Home 9 Passage 9 Originary Reduction

The originary or inceptual reduction consists of orienting to the beginning of the meaning of a phenomenon. The method of the originary reduction consists in readying oneself to the dawning moment where the originary meanings of a phenomenon may be sought and discerned. Heidegger speaks of a flash of insight that may happen as an appropriative event. For Heidegger this appropriative event occurs when the truth of “beying” reveals itself. In the flash of insight we not only gain a phenomenological understanding of some object or thing, we also gain an original sight of ourselves as humans. This goes to the very origin and core of the beginning of the meaning of being, for which Heidegger reserves the archaic spelling of “Seyn” (“beying”). Heidegger formulated his radically innovative notion of inception already in the 1930s, in his Contributions to Philosophy (1999, 2012b) that he wrote after Being and Time. But Contributions as well as related texts such as The Event (2013b) and the Bremen and Freiburg Lectures (2012a) were translated only recently into English.