ABSTRACT
By Martin Heidegger's own admission, the Contributions is his attempt to do the impossible and leap over his own shadow. Just what he had in mind can be discovered by carefully reviewing his account of Immanuel Kant's shadow. Applied to Heidegger's own itinerary, what Heidegger attempts in the Contributions is possible only due to the success of Being and Time in arriving at the domain to be thought. This chapter concerns Heidegger's heroic efforts in the late 1930s to twist free of his transcendental heritage while acknowledging the impossibility of doing so. Each of the stages of the Contributions has its own guiding disposition. Heidegger develops the notion of historical reflection with three basic theses: Historical reflection is futural; as a source, it is hidden, because it withdraws behind what flows from it; consequently, what is required is a revolutionary stance that unearths the hidden law of the beginning and sets it free for a new beginning.
