manifest the being of beings, not as the mere positive “counter-part” of the reduction, but more radically as what was always implied by the reduction. The “leading-back” [Rückführung] of the gaze, Heidegger explains, “expressly requires us to be led toward [Hinführung] Being; it thus requires guidance [Leitung]” (GA 24, 29/21). Heidegger calls this “positive” determination of the method “phenomenological construction.” The term construction may be deceptive in light of the opposition of phenomenology to any “conceptual construction.” Indeed, Heidegger generally reserves this term to designate the dogmatic and artificial constructs of theories that conceal the primordial meaning of phenomena, of “the things themselves.”15 In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, however, this term is intended positively as the active elucidation of the structure of being [Seinsverfassung], the anticipatory projection of the being of a being in understanding. In fact, already in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger had evoked the task of a “phenomenological construction [phänomenologischen Konstruktion]” of the existential constitution of historicity, adding to the term construction an explanatory note: “projection” (SZ, 375). Let me explain this term: in section 42 of Being and Time, Heidegger designates the structure of care as an “ontological construction [ontologische Konstruktion],” one that is precisely opposed to “a mere fabrication” (SZ, 197). Indeed, being is not accessible as a being, it cannot be “found” somewhere, like a thing or an immediate given; it must rather give rise to a particular access, a specific and positive understanding, an understanding projection. As defined in Sein und Zeit, understanding essentially has the character of a project, or better, projection. Being must in some sense be “projected,” brought into view, that is, “constructed,” Heidegger explaining for instance that the question of the meaning of being must be “constructed” (gestellt; SZ, 5, trans. slightly modified). More precisely, beings are projected (constructed) in terms of their being. To construct in this context means to manifest being primordially. As one reads in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics: “But construction here does not mean: free-floating thinking-out of something. It is instead a projecting in which the preliminary guidance as well as the taking-off of the projection [der Absprung des Entwurfs] must be predetermined and protected. . . . The fundamental-ontological construction is distinguished by the fact that it should expose the inner possibility of something which, precisely as what is best known, thoroughly masters all Dasein.”16 The phenomenological method, taken in the sense of an a priori knowledge of being, now has a positive meaning; it is an act of construction, that is, a making-manifest of the being of beings. It is a matter of “constructing” the being of beings, of revealing its eventfulness.
(c) The conceptual interpretation of being and its structures, the “reductive construction,” does not yet exhaust the meaning of the phenomenological method. One further element is necessary, for the structures of the being of beings are not accessible in some kind of immediate clarity and are not presented to some pure, contemplative, and in that sense abstract gaze. As noted, the event is caught in epistemological and metaphysical concepts that neutralize its eventfulness. Everything takes place as if such eventfulness was covered over by the metaphysical categories of cause, subject, and substance, as if the eventfulness of the event did not appear but remain concealed behind an inadequate metaphysics of foundation, reason, and substantiality. Indeed, Heidegger stresses that Dasein’s self-interpretation is inscribed in a certain conceptual heritage that structures it and provides it with its categories and its modes of apprehension. In paragraph 6 of Being and Time, where he defines his project as a “destruction of the history of ontology,” Heidegger emphasizes that any understanding of being—above all, any preunderstanding of being that is specific to Dasein—remains in a certain tradition due to the essential historicality of that entity. Dasein is an entity that cannot be explicated except through its own historicality. Dasein always understands itself from within an inherited tradition in which it has “grown up.” “Whatever the way of Being it may have at the time, and thus with whatever understanding of Being it may possess, Dasein has grown up into and in a traditional way of interpreting itself: in terms of this it understands itself proximally, and, within a certain range, constantly” (SZ, 20). This is why the question of the meaning of being is a historical question: the “question [of the meaning of being] thus brings itself to the point where it understands itself as historiological [historisch]” (SZ, 21). To raise the question of being implies engaging one’s own tradition. Dasein’s relation to the tradition, however, is far from transparent. On the contrary, tradition withholds from delivering its content to Dasein’s everyday being. Or, rather, it delivers it only as a “result,” that is, through the covering over in “self-evidence” (SZ, 21) of the primordial sources of the categories that have been handed down. The tradition is described by Heidegger as an obstacle (it “blocks our access to those primordial ‘sources’ from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have in part been quite genuinely drawn”; SZ, 21, emphasis mine), as an uprooting (“Dasein has had its historicality so thoroughly uprooted by tradition that it confines its interests to the multiformity of possible types, directions, and standpoints of philosophical activity in the most exotic and alien of cultures; and by this very interest it seeks to veil the fact that it has no ground [Bodenlosigkeit] of its own to stand on”; SZ, 21, emphasis mine), and as an obliteration or omission of the origin (“Indeed [the tradition] makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and it makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand”; SZ, 21). Tradition is described as a concealment of origins.
This situation reveals that the access to the event of being (and to the being of the event) requires a deconstructive passage through an inauthentic tradition. A thinking of the event will never go without a deconstruction of the obstacles that obstruct its eventfulness. “If the question of being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about must be dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of being—the ways which have guided us ever since” (SZ, 22). In this sense, the inquiry aims “to go back to the past in a positive manner and make it productively its own” (SZ, 21), but this reappropriation of the ontological grounds will take the form of a deconstruction (Destruktion) of an improper tradition. Deconstruction must be integrated into the concept of method of phenomenology. This is why Heidegger adds to the reductive construction a destruction. “Construction in philosophy,” Heidegger explains, “is necessarily deconstruction [Konstruktion der Philosophie ist notwendig Destruktion]” (GA 24, 31/23, trans. modified). A thinking of the event of being must assume its deconstructive character. “There necessarily belongs to the conceptual interpretation of being and its structures, that is, to the reductive construction of being, a destruction. . . . Only by means of this destruction can ontology fully assure itself in a philosophical way of the genuine character of its concepts” (GA 24, 31/22–23). Destruction should be taken, literally, as a dis-obstruction or dismantling of what obstructs phenomenological vision and thus cannot be identified with a destruction or negative undertaking. It represents rather a positive reappropriation of the tradition since it returns to the sources of the concepts handed down by this tradition. “Construction in philosophy is necessarily destruction, that is to say, a de-construction of traditional concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition. And this is not a negation of the tradition or a condemnation of it as worthless; quite the reverse, it signifies precisely a positive appropriation of tradition” (GA 24, 31/23).17
Further, deconstruction manifests the historicity and facticity of being. This facticity is apparent in the context of the phenomenological method’s “starting point,” which, as noted, “begins” with beings in order to reach, by an “aversive” movement, their being. The peculiar genesis of this movement, its “impure” beginnings, so to speak, inescapably affects the concept of being that is sought with a certain nonessentiality. The starting point is “obviously always determined
