Bret Davis (2007:xxx-xxxi) – being revealed as will

Both the early quasi-transcendental claim that finite resolute Dasein chooses its possibilities for being, and the subsequent claim that the human will-to-know (Wissen-wollen) must violently bring to a stand the overpowering onslaught of being, themselves become questionable in Heidegger’s mature being-historical thought, according to which being is revealed-in-(extreme)-concealment as will in the epoch of modernity. “To modern metaphysics,” Heidegger writes, “the being of beings appears as will,” and this means that “human-being [Menschsein] must appear in an emphatic manner as a willing” (WhD   36/91-92). Modern man has fallen into a purportedly self-grounding subjectivity, and things can appear only as representations (Vorstellungen) within the horizon of its will to power. To such willful subjectivity, the “earth itself can show itself only as the object of assault, an assault that, in human willing, establishes itself as unconditional objectification” (GA5  :256/100). Ultimately, in the age of nihilism as the most extreme “epoch” of the history of being (the epoche in which being is forgotten and withdraws to the extreme point of [xxxi] abandonment), beings are produced (hergestellt), ordered about (bestellt), and distorted (verstellt) within an enframing (Ge-stell) set up and driven by the technological “will to will.” Human beings too, themselves threatened with reduction to “human resources,” are “willed by the will to will without experiencing the essence of this will” (VA 85/82).

How, then, might we step back into a proper, non-willing relation of cor-respondence to being, as “place-holders” and “guardians” of its clearing, and thereby into a proper comportment to beings, one that cultivates and preserves them in a manner that genuinely lets them be? Heidegger writes: “Being itself could not be experienced without a more original experience of the essence of man and vice versa” (GA55  :293). He also tells us that “salvation [from the technological will to will] must come from where there is a turning with mortals in their essence” (GA5  :296/118). Yet how are we — in the midst of finding our historical essence thoroughly determined by the will to will — to turn and find our way to Gelassenheit? This problem of the will and the possibility of non-willing is undoubtedly one of the most question-worthy issues on Heidegger’s path of thought. (2007, p. xxx-xxxi)