by Jeff Gaines
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is widely considered one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. In spite of a tarnished reputation (due to a brief and ambiguous adherence to the Nazi party, between 1933-34*), his work has gained acceptance in philosophic, literary, and psychoanalytic circles.
Heidegger’s entire philosophical task, on which he spent no less than seventy years of thinking, writing, and discussion, is best understood as an attempt to respond to the question: “What is the meaning of Being?” He took this to be the fundamental question, the one that must be answered before one can answer any other. Before one can know what anything at all is, one must have understood the nature of this “is” itself. In the course of Heidegger’s thinking, this “is,” this Being, turns out to be more properly a verb than a noun, more of an activity than a thing. Being as a thing eventually gets crossed out (as represented by the notation Being), and is replaced by an understanding of being as a pure dynamic.
The concept of freedom, which enters often enough into Heidegger’s attempts to uncover Being, was yet never made the focus of any of his Heidegger’s articles or books, nor has it ever been considered one of the major themes in his philosophy. Nevertheless, the importance of this concept for an understanding of his philosophy cannot be denied, and is in fact worthy of more attention. The purpose of the following essay is to give “freedom” a more central place on Heidegger’s intellectual map.
“Freedom” is a term Heidegger employs in a bewildering variety of contexts. There is the freedom of Dasein; of other as Dasein; of the present at-hand; freedom as the basis for space; as the essence of truth; and as the Fate of Being.
How is one to understand these many meanings of freedom? What might they have in common, or how might they interrelate?
The problematic of freedom in Heidegger falls into two distinct domains. On the one hand, freedom concerns what is freed: what is allowed to show itself, or manifest its being. On the other hand, freedom concerns that which does the freeing, the agency of freedom. In each case, then, we will have to ask ourselves not only what is free and how it is so, but what agency frees it in the first place. In addition, there is the question of how these two domains–the freeing and the freed–are bound together structurally. As concerns this question, we will find that, for the most part, what binds them together is a particular way of “seeing.”
Modes of Freedom
In Being and Time (1927), Heidegger elaborates what could be called a “provisional ontology.” Three entities that figure prominently here are: Dasein; the present-at-hand; and the ready-to-hand. This ontology is provisional only, and not yet fundamental, because the description of the entities therein is only laid down as a way of access to Being itself. Furthermore, a full understanding of these entities–that is, a true grasping of them as concerns their ways of Being–will only be possible after the enquiry has reached its goal; i.e., after the meaning of Being in general has been clarified. Yet we all have, according to Heidegger, a vague, prior understanding of the meaning of Being in general–and thus of the ways entities are as well. This provisional ontology is therefore not wholly distinct from a fundamental one; the latter will be a clarification of the former.
Each of the three entities mentioned above has its own way of Being free. However, the various ways of Being of the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand are all grounded in Dasein’s way of Being. The analysis here should thus begin with Dasein. The question is, who or what is Dasein, and how can it be said to be free?
Again, Dasein is an entity. Now, Heidegger states that every entity is either a “who” or a “what.” Dasein is of the former mode of Being. It is a “who.” The “who” of Dasein is you, is I, is us. “We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed.” To put it another way, Dasein is the kind of Being man has. To be sure, Heidegger himself rarely puts it this way, especially in his early work, because he is working against a long standing, uncritical tendency to take “man” as something obvious or already understood. Yet Dasein can still be called human Being, within certain limits. The limits are that we don’t take human Being as something static in its own way of Being, like a tree or a house. Human Being or Dasein is rather ec-static, standing outside itself, thrown out from a center. It is not tantamount to an abiding human nature or essence. The essence of Dasein–existence–is a peculiar kind of non-essence in that it is not an actuality, but a pure “potentiality-for-Being.” Dasein is pure potentiality.
