The Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle

Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT May 2-5, 2013

Conveners: David Pettigrew and Rex Gilliland

With support from the Department of Philosophy, the Office of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Faculty Development Office at Southern Connecticut State University.

Heidegger Circle 2013 Review Committee: Babette Babich Daniel O. Dahlstrom Bret Davis Wayne Froman Trish Glazebrook Charles Guignon Lawrence Hatab Theodore Kisiel Cathy LeBlanc Will McNeill Andrew J. Mitchell Richard Polt Franois Raffoul

Table of Contents
Heidegger and Aristotle: Action, Production, and Ethos
Julie Kuhlken (Independent Scholar) 8

Shattering the Political or the Question of War in Heideggers Letter on Humanism

Babette Babich (Fordham University) 25

Heideggers Dasein and Luthers Christian: Revealing an Ontic Source of Freedom and Servitude
Nik Byle (University of South Florida) 50

A Path to the Fourfold: Heidegger and the Non-metaphysical Doctrine of the Four Causes
Brendan Mahoney (Binghamton University) 66

Heideggers Fourfold: On the Relationality of Things

Andrew J. Mitchell (Emory University) 91

Heideggers Differential Concept of Truth in Beitrge

James Bahoh (Duquesne University) 108

Beyond Heideggers Differential Ontology: Deleuzian Com-plication

Janae Sholtz (Alvernia University) 128

Uncanny Belonging: The Enigma of Solitude in Heideggers Work

Will McNeill (DePaul University) 144

My Language Which Is Not My Own: Heidegger and Derridas Challenge to Linguistic Determinism
Carolyn Culbertson (University of Maine Farmington) 166

Waiting to Die?- On Derridas Reading of Heidegger in Aporias

Hakhamanesh Zangeneh (California State University, Stanislaus) 191

Towards a Critique of Walten: Heidegger, Derrida and Henological Difference

Adam Knowles (New School for Social Research) 211

Gewissensruf: A Summons to Martyrdom?

G. Bart Kasowski (Collge Jean-de-Brbeuf) 227

The End of Entwurf and the Beginning of Gelassenheit

Joydeep Bagchee (Freie-Universitt, Berlin) 247

On the Beginnings of Thought: The Historicity of Thought in Martin Heidegger

Arun Iyer (Seattle University) 275

Heideggers Early Saying of Being as Physis (as Aletheia)

Richard Capobianco (Stonehill College) 296

The Transcendence of Immanence: Art as Phenomenology in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Nancy

Rebecca Longtin Hansen (Emory University) 313

The Ruination of the Artwork: Materiality, Repetition, Difference

Alexandra Morrison (Michigan Technological University) 331

Kant and Heidegger on Appearances and the In-itself

Michael Blzy (University of Toronto) 350 following 370

The Two Moments of Existence: From Care to Temporality

Thomas Sheehan (Stanford University)

Appendix
Conference Program

The Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle 2013

Heidegger and Aristotle: Action, Production, and Ethos Julie Kuhlken (Independent Scholar)
In this paper, I want to focus on two of the distinctions that inform Heidegger's discussion of ethics within "The Letter on Humanism."1 By investigating the distinctions between action [Handeln] and effecting [Wirken], on the one hand, and ethics and ethos, on the other, and considering their roots within his lectures on Aristotle in the 1920s, I will argue that Heidegger's practical concerns are less connected with ethics as it is generally practiced and understood today, than with the ancient notion of the good life.2 In grappling with the metaphysical grounding of Aristotle's conception of the good life and its essential relation to production, Heidegger examines both the historicality of ethos and action in ways that invite comparisons with Aristotle as well as Heidegger's contemporary Hannah Arendt. Action, Effecting, and Production At first glance, the distinction between action and effecting with which Heidegger introduces "The Letter on Humanism" is a straightforward echo of
1

As both Jean-Luc Nancy and Francois Dastur underscore, Heidegger describes ontology in this open letter as an "original ethics" [ursprngliche Ethik] (GA 9: 356/235). Jean-Luc Nancy, "Heidegger's 'Originary Ethics'" in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2002) 65-85. Francois Dastur, "The Call of Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity" in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, 87-97.
2

In the fifth chapter of his book Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), Walter Brogan considers a similar thesis, as does Franco Volpi in his article "Being and Time: A Translation of the Nicomachean Ethics?" in Reading Heidegger from the Start, ed. T. Kisiel and J. Van Buren (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004) 195-213 (see especially pp 204-5). Both of them focus primarily on Being and Time, however. As Brogan puts it, Heidegger discusses Dasein's possibility of being-a-whole in terms remarkably parallel to Aristotle's own understanding of the life that is characteristic of the happy person" (140).
8

Aristotle's own distinction between action (praxis) and production (poiesis). As all will recall, Aristotle differentiates action from production in order to distinguish practical wisdom as a distinctive form of thought. In Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics where the discussion occurs, Aristotle elucidates practical wisdom by first distinguishing it from scientific thinking: Whereas "matters of action admit of being other than they are" (1140b 3), science addresses matters that do not admit of change. This makes practical wisdom clearly distinct from science, but actually underscores its similarity to production, which also concerns matters that "admit of being other than they are." Therefore, to distinguish action from production, he further specifies that the latter "has an end other than itself, but action does not" (1140b 6). If we now turn to Heidegger, we do not find the notion of ends that is so central to Aristotle, a point which we will discuss in detail in the final section of the paper. According to Heidegger, to act is to bring to language how "the essence of man is essential for the truth of Being" (GA 9: 345/224). In other words, action is not indicative of the aims and ends of individuals "capable of managing households and states," as Aristotle believes, but the thinking of those who are the "shepherd of Being" (GA 9: 342/221). Or in even more Heideggerian terms, if Aristotelian action is that exercise of thinking (i.e. practical wisdom) that concerns how man relates to himself as being-in-the-world,3 Heideggerian action is that thinking which engages with Being as one who is claimed by Being. The difference between the two thinkers is sharpened if we examine the other half of the distinction: effecting in the case of Heidegger, and poiesis in the case of Aristotle. As described by Aristotle, poiesis is characterized by having "an

Heidegger himself offers this interpretation of Aristotle in his lectures on Plato's Sophist: "An outcome is not constitutive for the being of action, rather nothing other than the...How. The aim of phronesis is the anthropos itself" (GA 19:51).
9

end other than itself," which means that it is an activity that is directed away from man. For Heidegger, however, the difficulty with effecting is not that it is directed away from man, but that it is "directed towards beings" rather than Being (GA 9: 313/194).4 Effecting is concerned only with the utility of activities, with their consequences as they impact beings. It is, in this sense, even more restricted in its sphere of concern than poiesis, which involves the mode of thinking characterized as techne. As Heidegger develops within his 1939 essay on the Physics, techne harbors a knowledge of the capacity (dynamis) or "appropriateness for..." of the matter with which it concerns itself (GA 9: 281 (W: 351)/214). Unlike effecting, which orients itself only toward outcomes, blind to the origins of the products it manufactures, techne is the "arche of producer as well as the produced" (GA 19: 41):5 "the essence of techne is not movement in the sense of the activity of manipulating things, rather it is know-how in dealing with things. And telos does not mean 'goal' or 'purpose,' but 'end' in the sense of the finite perfectedness that determines the essence of something" (GA 9: 251 (W: 321)/192) Whereas techne retains its origin in man, effecting is divorced from all origin. Furthermore, it is effecting's lack of origin that establishes its essential distinction from action as Heidegger conceives of it. As we will see, Heidegger's insistence that what distinguishes action is its reaching back to beginnings both differentiates him from Aristotle, as well as to allow him a notion of natality comparable to that of Arendt.
4

As Heidegger will say later when discussing the question of humanity, "in the determination of the humanity of man as ek-sistence what is essential is not man but Being" (GA 9: 333/213).
5

In the 1939 essay, Heidegger combines this duality with the term "artifact," saying techne is the "arche of artifacts."
10

Heidegger's understanding of action as a going forth out of a beginning is captured in "The Letter on Humanism" by the term "accomplishment" [Vollbringen]. As Heidegger explains, "[t]o accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence, to lead it forth into this fullness." As the essence of action, accomplishment describes action in its temporal movement as a going-forth out of an unfolding beginning. As we will see this temporality is essential to action as Heidegger understands it, but so is his association of it with production. As he says, accomplishment is "to unfold something into the fullness of its essence, to lead it forth into this fullness--producere (GA 9: 312/193). As he explains in his 1931 Metaphysics lectures, "production" does not mean any mere manipulation or making--"To pro-duce means to make presently available (not just to make)," and "does not have to pass through human production" (GA 33: 179/154). As he had already noted in his 1924 lectures on Aristotle, production is essential to being-there itself. Because for the Greeks being meant "being-there in the present,"... ...what the there [of being-there] means for the Greeks [is] having-comeinto-the-there, and specifically through pro-duction; pro: there, pro is toward a determinate there; pro-ducing, bringing into the there into the present (GA 18: 214/144). What becomes evident as Heidegger's later thinking develops into the thinking of the history of Being, is that even though it is through Aristotle's thought that one recognizes the essentiality of production to Western ontology, it is also something fundamentally unthought by Aristotle himself. Thus, Heidegger's inclusion of production within the sphere of action in "The Letter" marks a longincubated break from Aristotle. The rift is also evoked in his oft repeated assertion in "The Letter on Humanism" that "thinking is neither theoretical nor practical. It comes to pass before this distinction" (GA 9: 358/236). That is,
11

whereas for Aristotle the distinction between action and production is subsequent to the distinction between theory and practice, Heidegger is engaged in that thinking which precedes all of these distinctions, a realm where both action and production are modes of bringing-forth.6 Ethics and Ethos The name he gives to the realm of such thinking is ethos, which brings me to the second distinction within "The Letter on Humanism" that I want to examine. This one also involves an explicit rejection, but this time of "ethics." As he succinctly puts it in "The Letter," "'ethics'...begin to flourish only when original thinking comes to an end" (GA 9: 316/195).7 Based on his other remarks, it would seem that he detects three sorts of dangers associated with the notion of "ethics." First is that which he expresses in the quotation above. He believes that ethics has become a scientific mode of thought, a "discipline," and thus divorced from action as Aristotle originally conceived of it, though rooted in the "technical interpretation of thinking" that has developed from the ancient Greek's philosophy (GA 9: 354 and 314/232 and 194). Second, he is worried that his own thought will be "conceived according to the established terminology in its customary meaning" (GA 9: 357/235). In "The Letter," where the continued relevance of Being and Time is a central preoccupation, Heidegger warns that the terms "'authenticity'" and "'inauthenticity,'" which "are used in a
6

In his reading of "The Letter," Mark Tanzer draws a similar conclusion, saying that "all human activity is ultimately a form of action" ("Heidegger on Humanism and Action" in Southwest Philosophy Review 16:2, 96).
7

It must be noted that in this case, Heidegger is not just rejecting a distinctive set of concerns called "ethics," but also "logic" and "physics," the former of which he himself had recourse to many times in his earlier career as a lecturer. Here is the full quotation, which follows a rejection of -isms (such as "humanism"): "Even such names as 'logic,' 'ethics,' and 'physics' begin to flourish only when original thinking comes to an end."
12

provisional fashion" in the 1926 work, "do not imply a moral-existentiell or 'anthropological' distinction" (GA 9: 332-3/212). This follows his 1941 repudiation of moral misinterpretations of the term "resoluteness" in the lectures on Parmenides. There he is quite explicit about the source of the misunderstanding, and locates it within our modern, subjectivist morality: "Arete as understood by the Greeks, 'resoluteness,' man's disclosedness as determined by aletheia and !"#$% ["awe"], is something essentially different from the modern notion of "resoluteness," grounded on man as subject" (GA 54: 111/75). To the extent that "ethics" is currently tied to subjectivist ways of thought, he wants to distance his thinking from it. This points to the third, and essentially historical, basis for Heidegger's rejection of ethics. As is already at work in the lectures on Parmenides, Heidegger is increasingly drawn to the pre-Socratics (and to poets)8 as a way of accomplishing the "step back [Schritt-zurck] that lets thinking enter into a questioning that experiences" (GA 9: 343/222). Reaching back before Plato's understanding of truth and Aristotle's ethics, is in his mind a way of accessing an ethos that was covered up in the same historical destiny that saw the waning of thinking. "Thinkers prior to this period knew neither a 'logic' nor an 'ethics' nor 'physics.' Yet their thinking was neither illogical nor immoral....The tragedies of Sophocles...preserve the ethos more primordially than Aristotle's lectures on 'ethics'" (GA 9: 354/232-3). The essentially historical character of the distinction between ethos and ethics is captured here. Not only is the history of Being such that the decline of thinking

William McNeill's book, The Time of Life: Heidegger and Ethos (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992) does an especially thorough analysis of the role played by the engagement with poets and Aristotle's Poetics in Heidegger's development of his understanding of ethos.
13

was the eclipse of ethos by ethics, ethos is historical in a way that ethics is not-ethos preserves. The distinction between ethics and ethos is necessary to Heidegger, because it identifies an original realm, or "abode," where thinking is freed from all of the philosophical divisions--between theory and practice and application-that were subsequently introduced by Plato and especially by Aristotle. Moreover, this is not an abode in the static spatial sense, this is a starting place for thinking the destiny of Being. As William McNeill puts it, ethos is "conceived in terms of the time of life and the temporality of human existence. Ethos for Heidegger means our dwelling, understood temporally as a way of Being."9 It is a fundamentally historical abode, whose beginning is already a stretching forth: "Ethos means abode, dwelling place. The word names the open region in which man dwells. The open region of his abode allows what pertains to man's essence, and what in thus arriving resides in nearness to him, to appear. The abode of man contains and preserves the advent of what belongs to man in his essence" (GA 9: 354/233). In other words, thinking acts so as to "[accomplish] the relation of Being to the essence of man" to the extent that it guards its original abode(GA 9: 313/193).10 If it does not, thinking fails to act, and Being does not come to language. Man is left homeless, "kept reliably on call only by gathering and ordering all his plans and activities [Planens und Handelns] in a way that corresponds to technology" (GA 9: 353/232). In the relation between thinking and ethos we see the

William McNeill, Time of Life, xi.

10

Those familiar with "The Letter on Humanism" will recognize here the very first paragraph of "The Letter" where Heidegger says: "[I]n thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home" (GA 9: 313/193).
14

convergence of the two distinctions we have been examining: action and effecting; ethos and ethics. On the one side, we have ethos, an abode where thinking dwells and acts, because the distinctions between theory, practice, and application do not bind it. And on the other, we have the existence of "technological man," who is a subject regulated by "ethics," the validity of which lies in the effectiveness of its laws to keep man "reliably on call." Or to put it differently, on the one side we have ethos where thinking acts as a mode of pro-duction, and on the other we have "ethics" according to which man should be judged on the basis of the effects of his activities. Whereas the first embraces production as a mode of ethos, the latter deems production as a mere application of technology, an effecting, and thus as exempt from ethical consideration. The dramatically different understandings of production that inform these two different ways of approaching man's essence both have their roots, as we will see, in Aristotle. Since I am going to examine them at length in what follows, for now I just want to examine Heidegger's response in "The Letter," because the ambiguity within Greek thinking translates into a distinctly modern ethical dilemma: In the modern technological era, when relations between men are governed by utility, should we, as Heidegger asks, "safeguard and secure the existing bonds even if they hold human beings together ever so tenuously and merely for the present," or should we wholly pursue "the task of thinking" by which "Being comes to language" and man to his abode (ethos) (GA 9: 353 and 313/232 and 193, respectively). For Aristotle, this dilemma does not exist. For him, those men whose relations are governed by utility are not candidates for ethics. Only those who could be deemed as having the qualities to lead men could act and live a good life. At the same time, they could devote their lives to action, only because as masters, they had servants (and women) who undertook
15

the productive activities that ensured their existence. There is, in other words, a biological dimension to Aristotle's understanding of ethics that Heidegger rejects. As MacIntyre puts it, "Aristotle's ethics...presupposes his metaphysical biology,"11 a biology which all will recall, differentiates productive activities from practical actions in part by assigning them to different human natures--to the slaves, productive activities, to the masters, practical actions. For Heidegger, such "biologism" covers up the question of production in its relation to action rather than address it. For Heidegger, the "bonds" between men should not be the metaphysically determined ones of servant and master. He wants to preserve man's connectedness, but not as bonds that demand that men be as effective as possible for one another, but as ethos, as belonging and dwelling in Being. In such dwelling the relevant distinction is not between the divergent ends of activities, as it is for Aristotle, but of action as it produces an ethical relation to Being (in the sense of ethos) and effecting as it produces technologically the forgetting of Being. Along with the forgetting of Being comes the loss of ethos, and the transformation of "ethical questions" to technical issues for experts. This modern form of "ethics" as a specialized discipline is divorced from the notion of the good life that animates Aristotle, even as the field appeals to him as its primary source. In what follows I want to examine Heidegger's 1924 lectures on Aristotle, because it is there that one finds the basis for the tension within Aristotle that Heidegger fully diagnoses within modern ethical thinking at the time of "The Letter." I will then return to the modern ethos being sketched by Heidegger, and compare his conception of action with that of his contemporary Hannah Arendt. In this comparison, I will argue that Heidegger's conception has the superior virtue of responding to challenges of modern technology.
11

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) 148.

