Herr Evans
Please sit down Professor Heidegger and make yourself comfortable. You may smoke in this area of the room if you wish. But first why not roll up your swastika flag on its pole and hand it to the waiter for safe-keeping until after our meal, or lean it against that hat-stand over there? I've ordered two large cognacs.

Forgive me for being blunt, but I'd like if I may to go back to my thoughts about the *is-word* and what I perceive to be your most basic and profound error of thinking. I continue to maintain that the BE word is central to an understanding of your whole philosophy of so-called 'Being,' and together with the gerundial trick 'Dasein.' It is your misunderstanding of the *IS-concept*and the semantic mechanism of the BE-function that provides the sandy foundational Grundbegriffe upon which your whole rickety house of transcendentalist cards is built.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
In Part Four of * Basic Concepts:* I headed a section: * Nonconsideration of the essential distinction between being and beings, * and I started by suggesting that beings  are or as I say, are determined by being.* But what passes itself off as even more self-evident is just that beings "are," or, as I say, are determined "by being."

When I say, "beings are," I say, I distinguish each time between beings and their being, without noticing this distinction at all. Thus I also do not ask what this distinction consists in, from whence it originates, how it remains so obvious, and where it gets the right to this obviousness. I also do not find the slightest reason to concern myself with this distinction between being and beings in the first place.


Herr Evans:
That is not true.  Your work has this ontological distinction running through it like a leit motiv. Please help yourself to the Erdnüsse Professor Heidegger. With respect, you are in error.   I do not distinguish between *beings* and *their being,* and neither do lots of other people for whom your so-called *Being* is no 
more than a conceptual reification or instantiation.  I do not agree that there *IS* a distinction between *beings* and their *being,* for the simple reason that I do not believe that 'beings' HAVE any 'Being' in the first place.

     Furthermore, the obviousness that you detect is not obvious to me at all.  Its *obviousness* is only *obvious* to people with a certain mindset - who come to the problem with a certain amount of religious baggage like you did with your Jesuitical seminary influences of your most vulnerable youth.   I cannot understand what you mean when you say that this phantom distinction gets the 'right' to this *obviousness,* for there is no such thing as a 'right' in the world of nature, that is unless the distinctions have banded together and formed a trade union for the upholding of the rights of distinctions to be distinct?

If I say: "The dog is on the grass," I am not making a statement about the dogs 'being' in the world, I am making a statement about the whereabouts of a particular bundle of atoms and particles,  which due to genetical programming have been arranged in a particular way that presents itself as an animal that we call a dog, which by the fact of existing in that particular way is an *entity* and is in a state of existing in a form that we humans call   *a dog.*  It doesn't *have* a *Being* it quite simply and uncomplicatedly is - *a dog.*


There is no way that the dog and its so-called *Being* can be separated - for *Being* is simply the third person singular tense of the BE word. Furthermore, if I make the statement: *Dogs are.* It prompts the logical response from you in the form of a question: *Dogs are what?* We naturally await a predicate.  If no predicate is forthcoming then we *fill in* the predicational material that we know of dogs from antecedal experience.

If you and I are standing in der Unter den Linden and a cat is sunning itself on the sidewalk, and we spot a pack of dogs which have escaped from their owners and are playing together, and I point my finger at them and say simply: *Dogs, * there is no implication as to the philosophical or temporal significance of *being* regarding those animals, but simply a warning to you in relation to the safety of the cat.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
When I consider the whole of beings, or even just attempt to think about it in a vague way, I leave what I envisage for the most part indeterminate and indistinct, whether beings or being, or both of them alternately and indefinitely, or each separately but in a barely comprehended relation. From here originates an old confusion of speech. I say "being" and really mean beings. I talk about beings as such and mean, at bottom, being. The distinction between beings and being seems not to obtain at all. If it does obtain, ignoring it seems not to cause any particular "harm."


Herr Evans:
Again professor, with the greatest of respect, you are totally wrong, for I DO NOT talk about *beings* as such and mean, at bottom, *being. * When people talk of castles and kings and frying pans, they are talking about the actual castles and kings and frying pans, they are not engaged with concepts of the so-called 'being' of those entities, and when they do think about them, it is perhaps a consideration of the sandstone blocks of which the castle was built, and how the builders managed to drag the blocks all the way from Kent, whether the Kaiser can button his coat with his shrivelled right arm, or whether the frying pan is 'non-stick' etc. Our minds DO NOT work in the manner that you Professor Heidegger. suggest.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
When I say, for example, completely outside scientific deliberation and far from all philosophical contemplation, "the weather is fine, " and then by "weather" I mean something actual and existing, and I mean with "fine" the actual condition, and I mean with the inconspicuous "is" the manner in which this being, the weather, thus and so exists.