How is one to understand this entity qua pure potentiality? For Heidegger, one must understand it temporally–and especially, in terms of its “to-be” (Zu-sein). Dasein is a necessarily futural entity. Necessarily futural because it is has been thrown, not of its own accord, into a world where it must decide its fate, that is, where it must project itself upon possibilities of itself. Now, to say that Dasein must project itself seems to admit some kind of determinism. And in fact, Dasein is “condemned” (to use Sartre’s term) to projecting itself upon its possibilities. Yet one must not let this fact obscure the freedom that can abide in such a projection.
For Heidegger, Dasein is free when it is free for tile full range of its possibilities. These possibilities fall into two basic “areas.” They may be either authentic or inauthentic. Authentic possibilities are those which are “closest” to the individualized Dasein’s way of Being. Inauthentic possibilities are those which are “farthest” from Dasein’s own way of Being, which have been distanced by the mediating prescriptions of someone other than Dasein, the public Other or “they” (Das Mann). It should be noted that these latter possibilities are necessary for Dasein’s worldly existence. We exist in the world with others, and hence must adopt a common or public way of Being–a way of Being characterized by a subscription to norms and by an average kind of understanding–in order to communicate and interact with others. Authentic possibilities, which one might somehow assume to be the most desirable, are neither more necessary nor “better” than the inauthentic. Yet the fact remains that the public way of Being-which Heidegger also calls the “they-Self ‘-tends to obscure and overpower one’s own way of Being. It is in this sense that a “dictatorship of the ‘they”‘ is a constant threat, if not a general actuality. In such a dictatorship, Dasein is not free for its full range of possibilities, but has been limited to those which the “they” prescribes. As Heidegger describes it, in a series of concrete (though far from exhaustive) examples.
“We take pleasure and joy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find shocking what they find shocking. The ‘they’ which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness.” (Being and Time , p. 164).
All of us are the “they.” Not all of us taken together, but individually. It is clear from the above passage that the “they” is not a “sum” of beings, or even a particular being, outside of individual Dasein. It is rather a way of Being that each and every Dasein takes on (of necessity) in its everyday Being with Others-though often to the extent that it is taken over by it. In fact, Dasein is always to a certain extent taken over by the “they.” It has, as Heidegger says “grown up into” the “they,” and will never be fully free of this public way of Being. Any freedom Dasein is to have–that is, any freedom for the full range of its possibilities, for choosing its ownmost and its public ways of being–must be won through and against the “they.”
Freedom must be won through the “they,” because the way in which Dasein understands the possibilities of its Being, and hence its very projection of itself upon them, is inextricably tied up in the way Dasein has been traditionally and publically interpreted. Any way Dasein understands itself will always be colored with tradition (the diachronic Other) and socialization (the synchronic Other). This is not necessarily a handicap. On the contrary, Dasein must “count on” (to use Ortega’s term) and exercise its character as an historical and social entity. No one can act in the world without this store of human knowledge and capabilities (or, as Nietzsche might add, of necessary errors) that has been transmitted historically and which is disseminated in everyday existing. The decisive factor is the way this store is used. It should be used critically, with an eye to revealing and expanding one’s possibilities, rather than simply abandoning them to the narrow confines of the “they’s” prescriptions.
Freedom must be won against the “they,” because the “they”–again, as a way of Being of individual Dasein itself, as an existentiale –is constantly asserting that the possibilities it lays out as those which “everyone” accepts and seeks, are the “right” and “proper” ones, and in fact the only ones worth considering. This tends to obscure the possibilities closest to one that are not necessarily those of the “they,” and to discourage their actualization even if they are seen. Thus any attempt to reveal and actualize one’s fullest and closest possibilities is discouraged in advance by the dominance and narrowness of the “they.” In order to truly seize upon one’s possibilities, one must to some extent rebel against the “they.” How can such a rebellion take place?
