Essential Thniking: A call of Being

Heidegger says: We never come to thoughts. They come to us. Essential thinking is not
something which man can do as and when he wants. Man can be an essential thinker only in so
far as he stands in the lighting of Being. In this process Being is primary, for thinking belongs
to Being. Dasein is able to think only because he is enabled to think. The enabling is a favour
Being bestows on man, thereby presencing man in his essence, i.e.as an essential thinker.

Being enables thinking in man because it wants thought and there is need for thinking. By
reason of its nature Being must itself be served, tended, guarded by thought, and hence is in
want of thought in order to be itself. There is a relationship between Beings giving and
Beings wanting. Thus Beings giving itself is its wanting itself. In wanting itself to be thought,
Being gives itself to thought. In this wanting itself to be thought, Being gives itself to thought. In
this wanting is concealed an appeal that calls forth thought. Thus, Being calls man to think. The
call of Being is not a periodical one nor is mans thinking an occasional human activity, for the
former is something constant while the latter is something essential to man. Man is a thinker only
because he is called to think.

The German term to call has a variety of meanings, such as invite, instruct, demand and
direct. It is related to the word keleuein which means to get something underway, The old use
of the term heissen also means letting reach. Thus, the term heissen in its original use has
the notion of helpfulness. The analysis of the term heissen clearly points to the fact that which
calls us to think helps us to think, by giving itself to think. Heidegger says: What calls us to
think, gives food for thought. That which gives food for thought is that which is eminently
thought-worry, viz., Being, which gives to thought its to-be-thought.

The mode in which Being gives itself to thought is one of withdrawing. In other words,
what calls on us to think and gives food for thought gives itself a withdrawing. Withdrawal is not
totally negative in the sense of absence of Being, but something real and actual. It is not nothing,
but the presence of Being as absent. When Being withdraws itself from us, it draws us in such a
way that we bear the stamp of being drawn toward; thereby we ourselves become pointers,
pointing towards Being. It is the withdrawing presence of Being that calls man to thinking and
that which looks for thinking in man. Thus, calling Dasein to think, Being gives itself to be
thought and wants itself to be thought. It draws man to thinking by withdrawing itself from him,
thereby making him a pointer to itself.

In the postscript to What is metaphysics? Heidegger speaks of the call of Being, which
to a certain extent is comparable with the mode of Beings gift of itself in its withdrawing. Here
it is in the context of anxiety: Being calls Dasein to itself. Anxiety is an experience of
Beinglessness. Being is the noiseless voice which makes itself heard in Dasein through the
attunement of anciety. In the attunement of anxiety Dasein may learn to experience Being in the
form of no-Being. In other words, through anxiety Being lights up in man its own relation to
Daseins essence. The noiseless voice of eing is a call and an appeal to Dasein to be the place
where its truth can be preserved. Heidegger stresses that the call is not Daeins doing, but
something that comes from the bounty of Being. Thus, the essential thinking is an occurrenceof
Being which comes from Beings initiative.