Herr Evans:
Again professor, you are totally wrong, for I DO NOT talk about *beings* as such and mean, at bottom, *Being.*  When people talk of castles and kings and frying pans, they are talking about the actual castles and kings and frying pans, they are not engaged with concepts of the so-called *Being* of those entities, and when they do think about them, it is perhaps a consideration of the sandstone blocks of which the castle was built, and how the builders managed to drag the blocks all the way from Kent, whether the Kaiser can button his coat with his shrivelled right arm, or whether the frying pan is 'non-stick' etc. Our minds DO NOT work in the manner that you Professor Heidegger. suggest.

You make a cardinal error. All of us when we say, "the weather is fine," mean the current state of the meteorological conditions. By "weather," something actual and existing only in the sense that its effects impinge upon us, as for instance if we feel the rain on our face or the wind in our hair or encounter the ice that causes us to slip and fall - or the ruined holiday. When we say *fine* we are using an adjective to signify with informality that the weather conditions that pertain are satisfactory or in an acceptable condition.

Yes, you are wrong Professor Heidegger, for it is the adjective *FINE* which qualifies and describes the weather conditions not the little word *is.* In natural language the predicate [which in this case is the adjective 'fine'] usually provides or reveals an informative aspect or aspects of the existential modality or state or states of the extantal imbuant has been singled out by you the speaker of the sentence as significant enough to be uttered and has been existentialised by you Herr Professor as the originator of the utterance by the use of its name 'weather'. These modes or states are often [but not always introduced by variations of the BE word - in this case it is the 'is' word that provides this function. The claims or opinions of the originator of the sentence regarding the particular state or states or mode or modes of the entity - the weather [either real or reificational] can usually be checked out by more questions, reference books, the meteorological office, looking for oneself, seeking expert opinion etc.] In this particular instance the IS word is engaged in 'indicating' or 'processing' the adjective - the word *fine. *

    The role of the IS word does not however render it empty of hidden potential, for it is available to provide an entrance ticket to a further audition of explication of the roles of the leading two actors in this tiny textual wordplay.

The lead actor is the word *weather,* and the artless innocent young ingenue the word *fine.* In other words the word *IS* does not perform any role in the sentence except that of pointing to the predicate that [in English] usually follows it. It is certainly not cast in the character part of *Old Father Being, * but merely acts as distributor of programme notes for those in the audience who don't understand the plot.

The word *IS* DOES NOT stand for the *being* of the weather, and it certainly DOES NOT stand for or play any part in the semantic signification of the word *fine,* (that you now curiously present as a *being.*) Everybody knows that the word *fine* is merely an adjective of description, which in this case is employed to describe the state of the particular condition of the elements, that we call 'the weather' at a particular brief instant of time.

*Objects* or *entities* - the nouns that describe - them do not need to be accompanied by the pseudo-verb *be* in any of its guises. The word *ship* when uttered, immediately conjures up or 'extantialises' an idea of the entity *ship* without any accompanying syntactic particles, if I say *the ship.* I have given you additional information, in that you have now been made aware of the fact that I refer to a particular ship *THE ship* but now you will be anxious for the final piece of the jigsaw - the predication - *the ship is -WHAT? *

This then Herr Professor Heidegger explains the dynamic relationship between the two main protagonists in the sentence *The weather is fine. * The usherette-word 'is' performs its role, which points and prompts with its illuminative torch as it guides members of the audience to their seats and hands out further information if required to enable confused spectators to follow the textual scenario.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Hence we mean *the being of the being* that is called "weather. " The "is" does not thereby name a being, unlike "the weather" and "fine. "


Herr Evans:
Again the noble Herr Professor Heidegger is confused - what in fact we mean is the*CONDITION* of the weather not the *BEING* of the weather. Furthermore*FINE* is not a
*BEING,* it is an *ADJECTIVE* which describes the*CONDITION* of the weather.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
But wherein lies the "is"? What does it mean, what does it consist in, that the weather "is" and that it "is" fine? The fine weather - that I can be glad about, but the "is"? What am I to make of it? I can read from the hygrometer whether the air is more or less humid, but there are no instruments to measure and comprehend the "is" of what I mean by "is. "