For Heidegger, this rebellion always occurs in silence. The silence he speaks of is the call of conscience. Heidegger understands the conscience as that which calls one back to one’s “ownmost-potentiality-for-Being,” to one’s ownmost way of projecting. The conscience calls silently in that it does not prescribe any particular mode of Being or conduct for Dasein. In the silence of this call, the question Dasein is continually asking itself–the question of how and where the ecstatic projection of its Being should be directed–is answered with the mute but nonetheless obvious and insistent reply of “Decide!”. This “Decide!” means simply that Dasein is responsible for working out its own existence. It is Dasein’s ownmost answer to itself on the question of its Being. It is also a direct challenge to the “they,” who wants always to have decided everything in advance for Dasein. The call of conscience is saying there is more than what “they” say; there is also Dasein’s ownmost directive. Now, this own or ownmost directive does not flow from an ego, or from a self conceived as standing over against other beings and the world. It flows rather from one’s “Da-sein” as situation, as ineluctable relation to oneself, other beings, and world. “Owness” (or eigentlig keit) is the immediacy of one’s situation, insofar as this can be established through and against the mediations as the “they.”
Dasein can find and choose its own way. Or, it can (consciously or unconsciously, genuinely or ingenuinely) “lose” its way in the “they.” Yet in order to be free, it must listen to its conscience; it must see that there are these two and it must choose the one or the other, as the situation calls for. For Dasein’s freedom lies not only in the perception of the full range of its possibilities, but also and always in the choice of one of these possibilities as concerns a given situation. And in a resolute choice at that. As Heidegger puts it:
“Freedom… is only in the choice of
one possibility–that is in tolerating
one’s not having chosen the others
and one’s not being able to choose
them”
(BT, p. 285)
Thus it appears that in perceptive, resolute projection–a projection Heidegger calls “sight,” and which he characterizes as “transparent”- Dasein becomes free for the actualization of its possibilities. This is the mode of freedom appropriate to this entity. Yet “Da-sein” or Being-there always involves Other Dasein. One is in the world with Others. Thus it is not simply a question here of one’s own freedom, but of the freedom of the Other as well. The Other’s freedom, insofar as one is responsible for it, depends on one’s way of Being towards him or her. Heidegger calls this way of Being solicitude, and cites it as having two extreme possibilities. On the one hand, one’s solicitous way of Being towards the Other can take the form of “leaping-in-for” him. In such “leaping-in-for,” one busies oneself with the Other’s affairs, one takes them over and “disburdens” him of them. While this taking over for and disburdening of the Other may seem to be a caring and beneficent activity, it is actually a deficient mode of care that takes away the Other’s responsibility and renders him dependent. One does not free the Other for his possibilities by leaping-in-for him.
The opposite extreme of solicitude is to “leap-ahead-of ‘ the Other. On leaping-ahead-of the Other, one gets out of his way. Yet one remains visible to him, as someone who cares enough not to take his responsibilities, and his responsibility for them, away. One may expand the Other’s horizon of possibility, by giving suggestions or setting an example, but one does not decide for him. In such solicitude, says Heidegger, one “frees the Other in his freedom for himself” (BT, p.122). This is the kind of freedom appropriate to Other Dasein; a freedom he not only already has and that must be respected, but a freedom that one is also responsible for revealing to him by leaping out of his way and ahead of him. Inleaping-in for the Other, one obscures his way and steals his freedom for it. In leaping-ahead-of him one opens his way. One must continually acknowledge in the Other the freedom he already has, or rather is, for freedom is not a property here. It is rather like an existentiale, a primordial constituent of the Being of Dasein.
So far it has been noted that Dasein projects itself toward itself in such a way that it either frees itself from, or abandons itself to the “they”; and that it projects itself towards Other Dasein so as to either free the Other for his own possibilities, or simply take these possibilities away. Yet Dasein also projects itself towards entities not of its character, and specifically towards those called “things.” In the early Heidegger, these things fall into two basic categories: the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand. The present-at-hand is the kind of thing one just “looks” at, that one encounters in a more or less disinterested way. A stone, a cloud, or the setting of the sun are the kinds of things that might be characterized as the present-at-hand. “Nature” in general is so characterized–but only when one just observes it, examines it, or cognitively appreciates it. Yet whether disinterestedness and hence pure presence-at-hand are ever really possible or viable, is something that will have to be taken up. In any case, the present-at-hand has a place in Heidegger’s provisional ontology.
