Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event): Of the Event

VI. The Future Ones

VI. th e Fu t u r e on es1 1. Cf. Überlegungen V, p. 44f. and VII, p. 47f. 248. The future ones Those strangers alike in heart, equally decided for the bestowal and refusal that have been assigned to them. The ones who bear the staff of the truth of beyng, the truth in which beings are built up to the dominance of the simple essence of every single thing and breath. The stillest witnesses to the stillest stillness in which an imperceptible impetus turns truth out of the confusion of all calculatively correct findings and back into its essence, such that there is kept concealed what is most concealed, viz., the trembling of the passing by of the decision about the gods, the essential occurrence of beyng. The future ones: the slow, far-hearing ones who ground this essence of truth. Those who offer resistance to the thrust of beyng. The ones to come2 are those future ones who receive—insofar as they expect on the way back and in sacrificial restraint—the intimation and intrusion of the absconding and nearing of the last god. The task is to prepare for these future ones. Such preparation is served by inceptual thinking as bearing the silence of the event. But thinking is only one way the few venture the leap into beyng. 249. The basic disposition of the future ones3 The resonating and the interplay, the leap and the grounding, have their own respective guiding dispositions, and all of these originally dispose together out of the basic disposition. Yet the point is not so much to describe this basic disposition as it is to bring it into effect in the whole of inceptual thinking. It is hardly to be named in one word, unless that word is “restraint.” But then this word must be taken in its entire fullness of origin, a fullness accruing to its meaning out of the inventive thinking of the event. 2. Cf. Prospect, 45. The “decision.” 3. Cf. Prospect, 5. For the few—For the rare, p. 14ff. The basic disposition includes mood [Zumutesein], namely, the temperament [Gemüt] of courage [Mut] as the mood of the attunedknowing will of the event. The guiding dispositions are attuned and attuning in unison with one another. The guiding disposition of the resonating is shock in the self-unveiling abandonment by beyng and is at same time diffidence in the face of the resonating event. Shock and diffidence in unity first allow the resonating to be carried out in thought. The unison of the guiding dispositions is fully attuned only through the basic disposition. In it are the future ones, and as so attuned [gestimmt] they are determined [be-stimmt] by the last god. (On disposition , cf. what is essential in the lecture courses on Hölderlin.4 ) 250. The future ones stand in sovereign knowledge as genuine knowledge. Whoever attains this knowledge cannot be subjected to calculation or compulsion. Furthermore , this knowledge is useless and has no “value”; it does not matter and cannot be taken as an immediate condition for a currently ongoing business. With what must the knowledge of those who genuinely know commence ? With authentic, historical cognition: i.e., with knowledge of the domain out of which future history is decided and with (questioning) steadfastness in that domain. This historical cognition never consists in determining and delineating current incidents in their circumstances and orientations and in their cherished goals and claims. This knowledge knows the hours of the occurrence which first forms history. Our own hour is the era of downgoing. The down-going, in the essential sense, is the path to the reticent preparation for what is to come, i.e., for the moment in which and the site in which the advent and the remaining absent of the gods will be decided. This downgoing is the utterly first beginning. The distorted essence of downgoing, however, takes its own different course and is mere foundering, impasse, stoppage, under the guises of the gigantic, the massive, and the priority of arrangement over what is supposed to fulfill it. 4. Lecture course, Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein,” winter semester 1934–35, (GA39); lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken,” winter semester 1941–42, (GA52); lecture course, Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister,” summer semester 1942, (GA53). 314 VI. The Future Ones [396–397] [13.58.151.231] Project MUSE (2024-04...