16

Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Human Good Heidegger's analysis of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics starts off with his observation, following Aristotle, that the explicit appearance of the good as such is made possible by techne. As he puts it, "As knowing-one's-way-around [i.e. as techne], concern about something has a good within itself, explicitly there" (GA 18: 67/47).12 This observation is significant, not only because it grounds Heidegger's life-long engagement with questions of technology and production, but also because it puts these concerns within an ethical framework. Techne reveals the simultaneous tying together of what we want to achieve with how we are to do it13--the same link that must be maintained if virtue is to be cultivated according to Aristotle--and for Heidegger, this means that analyzing techne is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for bringing the good into view. It is for this reason, that when Heidegger turns to the notion of the human good he says that it is a specific type of techne, a political techne: "[W]e will find the human good in a characteristic knowing-the-way-around of living itself. Aristotle designates this techne as politics" (GA 18: 70/49). The political techne reveals the human good as a way of knowing how to live, and it is for this reason that we must question technology in order to discover the good life. However, this questioning is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the good life, because even if techne provides a model for how we are to live, it cannot delimit the sphere of life itself--what life is. For this reason, we must also consider the
12

Earlier in the same paragraph, Heidegger defines techne as "knowing-one's-way-around something, in a definite mode of concern."
13

The double character of techne is well-developed in the lectures on Plato's Sophist. See section 7, GA 19.
17

"limit-character" (GA 18: 89/61) of the good life, what Aristotle investigates under the notion of telos. Heidegger warns against simply understanding telos as "aim" or "purpose," saying that this fails to capture its character of being "what is outermost," which in human terms is identified with death (GA 18: 82/57). The possibility of death "makes life complete," making it a mode of being-for-one's possibilities.14 As Heidegger puts it, the human telos is the "being-completed of being-there, [and in a more Kantian formulation15] the very possibility of being-there itself" (GA 18: 95/65). To the extent that it has the "possibility of disappearing" at its disposal, human being-there is present to its possibilities (GA18: 89/61). This temporal disposition towards one's existence which the "possibility of disappearing" involves--what Heidegger identifies as the "how" of one's concerns--constitutes the sphere of ethical possibilities. Following Aristotle, Heidegger examines the having of the "most genuine being-possibility at its disposal" under the rubric of arete (GA 18: 84/58). As addressing first and foremost one's disposition, virtue is not exhausted by the acts that one undertakes, productive or practical-- for as Heidegger says, "one can be competent, and still sleep one's life away" (GA 18: 78/55) Virtue also requires that a life's mode of being-possibility is such that it constantly has at its disposal the very possibility for these acts. In other words, arete requires a disposition toward one's being-possibility, such that when one undertakes one's concerns, it matters not just what one does, and not just how one does it, but also how one is disposed toward the having of these concerns. As I want to point out, even though Heidegger is following Aristotle in this analysis, there is, for lack of
14

"A being determined by entelechy means fundamentally the type of being that maintains itself in its genuine being-possibility so that the possibility is consummated" (GA 18: 90/62).
15

The Kantian formulation of telos is intentional, because in the passage following this one, Heidegger explicitly links the fulfillment of being-there to the "ontological condition of the possibility of the categorical imperative" (GA 18: 95/65).
18

a better word, a hermeneutical aspect16 to Heidegger's understanding of virtue that is lacking in Aristotle, and it is most evident in their contrasting discussions of the virtue of courage. For both Aristotle and Heidegger, courage as a virtue has a distinctive relation to the pathos of fear. As Aristotle puts it, "he is courageous who endures and fears the right things, for the right motive, in the right manner, and at the right time" (1115b: 17-19). As the ultimate example of courage, Aristotle cites courage in the face of death. Nevertheless, not all courage in the face of death is equally courageous. For Aristotle, there is a priority on those lifethreatening circumstances "in which a man can show his prowess or where he can die a noble death" (1115b:4), the latter understood on the prototype of death in battle. In cases where one is threatened by illness or drowning at sea, the courageous man faces an ignoble death, and thus the best he can do in such circumstances is to be revolted by it (1115b:3). By contrast, Heidegger's understanding of courage is open to a hermeneutics of situation.17 For him, the sphere of courage is not delimited by the socially determined honorability of the circumstances in which one finds oneself (1115a:31). Courage is, in his view, solely conditioned by one's disposition. As such, rather than tie courage to the
16

Both Francois Dastur and Peg Birmingham have examined this hermeneutic element of Heidegger's ethical thinking. In her essay "The Call of Conscious: The Most Intimate Alterity" Francois Dastur calls it a "hermeneutics of finitude." As she describes it, "what within us properly testifies to the necessity of interpretation, of the projection of a horizon of understanding, is the fact that we have to welcome the at once frightening and marvelous alterity of a being at the origin of which we are not and which is also among other things-ourselves" (89).
17

In her work on Heidegger and action, Peg Birmingham analyzes the hermeneutics of resoluteness, saying that it "takes the form of a reply that is at odds with what has been handed down...repetition understood as 'critical response'" (200). She describes its historical situatedness as decontextualizing: "The force of the critical reply is derived precisely from its decontextualization, from its break with a prior context and its capacity to assume new contexts" (200). "Heidegger and Arendt: The Birth of Political Action and Speech" in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2002) 191-202.
19

rightness of things, motives, manner and time, Heidegger sees it simply as "a question of being afraid in the right manner, and thereby coming to resoluteness" (GA 18: 261/175 (my emphasis)). Any circumstance, in other words, is a candidate for courage, as long as that it is possible in that moment to becomeresolved anew. Rather than being oriented specifically toward the encounter with noble circumstances, virtue is oriented toward "the interpretation of beingthere in its everydayness," toward "finding-oneself" in one's being-possibility (GA18:262/176).18 It is a modern ethos that is able to take into account, for instance, the courage of those afflicted by illness--think of the "survivor" epithet attributed to cancer patients--as well as those who engage in their occupations in a solicitous manner--think of the heroism attributed to those working in emergency rooms. By comparison, both of these forms of courage are unknown to Aristotle. As the early Heidegger intimates, in a world constantly deformed by modern technology, one cannot rely on socially defined norms to identify noble ends and the right manner of pursuing them. Moreover, ethical thinking cannot persevere if it ignores modern technology, and only passes judgment on its effects. A modern understanding of ethos rather must found itself precisely on a questioning of the temporality of modern technology. As modern technology routinizes previously deliberative activities, right repetition acts anew on the basis of a renewed appropriation of one's concern. As modern technology
18

In his reading of Heidegger's 1924 lectures, McNeill identifies resoluteness with what Aristotle understands as proairesis, though also emphasizing that Heidegger does not simply adopt the Aristotelian sense of it. By making the identification of resoluteness with proairesis, McNeill wants to underscore the degree to which Entschlossensein is "not so much the sense of a willful decision...in the modern sense of a subjective act, as that of opening oneself to something that will in itself be decisive (The Time of Life, 86). This is what allows it to be adaptable to the situation: "Our resolve or proairesis, while oriented toward a kairos (toward the enactment of a particular end), is also fundamentally open in the sense of being adaptable in response to the situation of the moment, of the present in its very unfolding" (91).
20

proceeds to make whole ways of life obsolete, the human good is "holdingoneself-open" (GA 18: 190/128) to a new interpretation of "genuine living," of "genuinely putting to work his having of what he is at his disposal" (GA 18: 100/69). The Impact of Modern Technology on Action The comparison between Arendt and Heidegger's understanding of action is fruitful, because they both recognize the irrelevance of Aristotle's ends-means conception of action in the light of modern technology. For Aristotle, moral ends distinguish themselves from non-moral ones to the extent that they are ends in themselves. However, the supposition that the ends of technical activity are external to their means relies on a strict distinction between the so-called "nature" upon which technology acts and the "culture" which it creates. Once technology is in the position to act into nature itself, this distinction breaks down. Modern technology fundamentally alters what counts for "natural"--as Arendt puts it, man's "ever-increasing skill in unchaining elemental processes...has finally ended in a veritable art of 'making' nature, that is, of creating 'natural' processes which without men would never exist" (HC, 235). In the face of a humanly shaped "nature," moral and technological solutions to problems can be compared in a way that Aristotle would have never thought possible--for example, a more just distribution of limited food resources has to compete, very often unsuccessfully, against the non-moral one of increasing food yields by the application of better technology. Both target the same noble end of reducing starvation as an end in itself. However, who is to say that the moral means is superior, particularly if it lets more people die? Faced with this situation, Arendt and Heidegger look to action not in order to discover the possibility of achieving the most noble ends--for her part, Arendt repeatedly emphasizes the
21

human "frailty" revealed by action19--but rather to disclose how man is most authentically human. For both of them, the most authentically human is disclosed temporally, and it is in embracing this temporality--what Arendt calls "natality," and Heidegger "historicality"--that we develop our potential for ethos. 20 "With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance" (HC, 17677). "The manner and mode of habituation, in the case of action, is not practice but repetition. Repetition....[means] acting anew in every moment on the basis of a corresponding resolution." And the "frequently of repetition," as he continues, "is the being-there of human beings, as determined by historicality" (GA 18: 189 and 191/128 and 129). If "natality" and "historicality" name human existence in its full potentiality, neither thinker believes that they characterize its day to day reality. Just the same, it is this gap between being-possibility and everydayness that opens up the space for action. As Heidegger puts it, "human living cannot be there constantly. The possibilities that a human existence has at its disposal are not constantly there within the stretching of being-there; it loses itself" (GA 18: 190/128) Where it loses itself, as far as Heidegger is concerned, is in the everydayness of das Man. However, unlike Arendt, he does not see the condition of das Man as an
19

See, in particular HC, 190-1.

20

As Peg Birmingham develops very well in her essay on Heidegger and Arendt, Heidegger's understanding of "historicality" could be said to have any even more important notion of "natality" than Arendt's in that it does not try to separate political life from biological life in the way that Arendt does. As she puts it, "Heidegger's analysis of of being-toward-death in Being and Time [for which the lectures on Aristotle are a preparation] is at the same time an analysis of natality and the possibility of new beginnings" (191).
22

alienation or misevaluation of our existence.21 Rather, action and speech have their initial mode of being in the "concrete being-with-one-another" of the One (das Man). It is as the One that we "see the world initially and for the most part, in which the world matters to human beings" (GA 18: 64/45). It is as One, as being one with other ones, that we are as language, and without this initial speaking-being we would not have our being as being-with.22 As such, Heidegger does not share with Arendt the view that the polis arises as a late fruit of action and speech (HC, 198-9), but rather "being-in-the-polis" is what we initially and for the most part are, and the task is to cultivate the resoluteness that disposes one to its already existent possibilities. Moreover, it is precisely through existence in the mode of the One that resoluteness becomes possible. As he describes it, the way in which we have our being as One makes the assertion "'I am,'...genuinely false." Instead, "[o]ne must say: 'I am one'" (GA 18: 64/45). Here Heidegger echoes the understanding of factical selfhood that he develops in his lectures on The Phenomenology of Religious Life. In those earlier lectures, the Selbstwelt of the Pauline Christian is said to relate to its self as a non-self: That which is like an I is and has the not-I (GA 60: 91-2/64). In other words, just like the early Christian, das Man both has and does not have his being. What is more fully developed through the lens of Aristotle, however, is precisely how such "uncanny" existence comports itself. Rather than rely upon the religious content of Saint Paul's letters to account for the exceptional existence of being "like an I," Heidegger takes an ethical turn.
21

For Arendt, every day existence is centered on the private concerns of life and utility, which she sees as crowding out the possibility of the public space of action (HC, 208). In her view, the latter redeems the "meaningless" of existence as animal laborans and homo faber (HC, 236).
22

As he explicitly puts it, "the determination of being-with-one-another is equiprimordial with the determination of speaking-being" (GA 18: 64/45).
23

He understands human being in its concerns as characterized by a beingpossibility. However, in that one can as easily (or really more easily) overlook possibilities as one can resolutely have them at one's disposal, one only is genuinely in the mode of one's being-possibility to the extent that one's disposition is resolute. As Heidegger puts it, "in-thus-finding-oneself-again-andagain," I gain the virtue of resoluteness, and thereby "first come into the genuine state, namely, the possibility that was in me now becomes genuinely real" (GA 18: 196/132). Significantly the example that Heidegger uses to illustrate this Heideggerian version of Aristotelian habituation is that "it is not the case that a builder becomes another through building...Rather he becomes precisely that which he is" (GA 18: 196/132). The example underscores that the human good is related to the possibility of genuine disclosure of being-there in everyday activities. As we have seen, Heidegger thinks out of an ethos that precedes the division between action and production, and thus sketches what might be called an ethics of the good life for the modern age, one stripped of Aristotle's metaphysical biology which had consigned production to those denied the possibility for action. In this light, the key distinctions in "The Letter"--between action and effecting, on the one hand, and ethos and ethics, on the other--are the culmination of over two decades of engagement with Aristotelian ethical thought. As we have traced in this essay, the ethical turn in Heidegger's thinking develops in close connection with his analysis of production and technology. In order to fully appreciate the temporal aspect of his understanding of action and how it differs from that of Hannah Arendt one must take this analysis into account.

24

Shattering the Political or the Question of War in Heideggers Letter on Humanism Babette Babich (Fordham University)

Jean Beaufrets question concerning humanism was politically framed on several levels as initially presented to Heidegger.1 Accordingly, Heideggers own response was itself political: invoking both technology and the self-same question of science that we remainand to this daystill too pious (in Nietzsches words) to be able to frame as a question: the very same question Heidegger develops in his later lectures delivered to the businessmen of Germany, including his Question Concerning Technology.2 The preoccupation with thinking technology and thinking science remains with Heidegger to the end of his life. 3 Even more significant perhaps (particularly in proximity with Heideggers focus on language as the house of
1

Heidegger however insists Aber der Hauptsatz des Existentialismus hat mit jenem Satz in Sein und Zeit nicht das geringste gemeinsam and he demonstrates this in point of fact. See Heidegger, ber den Humanismus. Brief an J.Beaufret, Paris (Bern: Francke, 1954). Citations for Heideggers The Letter on Humanism follow Heidegger, Basic Writings (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) and the same translation appears in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Note Heideggers impatience with this question even in his initial response to its first formulation.
2

The question concerning science is not resolved here as it is not resolved by the Freiburg and Bremen lectures, nor in the decade and a half to follow. Later Heidegger will go on to note sciences exclusive concern with Seienden together with the conviction that die Wissenschaft allein gebe die objective Wahrheit, whereby and to be sure Heideggers contrast with science as die neue Religion is ironic: Ihr gegenber scheint ein Versuch, das Sein zu denken, willkrlich und mystisch. Zollikon Seminars: ProtokolsConversationLetters (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 18.
3

See for discussions the contributions, including my own, in Patricia Glazebrook, ed., Heidegger on Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012) as well as Babich, Denker, and Zaborowski, eds., Heidegger und Nietzsche (Amsterdam: Rodopi Verlag, 2012).
25

Being as on the human as the shepherd of Beingrather than as lord of beingsand on thinking through the notions of Nhe and Nachbarschaft), is Heideggers focus on malevolence, das Bsartige, thought in terms of the entanglements of what heals or saves or redeems [das Heilen] and of what is holy [Heilig]. Relevantly, Nietzsche himself cannot but set das Bse together with the goodthat is to say, good and evil, Gut und Bseeven in his program to go beyond both as he writes in his Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. For Heidegger, good logician that he is, following Parmenides, following the scholastics: Every no is simply the affirmation of the not. [Alles Nein ist nur die Bejahung des Nicht.] Every affirmation consists in acknowledgment. (237/355) In this sense, what is to be thought beyond the wretched dealings of human beingsder bloen Schlechtigkeit des menschlichen Handelnsis the uncanny malignancy of viciousness, what Heidegger calls the Grimm, a word which, like grauenvoll and unheimlich, words to be taken in a precisely ontic and literal sense, reflecting the world as it remained or better said as it was left for Heidegger and his countrymen in the wake of the destruction of World War II, not only in (but especially in) Germany, not only for (but especially for) Germans. Heidegger does not say more than this. The effort to think through this claim has taken the energies of many scholars before me and Heidegger himself finds it worth outlining as necessary where evil comes to presence in the holy, as in healing: With healing, evil appears all the more in the clearing of Being. (237/355) But beyond the elusive and troubling reflection on good and evil, beyond the issue of the human and the inhuman, i.e., the hard edges of nihilism, what runs throughout the Letter on Humanism is Heideggers own authors concern with what can be called the failure of his thinking. This failure is evident in what he
26

describes as the inevitable misinterpretations of his work, an attempt to clarify which Heidegger had been making since Being and Time, where he had already attempted to guard in advance against misinterpretations, writing that the reader might take some time thinking about what was assertedthink for example of the concept of inauthenticity but think also of Sein and Da-Seinprior to concluding that only the everyday meaning of the term would be what was (or could have been) intended. And Heidegger has a number of such efforts throughout his work: in the Introduction to Metaphysics, he addresses Carnaps presumptions on logic contra Heideggers own talk of nothing. In a related fashion in his letter to Beaufret, Heidegger invokes the terminus Nichtet where, as we have just noted it above, Heidegger makes the perfectly logical observation negothat Alles Nein ist nur die Bejahung des Nicht (ibid.). A related terminological precision energizes his attempt in his Die Frage nach der Technik to emphasize that his project isnt about condemning technology. Heidegger summarizes this same effort in his later lecture Time and Being.4 Here he reflects that precisely where one would not presume to have instant and immediate comprehension of a painting by Paul Klee, for instance, illustrating the by invoking two of the painters last paintings, noting their medium in each case: Heilige aus einem Fenster (Aquarell) and Tod und Feuer (Tempura auf Rupfen), and by this means reminding his listeners that Klees paintings are the subject of a very specific and specifically demanding scienceart history: die Kunstwissenschaftor indeed Georg Trakls Siebengesang des Todes, about which engagement with the exigencies of yet another science, comparative literaturedie LiteraturwissenschaftHeidegger himself could testify from his
4

