Abstract

This essay offers the reader a unique interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of authentic destiny as it develops in the Hölderlin lectures and essays written in the 1930s through the 1950s. Ultimately, for Heidegger, the destiny of Germany, and perhaps beyond, that of humanity, is contingent on the receptivity of a people to the founding and grounding words of the “poet of poets” Hölderlin, who calls Dasein to participate in the awakening to a future that is as of yet indeterminate and historical in the highest degree, wherein, attuned by Hölderlin’s poetry, participants resolutely anticipate the potential “historical” arrival of Being as destiny