Dom which is the ground of being and time however

dom which is ‘‘the ground of being and time.’’
∞≥∏
However much Heidegger has gone beyond Kant in this transcendental-
ontological concept of freedom, it remains as the ‘‘condition of possibility’’ for
the realm of the experiential, for all that comes to appearance and disclosure
within the world—that is, for all that is being [ Seiendes ]. And it is in this regard
that, following Kant’s canon for the validity and intelligibility of the relation-
ship, Fink makes his critical observations on Heidegger’s program. Fink finds
right here that what passes for radical explication in fundamental ontology
really amounts to interpreting that-which- makes -possible—i.e., the condi-
tion ing factor—in terms of that-which- is made -possible—i.e., the condition ed
factor. (See 3.3.2.) That is, the lineaments of the conditioning factor are drawn
in accord with and following the features of that which is conditioned by it.
Now it may be that this procedure is unavoidable, and perhaps in principle
unavoidable; but not explicitly to draw out the philosophical implications of
the methodological order whereby the relation in the move of disclosive regress
inverts the order of the relation of conditioning itself, is to remain in an un-
critical naïveté. The situation is similar in principle to that for the analysis
of temporality, where, as Fink puts it, ‘‘genetic elucidation leads into self-
temporalizing time’’ rather than a move back into ‘‘the intra-temporal past.’’ In
other words, to inquire into genesis is to inquire into time’s temporalization,
into ‘‘the process of the bringing about of temporality [ die Zeitigung der
Zeit ].’’ But in conceptualizing this ‘‘proto-happening that first makes all hap-
pening possible,’’ we meet the procedure of ‘‘retro-application [ Rücklage ].’’
That is, though ‘‘time’s temporalization’’ cannot be itself a ‘‘happening,’’ i.e., in
134. EFA U-MH-V 51; MH-GA 31, p. 135.
135. EFA U-MH-V 132; cf. Wgm, p. 85. Heidegger’s address was on December 11,
1930.
136. EFA U-MH-V 51; MH-GA 31, p. 135.

170 Who Is Phenomenology?
time, nevertheless it can only be described by ‘‘retro-applying [ Rücklegung ] [to
it] that which is made possible by it.’’
∞≥π
This critical point was indicated earlier (3.3.2 and 3.4), but here it takes on
another note. Rather than simply a move of improper attribution, this ‘‘retro-
application’’ begins to have to play a positive role, as a kind of ‘‘malum neces-
sarium.’’ As Heidegger himself make clear in his discussion of Kant in the
summer lectures of 1930,
∞≥∫
this is tied to the fact that any critical philosophi-
cal reflection has to begin with some pregiven set of phenomena to be studied
and some pregiven schema of conceptualization with which to thematize and
explore them; or, put another way, the order of conditioning and structuring
phenomena is inverse to the order of the move of explanatory regression in
knowing.