Giorgio Agamben: The Open

At stake in the course is the definition of the concept of "open" as one of the names, indeed as the name kat'exochen {preeminent}, of being and of world. More than ten years later, in full world war, Heidegger returns to this concept and traces a summary genealogy of it. That it arose out of the eighth Duino Elegy was, in a certain sense, obvious; but in being adopted as the name of being ("the open, in which every being is freed . . . is being itself"!), Rilke's term under goes an essential reversal, which Heidegger seeks to emphasize in every way. For in the eighth Elegy it is the anima l (die Kreatur) that sees the open "with all its eyes," in distinct contrast to man , whose eyes have instead been "turned backward" and placed "like traps" a round him. While man always has the world before him - always only stands "facing opposite" (gegenüber) and never enters the "pure space" of the outside - the animal instead moves in the open, in a "nowhere without the no. "