Herr Evans:
Now your total lack of understanding is exposed for all to see, and I am embarrassed for you. You cannot see that *IS* presents merely an introduction to the existential modality of the entity contained in the predicate - an icon leading to further information about an existential aspect of the subject,


Herr Professor Heidegger:
How many times a day do I use this inconspicuous word "is, " and not only in relation to the weather? But what would come of our taking care of daily business if each time, or even only one time, I were to genuinely think of the "is" and allow myself to linger over it, instead of immediately and exclusively involving myself with the respective beings that affect our intentions, our work, our amusements, our hopes and fears? I am familiar with what is, beings themselves, and I experience that they are. But the "is" -where in all the world am I supposed to find it, where am I supposed to look for something like this in the first place?


Herr Evans:
I can see that Herr Professor Heidegger:
is genuinely worried about this *is-question. * I can detect your uneasiness in the fact that you are devoting so much time in this discussion to an exploration of what to you is a conundrum.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Where am I supposed to look for something like this in the first place?


Herr Evans:
You are agonizing unnecessarily Professor Heidegger, you don't realise that you are NOT SUPPOSED to seek after the word *IS* but to follow its bluebird song to the grove of available information to where it points -- to the PREDICATE!.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
"The leaf is green.*  I find the green of the leaf in the leaf itself. But where is the "is"? I say, nevertheless, the leaf "is"- it itself, the leaf. Consequently the "is" must belong to the visible leaf itself. But I do not "see" the "is" in the leaf, for it would have to be coloured or spatially formed. Where and what "is" the "is"?


Herr Evans:
I sympathise with you now as you thrash around in bewilderment. You seem to think that the word IS can in some magical way attach itself to the leaf, and I can see you are actually examining the leaf - looking for the *IS-label* like a suspicious customer examining the label in a coat to prove its provenance. Please stop, you are embarrassing me - oh what a sorry sight! Oh yes, one further point. The photonic "truth" of the matter is that grass is every colour of the rainbow EXCEPT green, because green is the one wavelength that the leaf will not absorb into itself. It therefore reflects into the eye of the beholder the quotidian greenness assumed to be its very essence like some absolutely rejected aspect of existence! A quick push on the *IS* button would have prompted you to have sorted out this information - perhaps by resorting to the Encyclopaedia Britannica?


Herr Professor Heidegger:
The question remains strange enough. It seems to lead to an empty hair-splitting, a hair-splitting about something that does not and need not trouble us. The cultivation of fruit trees takes its course without thinking about the "is, " and botany acquires information about the leaves of plants without otherwise knowing anything else about the "is. " It is enough that beings are. Let's stay with beings; wanting to think about the "IS" "is" mere quibbling. Or instead if I intentionally steer clear of a simple answer to the question as to where the "is" can be found.


Herr Evans:
Oh, but it is NOT "mere quibbling" and NEEDS to trouble us Professor Heidegger.

Now you seem to be running out of mental energy and looking for an escape? Are you hoping that the *IS word* will go away and leave you in peace? If so you are fooling yourself, for the *is-word* in one form or another will live while humanity exists. Why run away from the problem, and why do to the IS word what you would scold your maid for doing Herr Professor? Brushing something under the carpet because it is unsightly or difficult to understand is not a proper way to deal with problems. You should take heed of what your beloved Fuhrer says, and face up to it like a man. Running away from philosophical problems will not help you when your application to be Hitler's personal philosopher comes up for consideration.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Let's stay with the last example. "The leaf is green. " Here I shall take "the green leaf itself, " the designated being, as the "object. " Now, insofar as the "is" is not discoverable in this object, it must belong to the "subject, " that means to the person who judges and asserts propositions.


Herr Evans:
Hahahah! No, no, no, you can't sidestep the issue like that again you old fox! Here take a drink of your cognac - You can't find the *is-word* on the leaf- so now you want to search my pockets to see if I've hidden it there! Maybe the waiter has concealed it under his napkin? ! No! I disclaim ownership completely! The truth is that the word or the idea that the word signifies belongs TO BOTH OF US to use IF WE FEEL THE NEED to say something predicationally about an entity ( real or reificational) - or to ignore if we see fit. Look out! Here comes an IS word - "The waiter 'IS' here with two more cognacs!"


