98 | III. Event and Being-there
Only in the truth of being can both be experienced. But how do they themselves unfold, and what is meant, here, by this “unfolding”? A being is not—as beingless, but therefore it is also not “nothing.”
It can neither be said that the beingless is, nor that it is not.
But because being comes to intervene into the beingless and, as inception, incepts beings, therefore beings are, in a certain way, “prior to” and older than being—namely, as the beingless that subsequently comes into being. Beings are the “a priori” of being, provided confusion does not arise here through the use of metaphysical labels for being and for the in-being beings [seiende Seiende] that unfold beyond all metaphysics.
Beinglessness, though, does not mean the abandonment of beings by being; because in the abandonment by being, beings are indeed in-being, only in such a way that they appear to be uniquely themselves without needing being.
In being’s abandonment, beings are left to themselves and take on the appearance of not needing being.
In beinglessness beings are neither in-being nor not in-being.
The abandonment by being is an essential unfolding of being itself, the event of the unleashing of beings into machination.
Although beinglessness is still conceived from being, it does not arise from being, inasmuch as the beingless does not need being.
However, in beinglessness something most extreme about the essence of being can be grasped (inception—receding—parting).
Here—in “beinglessness” and in the “beingless”—is a demand, within which no metaphysics finds its way, but where the courage of onto-historical thinking can find attunement {GA 70: 122} and where, at the same time, the uniqueness of being can eventuate in its rareness.
In being’s abandonment (i.e., the machination of beings), beings are wholly outside beinglessness.
The beingless is beyond the nothing, because in the nothing beings are already in being and are in the first place only non-beings.