Zeit und Sein is the title of a lecture and following seminar given in 1962, first published in German (and French) in 1968 in the context of a celebration of Jean Beaufret. LEndurance de la Pense. Pour saluer Jean Beaufret (Paris: Plon, 1968),. 13-71. Cf. Zur Sache des Denkens (Tbingen, Max Niemyer,1969).
27

encounters with Emil Staiger and others, or indeed physics itself, the archscience of all natural sciences, and quantum physics in particular, naming his friend Werner Heisenberg. Heideggers point with these three examples is that just where one begins from a point of reticence or reserve with respect to these fields of expertise, one has no such restraint when it comes to philosophy. There one expects instant insight and direct applications for life with no further ado.5 As we know, Heidegger responds to Beaufrets question by articulating the challenge of understanding Da-Sein as ek-sisting. In other words As ek-sisting, the human sustains Da-sein in that he or she takes the Da, the lighting of being, into care. But Da-sein itself occurs essentially as thrown. It unfolds essentially in the throw of Being as the fateful sending. (207/324) This sentence seems to summarize Heideggers Being and Time (at least the scope of the book as we have it). Yet given the political claim at stake, with respect to existentialism and the import of Being and Time, Heidegger immediately contends that we go wronghe speaks of Verirrungif we attempt to explain the sentence about humanitys ek-sistent essence as if it were the secularized transference to human being of a thought that Christian theology expresses about God (Deus est suum esse [God is His Being]) (ibid.) not just because, as
5

Heidegger, Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper, 1972), p. 1. The joke in Heideggers day might have been that we are all so many Popperians, as it were: regarding philosophy as merely a matter of problem solving (isolating argument claims and so on) and expecting ready solutions, where the constant between Heideggers day and today is that analytic philosophy insists that it exemplifies such clarity. This is of course untrue as one can see by reading any issue of Mind or Synthese, taking any article, pretty much at random. Philosophy too, be it analytic or continental, is a highly technical affair, complete with insuperably esoteric referents.
28

Heidegger insists in Being and Time: The essence of Dasein lies in its existence. (205/322)6 The point is quintessentially decisive: Here everything is reversed. The section in question was held back because thinking failed in the adequate saying of this turning [Kehre] and did not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics. (208/325) With this, Heidegger raises the question concerning the putative absence of ethics in his philosophy: Soon after Being and Time appeared a young friend asked me, When are you going to write an ethics? (231/349) Here Heidegger argues that already in Sophocles one can find the clearest articulation of an ethics, a point Heidegger emphasized in his Introduction to Metaphysics. But Heidegger foregrounds neither Antigones ethical venture nor the Rilke-esque venturesomeness that is the nature of the human condition as such. More sympathetically (and that also means more embarrassingly), Heidegger offers Beaufret a fairly self-referential parable7 as he relates a story about intellectual sightseers in search of Heraclitus/Heidegger, a tale of visitors who found the man they sought and immediately turned to leave without finding what they supposed they came to find. The motif of seek and ye shall find was of lifelong importance for Heidegger,8 but Heideggers wit is telling as he implies that the seekers ambition was to find
6

Heidegger emphasizes Mit Bedacht schreibt daher der angefhrte Satz in Sein und Zeit (S. 52) das Wort Wesen in Anfhrungszeichen.
7

It is hard to avoid reading this anecdote autobiographically, as it might have applied to Heidegger himself, especially the Heidegger who had so thoroughly anatomized the empty absorptions of curiosity and idle talk Neugier und Gerede.
8

It was no accident that he asked Bernhard Welte to cite this passage to read at his funeral.
29

the thinker in a classic thinking pose (cue Rodin) only to be disappointed. Heideggers source for this reading is Aristotle, according to which Heraclitus visitors found him warming himself at an oven. In this all-too-human pose, backed to the fire, his appalled visitors withdrew. But backside to the fire only meant that Heraclitus was facing them, from which vantage he noticed their approach (seeing the wolf coming, as Socrates also put it with respect to his assailant Thrasymachus) and their turn to depart. Heraclitus calmed their embarrassment by addressing it directly: &"'!( )!* +!( &',!#-! -&./% Gtter wesen auch hier an. (234/352)9 There are gods even here. For Heidegger dwelling is possible as an alongside and as a kind of care which Heidegger renders in Anaximanders ethical terms. Ruch, which, as he says, we no longer know the meaning of but for which he gives the middle high German Ruoch and we note that it is translated into English as reck. Anglophone scholars have been charmed to hear Gerard Manley Hopkins usage in his poem Gods Grandeur: THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Bernhard Welte, Seeking and Finding: The Speech at Heidegger0s Burial, Thomas Sheehan, trans. in: Sheehan, ed., Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: Precedent, 1981), 73-75. See in German, Welte, Die Gottesfrage im Denken Martin Heideggers, in: Franz Pggeler, ed., Innerlichkeit und Erziehung: In memoriam Gustav Siewerth. Zum Gesprch zwischen Pdagogik, Philosophie und Theologie (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1964), pp. 177-192.
9

De partibus animalium, 645a19-20. Cf. 233. In his own reflections on the Anaximander fragment, reflections that engage the challenge of translation, Heidegger also takes up a kind of dwelling, as allowance, as jointure, as the between, as what Heidegger can call whiling. Thus he reflects in that locus: What is present is that which lingers awhile. The while occurs essentially as the transitional arrival in departure: the while comes to presence between approach and withdrawal. Between this twofold absence, the presencing of all that lingers occurs. In this between whatever lingers awhile is joined. (41)
30

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?10 For Heidegger this is the reck corresponding to #"12, order.11 Taking this reading to a rendering of ,!. 1*&$' as der Brauch, such ethical usage means for Heidegger: to hand something over to its own essence and to keep it in hand, preserving it as something present.12 Heidegger thus invokes an already extant ethos of a Greek kind which also serves him as saying that he has no part of an ethics of a Roman variety which is to say that he does not have a Judeo-Christian ethics whereby saying this means that we do not (and cannot) recognize Heideggers ethics as such.13 Instead
10

Hopkins poem as a whole reads: THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears mans smudge and shares mans smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. (Written ca. 1883 and published in 1918).

11

Heidegger, Der Spruch des Anaximander, Holzwege, S. 356. Ibid., p. 363.

12

13

Many have tried, particularly as inspired by the repeated impetus of the Heidegger scandals associated with Heidegger and National Socialism, see, for example, some of the contributions to Karsten Harries and Christoph Jamme, eds., Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, and Technology (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1994), as well as Joanna Hodge, Heidegger and Ethics (London: Routledge, 1995), Stuart Elden, Speaking Against Number: Heidegger, Language and the Politics of Calculation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and more recently see too the
31

Heideggers ethical reflections may be traced even more critically in his Introduction to Metaphysics in his discussion of to deinotaton, techne as providing the basic trait of deinon, the violent (160) and in his paratactic reflection on real being where commentators discuss Heideggers reflection on Sophocles lines 370: hypsipolis apolis.14 Here, for me, what is crucial is Heideggers terminological reflections. Thus we read, here citing the German, that the polis is politisch, d.h. an der Geschichts-sttte, insofern z.B. die Dichter nur, aber dann wirklich Dichter, indem die Denker nur, aber dann wirklich Denker, indem die Priester nur, aber dann wirklich Priester, indem die Herrscher nur, aber dann wirklich Herrscher sind.15 This collective sind, that is to say, being what poets are, what thinkers are, what priest are, what rulers are, profiling so many reflections on being, reflects both creative and actual doing: namely being as such, namely and this is his point really and actually being that (in the sense of whatsoever) politico-ethical life role one happens to be talking about in each case. In this sense, what is to be supposed is that poets are really to be poets, thinkers really thinkers, priests really priests, andthis is the patently Platonic point in the cadence Heidegger
contributions to Holger Zaborowski and Alfred Denker, eds., Heidegger und der National Sozialismus. Heidegger Jahrbuch 5 (Freiburg: Alber, 2009).
14

See Jacques Taminiaux, The Platonic Roots of Heideggers Political Thought, European Journal of Political Theory, 6/1 (2007): 11-29 for a discussion of Heidegger and Aristotle and Plato, among more recent readings, as well as for a political discussion, including an overview of the literature, Tracy Strongs chapter, Heidegger and the Space of the Political in his Politics Without Vision: Thinking Without a Bannister in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 263-324.
15

Heidegger, Einfhrung in die Metaphysik (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 117.

32

carefully retraces herewhat is supposed is that rulers really be rulers: Quoting Heideggers own reflections on what poets, thinker, priests, rulers are, this real being is all about action, eminently so, and that is to say as evidenced in what one actually does.16 Again, this is the same point Plato makes in his Republic. With such a reference to deeds or doings, we recall that Heidegger writes in his Letter on Humanism that the tragedies of Sophoclesprovided such a comparison is at all permissiblepreserve the ethos in their sagas more primordially than Aristotles lectures on Ethics. (232-233/350) In this way, too, Heidegger begins to parse Heraclitus 3-.% 4'-*$56 #!"6'. Man dwells insofar as he is man, in the nearness of god. (233/351) Readers in philosophy as in political theory are here both intrigued and uneasy. We have politics and ethics and we have Gewalt-ttige Gewalt. And all of this, especially in this constellation, is politically problematic. Thus all the while we read the Letter on Humanism with all of Heideggers several and literal invocations of the language of his interlocutor, we find the locus of Heideggers discussion of the uncanny in the lecture course on Hlderlins poem, The Ister, recalling Sophocles and contrasting with Heideggers later focus on Heilen and malignancy. We cannot but come to an encounter at the same time with das Unheimliche because the occasion for the letterand every letter, every text, every tweet, has such an occasioning contextthe eventuality of the letter is one preceded by, because it endured through, and thus and above all because it in fact followed in the wake of the world and Germany at war. This is thus an issue that concerns the theme of violence and rage, not only as Homer uses this in The Iliad,
16

Sind, dies sagt jedoch: als Gewalt-ttige Gewalt brauchen und Hochragende werden im geschichtlichen Sein als Schaffende, als Tter. Ibid. Be, but this means: as violent men to use power, to become pre-eminent in the historical being as creators, as men of action. Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 162.
33

the Greek poem sung in praise of war Sing rage!Singe den Zorn and this same uncanny violence is connected to Rausch. This is a Befindlichkeit that endures and feeds on itself in ways that exceed either anxiety or boredom. Heideggers focus on the strange, as we remember this predates his reflections here: ,! #&('4, ,. #&('7'. We translate: das Unheimliche, the uncanny17 It is in this context that a senior and by any measure extra-ordinary thinker one often called the thinker of the centurywriting, on the losers side of a conflict, to a junior scholar who, one can suppose, in the absence of the war might never have gotten a chance even to speak to Heidegger, much less enjoy a friendship and a correspondence with him, a correspondence of an almost every day kind, reflecting on philosophical matters but also the academic gossip concerning another scholar who wrote his own big book, Being and Nothingness borrowing not only from Husserl but also Heidegger himself and who opted to take a small revenge for slights (as we know that Sartre felt insulted) whether real or simply perceived, with his own claim for Existentialism is a Humanism. The video documentary of The Ister made in 2004 by the Australian (at the time of its making) graduate students, David Barison and Daniel Ross, documents the persistence of war. In the video as we have it we can see its resistance as we may say, enduring not by way of the videographers encounter
17

Heidegger, Hlderlins Hymn The Ister 12, 74. And all this situates, instantiates Heideggers claims on his own behalf with regard to the issue of philological correctness, an issue we may call the question of translation. Tell me what you think of translation, and I will tell you who you are. (The Ister, 12, 65) Remarking that this translation is initially alien to us, violent, or, in philological terms, wrong Heidegger continues here to pose the question of decision (regarding rightness and wrongness) as the question of standards and exceptions: who decides, and how does one decide, concerning the correctness of a translation? We get our knowledge of the meaning of words in a foreign language from a dictionary or wordbook. Yet we too readily forget that the information in a dictionary must always be based upon a preceding interpretation of linguistic contexts from which particular words and word usages are taken. The Ister, 12, 74-75.
34

with the voices of famous and not-so-famous names as recorded in video, Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, but the video as document, as archeo-mediation, archive-phenomenology. This is the video footage of landscape and riverscape and this video has a lot of it, some three hours worthnot quite as epic as Abel Gances Un grand amour de Beethoven (1936) or better said, Eisensteins Panzerkreuzer Potemkin (1925), but still. This preserved remainder of the wreck of war is seen in its focus on a devastated town that might well have been forgottenand be sure on this: one can easily imagine such oblivion, as we should all of us here recall that we (and this should embarrass us) scarcely paid attention to the war at its outset or even as it transpired in the time of our own lives. I would know as I was in Dubrovnik in the Spring of 1991, and all we sawI organized a conference there, like this one, but on a different topicin cities and airports and elsewhere along the way, weapons, machine guns of the kind we have learned to ignore in our virtual age of the spectacle, as of the ecstatic unreal, the integrated (non)reality that we suppose the result of terrorism, whereby, as Karl Kraus aptly gives us a formula for this in his quip regarding what he took to be the quack science of psychiatryKraus was the Thomas Szasz of his daythe remedy for terrorism (as we in New York City have learned from enduring more than a decade of the 9/11 war on terror), effectively effects or engenders the same terror it claims to prevent. In New York, in London, in Paris, we pass policemen or National Guardsmen armed with machine guns on subway platforms or downtown who do not blink an eye. Nor do we imagine that we ourselves are living in a fascist regime, not even after the supposed liberties of American freedom have long been abrogated by Bush, and again signed into law by Obama, as the so-called
35

and very Orwellian, War is Peace, Patriot Act. In the same way, American drones continue the same fight for freedom America claims to be fighting in distant swath of the world, from Africa and the middle east and onward towards Asia through Pakistan. We ask only if those drones should be able to kill us in our own home, we assume that we are fair game along with any other target anywhere else in the world. Where indeed is questioning in the wake of technology? Do we question? In the case of the Balkan conflict or conflicts it is even harder to speak: so many names in this conflict were almost instantly forgotten but the video flashes a name on a screenVukovar. Here we are reminded not only of the insistent claim that is the question of the Holocaust, named as it often is named as a word for a one and only tragedy, an exceptional horror. My question hereand I do not have an answerasks what happens in the wake of such singularizing attention? Thus I ask what our focus, what our recognition, leaves out? What of Novi Sad or all the other names we do not know? What remains to be, what can be said of any bombed-out town to use the American poet Archibald MacLeishs words?18 Heidegger seems too sovereign (there is a Schmittian point here that lies on the surface and is incorrect and a deeper one that might help us here, which I cannot pursue).19 What is certain in any case is that Heidegger, especially as one who could have been called as he was, and to say it again, the thinker of the century, does not say enough. Thus he uses only the human, all-too-human word of shame, which betrays not only his shame but our shame: this confesses the
18

I refer to Archibald MacLeishs play, J.B.

19

It is again worth referring to Strong, Politics Without Vision, in this case his chapter Carl Schmitt and the Exceptional Sovereign (218-262).
36

body in its vulnerability its frozen wet fur as the war poet Randall Jarrell wrote in 1945.20 Nietzsche mocked Aristotle along with rest of antiquity by pointing to the philosophic inconvenience presented by the body (it dares to behave as if it actually existed).21 In Nietzsches terms: The lower body is the reason the human being does not simply mistake himself for a god. (BGE 141) Shame was Heideggers enigmatic word, as Jaspers recounts it22 and if this tells us something it does not tell us enough because it is not the word we want. The only thing we want to hear from Heidegger is a plain confession: guilty.23 Heideggers silence, as his Parisian admirer Jacques Lacan quickly noted, is all too-sovereign: it is the silence of the master.

20

From my mothers sleep I fell into the State, / And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. / Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, / I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. / When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner
21

To be sure, the ancients never retracted their own condemnation of Heraclitus, the dark philosopher, burying even his sentiments in the same dung in which he was plastered at the hour of his death. In addition, of course to its origin in Diogenes Laertius, who was the subject of Nietzsches particular expertise, see too , as part of a litany on vainglory, Marcus Aurelius who mentions Heraclitus in his Meditations, Book 4.
22

I take this up in connection too with Hannah Arendt in Babich, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Arendt: On Politics, Science, and Communication, Existence, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2009): 1-19. Cf. Babich, Daniel Mayier-Katin, Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness (NY: Norton, 2010), Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 29, Nr. 4 (Summer 2011): 189-191.
23

There has been an extended scholarly debate on this issue, back and forth and again and I expect that it is not over, as such debates ought to begin again and again. I list some of the literature, again, in the final chapter of Babich, Word in Blood, Like Flowers and see too, for a book length discussion, Charles Bambach, Heidegger, Dilthey, and the Crisis of Historicism (1995) and for a powerful contemporary discussion, see Holger Zaborowski, Eine Frage von Irre und Schuld? Martin Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt a/M: Fischer, 2010).
37

With respect to Heidegger, the constant return of the philosophical question posed by Schneeburger, Farias, Faye,24 but also Elizabeth Hirsch and Herbert Marcuse and still more recently on the far left side of the political spectrum, Bruno Gulli and others, cannot but mean that something in us asks if Heidegger does (or does not) speak to us on this our own very politicized sense of the political?25 Language speaks. Thus where Heidegger invokes simplicity, The one thing thinking would like to attain and for the first time tries to articulate in Being and Time is something simple, his point seeks to take up the address of being, the simple nearness of an unobtrusive prevailing. The nearness occurs essentially as language itself. (212/330) But what matters to note here is that where it comes to language and proximity Heideggers reflection on this same language, nearness, proximity also offers us one of his rare and uncanny insights into sound (and this is always a matter of presence and relation, space and time). He writes: language is not mere speech, insofar as we represent the latter at best as the unity of phoneme (or written character), melody, rhythm, and meaning (or sense). We think of the phoneme and written
24

Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger: Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken (Bern, 1962), Victor Faras, Heidegger and Nazism (Temple University Press, 1989) Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, lintroduction du nazisme dans la philosophie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005).
25

I discuss these authors along with a range of surrounding literature and sought to give some account of this debate and its complexities, including its inherent politics, in my own essays, as I note one such (and there are others) in the note below. See for an insightful discussion that also speaks to (and beyond) the present theme, Tracy B. Strong, Martin Heidegger and the Space of the Political in Strong, Politics Without Vision: Thinking Without a Bannister in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013) 263-324. Things are of course only made more problematic, and we will return to this at the conclusion, although it matters that Heidegger counts silence as a mode of discourse. But see for one discussion, Babich, Heideggers Silence in: Charles Scott and Arleen Dallery, eds., Ethics and Danger: Currents in Continental Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 83-106.
38

character as a verbal body for language, of melody and rhythm as its soul, and whatever has to do with meaning as its spirit. (212213/330) To say that language is the house of being yields anything but a free or assured grant. Here everything depends upon appropriation, upon assignment and that means that here as elsewhere our relation to language is fraught: language eludes us, the word fails.26 Insteadand here we return to the insurrection of the technical, of technique, and given the dominion of technology today language surrenders itself to our mere willing and trafficking as an instrument of domination over beings. Beings themselves appear as actualities in the interaction of cause and effect. We encounter beings as actualities in a calculative businesslike way, but also scientifically and by way of philosophy, with explanations and proofs. (199/316)27 As Heidegger notes in his own lecture course on the Ister (and I think it is incumbent upon us to extend his parallel to the email and texting, i.e., our dependency on our cellphones as on the internet and I here include Facebook and Twitter):

26

See for a discussion and further references, Babich, Words in Blood, Like Flowers, 3-18.