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Each person can be regarded as a "subject" in relation to the "objects" that they encounter.


Herr Evans:
No, no, no, hahahaha! Professor Heidegger, you are tying yourself in knots, the subject of our discussion and the subject of the sentence is the *WEATHER,* not me or you or the speaker or the writer or anybody else in this room.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
But how does it stand with the subjects, of whom each can say "I" about itself, of whom many can say "I" about themselves? These "subjects" also "are" and must "be. " To say that the "is in the proposition "the leaf is green" lies in the "subject" is only to defer the question. For the "subject" is also a "being, " and thus the same question repeats itself. Indeed, it is perhaps still more difficult to say just to what extent "being" belongs to the subject, and belongs to it such that it would be transferred from here, so to speak, to "objects. " In addition, when I understand the green leaf as an "object, " I grasp it immediately and only in its relation to the subject, and precisely not as an independent being that I address in the "is" and "is green" in order to articulate what pertains to the being itself.


Herr Evans:
I think the best thing for you to do Professor Heidegger, is to go back to your study, hang a *Do not Disturb* sign on your door and think the problem through until you have reached a more definite conclusion. You are starting to look a little tired.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
No, forgive me Herr Evans, I had a late night last night - a Wagner concert, a few schnapps on the way home, you know the sort of thing. The flight from object to subject is in many respects a questionable way out. Thus we must reach still further and take notice for the first time of what we mean by the "is. " The unquestioned character of the "is" in its grammatical determination-emptiness and richness of meaning. When we take the "is" as a "word" we label it, according to grammar, as a derivation and form of the verb "to be. " We can also elevate this "verb" into a noun: being.


Herr Evans:
A dangerous thing to do but I admit it is done and is the practice in my country, though the crafty Greeks had separate ways of signifying those different concepts. It is my belief that the BE word is NOT a verb, but has been wrongfully classified as such.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
We can easily take notice of this grammatically determinable derivation, but it contributes nothing to our under standing of what is named by the words "to be, " "being, " "is, " "are, " "was, " "shall be, " "has been. " Finally we shall find out that no special assistance is needed in order to understand these words.


Herr Evans:
In your case Professor I can see that special assistance is EXACTLY what is needed in order for you to understand these words. You are wasting your time trying professor, for you are barking up the wrong tree, the words are merely pathfinders to an orchard of golden predicational facts from which the aureate apples of conclusions may be picked.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
We say, "The weather is fine." We can ask whether it really is fine, and whether it will last or isn't already starting to change. There can be doubt as to the characteristics of this being the weather but not about the "is, " that is to say, not about what the "is" means here.


Herr Evans:
I've been waiting and watching to see if the pfennig will drop, but sadly it is obvious that you cannot see what is axiomatic


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Also when it becomes questionable if the weather is "good" or "bad, " and we ask "Is the weather really as bad as it looks from this corner? "-Then the "is" itself remains entirely unquestioned in the question. There is nothing questionable about the "is"-about what we mean by it. But how is it supposed to become questionable? For indeed in the word "is" something is thought that has no special content, no determination. "The weather is fine, " "the window is closed, " "the street is dark, " here we constantly meet with the same empty meaning. The fullness and variability of beings never comes from the "is" and from being, but from beings themselves: weather, window, street, bad, closed, dark. When we say about beings that they are thus and so, we might distinguish between beings and being. But in this distinction being and the "is" remains continually indifferent and uniform, for it is emptiness itself. Indeed, perhaps we fall into a trap, so to speak, and attach to a linguistic form questions that have no support in what is actual. Useless hair-splitting instead of investigating the actual?


Herr Evans:
You are floundering now and going round in circles like a fly with a damaged wing. The bluebird called *IS* is already on the wing - it sings its song but your ears are deaf to its liquid melody. The IS word merely points to the existential state or modality of the subject which has been instantiated by the utterance of its name.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Suppose we say, to stay with the weather, "it rains. " Here the "is" does not present itself at all, and yet we mean that something actually "is. " But what is the point of all this fuss over the empty little word "is"? The indeterminacy and emptiness of the word "is" is not eliminated by putting a noun in place of the "is" and pronouncing the name "being. " At best, it is even increased.


Herr Evans:
Now you are admitting defeat and throwing in the towel. Don't you see the *IS* in this case has become a ghost - a silent partner, but it still hovers waiting for the call. All I need to do to make it reappear is to ask the question: What *is* it that rains? There it is again!