The ready-to-hand is the kind of thing one uses or is involved with. One comes across the ready-to-hand in an interested way, as the kind of thing that will conserve or enhance one’s Being. Tools are ready-to-hand; food, clothing, and shelter are ready-to-hand; day and night are ready-to hand, for working and for sleeping; space itself is ready-to-hand, as that which gets broken up into the region one moves through and towards. The ready-to-hand are those kinds of things one needs and cares about most.
The question is how can these, the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand be said to be free? It was stated earlier that the way of Being free these things possess is grounded in or dependent on Dasein’s way of Being. What is meant here is that only Dasein can set things free. From Being and Time on, Heidegger has elaborated the notion of Dasein’s setting things free by letting them be the things they are. How does Dasein do this? Dasein lets things be through a twofold movement. The first movement is that of engagement. Heidegger is careful to point out that letting-be (sein lassen) is not tantamount to neglecting. It is rather a specific way of engaging oneself with things. He calls this the way of “open” engagement. This idea of “openness” brings in the second movement. The open engagement is not only a tending towards, but is simultaneously a withdrawal from things. This withdrawal is effected in order to give things an intentional space wherein they can express the kind of Being they possess. The open engagement of letting-be would thus be far from any kind of pre-meditated “constituting” of the thing, or any foisting of an interpretation on it. Here, getting “to the things themselves” involves not only an appropriate expressing (on Dasein’s part) of the kind of Being they possess, but first and foremost a letting them express or “show” their Being. If, as has been suggested, Heidegger is concerned with rewriting Husserl’s idea of intentionality–and specifically, by saying that we always approach things through a given mood and in a given concerned understanding–then it might be added that this rewriting involves the approach/withdrawal of letting-be as well.
It should be noted that letting the present-at-hand be what it is, is different from letting the ready-to-hand be. The distinction here is based on the idea that there really is no such thing as the present-at-hand. Presence at-hand is a category applying to things that have been inappropriately grasped. Heidegger himself begins to imply this when he notes that much ontology from Plato to Husserl has mistaken both Being and all entities as present-at-hand. Furthermore, he notes that “Nature”–the most general form of presence-at-hand belonging to the things one is interested in, to the things one uses and gets involved with , is only said to appear at the moment these things become useless, or detached from a totality of involvements– i.e., at the very moment they can no longer be the things they are. Thus presence-at-hand does not belong to the Being of things. It is a distorted ontological category, or rather a purely ontic one.
This raises the question as to whether present-at-hand things can be set free. In one sense they cannot because to set a thing free means to let it be what it is.. Yet any time one lets something that seems present-at-hand be what it is, one finds that it is no longer present-at-hand. It is either ready to-hand, or it is something else. Now, there is no room in the provisional ontology of Being and Time for this something else. Things are either present-at-hand or ready-to-hand. In the later Heidegger, one finds that there are other kinds of things-artworks for example-that do not fall conveniently into either of these two categories; but for the moment we are trying to understand these two alone, and specifically -as concerns their freedom.
