Da-sein is the grounding of the abyss of beyng through the claiming of the human being as the particular being that is consigned to stewardship over the truth of beyng. On the basis of Da-sein, the human being is first transformed into that being to whom the relation to beyng assigns what is decisive, which immediately implies that the talk of a relation to beyng expresses the opposite of what is properly to be thought. For the relation to beyng is in truth beyng, which, as event, places the human being in this relation. Therefore many misunderstandings surround the "relation" indicated in the formula "the human being and beyng" (cf. Beyng, 272. The human being and 273. History).
272. The human being5
To someone who has grasped the history of the human being as the history of the essence of this being, the question of who the human being is can only signify the need to question this being outside the sphere of the previous metaphysical residence of humans, to refer the human being to another essence in this questioning, and to overcome thereby the question of who the human being is. This questioning still stands unavoidably in the guise of "anthropology" and is in danger of being misunderstood as anthropology.
1. What peaks must we scale in order to survey the human being freely in the plight of the essence of this being? The fact that the essence of the human being is to this being a property, i.e., a loss, and indeed out of the essential occurrence of beyng.
Why are such peaks necessary, and what do they mean?
2. Has the human being obstinately strayed into "mere" beings? Or was the human being therefore rejected by beyng? Then again, was the human being simply forsaken by beyng and abandoned to egotism?
(These questions move within the difference between being and beings.)
3. The human being, the thinking animal, as objectively present source of passions, drives, aims, valuings, and as endowed with a character, etc. That which can be ascertained at any time and is certain of everyone's approval, especially if everyone has agreed to question no longer and to let nothing else be except what each is:
a) what we encounter the human being as.
b) that we encounter the human being.
5. Cf. Beyng, 276. Beyng and language, p. 393f., and Überlegungen VIII.