And indeed the fundamental thought of my thinking is precisely that Being, or rather the unconcealment (Offenbarkeit) of Being, needs the human being, and that conversely the human being is human only insofar as he stands within the unconcealment of Being.
With this, the question of the extent to which I am occupied merely with Being and have forgotten the human being should be settled. One cannot ask about Being without asking about the essence of the human being.
Wisser: Nietzsche once said that the philosopher is the bad conscience of his age. Let us leave aside what Nietzsche may have meant by this.
Yet when one considers your attempt to discern the history of philosophy hitherto as a history of decline (Verfallsgeschichte) with regard to Being, and therefore to “destructure” it, many may perhaps be tempted to call Martin Heidegger the bad conscience of Western philosophy.
What do you regard as the most characteristic feature—or rather the most characteristic thought-pattern—of what you call the “forgetfulness of Being” (Seinsvergessenheit) and the “abandonment by Being” (Seinsverlassenheit)?
Heidegger: First of all I must correct your question in one respect, when you speak of a “history of decline.” That is not meant negatively!
I do not speak of a history of decline, but only of the destiny (Geschick) of Being insofar as Being withdraws itself more and more in comparison with the unconcealment of Being among the Greeks—until the unfolding of Being as mere objectivity for science, and today as mere standing-reserve (Bestand) for the technological mastery of the world. Thus: it is not a history of decline; rather it is a withdrawal of Being in which we stand.
The most characteristic feature of the forgetfulness of Being—and “forgetfulness” here must always be thought from the Greek, from Lethe, that is, from self-concealment, from the withdrawal of Being—well then, the characteristic feature of the destiny in which we stand is, insofar as I can survey it at all, the fact that the question of Being which I pose has not yet been understood.