In one sense, to free the present-at-hand would simply mean to let the present-at-hand thing be encountered from out of its background (the world)–that is to thematize and thus manifest in a given encountering a thing that had been hitherto unthematized or concealed. This is one use of the verb “to free” in Being and Time: to encounter or thematize a thing. Yet there are different levels of encountering for Heidegger, and one could contend that the notions of “freeing” or “freedom” should be reserved for the more primordial ones. According to this reading, the present-at-hand can only be released or “freed’ into the ready-to-hand. It cannot be freed in and of itself. And the ready-to-hand itself has its own way of being free. How all this is so may be illustrated by example. First, a variation on Heidegger’s own example: that of the south wind. I am a tourist hiking on a mountain trail and at a given moment feel a gust of wind from the south. I note the wind, but only as something that merely occurs, and does not involve my Being. The wind is simply present-at-hand for me. At the same time, a farmer in the valley below feels the wind as well, but in such a way that it is no longer the same wind. For him the south wind is ready-to hand. It brings the rain clouds to water the crops that he and his family will cut, gather and eat. The farmer is interested in and involved with the wind. And according to Heidegger, he is thereby closer to its Being. Winds are primordially ready-to-hand for Dasein. To grasp them as present-at-hand is to distort their Being. If I as tourist can shift my orientation and realize that the wind involves my Being too, I have thereby released its presence-at hand into the ready-to-hand. The ready-to-hand, however, must be released as well, in order for it to be what it is.
Dasein releases the ready-to-hand by letting it be involved in a totality of involvements. This may be illustrated by a different example from and perhaps more tangible than the one above. In originally using a pencil to write this paper, I am letting the pencil be involved in a totality of involvements. This totality has three salient features: the pencil itself; the equipment totality to which it belongs; and the region wherein this equipment operates. All these features are freed through the use of the pencil. First, in using the pencil itself! am letting it be what it is: equipment for writing. As long as I just stare at the pencil, I am not letting it be what it is. It is only when I pick it up and start writing with it that it becomes itself. Strangely, it is at this point that the pencil disappears for me. I have let it become involved in the writing to the point where it becomes transparent. This does not mean that the pencil no longer is. On the contrary, it has now come into its own, as an unobtrusive means for writing. I have thus granted the pencil the kind of freedom proper to it.
Not only has the pencil been freed, but the totality of equipment to which it belongs as well. In using any piece of equipment, says Heidegger, I at once “free up”–that is I reveal and set in motion–all the equipment connected with it. In this case, I both reveal and set in motion the paper on which I write, the table that supports the paper, the chair that supports my body, the room that shelters me as I write, etc. The equipment totality is moving in one direction: toward the written work. This totality is revealed to me, and remains in motion, for as long as I write.
Not only is the equipment totality set free, but the region wherein it operates as well. The region is not reducible to the physical space of my room, or to any physical space whatever. It is rather an intentional space that incorporates not only the place where I write, but the specific university space wherein the writing will be presented, the more general philosophic and literary space to which the writing speaks and responds, and perhaps the space of the “non-philosophic” public at large. The writing of this paper intended and revealed all of this. It brought a given region of activity to light, and in fact helped to constitute that very region. Of course, any such region will be more or less limited. These limits are not so much set by the kinds of tools one uses or the equipment totality to which they belong. These limits are set by the vision of the user–by his ability to see the connectedness of entities within a given region; yet not to see this theoretically, but through action, through the use of the ready-to-hand.
In describing the above kind of region, one seems to neglect space as such, “pure” space. What does Heidegger have to say about space as such? This brings one to his later work, and to another modality of freedom: freedom as the basis for space. Starting in the late SO’s and continuing for seventeen years, Heidegger conducted a series of seminars for the medical students of his friend Medard Boss at Zollikon, in Switzerland. In a relevant fragment from these seminars, he questions the students on the nature of space:
Heidegger: “How does Dr. R. relate to the table before him?”
Listener C: “Dr. R. is separated from the table by an interval of space.” Heidegger: “What, then, is space?”
Listener D: “The distance between Dr. R. and the table.”
Heidegger: “What is distance?”
Listener E: “A definition of space.”
Heidegger: “What then is space as such?” (italics added)
Ten long minutes of silence…
Listener F: “We have never heard such questions and do not know what you regard as important, what you want to hear, what you want to say.”