Herr Professor Heidegger:
It could appear that something important is concealed in what is named by the noun "being, " something important and in this case especially profound, even though the title "being" nevertheless remains just a nag for emptiness.


Herr Evans:
*Being* is never empty - for it has never been full. There is nothing *important* concealed in what is named by the so-called verb "being, " it is a chimera - a grotesque product of your imagination that plays 'catch-as-catch-can' with you as a blindfolded fall-guy 'Being' is the present continuous tense of the BE word - there is NO such THING as 'BEING' - We LIVE a LIFE - we EXIST for a comparatively short while as HUMANS, and then we DIE and the material that was once part of our bodies and brains exists as some other material - in some other form - dust, or part of the molecules of a lamp-post, or as part of the red dye on some red swastika armband like you wear, or even as part of a leaf like that one you are examining in this dim light. Quick! Put it away! Here comes the waiter - he will think that you are crazy.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
And yet, behind the uniformity and emptiness of the word "is, " a scarcely considered richness conceals itself. We say: "this man is from Swabia"; "the book is yours"; "the enemy is in retreat"; "red is port"; "God is"; "there is a flood in China"; "the goblet is silver"; "the soldier is on the battlefield"; "the potato beetle is in the fields"; "the lecture is in room "the dog is in the garden"; "this man is the devil's own. "

"Above all summits/Is rest. . . . "

Each time, the "is" has a different meaning and import for speech. We do not want to avoid this complexity but rather to emphasize it, for such a survey of the obvious can serve as a preliminary exercise for something else.

"The man is from Swabia" says: he originates from there; "the book is yours" says: it belongs to you; "the enemy is in retreat" means: he has begun to withdraw; "red is port" means: the red colour is a sign for . . . "God is" is supposed to mean: God exists, he is actually there; "there is a flood in China" means: there something prevails, spreads, and results in destruction; "the goblet is silver" means: according to its material characteristics, it consists of . . . "the soldier is on the battlefield" would say: he engages the enemy; "the potato beetle is in the fields" establishes that: this animal causes damage there; "the lecture is in room 5" means: the lecture takes place there; "the dog is in the garden" means to say: the dog is located there, runs around there; "this man is the devil's own" means: he acts as if possessed by evil. "Above all summits/Is rest . . . " means- yes, what does this mean? Above all summits "rest locates itself'? Or: "takes place"? "exists"? "spreads"? -"Above all summits/Is rest. "- Here not one of the above mentioned elucidations of the "is" fits. And when we collect them together and add them up, their sum does not suffice either. Indeed, no paraphrase at all will do, so we simply have to leave the "is" to itself. And thus the same "is" remains, but simple and irreplaceable at once, the same "is" enunciated in those few words that Goethe wrote upon the mullions in a hut on the Kickelhahn at Limenau (cf. the letter to Zelter of Sept. 4, 1831).

How strange, that in response to Goethe's words: "Above all summits/Is rest" we vacillate over an attempted elucidation of the familiar "is, " and hesitate to give any elucidation at all, so that we come to give up completely and only say the same words over and again: "Above all summits/ Is rest. " We forgo an elucidation of the "is, " not because its understanding could be too complicated, too difficult, even hopeless, but because here the "is" is said as if for the first and only time. This is something so unique and simple that we don't have to do anything on our part to be addressed by it. Hence the "intelligibility" of the "is" that precludes all elucidation, the "intelligibility" that has perhaps a completely different mode than that familiarity in which the "is" otherwise occurs to us, constantly unthought, in everyday discourse.


Herr Evans:
I thought as I listened to you just the that you were moving at last towards some understanding of the *IS-word* but alas no. "So near and yet so far, " as we say in England. The beautiful line by Goethe: "Above all summits/Is rest" is easily explained - the *is* simply points to the predicate which tells us that *rest* can be found, or it may be experienced, in that location high above the wearisomeness of human strife.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
All the same, the simple "is" of Goethe's poem holds itself far away from the mere indeterminacy and emptiness that we indeed easily master, if only through the hastiness of our understanding. Here, on the contrary, and despite its intelligibility, we are not at all equal to the address of this word, but are admitted into something inexhaustible.

"Above all summits/Is rest . . . "; in this "is" speaks the uniqueness of a gathered wealth. not the emptiness of the indeterminate, but the fullness of the overdetermined prevents an immediate delimitation and interpretation of the "is. " The insignificant word "is" thus begins to shine brightly. And the hasty judgment about the insignificance of the "is" starts to waver.

