Heideggerian Openings

"Heidegger...always emphasized the finitude of every mittence of Being and seem[ed] ready to concede the finitude of even his own efforts at thought...Witness the author's abiding effort continually to re-trieve his own un-said, the dissatisfaction with his own formulae, the relentless effort at a 'spiral'-interrogation. Given this finitude of Heidegger's own efforts, we are moved to pose two questions. In the first place, is it not possible to re-trieve this un-said differently than Heidegger himself has done? '...For everything that foundational thinking has genuinely thought retains--and, indeed, by reason of the very essence [of the process]--a plurality of meanings....' More concretely, let us ask: does Heidegger II have any more right to re-trieve the un-said of Heidegger I than, let us say, Jean Paul Sartre?

Again, if every thinker is in dialogue with his predecessors, but still more, perhaps, with posterity, is it not possible that another thinker [a dervish, par example--ed.] may re-trieve even Heidegger II and bring his un-said into language? If this is the case, is it not premature to speak of an 'eschatology' of Being and a 'new dawn' of World-history that would have arrived with Heidegger, as if the mittence that has been bestowed on him were, at last, definitive?"

--William J. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger, 4th edition, 637-638.