Heidegger: “I am only concerned that you open your eyes and do not immediately dim and distort your vision once more with artificial suggestions or theoretical explanations. How is it, then, with this matter that you have called an interval of space?”
Seven minutes of silence.
Heidegger: “Must not that which is spatial between Dr. R. and the table be penetrable so that the table can appear at all to Dr. R.? This spatiality consists then of penetrability, of openness, of freedom. Can one then say that openness, freedom- that which is cleared–is itself spatial?”
Listener A: “Now I really understand nothing.”
Five minutes of silence!!!
Heidegger: “Perhaps the wisdom of the German language can help you. You know not only the substantive ‘Raum’ (space), but also the verb ‘Raumen’ means nothing other than a making-free, making open. A forest clearing: this is a place which has been cleared, i.e., a place where the earth has been laid free of tree trunks, cleared (geraumt) of them. So it is that spatiality as such is rooted by its very nature in freedom, openness and clearedness, and not the reverse. (italics added)
This passage is relevant for two reasons. First, it introduces a modality of freedom, and in a way that is quite unexpected. The common notion of freedom in relation to space (as stated by Hume, for example) is that one is “free” in having sufficient space to move about in. But Heidegger is saying one has sufficient space to move about in because one is free; because one has the potentiality for creating space through an act of clearing, of making free. Space can be freed only because one is free to free it in the first place. And although the example of the forest clearing is a physical one, it does not refer primarily to a physical space. The activity of clearing or making free involves primarily the creation of an intentional space-a space that incorporates and surpasses the physical, the space that is opened when one engages oneself openly with entities.
Secondly, the passage is relevant in that Heidegger is using the very method he so often describes: that of freeing something by letting it be what it is, by creating an intentional space for it. This is what he means by phenomenology, this opening of a space for the things themselves–which would be the reverse of “dimming and distorting” them through “artificial suppositions or theoretical explanations.” And interestingly, he creates a space here for space itself, for space as such. Yet this “space as such” turns out to be not that of the classical physicist or geometer–a pure, constant, undifferentiated and ultimately non-human space–but rather the opening of a region for entities to dwell in, and the opening of a path towards these entities, a “penetrability,” an ability to penetrate. Thus it may have been misleading to imply that space was “something .” True, it is something ready-to-hand in Being and Time. But in the later Heidegger, and specifically in this passage, it seems space is not a thing, it is not ready-to hand. It is less a thing than an activity, less a noun than a verb: space as spacing, as “spatiality.” In any case, it is clear that freedom is its basis.
The final modality of freedom to be discussed is freedom as the essence of truth. Heidegger works out this sense of freedom in the “On the Essence of Truth” essay. Here, one will hear echoes of ideas previously discussed. The key phrase in this essay reads: “The essence of truth is freedom” How is this to be understood? To begin with, one should understand that the terms used here are taken in a non-traditional sense. “Essence” does not signify the “very nature” of some entity–a nature that would remain after one had eliminated all the modalities proper to it. It signifies rather “the foundation which makes possible.” How this definition is to be situated in the context of the above phrase will be seen.
“Truth” has a double signification here. First, it retains a quasi traditional sense of the conformity of an utterance to an entity. But truth has another sense, and one which is more primordial: truth as Aletheia. Aletheia or “unconcealment” signifies the presencing of Being in beings. It is in this radical sense of truth that truth as conformity is founded. For only on the basis of the presence of beings (and their Being present as they are) can one express utterances conforming to them. But what is it that makes it possible for beings to be present, and as they are? It is “freedom.”
“Freedom” here is “letting beings be.” It is, again, a free, open engagement that does not insist beings be this or that, but that simply lets them be, and as they are. Now, it is not a matter here of a will that determines to let beings be. Such a will would operate in the mode of “insistence,” in that it would insist beings be free. In fact, one must not insist at all. Every insistence, even to “let be” (which would in face be a contradiction in terms) “obscures” and “distorts” beings. The open engagement does not insist on, but rather gives itself over to beings. One gives one’s attention to beings, which attention allows for them to express themselves freely.
