in discussing the four separations, we dwelled relatively long on the separation between Being and thinking. Even today it is still the ground that sustains the determination of Being. The thinking that is guided by λόγος as assertion provides and maintains the perspective in which Being is viewed.

Hence, if Being itself is to be opened up and grounded in its originary distinction from beings, then an originary perspective needs to be opened up. The origin of the separation between Being and thinking, the disjunction of apprehending and Being, shows us that what is at stake here is nothing less than a determination of Being-human that springs from the essence of Being (φύσις) that is to be opened up.

The question about the essence of Being is intimately linked to the question of who the human being is. Yet the determination of the human essence that is required here is not a matter for a free-floating anthropology, which at bottom represents humanity in the same way as zoology represents animals. The question about human Being is now determined in its direction and scope solely on the basis of the question about Being. Within the question of Being, the human essence is to be grasped and grounded, according to the concealed directive of the inception, as the site that Being necessitates for its opening up. Humanity is the Here that is open in itself. Beings stand within this Here and are put to work in it. We therefore say: the Being of humanity is, in the strict sense of the word, “Being-here” <“Da-sein”>. The perspective for the opening up of Being must be grounded originally in the essence of Being-here as such a site for the opening up of Being.

The entire Western tradition and conception of Being, and accordingly the fundamental relation to Being that is still dominant today, is summed up in the title Being and thinking.