“The human being”, says Martin Heidegger, is “in its essence itself a katastrophé […] – a turning-about which turns it away from its own essence. Among beings, the human being is a complete, unique catastrophe”. The meaning of this statement, of course, resides in the circumstance that the turning-away from one’s own essense is primordial, and not subsequent in the sense of an ontological Fall of Man. The originary turning-away from one’s “own” essence means that the catastrophic subject is originarily lacking its own and such an essence. It is a subject without essence, subject without subjectivity. Heidegger would doubtless not agree without reservation to this pointed emphasis on an originary lack of essence.