We now recognize the wealth of what the "is" has to say and is capable of saying, only in different respects from the complexity of the enumerated propositions. If we attempt to transfer the meaning of the "is" from any one of the above-cited propositions to the others, we immediately fail. Thus the emptiness and uniformity of the "is" shows itself to be a clumsy pretense that clings to the sameness of the sounds and the written characters. But how, then, is the alleged wealth supposed to lie in the "is" itself?


Herr Evans:
You have me on tenterhooks awaiting the possibility of your final discovery of the function of 'IS'. Yet I have a feeling that the light will never dawn.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
The word "is, " taken by itself, remains helpless and poor in meaning. Why it is so with the "is, " indeed why it must be so, is also easy to see. The complexity of the meanings of the "is" has its intelligible ground in the fact that a different being is represented each time in the above-cited propositions: the man from Swabia, the book, the enemy, the colour red, God, the flood, the goblet, the soldier, the potato beetle, the lecture, the dog, the evil man, and finally in Goethe's poem-what? "Rest"? Is "rest" represented there and something about it ascertained, that it is present "above all summits"?


Herr Evans:
The word "is, " taken by itself, is not helpless and poor in meaning - that is when one DISCOVERS the meaning O. K. Now it is time to put you out of your misery and tell you the secret of the BE word and its conjugate IS. The IS word is a little word that 'stands in' or 'deputises' for quite a long sentence - a sentence that it never speaks. But first we need a sentence to embed it in and to act as a matrix or template for our example:

"The apple is red."

(The subject goes here)"... exhibits an existential modality or state of relative or absolute numerosity, relative spatial positionality, identification, classification, nominality, transcendentality, spatial or volumetric occupancy and genitivality of..."(the predicate follows here.)

Now if you cut out the IS word from any sentence and substitute the above rubric it will still make sense, in other words, any existential state or modality is covered by this substitution. Now you finally know exactly what the IS word means.

"The apple is red."

"The apple "... exhibits an EXISTENTIAL MODALITY or state of relative or absolute numerosity, relative spatial positionality, identification, classification, nominality, transcendentality, spatial or volumetric occupancy and genitivality of.. red[ness.]

Now you can just what a clever little fellow the IS word really is representing all this unspoken information?

Yes, you are right, the is-word is good at representing unspoken information both on a high poetic level as in the case of Goethe's poem and also in more mundane tasks such as the man from Swabia, your mistake is to take the little *IS-word* by *ITSELF* and by transmogrifying it from the present continuous case i. e. *BEING* you castrate it of its power, and foolishly attempt to stuff it into a foreign mould and recast it in another role to fit your half-baked psychologically manqué - phenomenological preconceptions. This is your failure and your cardinal mistake. This is the shifting sand upon which the foundation of your whole phenomenological castle in the air is built. The 'copuletic' use is a misnomer and a misunderstanding of the word by the Scholastics and medieval priests. Its perceived use as a *link-word* is a fallacy.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Here again, we hesitate over the interpretation. And that is no wonder, since the propositions cited above are "prosaic" observations and declarations, while in the last example precisely a "poetic" proposition was brought forward. In "poetic propositions, " if they may be called "propositions" at all, things do not lie on the surface as much as they do in familiar, everyday discourse. The "poetic" is the exception. The rule and the ordinary are not to be gathered from it, and that means whatever can be discerned of the "is" commonly and in general. Therefore we may hope to ascend to the level of "higher, " "poetic" expression, and to be able to attempt its clarification, only when the meaning of the "is" is first clarified satisfactorily in the common assertive proposition. Thus it is perhaps just as well that we do not allow ourselves to be prematurely confused by the "poetic" example that was merely tacked on to the end of the propositional sequence.


Herr Evans:
Let me put you out of your agony the *is word* works in the same way for the language of the drug addicts in the gutter and the language of Shakespeare or Goethe. You are chasing silver shadows in a cave of Platonic darkness.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
The previously cited propositions suffice, then, to demonstrate that the "is" derives its meaning each time from the being that is respectively represented, addressed, and articulated in the proposition. Only thus can it fill the emptiness that is otherwise, and indeed characteristically, inherent in it from case to case, and present itself in the appearance of a fulfilled word.


