At this point of the analysis, now that it has been established that the principle of reason is to be heard as a principle of being, what remains to be determined is the relation between being and ground. As stated earlier, only beings are grounded while being is said to belong with ground/reason. “Ground/reason receives its essence from its belonging together with being qua being,” and conversely, “being reigns qua being from out of the essence of ground/reason” (GA 10, 76/PR, 51). Being and reason/ground gather as the same (“Ground/reason and being (‘are’) the same”) since being, as being, grounds. Now, if being is ground/reason, then it cannot in turn be grounded. The ground, as ground, cannot be grounded. Being reveals itself as groundless. “Therefore being can never first have a ground/reason which would supposedly ground it. Accordingly, ground/reason is missing from being. Ground/reason remains at a remove from being” (GA 10, 76/PR, 51). Being is the abyss . . . as ground. “Being ‘is’ the abyss in the sense of such a remaining-apart of reason from being [Im Sinne solchen Ab-bleibens des Grundes vom Sein “ist” das Sein der Ab-grund]. To the extent that being as such grounds, it remains groundless.” Why? Because in fact being “does not fall within the orbit of the principle of reason, rather only, beings do” (GA 10, 77/PR, 51). The foundation, in order to be the foundation that it is, must itself be without foundation: this is how the principle of reason, which states that all events must be grounded, self-deconstructs. The event of being finds itself freed from the request for a foundation and opens onto an abyss. Heidegger insists on the latter point: being is groundless. Being has no ground “because every foundation—even and especially self-founded ones—remain inappropriate to being.” Why? Because grounding only applies to beings: as noted earlier, it is beings that can be grounded. This is why “every founding and even every appearance of foundability has inevitably degraded being to some sort of a being” (GA 10, 166/PR, 111). To consider being as grounded would be to treat it as a being. But, as Heidegger reminds us, it is a matter of “no longer explaining being by way of some sort of being” (GA 10, 100/PR, 68). As a consequence, being as such is groundless: “Being qua Being remains ground-less” (GA 10, 166/PR, 111). Ultimately, the ground “stays off and away” from being, and being remains without ground.
Heidegger is fully aware of the apparent contradiction between those two statements: on the one hand, being is the “same” as reason/ground; on the other, being is the “a-byss.” He for instance asks, somewhat rhetorically: does the claim that being is the “a-byss” “simply stand next to all we said earlier: being and ground/reason: the same? Or does one even exclude the other? In fact, it seems so if we think according to the rules of ordinary logic. According to these ‘being and ground/reason: the same’ amounts to saying: being = ground/reason. Then how could the other one hold: being: the a-byss?” (GA 10, 166/PR, 111). First, to state that being is the same as ground/reason, or that being and reason: the same, does not signify that being is simply equated with reason, cause, principle, or rational ground, but rather, as Heidegger here retrieves the original sense of ratio as Logos, that it is “a letting-lie-present that assembles” (GA 10, 165/PR, 110). This allows him to posit at once the two following propositions: “being and ground/reason: the same. Simultaneously this meant: being: the a-byss [Sein: der Ab-grund]” (GA 10, 165/PR, 110–111). Second, and most important, it is insofar as being is the ground that it has no ground: “This is what shows itself as what is to be thought now, namely, being ‘is’ the a-byss insofar as being and ground/reason: the same. Insofar as being ‘is’ what grounds, and only insofar as it is so, it has no ground/reason” (GA 10, 166/PR, 111). More than an abyss, one should here refer to being as a “groundless ground,” as an Ab-grund, groundless because it is ground. Further, Heidegger is able to claim that being is groundless on account of the distinction between being and beings: it is indeed the ontological difference that governs this discussion. In the Address, Heidegger recalls that in its classical understanding, the principle of reason demands that every being be founded in reason: “The fundamental principle of reason says: every being has a reason. The principle is a statement about beings” (GA 10, 183/PR, 125). This reveals that only beings are grounded. Now, Heidegger stresses an ontological understanding of the principle of reason, an understanding that was not pursued by Leibniz or the tradition because of their exclusive focus on beings. To that extent, the principle of reason must be heard as: nothing is without reason, which also reveals that being and reason must be heard together. This is why Heidegger writes: being/reason: the same, or also: “being and reason ring out as belonging together in one” (GA 10, 183/PR, 125). The principle of reason now says: “ground/reason belongs to being” (GA 10, 183/PR, 125) and is no longer the supreme fundamental principle of the cognition of beings. The principle of reason no longer speaks of beings but of being (“The principle of reason now speaks as a word of being,” GA 10, 183/PR, 125). Being does not have a reason but is (the same as) reason: this, indeed, is how one can understand how Heidegger is able to claim both that being/ground: the same and that being is the a-byss: being is the a-byss insofar as it is the ground, and as such, has no ground: “what, after all, does ‘being’ mean? Answer: ‘being’ means ‘ground/reason.’ Nevertheless, as a word of being the principle of reason can no longer mean to say: being has a ground/reason. If we were to understand the word of being in this sense, then we would represent being as a being. Only beings have—and indeed necessarily—a ground/reason. A being is a being only when grounded. However, being, since it is itself ground/reason, remains without a ground/reason” (GA 10, 184/PR, 125). The event of being is groundless and abyssal just as reason is groundless and abyssal.
The Rose Has No Why . . .
Nowhere is that contrast between the logic of foundation of the principle of reason and the groundlessness of being made so apparent than in Heidegger’s repeated invocations of the following saying from the sixteenth-century poet and mystic Angelus Silesius:
The rose is without why: it blooms because it blooms,
It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen
[Die Ros ist ohn warung; sie blühet weil sie blühet,
Sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet]
On the one hand is the statement that no being is without a reason; on the other hand, that the being has no why. There lies its eventfulness: it has no ground, rather it happens. In Marion’s words, the event “suspends the principle of reason” (BG, 160). The principle of reason concentrates in a request and a call for a reason, that is, it concentrates in the question “why?” “In the ‘why?’ we ask for reasons. The strict formulation of the principle of reason—‘Nothing is without rendering its reasons’—can be formulated thus: Nothing is without a why” (GA 10, 53/PR, 35). Heidegger contrasts the two statements. “First, one should recall the short formulation of the Leibnizian principium reddendae rationis. It reads: Nothing is without a why. The words of Angelus Silesius speak bluntly to the contrary: ‘The rose is without why’” (GA 10, 55/PR, 36). The principle of reason collapses with that provocative saying: “According to the words of the poet, the principle of reason does not hold in this field” (GA 10, 55/PR, 36). Nonetheless the following verse by Angelus Silesius states:
The