the clearing (intelligibility).”3 Here “dis-closedness” refers to the thrown-openness of ἀλήϑεια-1; and “intelligibility” means that whereby things are able (cf. –ible) to be known and dealt with. This possibilizing element is the “space” that our thrown-open ex-sistence is and that lets us take things as—that is, in terms of their possible meanings. This Lichtung is always understood in terms of its Lichten: the opening-and-sustaining of the openness thanks to our ever-operative ap-propri-ation to our proper condition as thrown-open. The appropriated clearing is the core fact, die Sache selbst, of all Heidegger’s work.
But if Heidegger had established that much by the end of Being and Time, what more remained to be done? In this chapter, after some opening remarks we will study the formidable obstacles that Heidegger confronted as he struggled to complete Being and Time in the years 1927 through 1930. The chapter proceeds as follows:
Readers are forewarned: This makes for a very thick chapter, and much of the material (especially topics 2 through 4) may light the fire only of truly paid-up Heideggerians. That said, however, the distinction between the two kinds of ontological difference (in number 2) as well as the last two topics (5 and 6) are of more general interest, and number 6 is utterly important for understanding the later Heidegger.
Within the transcendental framework that governs Being and Time, at best only half of Heidegger’s task had been carried out by the end of SZ I.2. To be sure, in good transcendental fashion he had begun by turning the inquiring subject into the subject of the inquiry. Insofar as ex-sistence is the only place where meaning shows up, the question about meaning and its source had been turned back on the questioner. The early Heidegger’s wager was that if we understood
3. GA 16: 424.20–21 = 5.14–15: “der Bereich der Unverborgenheit oder Lichtung (Verstehbarkeit).” See GA 9, 199.21 = 152.24: “[das] Offene des Begreifens.”