27

And making a point key to the Beitrge Heidegger adds here: Zu diesen gehrt auch die Versicherung, etwas sei unerklrlich. Ibid. For Heidegger in his Brief uber den HumanismusDer Bindung durch die Ethik mu alle Sorge gewidmet sein, wo der in das Massenwesen ausgelieferte Mensch der Technik nur durch eine der Technik entsprechende Sammlung und Ordnung seines Planens und Handelns im ganzen noch zu einer verllichen Bestndigkeit gebracht werden kann. Wer drfte diese Notlage bersehen? 349.
39

we need mention only the airplane and the radio in order to see at once that not only are both machines devices that have arisen in the context of modern natural science, but that they are also determining the course of the most recent history of the modern era. For it is by no means the case that it is simply the same processes previously introduced and dealt with by means of the rural postman and the mail coach that are now being accomplished using other means. Rather, the airplane and the radio are intrinsically, that is, in terms of their machine essence and in terms of the extensive scope of their essence, determining the leeway for playing out possibilities that can be planned and accomplished through human willpower and for its putting things into effect.28 None of these things are for Heidegger the same and he will contend that what is needed is not a technological remedy. Heidegger instead asks us to try something else. This something else, as I argue elsewhere, takes us to the mere mereness of things in an echo, be it direct or indirect, of Adornos nur, only. This is the barest of indigent things as we also echo Levinas as Celan too emphasizes this point as it is to be sure Heideggers own. This is the closest Heidegger comes to a program for action in the age of technology, hier und jetzt und im Geringen.29

28

Heidegger, The Ister, 44.

29

Heidegger, Die Frage nach der Technik, in: Vortrge und Aufstze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1978), 37.
40

Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought When Heidegger speaking to the heart of the charge of nihilism argues that Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought he suggests that one must hear language beyond logic in a mode that hearkens to melody, interval, the spirit of the word. In this sense Heidegger follows Nietzsches recollection of the grammarian Stoic, namely Seneca, who recommends that philosophy is to become philology, 30 and to recall Heideggers Platonico-Aristotelian phrasing of this injunction, as we traced this through his 1935 lecture course, what follows then is that one really has to be a philologist or a grammarian. Only from this juncture can Heidegger pose the following double question, already set in cadence and framing his question as critical, reflecting to begin with that Erst aus dem Wesen des Heiligen is it possible to think das Wesen von Gottheit and adding that Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word God is to signify... Or, as he continues, and we remember that Germans, Allemanic, Badenser, or Suabian, love the word or [Oder]: should we not first be able to hear and understand all these words carefully if we are to be permitted as human beings, that is, as eksistent creatures, to experience a relation of God to human beings? How can the human being at the present stage of world history ask at all seriously and rigorously whether the god nears or withdraws, when he has above all neglected to think into the dimension in which alone that question can be asked? (230/348)

30

Nietzsche, Homer und die klassische Philologie, Werke in drei Bnden (Mnchen: WBG, 1954), Vol. 3, 154-174.
41

Thinking into the dimension in which alone that question can be asked is nothing other than attempting to think the dimension of the holy. This attempt to think the sacred corresponds to the doubleness Heidegger is always at pains to trace as this is also the dimension of the question that is Heideggers question of the truth of being, a question he always felt compelled to raise as the question that is forgotten, withdraws, is closed off as a dimension if the open region of being is not cleared and in its clearing is near to humans. (Ibid.) And it is in this context that he reflects and this is decisive, as this also echoes throughout his later work: Perhaps what is distinctive about this world-epoch consists in the closure of the dimension of the hale [des Heilen]. Perhaps that is the sole malignancy [Unheil]. (Ibid.) The Unheil is tied to what is closed off when Heilen is foreclosed. Heilen as Heidegger speaks of it here is not die Sakrale, not Heiligkeit, but the hale, the healthy, the whole or unshattered. This distinction matters more than all the theology in the world when we are speaking, as Heidegger is clearly speaking, about a particular world-epoch following not only one world war, and of costs suffered by not only one people. The hale, what is whole is what is fractured, sundered, shattered by war and its aftermath, an aftermath that would in Germanys case continue late into the 20th century; some would say it is with us even still. And thus it is that Heilen is what is needed. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger later traces a Hlderlinian figure of tragedy and strife, an insight that for Hlderlin had a powerful romance about it, even if we steer clear of supposing Hlderlin a Romantic thinker when he offered the Heraclitean reflection on harmony and opposition or tension. Reconciliation as Hlderlin muses with respect to lovers

42

and lovers disputes, is in the midst of conflictVershnung ist mitten im Streit und alles Getrennte findet sich wieder. The backstretched connection where what is at variance with itself agrees with itself, where danger prevails and unfolds into the same prevalence is the salvaging, saving power. Everything in these words speaks with the high pathos of metaphysics and ultimate redemption. Heideggers gesture seeks to bring this backstretched tension of reconciliation to the quotidian, the here and the now the same present, here and now, that is also Goethean gold and thus, as the late Pierre Hadot sought to remind us, it only the present that remains as our only possibility for happiness, for well-beingNietzsche would say convalescence just where we find ourselves in this same world-epoch. For Heidegger this is found if it is found at all in words our commentators have brought to our attention from those thinkers of the ethical who also learned as much as they did from Heidegger. We say it once again: in little things. Im Geringen. Adornos mere and only: nur.31 This Levinasian wordthis very little, this almost nothingwe have to hear repeatedly in order that we might hear it for the first time, from Critchley and Bernasconi (yet more understatedly) and from many others, as Heidegger himself traces the Gering through Hlderlin and Rilke, George and Trakl. I have been seeking to place the questions of Heideggers Letter on Humanism such that we might again hear these questions (of humanism and inhumanism, atheism and theism, on the supposed threats of nihilism and irrationalism) as questions concerning the possibility of whatever ethics may come forth as a way not merely of thinking but of being. The trouble with all of this remains as
31

I take this up elsewhere with reference to Adorno in particular. See Babich, Adorno on Science and Nihilism, Animals, and Jews, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale, Vol. 14, No. 1, (2011): 110-145.
43

Heidegger observes, as Nietzsche had observed, nothing other than our humanism as this stands and falls with us, in just the way that Heidegger a few years later would both quote and then unquote or correct Heisenberg, recollecting that so far from what appears to the insurrection of the human, man increasingly and everywhere encounters only himself, such that there is instead a retreat, a fading of the human from what it once meant in the quadrate traced between earth and sky, mortal and divine. To this day, we do not think this thought and to this day our ethics continue to be absorbed with the question of our own dignity, ineluctably anthropocentric as this may be connected, for those who wish to consider Heideggers earth and sky, to the analytic reflections and very real or deep earth reflections as these characterize the thinking and the ethico-ecology of an Arne Naess. Yet simply by affixing a prefix to our ethics, geo- or bio- in place of our traditionally anthropocentric ethics we have yet to address the problems Heidegger outlines. Humanism in this respect, like nationalism and subjectivism, is the problem. In this sense we, ourselves, get in the way of both the problem of being and any ethical way of dwelling on this earth. At stake from the start in Heideggers response to Beaufret has been the complicated question of the human, heard with reference to Kantian dignity, Wrde, which, we know that Kant himself took care to set above, beyond, apart from price. Heideggers reflection reminds us that distinguishing value in this way is inevitably, i.e., still a kind of valuing.32

32

There are many who write on this notion and I recommend in particular Jacques Taminiaux, not less for his own theoretical background in law. See Taminiaux and in English and with specific reference to Heidegger and Nietzsche: Taminiaux, On Heideggers Interpretation of the Will To Power As Art, New Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 3, Nos. 1 and 2 (1999): 1-22, see for a direct discussion: Babich, On Connivance, Nihilism, and Value, New
44

Heideggers insight continues Nietzsches mocking invocation of our dedication to shopkeepers gold33 as this holds even with the higher gold of the spirit the good Christian is still seeking to be well-paid. 34 In Heideggers encapsulation of this quintessentially Nietzschean point, precisely through the characterization of something as a value what is so valued is robbed of its worth. That is to say, by the assessment of something as a value what is valued is admitted only as an object for mans estimation. But what a thing is in its Being is not exhausted by its being an object, particularly when objectivity takes the form of value. Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivisizing. It does not let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be validsolely as the objects of its doing. (228/345) Here in his letter written to a friendly and one-time opponent Heidegger writes about the nihilating of nothing: The nihilating in being is the essence of what I call the nothing. Hence, because it thinks being, thinking thinks the nothing. In healing being first grants ascent into grace; to raging its compulsion to malignancy. (238/357)35

Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 3, Nos. 1 and 2 (1999): 23-52. Robert Sinnerbrink discusses Taminiauxs analysis in an aesthetic context in his Heidegger and Nietzsche on the End of Art in Babich, Denker, and Zaborowski, eds., Heidegger and Nietzsche (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), 417-428.
33

Nietzsches term is Krmer-Gold. Cf. Z III Von alten und neuen Tafeln, 21. Cf. Nietzsches FW, JGB, GM

34

35

This is double-bound path is fraught and there is no other paththis is why Reiner Schrmann always called it a double bind. It was this resistant remainder that remains to be thought. For his part, Schrmann, sought to think them without dismissing them as simply beyond the pale, beyond consideration: to be condemned, the Rylean move, that enshrines the ad hominem argument that to do this day remains the major issue when it comes to
45

Heideggers concluding words ask us to pay attention to what would be needed for reading not words but the letter itself and thus the spirit of German song, as this last was Hlderlins observance. Where literary scholars trace the strictures of the feste Buchstab, 36 I hear this attention to the melos of deutscher Gesang as this sounds at the end of Hlderlins Patmos hymn, a poem that accompanies Heidegger for the rest of his life: Nah ist Und schwer zu fassen der Gott. And we know how that line goes for the poet, as we have learned from Heidegger to think into the dark forms of the beginning of this poem, named as it is for an island consecrated to the apostle of the word, and we know the rest of this line not only from Hlderlin but Heidegger: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wchst Das Rettende auch. I hear the end of the poem: Der feste Buchstab, und Bestehendes gut Gedeutet. Dem folgt deutscher Gesang. However one chooses to read the poets words, whether it be with the literary theorists attention to the feste Buchstab or the philosophers hearkening to song, Heideggers ultimate point remains revolutionary.37 Thus I have sought to
Heideggers not a good man. I take this up, and I recommend the other contributions to the same collection, in my Schrmanns Broken Hegemonies: The Cracks in Heideggers Contributions and Meister Eckharts Alchemy. In: Vishwa Adluri, ed., On Reiner Schrmann (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). 36 I refer here to the contributions to collection edited by Aris Fioretos, The Solid Letter: Readings of Friendrich Holderlin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
37

And when I say that I do not merely here his own allusive claim that die Sprache ist so die

46

set Heidegger on the side of the phantasm of civic political action, the fantasy of revolution that is Occupy Wall Street 38 as what remains for the essential challenge of philosophy for life, for changing the world, just as Marx reflected.

Concluding Marxian Postscript At the end of a text, at the end of a talk, as true for us, true for Heidegger, one begins to read. Thus we recall Heideggers references to Marx throughout his letter, referring to Sartres dialogue with Marx, but also to homelessness, making his reference more pragmatic than academic. One key reference to Marx is articulated in Heideggers typical coopting strategy of reading other thinkers through their own claims, and summarizing the trajectory we have been following down to Hlderlins lovers Vershnung as Heidegger describes this very reciprocal return, one to another, in Husserlian Hegelian or indeed Heideggerian terms: Absolute metaphysics, with its Marxian and Nietzschean inversions, belongs to the history of the truth of being. Whatever stems from it cannot be countered or even cast aside by refutations. It can only be taken up in such a way that its truth is more primordially sheltered in being itself and removed from the domain of mere human opinion. All refutation in the field of essential thinking is foolish. Strife among thinkers is the lovers quarrel concerning the matter itself. It assists them mutually toward a simple belonging to the Same,
Sprache des Seins, wie die Wolken die Wolken des Himmels sind but and much rather that das Denken legt mit seinem Sagen unscheinbare Furchen in die Sprache. 38 See if you like, my essays: Politics and Heidegger: Aristotle, Superman, and !i"ek, Telos, Vol. 161 (Winter 2012): 141-161 and Weaker Hermeneutics: Changing Convictions, Changing the World, in: Syliva Mazzinie, ed., Hermeneutic Communism (Forthcoming).
47

from which they find what is fitting for them in the destiny of being. (215-216/331-332) What is needed for Heidegger is an articulation of a philosophical encounter with Marxism in an age where die Heimatlosigkeit wird ein Weltschicksal (219/336) where we note just once more, and where the images from Gaza may bring this home to us and quite literally: whatever else it is, Heideggers letter on humanism is a letter from a war-devastated world. Everything, and I am not only speaking of bridges and houses, everything is shattered. Here the danger [die Gefahr], to be thought between Amerikanismus and Kommunismus and above all in terms of nationalism, defined metaphysically as an anthropologism and as such as a subjektivism 39 including indeed and even the language of Geschick40 itself is also in sway as Heidegger here returns to the notion of science as signifying the end of philosophy and its utter dissolution in the sciences, the unity of which unfolds similarly anew in cybernetics41 The Gefahr in this sense is driven, tracked, as what Heidegger was fond of calling one-track thinking and science, and it is as dangerous as it is because it cannot be directly countered. We are back to the little, we are back to almost nothing, to little things, and in every case we risk a shattering confrontation with our own suppositions, our
39

Dieser ist die Subjektivitt des Menschen in der Totalitt. Er vollzieht ihre unbedingte Selbstbehauptung.
40

Die Technik ist in ihrem Wesen ein seinsgeschichtliches Geschick der in der Vergessenheit ruhenden Wahrheit des Seins. (337)
41

Der Rckfall des Denkens in die Metaphysik nimmt eine neue Form an: Es ist das Ende der Philosophie im Sinne der vollstandigen Auflosung in die Wissenschaften, deren Einheit sich gleichfalls neu in der Kybernetik entfaltet. Erste Auflage, 1949.
48

own convictions as Nietzsche would say, our own prejudices. Where all that was solid had been obliterated (twice) Heidegger emphasizes that to philosophize about being shattered is separated by a chasm from a thinking that is shattered. (223/340)42

42

To this day we may yet but only to the extent as Heidegger also argues that we risk or allow this shattering in our own thinking hear Heideggers call for a revolution: What is needed in the present world crisis is less philosophy, but more attentiveness in thinking; less literature, but more cultivation of the letter.Ntig ist in der jetzigen Weltnot: weniger Philosophie, aber mehr Achtsamkeit des Denkens; weniger Literatur, aber mehr Pflege des Buchstabens. (360)
49

Heideggers Dasein and Luthers Christian: Revealing an Ontic Source of Freedom and Servitude Nik Byle (University of South Florida)
Though there is a strong body of work dealing with the early Heideggers (Being and Time and prior) relation to Luther. Generally, such work focuses either on Heideggers use of Luthers method of destruction or the Lutheran origins of key concepts such as conscience and Angst.1 There is, however, at least one theme that seems as yet untouched. This theme concerns the way in which authentic Dasein is simultaneously free and bound, and which, in terms of Luthers work, receives its most sustained and systematic treatment in the appropriately titled work, The Freedom of a Christian. While there is no direct evidence that Heidegger ever read The Freedom of a Christian, there are circumstantial reasons to suppose that he did and therefore reasons to raise the question of this works relation to Being and Time. First, it appears that Heidegger studied Luthers work for more than a decade, and there are personal statements concerning Luthers immense personal and philosophical importance.2 Second, we know that Heidegger at least owned a copy of it.3
1

For strong representative works dealing with these relations see, Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); John van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Benjamin Crowe, Heideggers Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Herman Philipse, Heideggers Philosophy of Being: A Critical Introduction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); David Vessey, Heideggers Existential Domestication of Luther, in The Devils Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition, ed. Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 131139.
2

Heideggers earliest engagement with Luther seems to have been in 1908 and may have ebbed around 1923; Otto Pggler, Heideggers Luther-Lektre im Freiburger Theologenkonvikt, in Heidegger und die Anfnge seines Denkens, ed. Alfred Denker, HansHelmuth Gander, and Holger Zaborowski, vol. 1, Heidegger-Jahrbuch (Mnchen: Karl
50

Finally, for a period Heidegger and Julius Ebbinghaus read Luthers reformatory writings, of which The Freedom of a Christian is generally considered among the most important.4 It is doubtful that such a lengthy and intensive engagement with Luther that spanned Luthers entire writing career would have skipped this fundamental text.5 It seems reasonable, then, to ask what, if any, influence The Freedom of a Christian had on Heidegger. In fact, as I will argue the Christian conceptions of freedom and servitude Luther explicates forms important ontic material from which Heidegger draws in order to come to the ontological understanding of authentic Daseins power over its existence and servitude to its communal involvements. Becoming a Christian/Becoming Authentic Before continuing to the similarities between Heideggers conception of authentic Dasein and Luthers Christian, and therefore Heideggers use of Luther, a brief account of the similarities between becoming authentic and becoming a Christian is necessary since much of authenticity and Christianness

Alber, 2004), 192; van Buren, The Young Heidegger, 149; Kisiel, The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, 452.
3

