in this sense that Heidegger speaks of the task of a transformation of man into Dasein in its proper selfhood. For such a task, the Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) could not be a better beginning.[33]1) Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), vol. 65 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989), 84 (hereafter cited as GA 65, followed by page number); translated by Par vis Emad and Kenneth Maly as Contributions to Philosophy: (From Enowning) (Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1999), 58 (hereafter cited as CP, followed by page number). 2) It is important to note from the outset that the expression "truth of be-ing," as such, leads away from all subjectivism, for it points to a dimension beyond the opposition between subject and object. Truth "of" be-ing does not mean: truth about being (objectification), but neither is it to be taken simply as a subjective genitive. In fact, Heidegger clarifies that the "of" "can never be grasped by the heretofore 'grammatical' genitive" (GA 65: 428; CP, 302). The "of" instead names the event of the happening of the truth "of" be-ing (which is the happening of the be-ing "of" truth), a dimension which is more originary than the subject-object opposition. This is why Heidegger renames the genitive "of" an "ur-own" (ein ureigener). 3) A concern echoed rhetorically by Jean Greisch who asks whether one should not assume that in a thinking of Ereignis, the self would be, so to speak, sacrificed on the altar of be-ing itself ("L'hermneutique dans la 'phnomnologie comme telle'," Revue de Mtaphysique et Morale no. 1 (1991): 51). 4) Heidegger, Four Seminars, translated by Andrew Mitchell and Francois Raffoiil (Bloom-ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 46. Hereafter cited as FS. 5) One of course recalls here the well-known passage from the Nietzsche volumes where Heidegger, discussing the unfinished or interrupted character of Being and Time, explained: "The reason for the disruption is that the attempt and the path it chose confront the danger of unwillingly becoming merely another entrenchment of subjectivity" (Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vols. 3 and 4, ed. David Farrell Krell [San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1991], 141; my emphasis). 6) "Thrownness will be experienced above all from within the truth of be-ing. In the first preliminary interpretation (Being and Time) thrownness still remains misunderstandable in the sense of man's accidentally appearing among other beings" (GA 65: 318; CP, 223). 7) This is the case, first, because the turning in the question of being, from fundamental-ontological thinking to be-ing-historical thinking, does not mean that there would be two distinct questions. In fact, there is only one single question. Heidegger states it clearly in several places (for instance, "the same question of the 'meaning of be-ing' is always asked, and only this question" [GA 65: 84; CP, 58. Also, GA 65: 88; CP, 61]). However, because it asks that same question ever more originarily, the "locations of questioning are constantly different," and the question "must transform itself from the ground up." With that uniqueness of the question of be-ing in minda uniqueness whose appropriation requires stumbling and change or plurality of locations in the questioninglet us note that in the Thor seminar in 1969, Heidegger announced that his thinking of being has taken three essential formulations: as meaning of being, as truth of being, and as topology of being (FS, 41, 47). In this context, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann convincingly argues that "enowning-historical thinking originates from within the fundamental-ontological thinking of the question of being," and that therefore "Being-historical thinking becomes what it is from within a transformation (Wandel) of fundamental-ontological thinkingand not by turning-away from that first pathway of the question of being" ("Contributions to Philosophy and Enowning Historical Thinking," in Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, eds. Charles Scott, Susan Schoenbohm, Daniela Vallega-Neu, Alejandro Vallega [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001], 105). With respect to the problem of selfhood, which occupies us here, this means that the shift from a questioning of the meaning of being to one out of the truth of being itself does not mean that the reference to human selfhood is abandoned, but rather that there is a sort of dis-placing (Verrckung) of man into a dimension, which Heidegger calls the "between," from which he becomes for the first time himself. "In the history of the truth of being Dasein is the essential case of the between [Zwischenfall], i.e., the case of falling-into that 'between' [Zwischen] into which man must be displaced [ver-rckt], in order above all to be himself" (GA 65: 317; CP, 223). In paragraph 227, Heidegger would speak of the dis-placing of man into Dasein. He also speaks of how through this displacing out of the desolation of the abandonment of be-ing, man will come to stand in enowning and find "his abode in the truth of be-ing" (GA 65: 26; CP, 19). The origin of the self is therefore not the I, but the happening of be-ing itself, and the shift from fundamental ontology to being-historical thinking implies a revolution of the site of human selfhood. 8) Also: "Be-ing needs Da-sein and does not hold sway at all without this enownment" (GA 65: 254; CP, 179). 