Thus freedom is not, in this context, primarily the freedom of Dasein (though this freedom is implied). It is the freedom one grants to beings. As such, it is “the foundation which makes (the truth of these beings) possible.” Because, again, it is thanks to this freedom or rather freeing that unconcealment (Aletheia, the radical truth of beings and even of Being itself) is brought about. It is on the basis of this bringing about that all the other “truths,” the conformities of utterances to beings, are themselves possible. Freedom as the essence of truth is simply that freeing or open engagement that lets beings be unconcealed or disclosed.
The Essence of Freedom
Heidegger also speaks of the essence of freedom itself in the above essay, in the following way: “the heretofore uncomprehended essence of freedom,” he says, is “freedom for what is opened up in an open region.” Freedom was said to be that which opens things up in the first place, and which discloses the regions wherein they dwell. Now, it seems that freedom – in its essence-is freedom for the beings and regions so disclosed. How is one to understand these two seemingly distinct notions of freedom? Perhaps in their belonging-together. Freedom is neither the freedom of Dasein alone, nor simply that of the beings Dasein discloses. Freedom occurs in the appropriate belonging together of Dasein and beings, in the in between. It is a bond, a traversal, a back-and-forth within openness. It is not essentially grasped until it is grasped as a free projection towards beings that have been disclosed or freed. The essence of freedom then, is Dasein’s clear, projective activity towards entities that have already themselves been freed.
In this sense, it might seem that Dasein’s freedom–which, as has been asserted, is the basis for the freedom of all other beings–is itself its own basis. To take it as such, however, would be a misunderstanding. True, Dasein can free itself and all other entities, and thus be truly free for whatever is disclosed to it. But Dasein is not the basis of its own Being. Being is. And Dasein can only be, and be free, because Being itself is free.
The Ground of Freedom
Heidegger addresses the freedom of Being in his essay on Parmenides called “Moira.” He translates moira as “Fate.” He contends that Parmenides thought this “Fate” in terms of an unfolding of the fold between Being and beings, and unfolding that reveals Being as the presence of beings, and that thus reveals these beings themselves. Fate brings beings out of concealment, reveals them, presences them. If fate does not do so, then beings are not. And what is not cannot be free. Yet fate here is not something other than Being. It is the fate of Being. It has been further interpreted as the caprice of Being, as the freedom of Being to manifest itself (as the presence of beings) or not. Being can “dispense” the presence of beings, or, it can “withold” it. In either case, it is Being’s affair. History is not the history of beings in general, or even of Dasein in particular. It is the history of Being, the history of the dispensation or the witholding of presence. Now, if this interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of fate is accurate, it indicates a notion of freedom that is fundamental in relation to all those cited above. The freedom of Dasein, the freedom or freeing of things and of space and the essence of freedom as the belonging together of these, are only possible on the basis of Being’s freedom to presence them. Freedom, then, is ultimately (though not essentially, perhaps) not that of beings individually or in relation to each other, but of Being itself.
Final Note
We should conclude with a note of caution. The approach of theoretically solving a theoretical problem may not be adequate. It may not do justice to the question of freedom; it may not give the question the response it deserves. One may save Heidegger from the metaphysical tradition of the West, by manipulating words on paper, but one cannot save him from the\ Western philosophical tradition as a whole, the tradition that prioritizes thinking and that seeks through thinking to resolve (and even to create) problems. Freedom, however, is not simply a philosophical problem, or a philosophical achievement. One does not become free by arriving at a (however novel) definition of freedom. What freedom is and how it is to be achieved is a problem for human beings engaged in and acting in the world; it is to be solved by human beings engaged in and acting in the world. Or perhaps it is not a problem at all, but a challenge–the greatest human challenge.