In 1921 Heidegger was awarded the complete Erlangen edition of Luthers works. van Buren, The Young Heidegger, 149; Kisiel, The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, 228.
4

John van Buren, Heideggers Early Freiburg Courses, 1915-1923, Research in Phenomenology 23 (1993): 138. Lohse, for example, includes The Freedom of a Christian among the three central Reformation works. Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work, trans. Robert Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 489. The earliest of Luthers writings that Heidegger cites is Quaestio de viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia disputata (1516), the latest is Luthers Lectures on Genesis (1544) both in Martin Heidegger, Das Problem der Snde bei Luther, in Sachgemsse Exegese: Die Protokolle aus Rudolf Bultmanns Neutestamentlichen Seminaren 1921-1951, ed. Wilfried Hrle and Dieter Lhrmann (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1996), 2833.
51
5

are predicated on this process.6 While Heideggers account of how authenticity is reached is more systematic than Luthers account of becoming a Christian, they do share a cluster of remarkably similar concepts that may be grouped under the larger concept of Anfechtungen (trials, tribulations, or assaults). The picture I intend to paint as a general outline in this section is one in which the existential encounters effective in bringing Dasein to authenticity, i.e. death, anxiety, and conscience, are captured under Luthers understanding of the Law up to the Christians encounter with Christ or the Gospel. On the other side of these encounters are, then, authenticity for Heidegger and being a Christian for Luther, at which point the similarities between Being and Time and The Freedom of a Christian may be elucidated. For Heidegger, one of the first encounters that initiates the movement to authenticity is the encounter with death; though death not in the physical sense, which he terms perishing (Verenden), or the end of being-there that he reserves for demise or decease (Ableben), but death (Tod) as the end of possibilities of Dasein (GA 2: 247, 250-1). Here Dasein projects itself forward and sees the possibility of the impossibility of it being-there. Essentially, Dasein meets a limit, discovers that it is finite, and is thrown back on itself, back on its being-in-theworld. Though Luther does at times speak of death in the more straightforward sense of the end of human life, there are also times when Luther intends a deeper meaning, one which signifies the death of our existence as a sinner and the rebirth in Christ as Christians: It [the sacrament of Christs suffering] signifies

That there are such similarities is not new to Luther-Heidegger scholarship. For other accounts see van Buren, The Young Heidegger, 156, 1715, 184, 189, and 30813; and Vessey, Heideggers Existential Domestication of Luther.
52

the death of sin in us and grants it [faith] to those who believe.7 In fact, for Luther it is possible, even necessary, to experience this sense of death multiple times. For Luther asserts one is never forever rid of the Law and the Anfechtungen it brings: The more Christian a man is, the more evils, sufferings, and deaths he must endure.8 Luther, through his own experience, knew how slippery the footing of faith was and how easily one falls from faith back into the Law and its Anfechtungen.9 Christianness, for Luther, is then the art of continually reentering the Gospel and faith.10 In theory, this seems equally possible for Heidegger insofar as we may forget our ownmost possibility for being thereby requiring multiple encounters with death (Cf. GA 2: 289, 345, 387). More importantly, Luthers death also seems to be a limit. This sense of death may be understood as the limit separating Law and sin from Gospel and faith. The Laws ultimate function is to show person to be limited or dead in sin such that one is wholly incapable of coming to faith by ones own means. Death then moves to the mutually entailing experience of anxiety (Angst). For Heidegger, while death is associated with understanding and projection, anxiety is associated with attunement and thrownness (GA 2: 252). In projecting towards and anticipating death we are thrown anxiously back on how
7

Lectures on Galations, Chapters 1-6, 1519 in LW 27, 238. It is common practice to simply cite the volume of Luthers Work; since I, however, find it useful to know the exact work being drawn from I have included the title of the work in the initial citation. Also, to add textual and historical support to the present argument citations to Luther outside of The Freedom of a Christian have been limited almost exclusively to works Heidegger is known or likely to have read.
8

Luther, Martin, The Freedom of a Christian, in Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy E. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 606. Hereafter cited parenthetically.
9

Lectures on Galatians (1535) in LW 26, 63-4. Lectures on Galatians (1535) in LW 27, 27.
53

10

we are in the world. Anxiety is anxiety before being-in-the-world when the involvements that compose the world collapse in on themselves and completely lack significance (GA 2: 186). Heidegger is, in fact, uncharacteristically forthright about Luthers contribution to his understanding of anxiety (GA 2: 190n1). For Luther, anxiety and death are also interwoven: But if you look at death in any other way [than through Christ], it will kill you with great anxiety and anguish.11 And there also seems, for Luther, to be a sense of the collapsing of significance with anxiety: Just as joy is a certain freedom of the heart, even in tribulation, so distress [also translated as anxiety] represents a certain narrowing and constriction in tribulation.12 For Heidegger, both anxiety and death allow for the possibility of having a conscience, which mutually supports seeing death as an ownmost possibility and makes one ready for anxiety (GA 2: 296, 305, 310). The conscience is then a call from within Dasein itself to recognize itself as Being-guilty: The call of conscience has the character of an appeal of Daseins to its ownmost potentialityfor-Being-its-Self and that by way of a summons to its ownmost Being-guilty (GA 2: 269). Guilt actually strikes the conscience (GA 2: 307). For Luther, death and anxiety are also tied up in the conscience that cocondemns the individual with God for their state of sin. Luthers language is remarkably similar to Heideggers: For it [the Lords Supper] is given to those who need strength and comfort, who have timid hearts and terrified consciences,

11

Martin Luther, Sermon on Preparing to Die, in Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy E. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 643. The same word is variously translated as anxiety, anguish, and distress.
12

Lectures on Romans in LW 25, 179.

54

and who are assailed by sin, or have even fallen into sin.13 Here we see the final step of the Law, its final Anfechtungen, which reveals a unique ontic, Christian truth only available once one has traversed these trials. The ultimate purpose of the above encounters, for Heidegger and Luther, is to show Being-guilty (Schuldigsein) and sin, respectively. For Heidegger, Being-guilty is tied to lostness in the they and once this is revealed, then one is ready for authenticity: The understanding of the call of conscience exposes the lostness in the they. Resoluteness returns Dasein to its ownmost potentiality for-Being-its-Self. In the understanding of being towards death as the ownmost possibility, then ones own potentiality-for-Being becomes authentic and entirely transparent (GA 2: 307). Heidegger is in fact quite explicit that sin is the faithful or Christian ontic understanding of Being-guilty (GA 2: 306n1). For Luther, these concepts and encounters have a similar function; however, rather than authenticity they lead one to the Gospel and Christ. For example, in The Freedom of a Christian he states, Now when a man has learned through the commandments [i.e. the Law] to recognize his helplessness and is distressedthen, being truly humbled and reduced to nothing in his own eyes, he finds in himself nothing whereby he may be justified and saved. Here the second part of Scripture [i.e. the Gospel] comes to our aid (FC, 600). And it is here that Dasein and the Christian gain a unique sense of freedom, part of which will involve freedom from the above Anfechtungen, if only temporarily.

13

Martin Luther, The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ-Against the Fanatics, in Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy E. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 248. Emphasis added.
55

Dasein, the Christian, and Their Freedom Having elucidated the basic process of becoming authentic for Heidegger and becoming a Christian for Luther, we may now turn to the central theme of The Freedom of a Christian. This works entire thematic purpose is to explain what the following two propositions are and how they work together: A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all (FC, 596). The first statement concerns the inner man, while the second concerns the outer (FC, 596, 610). Admittedly, Heidegger does prefer to avoid such distinctions. Yet, it is important to note that for Heidegger, Luther is operating primarily at the ontic level, and therefore, it is at least in a formal sense, appropriate for him to make such distinctions. However, there is a striking similarity between Heideggers distinction between the they (das Man) and authentic self (eigentlichen Selbst) (GA 2: 130, 317). This should not be confused with the distinction between the they-self (Man-selbst), which is inauthentic, and the authentic being-ones-self (eigentliche Selbstsein), which is authentic (ibid). Rather the they and authentic self are existentials that may be modified in ones becoming either the inauthentic they-self or authentic authentic beingones self (ibid). Here we are concerned with how the they and authentic self appear under the auspices of authentic being-ones-self. Ultimately, I am arguing that there are correspondences between the authentic self and Luthers free, inner Christian, and between the they and Luthers bound, outer Christian, though again as they are authentically modified. I will begin with the inwardly free Christian. First, this freedom in its more negative formulation, derived from the clause subject to none, is freedom from works, or the belief and requirements that to receive justification and salvation one needs to perform any acts. This, then, is essentially freedom from
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the Law (FC, 601).14 Freedom from the Law carries with it freedom from sin and the Anfechtungen that brought one to faith: Thus the believing soul by means of the pledge of its faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and hell (FC, 604). Christian freedom, for Luther, does not stop with the above negative sense of freedom. It has a more vital, positive formulation derived from the clause lord of all. Though of course this freedom does not physically free the Christian from the world nor grant some physical power over the world (FC, 606). Christians and non-Christians alike are subject to the vagaries of the world (FC, 606). But it does make everything bend to the power of faith and aid the Christian in salvation. Every Christian is by faith so exalted above all things that, by virtue of a spiritual power, he is lord of all things without exception, so that nothing can do him any harm. As a matter of fact, all things are made subject to him and are compelled to serve him in obtaining salvation (FC, 606). For example, the Lords Supper taken in sin is useless for salvation, perhaps even detrimental. [F]or one who does not believe is not served by anythingand all things turn out badly (FC, 607). But in faith the same acts are turned to the salvific advantage of the Christian. In fact, Luther takes the phrase lord of all quite seriously for even the above encounters that brought one too faith and seemed most threatening to ones salvation work in the Christians favor: [I]n all things I can find profit toward salvation, so that the cross and death itself are compelled to serve me (FC, 607). For Heidegger, this freedom given by Christ to the Christian has its ontological foundation in his understanding that in anticipatory resoluteness (vorlaufende Entschlossenheit), which is an authentic projection onto death that reveals Being-guilty, Dasein is given power over its existence. (GA 2: 306, 310).
14

Also see LW 27, 49-50.

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Existence (Existenz) is the technical term (contrasted with essence) and associated with projection and understanding. Power over existence then means power over possibilities. Here it seems that what was once detrimental to Daseins authenticity, the possibilities it unreflectively took over from the they, work to its advantage in being authentic. Just as the Lords Supper appears the same in sin or in faith, yet it functions quite differently depending on which one is in, the possibilities and roles that Dasein takes up may appear the same yet function very differently. Dasein may take up the roles of mother or professor. In inauthenticity these roles work against Dasein. In inauthenticity these roles are a part of the everyday concerns into which Dasein falls. Dasein unreflectively does what such roles entail. Once authentic, however, these roles become advantageous. Here such roles work to fill out and complete Dasein. They aid in making Dasein a whole. Just as for the Christian the ontic conception of death is turned to aid in salvation, ontological death also becomes advantageous for Dasein. The authentic appropriation of roles or possibilities turns death, as the possibility of being whole or complete, to Daseins advantage. Even anxiety becomes a prepared joy (gerstete Freude) (GA 2: 310). There is even a temporal correlation between Luthers ontic, Christian freedom understood as Gods futural promise of sanctification and Heideggers ontological freedom of Dasein as fate (Schicksal). For Luther, the Christian must turn [their] eyes to God, to whom the path of death leads and directs [them]. Here [they] find the beginning of the narrow gate and of the straight path to life.15 First, this is an extreme focusing of the Christians life. The reason all things turn to the Christians salvific advantage is that they have turned completely to God, and understand and orient all things according to this single
15

LW 42, 99.

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path, a theme of which Heidegger was well-aware (GA 60: 95-7). Second, the Christian, according to Luther, understands this individual path to lie between Gods past promise of salvation, constantly made present in the sacraments and preaching, and to be fulfilled in the future. Heideggers temporal category of fate has a similar formal structure: Only anticipating death drives out every incidental and tentative possibility. Only the freedom for death gives Dasein its aim outright and thrusts existence into its finitude. The striking finitude of existence tears Dasein back from the endless multiplicity of possibilitiesand brings Dasein into the simplicity of its fate (GA 2: 384). Dasein, the Christian and Their Servitude The freedom described above does not, however, mean that the Christian and authentic Dasein are free to do whatever they choose. They, in fact, gain a new or modified responsibility or bondage that arises from this freedom. For Luther, having become a Christian through faith, she now has Christ within her. Christ has conquered and freed the Christian from death, sin, the terrors of the conscience and so forth. Having done so, Christ has at the same time bound the Christians outer self to the neighbors. Hence, as our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aideach one should become as it were a Christ to the other that we may be Christs to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians (FC, 619-20). In becoming Christian one also becomes Christ for others. A function Christ has for the Christian is to bring us to the Gospel and faith. Christians, therefore, should aid others in overcoming the Law and coming to faith. Much of how Heidegger conceives of authentic Dasein being bound to others is contained within this one formulation by Luther. This might remind one of Heideggers distinction between the authentic leaping ahead and the inauthentic leaping in
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for. Solicitude, the existential structure of Daseins Being-with others, may also be authentic or inauthentic. Leaping ahead (vorausspringen), an authentic form of solicitude, seems to constitute an ontological understanding of how one may function as Christ for others. Authentic Dasein can leap ahead for an Other and help make the Other transparent to itself thereby helping to free it as authentic Dasein is free (GA 2: 122). Authentic Dasein can do so by becoming the conscience of Others. In fact, it is from authenticity that authentic togetherness [Miteinander] first arises (GA 2: 298). If one goes outside The Freedom of a Christian to another work Heidegger is likely to have read, the communal link of Christians, as a church, is even stronger: Hence it is that Christ and all saints are one spiritual body, just as the inhabitants of a city are one community and body, each citizen being a member of the other and of the entire city. All saints, therefore, are members of Christ and of the church, which is a spiritual and eternal city of God.16 Here having faith and Christ does not merely link one individually existing Christian to another, rather having Christ and faith, and being in the community of Christ are mutually necessary and entailing. You cannot have one without the other, and the existence of one Christian is bound up with the existence of all other Christians in virtue of belonging to one body, or one church. An ontological understanding of this might also be found in Being and Time. First, Dasein is not simply the authentic self which calls itself to authenticity. Dasein still has the existential structure of the they that must also be modified in authenticity. Dasein is still bound insofar as the possibilities that it freely takes up, the power it has to exist or project, is still dependent on the they. This point is particularly strong in Heideggers communal correlate to
16

The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and the Brotherhoods (1519) in LW 35, 51.
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fate, i.e. destiny (Geschick). But, as being-in-the-world, if fateful Dasein exists essentially in Being-with Others, its happening [or historizing (Geschehen)] is a co-happening (Mitgeschehen) and is determined as destiny (GA 2: 384). Dasein never exists as an independent fate. Or for Luther, the Christian never exists alone on its individual path to salvation. First, Daseins fate is still dependent on the heritage (Erbe) that has come down to it. Second, in authentically choosing and taking up the possibilities in its heritage as fate, it necessarily does so with others. Only as fateful destiny [schicksalhafte Geschick]in and with its Generation is there a full authentic happening of Dasein (GA 2: 384-5). In fact, the earliest signs of Heidegger understanding community in this way are religious. In his lectures on Pauls letters to the Thessalonians, Heidegger makes statements such as the following: He [Paul] necessarily co-experiences [miterfhren] himself in them [the Thessalonians] (GA 60: 93). And Their having-become [Gewordensein] is also a having-become of Pauls (ibid). So it seems that just as a Christian cannot exist alone for Luther, authentic Dasein cannot either. Conclusion In Being and Time, Heidegger explicitly states that his method is to work from the ontic to the ontological (GA 2: 311-3). If one wishes to pursue, understand, and evaluate Heideggers thought, then knowing his ontic sources and how he used them is indispensible. The preceding has sought to demonstrate that many of Luthers ontic understandings of what it means for a Christian to be both free and bound fit within Heideggers ontological structures. Coupled with Heideggers extensive knowledge of and self-professed indebtedness to Luther, it should be evident that, along with the method of destruction and the existential encounters of death, anxiety and conscience, Heidegger draws on
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Luthers ontic understanding of a Christian to inform authentic Daseins freed existence and servitude to communal involvements. What, then, is gained from knowing this source? First, I think the preceding has mitigated the perception of Heideggers Being and Time as fundamentally and extremely individualistic. There are undoubtedly extreme and important individualistic elements in Being and Time. Most notably, death, anxiety, and conscience are all fundamentally defined as individualizing moments (GA 2: 187-9, 263-4, 307). However, on the other side of these moments, in authenticity, Dasein is necessarily once again communal. For Luther and much of the Lutheran tradition, it is impossible to be Christian outside the community. A Christian is always Christian in Christ with others all drawing on and repeating anew a shared heritage This seems equally ontologically true for Heidegger. Whether ontically understood as the church, the polis, or, controversially, the Volk, authenticity involves co-existing, in the technical sense, with a community and appropriating the heritage contained within that community. Finally, with Luther playing such a vital role in Heideggers early projects, it seems worth investigating the continuities and discontinuities between Heideggers understanding and appropriation of Luther with that of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. In section 3 of Being and Time, Heidegger mentions the renaissance of Luther in contemporary theology and it positive potential for properly grounding theology. Heidegger knew this community and in some respects engaged with it. If we then apply Heidegger to himself, then it is reasonable to assume that he is also bound to the Luther renaissance that surrounds him. Understanding Heidegger might just then also require understanding the various Luthers surrounding him.

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References van Buren, John. Heideggers Early Freiburg Courses, 1915-1923. Research in Phenomenology 23 (1993): 132152. . The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Crowe, Benjamin. Heideggers Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Heidegger, Martin. Das Problem der Snde bei Luther. In Sachgemsse Exegese: Die Protokolle aus Rudolf Bultmanns Neutestamentlichen Seminaren 1921-1951, edited by Wilfried Hrle and Dieter Lhrmann, 2833. Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1996. . Phnomenologie des Religisen Lebens. Vol. 60. Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995. . Sein und Zeit. 17th ed. Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993. Kisiel, Theodore. The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Lohse, Bernhard. Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Translated by Robert Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.