9) It is important to note from the outset, and before we return to it in greater details, that, since "the origin of Dasein is in enowning and its turning" and that consequently "Dasein has only to be grounded as and in the truth of be-ing," the grounding of the truth of be-ing by Dasein, from "the human side," can only mean: "groundingnot creatingis letting the ground be so that man once again comes to himself and recovers self-being" (GA 65: 31; CP, 23). For a careful analysis of the various senses of such grounding, see John Sallis' essay, "Grounders of the Abyss," in Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, 181-97. 10) "But belongingness to be-ing holds sway only because being in its uniqueness needs Dasein [das Da-sein braucht] and, grounded therein and grounding it, needs man. No truth holds sway otherwise" (GA 65: 317; CP, 223; translation slightly modified: my emphasis). 11) Already in Introduction to Metaphysics, we read: "The determination of the essence of the human being is never an answer, but is essentially a question" (Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000], 149) (hereafter cited as IM). 12) Heidegger, Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitt), GA 63 (Frankfurt am Main: Klos-termann, 1995), 21-33. 13) Heidegger, The Concept of Time, trans. William H. McNeill (Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 22E. 14) "Because humanity is itself as historical, the question about its own Being must change from the form 'What is humanity?' into the form 'Who is humanity?'" (IM, 53). 15) Heidegger, Hlderlins Hymnen "Germanien" und "Der Rhein," GA 39 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1999), 48-49. 16) Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Evanston, IL: Chicago University Press, 2002), 12. Hereafter cited as TB. 17) Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994), 204-5. 18) On the persistence of the question "who?" in Heidegger's thought, see Jacques Derrida's essay, "'Eating well,' or the Calculation of the Subject," in Who Comes after the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge,1991), 96-119. The question "who?" does not necessarily mean the repositing of the ego as subject but sketches the place of a "self" or a "someone," to whom the event or gift of Being is addressed, and which can no longer be understood as subjectivity. 19) In "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger would explain: "The manner and mode in which man is man, i.e., is himself; the manner of the coming to presence (Wesenart) of selfhood, which is not at all synonymous with I-ness (Ichheit), but rather is determined out of the relation to Being as such" ("The Age of the World Picture," in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt [San Francisco, CA: HarperPerennial, 1982], 145). 20) This echoes what was already said in Introduction to Metaphysics, where Heidegger explained that selfhood "does not mean that humanity is primarily an T and an individual. Humanity is not this any more than it is a We and a community" (IM, 153). 21) "But what counts as the next goal is not at all and no longer to begin with man as a subject [Subjektum], because he is beforehand grasped in terms of the question of being, and only in this way" (GA 65: 489; CP, 345). On this point, I take the liberty of referring the reader to my Heidegger and the Subject (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, Prometheus, 1999). 22) The problematic is therefore neither restricted to nor aimed at the figure of the peoplehere relegated to both subjectivism and biologismas Heidegger makes patently clear in paragraph 196: "It is only from Da-sein that what is ownmost to a people can be grasped and that means at the same time knowing that the people can never be goal and purpose and that such an opinion is only a 'popular' [vlkische] extension of the 'liberal' thought of the T and of the economic idea of the preservation of 'life'" (GA 65: 319; CP, 224). 23) For instance, in paragraph 197: "Selfhood is more originary [ursprnglicher] than any I and you and we. These are primarily gathered as such in the self, thus each becoming each 'itself " (GA 65: 320; CP, 225). 24) On this point, see paragraph 271. 25) This situation is similar to the one we found in Being and Time, where mineness (Jemei-nigkeit) was the ontological condition of possibility of personal pronouns, but itself was not of the order of I-hood. 26) As well as all modes of reflection onto self: "The retro-relation [Riickbezug] that is named in the 'itself,' to 'itself,' with 'itself,' for 'itself,' has what is ownmost in the owning" (Eignung) (GA 65: 320; CP, 225). 27) Heidegger goes so far as to state that the "counter-resonance of needing and belonging makes up be-ing as enowning" (GA 65: 251; CP, 177). 28) In paragraphs 134 and 135, Heidegger addresses the "relation" of Da-sein to be-ing, and notes that "strictly speaking, talk of a relation of Da-sein to be-ing is misleading, insofar as this suggests that be-ing holds sway 'for itself' and that Da-sein takes up the relating to be-ing" (GA 65: 254; CP, 179). 29) "When through enowning, Da-seinas the open midpoint of the selfhood that grounds truthis thrown unto itself and becomes a self, then Dasein as the sheltered possibility of grounding the essential swaying of be-ing must in return belong to enowning" (GA 65: 408; CP, 286-87). 30) Heidegger insists that care "is always a care 'for the sake of be-ing'not the be-ing of man, but the be-ing of beings in the whole" (GA 65: 16; CP, 12). 31) Levinas saw this: Speaking of Ereignis in Heidegger's thought, he writes: "Being is what becomes my own, and this is why Being needs man. It is through man that Being is 'properly' ('ownly'). These are the most profound moments in Heidegger's thought" (De Dieu qui vient a l'ide [Paris: Vrin, 1982], 146ff.). 32) M. Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, trans. William McNeill (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 143-44; translation modified. 33) I wish to thank Melida Badilla for her help during the writing of this essay.