Herr Evans:
Mein Gott im Himmel! For a moment I thought that you had grasped it! No I am sorry it doesn't derive its meaning from the subject and predicate of the sentence, but
*POINTS* to a place where additional meaning may be found - in the predicate - it has no emptiness for it is never filled. It is a silent veiled figure that points with outstretched finger to the well from where the fresh water of predicational knowledge may be drawn.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
The emptiness and indeterminacy of the "is" as a presupposition for its being a "copula. " Citing the examples above thus proves the exact opposite of what is supposed to be shown, not a richness of the "is" but precisely its emptiness. Hence the impression afforded at first by this much-used word is confirmed, i. e. , that of an indeterminate and not further determinable word, which is the essential mode of this word. Indeed, the alleged emptiness of this word, the "is, " can be properly demonstrated as soon as we cease to deal with it in an approximate way. Let us attend to the character of this word instead of the many examples of its application, which can easily be multiplied to infinity. Grammar informs us about this. According to grammar, the "is" has the task of connecting the "subject" with the "predicate. " The "is" is therefore called the "link" or "copula."

The connecting remains dependent upon what is supposed to be connected, and the mode of the bond is determined by the mode of what is supposed to come into connection. that the "is" has the character of the copula shows clearly enough the extent to which its meaning must be characterized by emptiness and indeterminacy. For only thus can the "is" suffice for the various uses that are constantly demanded of it in discourse. The "is" remains not only actually an empty word, but due to its essence-as a connecting word-it may not be loaded down beforehand with any particular meaning. Its own meaning must therefore be totally "empty. "

Being ("is") as the general, the universal. The uniformity of the "is" therefore cannot be passed off as a mere appearance. It distinguishes this word and thus indicates that the noun "being, " derived from its infinitive "to be, " also only signifies a perhaps indispensable but fundamentally empty representation. This uniformity is won by turning our view from beings and their respective determinations and retaining only the empty universal. For a long time now "being" has therefore been called the most common, the "general, " the most general of all that is general. In this word, and in what it means, the solidity of each respective being evaporates into the haziest haze of the most universal. Hence Nietzsche calls "being" the "last breath of a vaporizing reality. "


Herr Evans:
Now we have arrived at you fatal step, the point of departure where the existentialist path heads for the Gaderene cliff. Gadarene swine? You remember, Christ sent evil spirits into a herd of pigs, and the maddened herd raced over a cliff and drowned?
Your wrongful extrapolation of *IS* - which is the present continuous tense of *be,* as some sort of parallel experiential spiritual continuity running alongside LIFE leads to the chasm and the ultimate demise of your idea.


Herr Professor Heidegger:


If, however, being thus vaporizes and disappears, what becomes of the difference between being and beings?


Herr Evans:
There is no difference, because 'beings' ARE entities that EXIST. "Exactly what becomes of it?" you ask. Can you not comprehend Herr Professor Heidegger:
that there IS NO DIFFERENCE!


Herr Professor Heidegger:
In this difference, we "have" before us two differentia: beings and *Being*. If, however, one of the two differentia in this difference, namely being, is only the emptiest universalization of the other, owes its essence to the other, and if consequently everything that has content and endures shifts to the side of beings, and being is in truth nothing, or at best an empty word-sound, then the differentiation may not be taken as completely valid. For it to be valid, each of the two "sides" would have to be able to maintain a genuine and radical claim to essence from out of itself.

If we are to consider the whole of beings, then we could certainly give the most universal but also the emptiest of beings the name "being. " But we fall at once into error when, fooled by the naming and establishing of the name "being, " we chase after a so-called "being itself" instead of considering only beings (is . . . to be-being-being itself). Indeed, we do not simply fall once more into error, but into the mere emptiness of the purely null, where inquiry no longer finds any support, where there is nothing to be in error about. If we want to follow the saying [ unprintable Greek word], we therefore do well to avoid the phantom of an "abstract concept named by the word "being. "


Herr Evans:
There we have the cross of unknowing that you will carry to your grave. You will never be aware that you will go unenlightened into that good night? I take no delight in this fact Herr Professor Heidegger:
I assure you.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
I must be going now its almost seven. I enjoyed our chat.


Herr Evans:
Me too Herr Professor Heidegger:
it seems you are not the ogre I expected in spite of your politics. Please allow me to help you on with your coat, the night air is sharp and a yellow fog curls round the chimneypots of the old town of Freiburg. Farewell.


Herr Professor Heidegger:
Auf Weidersehn! Herr Evans.