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Luther, Martin. Lectures on Galatians, 1519, Chapters 1-6. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, translated by Richard Jungkuntz, 27:153410. Luthers Works. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964. . Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4. Translated and edited by Jaroslav Pelikan. Vol. 26. Luthers Works. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963. . Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia. Edited by Hilton C. Oswald. Vol. 25. Luthers Works. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972. . Sermon on Preparing to Die. In Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy E. Lull, 63854. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. . The Blessed Sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and the Brotherhoods, 1519. edited by E. Theodore Bachmann, translated by Jeremiah Schindel, 35:4574. Luthers Works. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960. . The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ-Against the Fanatics. In Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy E. Lull. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. . The Freedom of a Christian. In Martin Luthers Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy E. Lull, 585629. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Philipse, Herman. Heideggers Philosophy of Being: A Critical Introduction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
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Pggler, Otto. Heideggers Luther-Lektre Im Freiburger Theologenkonvikt. In Heidegger und die Anfnge seines Denkens, edited by Alfred Denker, HansHelmuth Gander, and Holger Zaborowski, 1:185196. Heidegger-Jahrbuch. Mnchen: Karl Alber, 2004. Vessey, David. Heideggers Existential Domestication of Luther. In The Devils Whore: Reason and Philosophy in the Lutheran Tradition, edited by Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth, 131139. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.

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A Path to the Fourfold: Heidegger and the Non-metaphysical Doctrine of the Four Causes Brendan Mahoney (Binghamton University)
Within Heideggers later writings, the fourfold (das Geviert) is perhaps one of the strangest and most perplexing concepts he puts forth. The strangeness stems, in large part, from the language Heidegger uses to describe the fourfold. His language is both highly poeticif almost mythicand, as Mark Wrathall states, infuriatingly literal (204).1 Consequently, Andrew Mitchell claims, the fourfold is often dismissed as an obscure, mystic or overly poetic exuberance of Heideggers thinking, which has resulted in a relative paucity of in-depth scholarship on the topic.2 Wrathall explains, Philosophers are not used to such talk, so it is tempting either simply to ignore these passages or to impose a metaphorical reading (205). Yet, this would be mistake for any attempt to understand Heideggers later path of thinking. As Julian Young asserts, without understanding the fourfold one can understand almost nothing of later Heidegger (373). Youngs assertion is not hyperbolic; Mitchell notes, The fourfold is not a passing phase in Heideggers thinking: references to
1

James Edwards describes Heideggers language as typically overblown and cryptic, which seems to be too strong of a dismissal of the more poetic aspects of his language (Thinging, 457). The tone of Edwardss critique is somewhat surprising given the philosophical importance he attributes to the fourfold and the highly insightful interpretation he presents of the concept in both The Thinging of the Thing: The Ethic of Conditionality in Heideggers Later Work and The Plain Sense of Things, pp. 165-184.
2

Julian Young states, Among the many mysteries surrounding the fourfold is the almost total absence of any attempt by Heidegger scholars to explain what it is (373). Although indepth scholarship on the fourfold is in the minority of Heidegger scholarship, there has been some excellent and insightful work produced on the topic: e.g., Andrew Mitchells The Fourfold, James Edwardss The Plain Sense of Things (pp. 165-184), Mark Wrathalls Between the Earth and the Sky, and Otto Pggelers Martin Heideggers Path of Thinking (pp. 200-216)
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it are found in the lectures and essays of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Fourfold, 209). And the lectures and essays that contain references to the fourfold stand among some of the most significant to Heideggers later thought: e.g., The Thing, Language, Building Dwelling Thinking, The Question of Being, and Hlderlins Earth and Sky.3 As such, the fourfold is central to Heideggers later thoughts on world, space, dwelling, poetry, the thing, and modern technology. Given both the significance and the difficulty of the concept of the fourfold, how are we to approach understanding it? Initially, we are faced with two ways of reading Heideggers descriptions of the fourfold: literally or metaphorically. I am inclined to agree with Mitchell (Fourfold, 209), Wrathall (205), and Benjamin Crowe (123-125), who argue that we should not interpret the fourfold as a metaphor. Crowe points to Heideggers own criticism of contemporary views of myth, according to which it consists of poetic tropes that conceal a literal meaning (124).4 If the metaphorical reading proves problematic, then we should read the fourfold literally. As Mitchell declares, We do best when we take Heidegger at his word (Fourfold, 209). However, the literal reading also poses two problems: 1) the risk that weinstead of explaining or interpreting the fourfoldmerely repeat lamely [Heideggers] semipoetic musings (Wrathall 205)5, and 2) the possibility that in our attempt at

Although not explicitly named, the fourfold of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities also features prominently in Poetically Man Dwells and Language in the Poem.
4

The reference is to Heideggers 1942 lecture course, Hlderlins Hymn The Ister (GA53 139/111).
5

For example: Ben Vedders analysis of the fourfoldin his otherwise careful and informative book, Heideggers Philosophy of Religionverges on mere repetition of Heideggers language (220-225).
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literalness, we over simplify the concept6, thus rendering it too prosaic or mundane. Even if the fourfold does describe something fundamental about the world, it is undeniably strangeespecially to those inhabiting the modern technological world. Thus, in order to avoid oversimplification or mantra-like repetitions of Heideggers words, we should be mindful, as Mitchell recommends, to let it [the fourfold] be as strange, unconventional and thoughtprovoking as it can be in its evocation of thing and world (Fourfold, 209). An encounter with the strange certainly can challenge us to question our habits of thought and preconceptions, and we find such a challenge in Heideggers later texts. As Gadamer comments: The language of the later Heidegger is a constant breaking up of habitual phrases, a charging of words with a new, elemental pressure that leads to explosive discharges (Way, 135). However, we ought to be cautious not to let Heideggers words strike us as too strange, too unconventional. He does not break up our habitual phrases or paths of thought merely for the sake of destroying them; he attempts to clear newor perhaps forgottenpaths of thought. As such, Gadamers comparison of Heideggers language to poetry is apt (ibid). Yet, unlike a poem, which attempts to transform the world by creating a new world,7 Heideggers language is the language of thought. A language that overtakes itself continuously, a dialectic answering to something pre-thought and preconceived (ibid). He

JulianYoungs work on the fourfoldalthough offering some clarity and insight, as well as being praised by both Crowe (123) and Wrathall (205)has a tendency to oversimplification. For example, both Crow (123-127) and Mitchell (Fourfold, 216 n.16) critique his treatment of the divinities.
7

This concept of poetry stems from Ricurs analysis of metaphor. See his Metaphor and the Problem of Hermeneutics, especially pp. 176-181. Although my comments certainly risk overgeneralization, I think they (and Ricurs essay) are approaching something essential about poetry or the poetic.
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attempts, through his language, to show what is already there (what is prethought, preconceived), but not yet heard or articulated. In that sense, his language strives to recollect what has yet entered language, what is silent. Therefore, if we let Heideggers concept of the fourfold strike us as too strange, too unconventional, then our fixation on its obscurity might veil what its intends to show: what Edwards describes as the conditions that make the thing the thing it isno matter how mundane the thing (Thinging, 465). As such, the concept of the fourfolddespite its apparent strangenessshould bring forth what it is most familiar. In order to clear the path between the strangeness of the fourfold and the everyday world of things, I suggest that we interpret Heideggers descriptions of the fourfold through the familiar conditions that make the thing the thing it isi.e., those proposed in the tradition of metaphysics. On this point, I disagree with Mitchell, who claims, Commentators go astray when they try to understand the fourfold as a reinscription of earlier views: those of Heidegger himself or those of the ancient Greeks, the Taoists, Native Americans, or even Hlderlin (Fourfold, 209). Mitchell is correct to warn us against understanding the fourfold as a reinscription of earlier views. Were it a reinscription, the fourfold would merely be Heideggers attempt to rewrite or rearticulate an earlier concept or theoryyet without also rethinking it. This does not seem to be the case with Heidegger. However, I take Mitchell to be equating reinscribing with reinterpreting, and this is where I diverge from his line of thought. Although not a reinscription, I would argue that the fourfold is Heideggers reinterpretation of a previous view. As such, it rethinks an earlier insight, thus listening anew to things in order to say what remained concealed or un-thought in the tradition.

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This understanding of the fourfoldas a reinterpretation of an earlier insight in the metaphysical traditionaccords with Heideggers own project of destructuring metaphysics. In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger writes, the beginning must be begun again, more radically, with all the strangeness, darkness, insecurity that attend a true beginning (39). Theodore Kiesel provides the following explanation of the method that Heidegger articulates, somewhat gnomically, in that comment: For Heidegger strives to overcome the more immediate tradition of metaphysics by rejuvenating the hidden resources which it retains from a much older and more profound tradition. Overcoming the tradition is therefore not a matter of shaking off the tradition but of appropriating it more originally (xx). Kiesel further elaborates on the aim of this method: Its purpose is not a modern revival of classical antiquity in order to imitate its ways, or an antiquarian interest in reliving the past, but to rethink something which is still very much present and operative in our contemporary world (xxiii). Since Heideggers purpose is not a revival (or reinscription) of classical antiquity, but a rethinking of an insight into something still presentif forgottenin our modern technological world, then part of this new beginning, this reinterpretation, is finding a new language that will bring forth what was unsaid or masked in the inceptual language of western metaphysics.8 Therefore, I would argue that the fourfold is such a reinterpretation and re-saying of an earlier insight. Specifically, I propose 1) that the fourfold is Heideggers nonmetaphysical reinterpretation of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes, and 2) that such an interpretative framework will enable us to better understand this
8

In his Letter on Humanism, Heidegger attributesin parthis failure to complete Division III of Being and Time to his attempt to continue using the language of metaphysics: The division in question was held back because thinking failed in the adequate saying of this turning [Kehre] and did not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics (250).
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crypticyet highly significantconcept. John Macquarrie, in Heidegger and Christianity, notes the more apparent similarities between the fourfold and Aristotles doctrine of the four causes: Although I said that the language of Heidegger about the fourfold seems to be poetic rather than strictly philosophical, his use of the scheme can hardly fail to remind us of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes (66). Despite mentioning this possible resemblance, Macquarrie devotes barely a page to developing it, thus leaving his thought as more of a sketch. Furthermore, he doubts the viability or the extent of the similarity, particularly concerning the pairings between the sky and the formal cause and the gods and the final cause (66-67).9 In this paper, I will flesh out Macquarries suggestion and provide a more solid, developed argument in support of the claim that the fourfold is Heideggers reinterpretation of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes. First, I will outline the grounds for this comparison. Then, I will explicate Heideggers understanding of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes.10 Finally, I will provide a sketch of the fourfold as the non-metaphysical reinterpretation of the doctrine of the four causes.

Ultimately, Macquarrieat least in this workdoes not delve too deeply into the concept of the fourfold. He seems to find Heideggers earlier distinction between earth and world to be more applicable: perhaps the fourfold was spelled out too precisely, and certainly there is difficulty in applying it to particular cases. The simpler or seemingly simpler conception of earth and world is also more flexible (76).
10

As a caveat: this paper will not be concerned with the accuracy of Heideggers understanding of Aristotle; instead, it will be concerned solely with exploring how that understanding might help to illuminate the fourfold.
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I. Grounds for Comparison Macquarries brief examination of the relationship between the fourfold and Aristotles doctrine of the four causes touches on the more superficial aspects of the comparison: there are four components in both concepts; there is a relatively clear connection between the earth and material cause; there is a less clear, but still probable, connection between the mortals and efficient cause; there is a possible, yet tenuous, connection between the gods and final cause; and there is an ambiguousif insubstantialconnection between the sky and formal cause (66-67). Therefore, if we are to develop the viability and fruitfulness of this comparison, then we will need to find more substantial ground for it. First, there is the matter of influence. Walter Brogan notes, Many Heidegger commentators consider Aristotles work to be one of the most influential forces in the development of Heideggers own philosophical approach (2). Indeed, William Richardson claims, Aristotle has influenced him more profoundly than any other thinker (309). This influence is particularly apparent in the early phase of Heideggers thinking;11 however, Aristotle remains a significant figure during Heideggers middle phase, when he was developing his insight concerning the turn. A number of Heideggers most substantial works from this period examine Aristotles ideas in great depth: e.g., Aristotles Metaphysics Theta 1-3, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Introduction to Metaphysics, Mindfulness, and On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotles Physics B, I.12

11

For a useful and succinct overview of Heideggers early lectures on Aristotle, see Brogan, pp. 2-3.
12

In addition, the pivotal essay, The Essence of Ground, utilizes Aristotles doctrine of the

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During his middle phase, Heidegger becomes increasingly critical of the metaphysical tradition, and Aristotle features prominently in this critique as a pivotal figure. As Brogan explains, he preserves, even in the face of his teacher Plato, an echo of originary Greek thinking [i.e., the Presocratics] (3).13 In Aristotle, Heidegger finds both the beginnings of metaphysics and the traces of a pre-metaphysical way of thinking. Therefore, in Heideggers attempt to think the original insight of Greek thought non-metaphysically, it is reasonable that he would carefully examine the point at which the pre-metaphysical (or primordial) insight transforms into metaphysical thought. According to Catriona Hanley, Heidegger characterizes the transformation of the premetaphysical insight into metaphysical thought primarily as a view of being as constant presence, a result of the search for grounds (8). The search for grounds, for constant presence, is indicative of what Heidegger claims the essence of metaphysics to be: onto-theo-logic (OCM, 59). He explains ontotheo-logic as such: Metaphysics thinks of beings as such, that is, in general. Metaphysics thinks of beings as such, as a whole. Metaphysics thinks of the Being of beings both in the ground-giving unity of what is most general, what is indifferently valid everywhere, and also in the unity of the all that accounts for the ground, that is, of the All-Highest. The Being of being is thus thought of in advance as the grounding ground. Therefore all metaphysics is at bottom,
four causes as its opening frame (98). Furthermore, although not explicitly mentioned, Aristotles hylomorphic theory is clearly in the background of Heideggers discussion of the ancient concept of the thing in The Origin of the Work of Art (146-154).
13

Heidegger considers Presocratic philosophy to end in greatness in Aristotle because Knowledge of its [phusiss] original meaning still lives on in Aristotle, when he speaks of the grounds of beings as such (IM, 15-16). Translation modified.
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and from the ground up, what grounds, what gives account of the ground, what is called to account by the ground, and finally what calls the ground to account. (58) Metaphysics thinks of and accounts for (logic) what grounds beings: it thinks of being both as what is most general (onto) and the highest being (theo). Furthermore, Because Being appears as ground, Heidegger states, beings are what is grounded; the highest being, however, is what accounts in the sense of giving the first cause (OCM, 70). In its search for grounds, metaphysics thinks being in terms of causality; this causal thinking spans metaphysics from its inceptione.g., Aristotles concepts of the Prime Mover and Godto its last epoch in modern technology.14 Given the centrality of causal thinking to metaphysics, it seems that Heidegger would need to think causality non-metaphysically in order to undertake his project of overcom[ing] the more immediate tradition of metaphysics by rejuvenating the hidden resources which it retains from a much older and more profound tradition (Kiesel xx). Perhaps the most influential theory of causality in the metaphysical tradition was developed by Aristotle. Heidegger puts forth his interpretation of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes,

14

In his seminal work on modern technology, The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger claims that it is a careful analysis of causality that enables us to critique the widely held instrumentalist view of technology, and thus arrive at an understanding of the essence of technology. He writes, the instrumental conception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology (QCT, 313/GA 7, 10-11). However, he then declares, the correct instrumental definition of technology still does not show us technologys essence (ibid). As such, we must examine what about the instrumental definition masks the essence of technology. In order to do so, Heidegger states, We must ask: What is the instrumental itself? (ibid). In response, Heidegger claims that the means-end thinking of technology is grounded in causality: wherever instrumentality reigns, there reigns causality (ibid).
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appropriately, in The Question Concerning Technologyhis seminal essay on modern technology, and thus on the destining of being in our era and the last epoch of metaphysics. I say appropriately because I would argue that the context of this essays first appearance provides further evidence for my proposition that the fourfold is Heideggers attempt to think the doctrine of the four causes non-metaphysically. The first appearance of The Question Concerning Technology was as the second lecture, Positionality (Das Gestell), delivered in his 1949 lecture series at the Club at Bremen: Insight Into That Which Is (QCT, ix-x).15 According to Mitchells Translators Forward to his recent translation of Bremen and Freiburg Lectures (GA 79), In many respects the Bremen lectures inaugurate the late period of Heideggers thinking. It is here that he first formulates his conception of the thing as a gathering of the fourfold (das Geviert) and of technology as a matter of positionality (das Gestell) (vii). Specifically, Heidegger introduces the concept of the fourfold in the first lecture of the series, The Thing (Das Ding). The central focus of this lecture is the question: what is a thingor, we might say, what causes a thing to be a thing? In addition, the closing discussion of nearness in the first lecture serves as a transition into the opening and main theme of the second lecture. As such, there is a continuity between the two lectures in their original form. Both lecturesin revised formswere published together in Vortrge und Aufstze as The Thing and The Questioning Concerning Technology. Even though the two lectures do not appear next to one another in this volume, I would suggest that the continuity between them is still present. In its revised form, The Question Concerning Technology does not open with the topic of
15

