Nonetheless, Heidegger undertakes a positive reappropriation of the phenomenological reduction. In the context of a critical discussion of the epoché, Heidegger challenges the idea that the phenomenological bracketing of existence positing forecloses the very problematic of being. On the contrary, according to him, the “bracketing of the entity takes nothing away from the entity itself, nor does it purport to assume that the entity is not. This reversal of perspective [Umschaltung des Blickes] has rather the sense of making the being of the entity present.” Thus, “This phenomenological suspension [Auschaltung] of the transcendent thesis has but the sole function of making the entity present in regard to its being. The term ‘suspension’ is thus always misunderstood when it is thought that in suspending the thesis of existence and by doing so, phenomenological reflection simply has nothing more to do with the entity. Quite the contrary: in an extreme and unique way, what really is at issue now is the determination of the being of the very entity” (GA 20, 136/99). On this account, the reduction applied in the epoché no longer forecloses the ontological problematic, but on the contrary opens it up as such. The reduction is no longer situated between world and ego, transcendence and immanence, but first of all occurs within the ontological difference. Thus reappropriated, the phenomenological reduction is therefore nothing other than the manifestation of the ontological difference itself. It then becomes possible to include the reduction into the concept of the method of ontology. If, for Husserl, the reduction was a kind of leading-back (Rück-führung) of the gaze from the natural attitude to transcendental consciousness as constitutive of the world, for Heidegger the reduction is a return from beings to being. “We call this basic component of phenomenological method—the leading-back or reduction of investigative vision from a naively apprehended being to Being—phenomenological reduction” (GA 24, 29/21). The phenomenological reduction is “the leading of our vision from beings back to being [die Rückführung des Blickes von Seienden zum Sein]” (GA 24, 29/21). The reduction is a way into being: it allows a shift from entities to their being, that is, to their happening as such. Most important, a phenomenology of the event is made possible by Heidegger’s reinterpretation of the phenomenological reduction as a reduction of beings (what is present) to their being (the event of their presence).
(b) Now, the motif of reduction as revelatory of the ontological difference and of the possibility of seizing being as event is not the sole element in the “method of ontology.” The reduction is in fact a merely negative process. It constitutes a sort of “leading-away” (Abwendung) from beings, proceeding from a “negative methodological measure” (GA 24, 29/21). Beginning with beings (for ontology has an ontical basis: being is always the being of a being, it “belongs to the being”; GA 24, 22/17), the phenomenological gaze turns away from them, abstracts from them. Now, to be sure, this abstraction has its own necessity: in order to grasp a being in its being, one must begin by turning away from it. “Apprehension of being . . . always turns, at first and necessarily, to some being; but then, in a precise way, it is led away from that being and led back to its being” (GA 24, 28–29/21). This is why the reduction in the sense of a leading-away of the gaze must be “completed” by another, positive, element of the method, which Heidegger calls the phenomenological construction. In the phenomenological construction, a positive approach to the event of being as such becomes possible. The phenomenological method must positively 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