It received its current title when Heidegger delivered an expanded edition of the lecture in 1955 (QCT, ix-x).
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nearness; instead, its first few pages contain a critical analysis of the concept of causality. As such, I would argue that the continuity between the two essays occurs through the topic of causality. In particular, I would claim that The Question Concerning Technology, working with the metaphysical concept of causality, describes how things appear in the last epoch of metaphysics, and The Thing, with its discussion of the fourfold, attempts to describe how things appear non-metaphysically. In addition to the conceptual connections, I would suggest that there are three relevant textual clues that indicate that the fourfold is Heideggers attempt to think the doctrine of the four causes nonmetaphysically: 1) the etymological link between the Roman causa and res and the Old German thing, dinc that he outlines in The Thing (173), 2) the similarity of the examples he provides to explain the Greek concept of causality (the silver chalice) and the thing as a gathering of the fourfold (the jug), and 3) the resemblance between his explication of causality as a fourfold belonging at once to each other (QCT, 314/GA 7, 12) and his description of the fourfold as a mirror-play. If we are to consider the fourfold to be Heideggers attempt to think Aristotles doctrine of the four causes non-metaphysically, then we must first examine his understanding of the doctrine of the four causes. II. Heideggers Understanding of Aristotles Doctrine of the Four Causes In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger provides a concise explication of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes. He provides this explication within a discussion of the modern concept of causality, which he claims underlies the current instrumentalist view of technology. For a long time we have been accustomed to representing cause as that which brings something about. In this connection, to bring about means to obtain results, effects. The causa efficiens, but one among the four causes, sets the standard for
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all causality (314/12). Heidegger traces the modern understanding of causality (Kausalitt) to the interpretation of the Roman translation of the Greek aition as causa; however, he critiques the modern understanding: Greek thought per se has nothing at all to do with bringing about and effecting (ibid). He then offers his own explanation of the Greek concept of aition: What we call cause [Ursache] and the Romans call causa is called aition by the Greeks, that to which something else is obliged [das, was ein anderes verschuldet]. The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of obligation [des Verschuldens] to something else (QCT, 314/GA 7, 12).16 Using a silver chalice as an example, Heidegger then explicates Aristotles doctrine of the four causes. The first causematter (hyle)Heidegger explains, is that out of which the silver chalice is made (315/12). This definition is rather simple, but we can flesh it out further by turning to his remarks about hyle in the 1939 essay, On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotles Physics B, I: Aristotle characterizes hyle as ta dunamei. Dunamis means the capacity, or better, the appropriateness for (214). He further refines this idea: Hyle is the appropriate orderable, that which, like flesh and bones, belongs to a being that has in itself the origin and ordering of its movedness (ibid). The material cause (hyle) is the capacity or appropriateness to appear as some-thing. As such, the material cause is obliged to the formal cause (eidos), which Heidegger describes as, the aspect (eidos) of chaliceness (QCT, 315/GA 7, 13). To explain eidos more fully, we can again turn to the 1939 essay on Aristotles Physics: Eidos means the appearance of a thing and of a being in general, but
16

Translation modified. Furthermore, a similarand earliertranslation of aition is found in Heideggers 1939 essay on Aristotles Physics B, 1: Aition, for which Aristotle will soon introduce a more precise definition, means in the present context: that which is responsible for the fact that a being is what it is. This responsibility does not have the character of causation in the sense of a causally efficient actualizing (OECP, 188).
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appearance in the sense of the aspect, the looks, the view, idea, that it offers and can offer only because the being has been put forth into this appearance and, standing in it, is present of and by itself in a word, is (OECP, 210). The formal cause is the appearance, aspect, or look a thing stands in, and in so standing offers. Heidegger then continues with his explication of the four causes: But there remains yet a third something that is above all responsible for the sacrificial vessel. It is that which in advance confines the chalice within the realm of consecration and bestowal (QCT, 315/GA 7, 13). This is the third cause: formal cause (telos). He defines telos as such: Circumscribing gives bounds to the thing [Das Umgrenzende beendet das Ding]. With the bounds [Mit diesem Ende] the thing does not stop; rather from out of them [aus ihm her] it begins to be what, after production, it will be. The giving of bounds, the bringing to completion [Das Beendende, Vollendende], in this sense is called in Greek telos, which is all too often translated as aim or purpose, and so misinterpreted. (ibid) Heideggers usage of nominalized present participles (e.g., Das Beendende, Das Vollendende) indicates that telos is more akin to a process than it is to an aim or a purpose. Specifically, it is the process of giving bounds to a thing, of bringing a thing to completion.17 Furthermore, as this process, telos is not merely a place where a thing arrivesit endures and coextends throughout the entire process of a things emergence; thus, Heidegger speaks of it as both beginning and
17

I should clarify that giving bounds and bringing to completion are not necessarily external activities to a thing. In the case of an artifact, a person would give the bounds to a thing and bring it to completion. However, with natural entities (phusei on), they give their own bounds and bring themselves to completion.
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completion. Finally, there is a fourth participant in the responsibility for the finished sacrificial vessels lying before us ready for use (ibid). The fourth cause is what the tradition has named causa efficiens (hothen18); however, Heidegger critiques the usage of this Latin term: The Aristotelian doctrine neither knows the cause that is named by this term, nor uses a Greek word that would correspond to it (ibid). Once critiquing the notion of effecting as the definition of the fourth cause, he describes it as, that from which the sacred vessels being brought forth and subsistence take and retain their first departure (ibid). Richard Rojcewicz provides an insightful explanation of the fourth cause, hothen: This word [hothen], which is Aristotles most characteristic way of referring to the so-called efficient cause, is in fact not a name, a noun, but rather a relative adverb used substantively. The word is hothen, a simple term which means, as a substantive, that from which or the whence (20). After explicating the four causes, Heidegger describes the four causes as a unity (Einheit) that is a the interplay of the four ways of obligation [das Zusammenspiel der vier Weisen des Verschuldens] (QCT, 8-9/GA 7, 14). However, concerned that his readers modern ears will mishear the true sense of obligation (Verschulden) as effecting (Wirkens), Heidegger proposes another word to better clarify his understanding of aition: Ver-an-lassen (ibid). Rojcewicz carefully unpacks Heideggers meaning of this word in the following way: [T]he prefixes set the words in order from a more passive to an emphatically active sense of letting. The order is this: from letting loose, to guiding onto the proper path to some end, to being in

18

Heidegger does not explicitly mention the Greek word hothen in his interpretation, although he does describe the efficient cause as von wo her (from whence), which is a close approximation to the Greek. I discovered the Greek term in Richard Rojcewiczs book length study on The Question Concerning Technology: The Gods and Technology.
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attendance all the way to that end. As applied to the four causes, the sense of the terms is as follows. Los-lassen: the four causes let something loose or release it. An-lassen: they then let it go on to its path of development. Ver-an-lassen: their letting escorts the thing all the way to the end of its development. (32) In Heideggers interpretation of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes, the causes are the four ways that let something enter onto the path by which it will come forth and which care for it all the way to the end of its full coming forth (Rojcewicz 33). And it is to these four ways that things are obliged (verschuldet). III. The Fourfold as the Non-Metaphysical Doctrine of the Four Causes Now that we have examined Heideggers understanding of Aristotles doctrine of the four causes, I will apply that understanding to an interpretation of the fourfold. The first claim I will make is that the fourfold, like the four causes, is what is responsible for what the thing is. As Edwards states, these conditions the conditions that make the thing the thing it is are not themselves entities. They are not super-entities that ground the being of the things there are. In this way the fourfold is in no way metaphysical The fourfold cannot be presenced as such. It is the dimension within which all presencing happens (Thinging, 465). If the elements of the fourfold are not entities, then perhaps we should understand them as the processes or ways by which the thing emerges. Mitchells reading of the fourfold also tends toward a processual or non-substantial understanding of the fourfold: As a gathering, the thing is desubstantialized; it is no longer construed as a present and self-enclosed entity, but instead as the intersection of earth, sky, mortals and divinities. Considering the thing a gathering thus precludes any conception of the thing as
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a steady presence (Fourfold, 209-210). Desubstantializing the thing and the fourfold, and thus not thinking of them as beings or constant presence, accords with Heideggers project of rethinking the inceptual insights of Western metaphysics non-metaphysically. The language depicting the elements of the fourfold lends support to the claim that they are the processes or ways by which the thing emerges, instead of beings; much of the language utilizes verbal constructions. Heidegger describes the earth with verbal adjectives, participles, and nominalized present participles: Earth is the serving bearer, the blossoming fruiting, spread out in rock and water, rising up in plant and animal [Die Erde ist die dienend Tragende, die blhend Fruchtende, hingebreitet in Gestein und Gewsser, aufgehend zu Gewchs und Getier] (BDT, 147/GA 7, 143).19 For the sky, in addition to utilizing verbal adjectives, he depicts it entirely as natural processes (e.g., weather, seasons, the movement of the celestial bodies): The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glittering of the stars, the years seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether [Der Himmel ist der wlbende Sonnengang, der gestaltwechselnde Mondlauf, der wanderne Glanz der Gestirne, die Zeiten des Jahres und ihre Wende, Licht und Dmmer des Tages, Dunkel und Helle der Nacht, das Wirtliche und Unwirtliche der Wetter, Wolkenzug und blauende Tiefe des thers]. (147/144) Even the defining characteristic of the mortals is verbal: They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death [Sie heien die
19

Translation modified.
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Sterblichen, weil sie sterben knnen. Sterben heit, den Tod als Tod vermgen] (148/144). A capacity for the event of death is what defines the mortals. Finally, the primary descriptions of the divinities20 (Die Gttlichen) are activities: The divinities are the beckoning messengers of divinity. Out of the holy sway of this, the divine appears in its presence or it withdraws into its concealment [Die Gttlichen sind die winkenden Boten der Gottheit. Aus dem heiligen Walten dieser erscheint der Gott in seine Gegenwart oder er entzieht sich in seine Verhllung] (147-148/144). In some senses, the nouns seem merely to be placeholders for the verbs. If we understand the elements of the fourfold as the processes or ways by which a thing emerges, then how does each element condition the things emergence? Let us begin with the earth. The earth is matter, hylehowever, it is nothing material; instead, it is the pulse or the pushing-forth of the thing towards emergence, unfolding. The earth is possibility; it is the very capacity of any thing to emerge. It is the bursting-forth of the seed in germination, the push of the seedling towards sunlight, the formation of buds in early spring, the reach of trees towards the sky. The earth is also the pulse of blood, respiration, awakening from sleep. Earth names the possibility, the pulse from which things emerge towards appearance. However, the earth resists total emergence. It is the resistance and opacity of rock, the quiescence of winter, the darkness of soil, silence and sleep. It is the hidden side of things, the interiority concealed by bark or flesh. As Mitchell notes, The earth withdraws ground in order to release the superficial play of appearance, the name for which is shining (Fourfold, 212). In its withdrawal, its resistance to total emergence, the earth preserves
20

Hofstadter translates die Gttlichen as the divinities, der Gottheit as the godhead, and der Gott as the god. I have translated them as the divinities, divinity, and the divine, respectively. I have made my translation choices for two reasons: 1) to create a symmetry with the German by maintaining a shared root (i.e. divine) among the English terms, and 2) to distance Heideggers concept from the almost unavoidable connotations that the word god carriesi.e., the personal god of Judaism and Christianity.
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possibility; it preserves and replenishes the capacity of ever-new things to continuously emerge towards appearance. If there were no darkness that surges and rises out of itself, no earth, claims Edwards, then there would be nothing to emerge into the light of our conceptions, nothing to demand that light, however flickering. Our life of enlightened things is sheltered by that darkness (Thinging, 461). As things emerge from the pulse of earth, they do so under the sky. As Mitchell writes, The sky is the space of the earths emergence, the space wherein things appear and through which they shine (Fourfold, 213). Things may shine under the sky because, Edwards explains, the sky is the source of light; it is only under the sky and its varying degrees of luminance that anything can be seen as the thing it is (Thinging, 462). In the interplay of light and dark, some things are illuminedstand forth in appearanceand other things are dimmed, receding into the shadows. Furthermore, claims Mitchell, What appears under the sky is involved in the world and marked by that involvement. Exposed to the sky, the thing is weathered by it (Fourfold, 213). The sky shapes things; it weathers them as they weather the varying conditions of the sky. Rain, rivers, glaciers, and wind-blown particulates carve and shape the rock. Heat and cold create expansion and contraction, swelling and cracking. Sunlight and moisture affect the vibrancy of the color of plants. The climate creates differing types of fur, hair, and skin pigmentation in animals. The sky is form, aspect, look, eidos. It is the thing standing forth, emerging from the earth from possibilityinto what it is; the sky is that by which the thing is differentiated from other things, the space between things. Yet, the thing can only stand forth into what it isbe shaped and weathered by the skybecause it is fundamentally exposed. This is the condition of mortality. Mitchell writes, mortals names those beings defined
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by exposure and openness to world (Fourfold, 211). Even though Heidegger equates the mortals with the human beings,21 I am inclined to agree with Mitchell, who proposes in his paper Heideggers Later Thinking on Animality, Mortality is not something simply pre-given as a distinction to the human against the rest of life. It marks a kind of transition out of the living being, out of humanity itself (80). Mortality is a way of being, a way that we might achieve, but which, Mitchell speculates, is not exclusive to humans: And yet, what is mortality but a matter of exposure? Mortality is not a privilege of the human (81). Thus, the mortals names the things exposure and openness to that which is other than it, that which can weather and form it, and thus differentiate it and enable it to emerge as what it is. Yet, as fundamentally open, the thing can never be entirely closedi.e., it retains possibility, the capacity to be affected. The mortals are capable of death as death (BDT, 148/GA 7, 144). As we recall from Being and Time (Division Two, I.53), death is possibilitynot the possibility for something, but possibility as such. Therefore, the mortals are capable of possibility as possibility. The mortals is the that from which or the whence of the things emergence; it is the things openness and exposure both to possibility (earth, hyle) and to standing forth as itself (sky, eidos). The mortals connect the earth and the sky. However, the things exposure and openness is not boundless, limitless. The thing emerges from possibility and stands forth as itself; once it arrives at what it is, it is complete, and it holds itself in this completion, this limit. I would argue that the divinities are the things holding themselves in their completion, their limitsthe divinities are the end or the telos of things.22 Thus, the divinities

21 22

The mortals are the human beings [Die Sterblichen sind die Menschen] (BDT, 148/GA 7, 144). Although I do not have space to do so in this work, I would suggest that it might be useful to compare this interpretation of the divinities to Heideggers explication of Aristotles concept
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are the fully blossomed flower, the ripeness of blackberries in August, the maturity of the oak tree. Yet, why call these seemingly mundane, entirely ordinary occurences divinities? A response to that question is beyond the scope of this paper because it would necessitate explicating what Heidegger means by divinity (der Gottheit). However, as indicators for future research, I would suggest that the answer involves Heideggers description of divinity as mysterious (PMD, 220/ GA 7, 191) and his critique of the metaphysical concept of ground in The Principle of Reason (Der Satz VomGrund). The interpretation of the fourfold that I have offered here is a sketch. It necessitates a lengthier and more in-depth analysis; in particular, the fourfold must, as Mitchell claims, be understood in conjunction with Heideggers views on technology (Fourfold, 216 n.3). However, I think the path that future research must take will be clearer if we read the fourfold as Heideggers attempt to think the doctrine of the four causes non-metaphysically.

of entelecheia: the movement of a moving being gathers itself into its end, telos, and as so gathered within its end, has itself: en telei echei, entelecheia (OECP, 217).
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Works Cited Brogan, Walter. Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. Crowe, Benjamin D. Heideggers Phenomenology of Religion: Realism and Cultural Criticism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. Edwards, James. The Plain Sense of Things: The Fate of Religion in an Age of Normal Nihilism. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. Edwards, James C. The Thinging of the Thing: The Ethic of Conditionality in Heideggers Later Work. A Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Mark Wrathall. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Heideggers Ways. Trans. John W. Stanley. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994. Hanley, Catriona. Being and God in Aristotle: The Role of Method in Thinking the Infinite. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.

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 Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insight Into That Which Is and Basic Principles of Thinking. Trans. Andrew Mitchell. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012. Building Dwelling Thinking. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York, Perennial Classics, 2001. Hlderlins Hymn The Ister. Trans. William McNeill and Julia Davis. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. Hlderlins Hymne Der Ister. Gesamtausgabe, v. 53, 2nd Ed. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993. Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. Ralph Mannheim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959. Language in the Poem. On the Way to Language. Trans. Peter D. Hertz. New York: HarperCollins, 1982. Letter on Humanism. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi. Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotles Physics B, I. Trans. Thomas Sheehan. Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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 On the Essence of Ground. Trans. William McNeill. Pathmarks. Ed. William McNeill. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. On the Origin of the Work of Art. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York, Perennial Classics, 2001. The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics. Identity and Difference. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Poetically Man Dwells Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York, Perennial Classics, 2001. The Principle of Reason. Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996. The Question Concerning Technology. Trans. William Lovitt. Basic Writings, Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. The Question Concerning Technology. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Vortrge und Aufstze. Gesamtausgabe, v. 7. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000.

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Kiesel, Theodore. Translators Introduction. Werner Marx. Heidegger and the Tradition. Trans. Theodore Kiesel and Murray Greene. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1971. Macquarrie, John. Heidegger and Christianity. New York: Continuum, 1994. Mitchell, Andrew. The fourfold. Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts. Ed. Bret W. Davis. Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2010. Mitchell, Andrew. Heideggers Later Thinking of Animality: The End of World Poverty. Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 1 (2011): 74-85. Pggeler, Otto. Martin Heideggers Path of Thinking. Trans. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1987. Richardson, William J. Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963. Ricur, Paul. Metaphor and the Problem of Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Ed. and Trans. John B. Thompson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Rojcewicz, Richard. The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006. Vedder, Ben. Heideggers Philosophy of Religion: From God to the Gods. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2007.
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Wrathall, Mark. Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Young, Julian. The Fourfold. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Charles Guignon. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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Heideggers Fourfold: On the Relationality of Things Andrew J. Mitchell (Emory University)

The fourfold (das Geviert) is a thinking of things. The fourfold names the gathering of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities that comes to constitute the thing for Heidegger. In the late 1940s, operating under a teaching ban imposed by the French authorities in the wake of the Second World War, Heidegger ventures the boldest statement of his thinking in announcing the fourfold.1 First named in the 1949 lecture cycle Insight Into That Which Is, held at the private Club zu Bremen, developed and refined over the next decade, and remaining with Heidegger until the end of his life, the fourfold is nothing less than the inauguration of Heideggers later thinking. The fourfold brings together the poetic sensibility of Heideggers Hlderlin interpretations of the 1940s with the esoteric rigor of his notebooks from the 1930s, into a new figure of thought: the thing. The simple things around us indeed, the things themselves become the focus of his attention, lending to his work of the period a unique phenomenological density disencumbered of all formal transcendentalism. The fourfold provides an account of the thing as inherently relational. Thanks to the fourfold, these things unfold themselves ecstatically, opening relations with the world beyond them. Unlike the self-enclosed object of modern metaphysics, the thing is utterly worldly, its essence lying in the relations it maintains throughout the world around it, the world to which it is inextricably bound. The fourfold is the key to understanding this streaming relationality of worldly existence. The importance of this new thinking of the thing should not be underestimated. The 1949 Bremen lecture cycle, Insight Into That Which Is, where the
1

Egon Vietta, author of Die Seinsfrage bei Martin Heidegger, as cited in Petzet, Stern zugehen, 62/Encounters, 56. For more on Vietta, see Petzet, Stern zugehen, 107-10/Encounters, 100-2.
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conception of the fourfold is first forged in its opening lecture Das Ding, stands alongside Being and Time (1927), his landmark early work, and the Contributions to Philosophy (1936-38), the gravitational center of his middle period, as a third, decisive milestone along Heideggers path of thought. While such a claim might first appear hyperbolic, Heidegger himself puts great stock in this orientation to the thing. In a 1964 letter reflecting on his path of thought hitherto, he confesses: Apart from the thing lecture, I have never presented my own thinking purely on its own terms in publications even once hitherto, however far it has come in the meantime, but rather have presented it always only in such a manner whereby, as a first attempt, I have sought to make my thinking understandable in terms of the tradition.2 It behooves us then to take up Heideggers thinking on its own terms. I take the fourfold to be Heideggerian thought on its own terms. Simply stated, I take the crux of Heideggers later thinking to be preeminently a new concern for the thing in its relational openness. The key to this relationality of things is the fourfold. The relationality of the fourfold releases the thing from its objective confines and sends it out onto the world. The fourfold lets the thing thing (das Ding dingen).

Letter to Dieter Sinn of August 24, 1964, cited in Sinn, Ereignis und Nirwana, 172, em. I am grateful to Richard Polt for drawing my attention to this reference. This letter also has the potential to shed some light on a perplexing claim from the 1951 seminar in Zrich. Here Heidegger is asked why his own thought is so bound up with the interpretation of texts. He replies that an essential part of this arises from an embarrassment: because I am apprehensive to say directly what I could perhaps still say; for this reason I eschew this, because in todays age it would be immediately commonplace and thereby distorted. It is to a certain extent a defensive measure. In my 30-35 years of teaching, I have only once or twice spoken of my own concerns [Sachen] (GA 15: 426, em). It is my contention in the following that Heideggers own concerns here are those of the fourfold and the thing. This is at least in accordance with the claims of the 1964 letter just cited.
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For my remarks today, I would like to first speak more broadly about the relationality of things, about the fourfold as gathered into these things, and about their "thinging." I then turn to the fourfold itself to the earth, sky, divinities, and mortals to examine what each contributes to the constitution of this relational thing. I conclude by returning to the thing as it emerges from the interplay of the four, where it is understood no longer as finite, but in-finite (unendlich). Through all this I hope to show not only the novelty of Heideggers position (that his late work contributes something new to his thinking), but its profundity as well (that the fourfold would be the consummation of his thought). 1. Thing as Gathering of the Fourfold

Let me begin by saying that a thing is nothing self-same or homogeneous. A thing is composed. This is what the fourfold most directly says, that things are composed of different elements or components. And it is only through this heterogeneity of the thing that it is able to move past itself and enter into relations. The fourfold thus coalesce in the emergence of the thing into this world. But this relationality would not be possible for objects as self-contained pieces of material, as the sturdy furniture of a pre-existing world. Things are not the building blocks of reality, they are never solid enough for this. For the thing to be a thing of the sort described, it must surrender itself into a play of relations, exist as a cluster and conglomeration of relations. The fourfold allows Heidegger a way of articulating the desolidification or dis-closure of the thing, the interruption of the things self-presence and self-identity whereby that thing passes into the world. Rather than an underlying substantial existence, things

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are thought in terms of a gathering (Versammlung) of the fourfold.3 The fourfold is gathered (versammelt) into things. As a gathering, the thing is desubstantialized, it is no longer construed as a present and self-enclosed entity, but instead as the intersection of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities. Considering the thing a gathering thus precludes any conception of the thing as a steady presence. The fourfold gathers around the thing in a tenuous convergence. There is nothing everlasting or monumental about such things, they tarry ephemerally (Heideggers term is weilen). The thing abides. The same gathering that unites the four in the thing is equally a disaggregation of that thing (Entsammlung perhaps). What is gathered is not a homogeneity, but a spaced parting of assembled members. The fourfold disaggregates the thing by releasing it from the bounds of an encapsulated selfidentity into the streams of relation. Heidegger calls this thinging (The thing things; GA 79: 17/16). The thing in its thinging is telescoped out beyond itself. The thing is not only gathered but disassembled at once, and through this disassembly it enters the world. The extrapolated thing extrudes beyond itself, billowing through the four members of the fourfold. Each of these grants the thing a place within a particular cluster of relations and supportive connections. The thing is nestled within a context. The things that appear in Heideggers lectures emphasize this contextual, relational character as well. A thing is a jug (The Thing), a vessel that holds and retains, gives and pours out (Heidegger speaks of a gift of the pour [Geschenk des Gusses]; GA 79: 11/10).4 This thing the jug is determined by its

cf. Building Dwelling Thinking (GA 7: 155/PLT 151), The Thing (GA 79: 13/PLT 172). The term also plays an important role in the cotemporaneous Logos (GA 7: 225/EGT 70).
4

Not coincidentally a recurrent example for Heidegger. See the 1936-1938 Contributions to

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pour, the pour [Gu] determines the jughood of the jug (GA 79: 11 n. a/10 n. 1). But this pour is itself never simply contained or retained without further ado, the sharing of it is an ineradicable and constitutive possibility. The pour is then always at the same time a pouring out: What is authentic of the pour is nevertheless the outpouring [Ausgieen] (GA 79: 11 n. a/10 n. 1). The jug as thing is determined by a pouring out. This outpouring exceeds any utilitarian directive. It is a sacrifice: Sufficiently thought and genuinely said, where it is essentially performed pouring is: donating, sacrificing, and therefore giving" (GA 79: 12/11). The jug is not a jug because it is useful, the jug is a jug because it is capable of sacrificial expenditure. A thing is a bridge (Building Dwelling Thinking), a crossing over two shores that provides passage along a way. Bridges conduct, accompany, and escort us (geleiten uns) along a path (and Heidegger does not fail to note that we ourselves, as mortals, are always underway and in the crossing, cf. GA 7: 155/PLT 150, tm). The bridge brings about a relation between the shores and the surrounding landscape such that, it brings stream and shore and land into a reciprocal neighborliness (GA 7: 154/PLT 150, tm). This sort of a bond does not occur among the indifference of objects. Instead, when a thing is in place, it transforms its surroundings. The shores are no longer already present-at-hand shores (GA 7: 154/PLT 150, tm), they are transformed by the relations presented by the bridge. The bridge stands in a particular relation to the shores it touches, in the crossing over of the bridge the shores first come forth as shores (GA 7: 154/PLT 150, tm). The relational bridge touches what surrounds it and participates in the building of a particular locale (Ortschaft) with them.

Philosophy (from Enowning) (GA 65: 339/237) as well as the 1945 Country Path Conversation, !)+(8!9"2 (GA 77: 126-137/82-89).
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These are not so many arbitrary facts about jugs and bridges, but essential traits of things, the instantiations of an ontological relationality. Things are all jugs, defined by their relation to a giving out (of themselves) determinative for what they are. Things themselves are so many gifts of excess, they pour beyond their bounds as ecstatic existences. Ecstatic existence is no longer a privilege of Dasein, but whatever appears within a world, if there is a world, must appear ecstatically. Things exist within a cluster of relations that draws them out in innumerable directions and in varying degrees. They give themselves out to the world. And in so doing things are all bridges, too. They forge connections between what exists around them, they throw a bridge between our surroundings and ourselves. No thing is simply in a position, but already extending beyond itself as part of a context. Things pass from themselves into relations of every stripe, spatial, temporal, affective, associative, etc. and no relation is foreign to them or impossible for them. They reach across to us, departing from their physical bounds in creating a context, in appealing to us, in providing for us. Things touch us, transform us, and conduct us along a meaningful path through the world. We who are always underway could never be so underway were it not for the things accompanying us in this ecstatic exploration of world. The thing gestures out beyond itself, exposed on all sides, and shaped by nothing it would possess on its own, but instead by a world that ever exceeds it. Each element of the fourfold provides a limit or interface of the thing whereby it passes into world. The four together desubstantialize the thing and deliver it to world.

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2.

The Fourfold

How then does the fourfold effect this? What is it that is gathered together to create these relational things? Heideggers first depiction of the four (from The Thing, 1949) reads: The earth is the building bearer, what nourishingly fructifies, tending waters and stones, plants and animals. [] The sky is the path of the sun, the course of the moon, the gleam of the stars, the seasons of the year, the light and twilight of day, the dark and bright of the night, the favor and inclemency of the weather, drifting clouds, and blue depths of the ether. [] The divinities are the hinting messengers of godhood. From the concealed reign of these there appears the god in his essence, withdrawing him from every comparison with what is present. [] The mortals are the humans. They are called the mortals because they are able to die. Dying means: to be capable of death as death. [GA 79: 17/16-17] It is these four that are gathered together in the thing. So let us now examine each in turn, emphasizing the ways in which each of them contributes to the constitution of a finite, relational thing. a. The Earth

The earth is perhaps the most familiar of the four components of the fourfold. The earth is materiality. The earth is the material out of which things are composed. But we go wrong to think this material quality of the earth as http://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/pettigrew-rusenje-spomenika-u-strazistu-znacilobi-da-u-rs-u-vlada-apartheid/130304086anything substantial or stable. To understand this earth, we must rid ourselves of such substantialist prejudices.
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This is just what Heideggers emphasis on the earth as a bearer (Tragende) is meant to do. In the fourfold the earth names the way that things exist as sensuously and materially apparent. Heideggers name for this is bearing. Bearing is not to be confused with ground (Grund) or grounding. In the typical grounding scenario, that which is grounded, the object, is traced back to a substantive, eternal basis, its essence, for example. What is grounded is dependent upon the ground and follows from it. With bearing, Heidegger indicates instead a co-belonging. What is borne (das Getragene) requires its bearer (der Trger), but it likewise constitutes that bearer through the state of being borne. In a similar sense, we might say that a parent is only a parent thanks to the child. While the parent bears the child, it is only through the child that the adult first becomes a parent. What this means is that there ultimately is no ground, or no ultimate ground. The only traction that we find in this world is through a reciprocal relation of holding each other afloat. We bear each other, we bear the world, but those same others and that same world bears us up in turn. With such a flimsy support of thingly existence, it is no wonder that the earth can be nothing substantive. Instead what the earth bears is called a fructifying (Fruchtende). What the earth bears comes to fruition, it blossoms into appearance. The earth bears the sensuous appearance of things. And it is only in this sense that it can be the material of things. The earth as sensuous gleam (Glanz) is the what things are composed of. Things do not exist materially, they exist phenomenally. They are composed not of inert, dead matter, but of shining, phenomenal radiance. They make up a world that reaches out to us, radiates to us. The nature that Heidegger lists in his depiction of the earth stone, water, plants, and animals all make appearances in his work of the late 1940s and
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1950s. Each is rethought in terms of just this manner of existing, a nonsubstantive bearing relation. Nothing is simply inert, stones speak, rivers poetize, and both plants and animals move past any presumed encapsulation in an environment (Umwelt) or disinhibiting ring (Enthemmungsring). b. The Sky

If the earth is the phenomenal appearance of things, then it needs some space in which to appear. The sky is this space. The ungrounded earthly appearing that gleams in an untethered radiance can only do so through a medium capable of receiving it. The sky is that medium. Without the sky, there would be no earth. The two together form the dimension, are united in a marriage (GA 7: 198/PLT 218; GA 79: 11/10). For the sky to be able to do this, however, it cannot be a mere void. A void would be the correlate to the modern object, the absence correlate to objective full presence. With the abandonment of a thinking of objective presence, however, we likewise abandon the thought of sheer absence; we abandon the thought of a void. And the sky is no void. Instead, it is a complex and varied medium, an ether, as Heidegger says. The sky is a space of movement and change. The change of the sky yields a particular kind of time, the natural time of heavenly alteration. Day passes into night, the sun recedes before the moon and stars. These changes of the day are part of a larger cycle of changes of the year. The seasons change. These temporal shifts are accompanied by changes of the light. Thanks to the sky, things appear under different lightings, show themselves differently at different times. The color of the sky is blue, that is to say, neither pitch black nor bright white, but a color between these two, the color of the between and mediation. No void, the sky is a textured space. As an ether, there is a viscosity to it. The density of the sky varies and it undulates in accordance with the things and
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relations that run through it. This non-homogeneity of the sky is amplified by passing patches of opacity (clouds) that appear throughout it. Still more, large swaths of the medium are subject to occasional seizures of great violence (storms), releasing untold destructive powers. But that same sky is capable of matching our mood, of cheering us up (Aufheitern) and elating us. It provides a space of relief from our mundane preoccupations, where we might look up from our labor (Aufschauen) and open ourselves to change. To think the relationality of things, this notion of medium is crucial. If things are to be understood as relational, they are outside of themselves. This means they must enter a space that is capable of receiving them, a space suited to them. The sky is this space. And what appears under the sky is affected by appearing there. Because the sky is not empty space or a void, it has an effect upon all that appears within it. What appears is weathered by the sky. What exists blanches and wears away. Whatever appears cannot last for long. c. Divinities

The divinities are messengers, hinting messengers of godhood and each of these terms is crucial for understanding their function in the constitution of a relational thing. By writing this messengerial role into the thinging of the thing, Heidegger moves into a new paradigm of meaning for his later work. As the researcher in the Dialogue on Language (1953) remarks, it would scarcely have escaped you that in my later writings the names hermeneutics and hermeneutical are no longer employed (GA 12: 94/OWL 12, tm). In place of this, we find a thinking of the message. The divinities are the inaugural moment of this new (non-hermeneutical) thematic of the message. Since Heideggers first Hlderlin reading, the hint (Wink) has named the way of presencing of that which is not simply present. Hlderlins notion of a
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flight of the gods is understood as itself a hint. The hint names the presence of what is no longer present, it announces an absence. But in announcing an absence, it is no longer utterly absent. It is remarked. The hint thus troubles the very opposition between presence and absence. Even more, the hint is understood in terms of the trace. Heideggers thinking of godhood here (first broached in two texts from 1946, the Letter on Humanism and What Are Poets For?) makes this abundantly clear. Godhood is the medium of the godly (of the gods), but only insofar as the element of this godhood is found in the holy (das Heilige), itself the medium for the appearance of the hale (das Heile). The hale for its part is a mode of presencing that resists the total availability of the standing reserve. Technology would make everything unconcealed, yet the hale (das Heile) keeps a concealment. But it would appear that today all is standing reserve (Bestand), that there is nothing hale. As Heidegger explains, today not only does the holy remain hidden as the trace of godhood, but even what is hale, the trace of the holy, appears to be extinguished (GA 5: 295/221; tm). But it only appears to be extinguished, it is not yet so. There still remains a glimmer of concealment and this is what the divinities signal to us, why there is meaning, and why they can only hint at it. The divinities are messengers of this, between origin and destination and defined by a meaning they do not possess as their own. They ensure that we remain between presence and absence, that metaphysical closure yet entails an outside, and that the exposure to this outside is meaningful. They promise a space of meaning, the space of a message. The things themselves are messaged to us, i.e., are meaningful. And this without the imposition of a meaning structure on the part of the human, a hermeneutic circle in which only Dasein is meaningful. Heideggers later thinking of meaning begins from this.
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d.

Mortals

Death is constitutive for the mortals. In Being and Time, Heidegger explored the strange non-presence of death. On the one hand, death is most our own in that no one can die our deaths for us, but on the other, death is nothing we possess, when it is here, we are gone, and when we are here, it is not. Existence was thus defined by this non-possession of ones own. What is most our own is no possession and this frustrates the attempts of the ego to seclude itself in isolation, to have itself. To be mortal is to be defined by dispossession, by a death we can never have. What is most my own remains outside of me, and this fact cracks me open, and is thus my fundamental opening to world. In his later thinking, Heidegger takes this notion of death a step further. Now death is understood as something of which the mortals are capable (vermgen). But this is a technical term for Heidegger. The Letter on Humanism explained what is most enabling in this regard as an element, i.e. a medium: The element is what properly enables [das Vermgende]: it is the enabling [das Vermgen] (GA 9: 316/241). The death that the mortal does not possess, but which enables the mortal to be mortal, is a death that opens them to the outside. Mortals are outside in their death. Death is the medium of mortality. Consequently, mortals names those beings defined by exposure and openness to world. The essential plurality of the name points to their communal nature. As Building Dwelling Thinking explains, mortals dwell insofar as, by their own essence, namely, that they are capable of death as death, they accompany [others] in the use of this capability so that there may be a good death (GA 7: 152/PLT 148; tm). This is dwelling, an exposed, relational existence upon the earth, under the sky, before the divinities, and with others, with the things. Mortals are no longer world-building Dasein, but so thoroughly
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members of a community as to forego such privilege by participating in the fourfolds play of thing and world. The presence of mortals within the thinging of the thing does not entail that things only exist for the mortal or that the mortal is somehow the source of things. Rather, if things are understood to be relational, then those relations must be ones that reach out to us. There could not be a relational world of things that remained indifferent to us. Relationality must be absolute or it is nothing. And this means that we are always already claimed by the world, appealed to by things. This responsibility is the gist of mortality. It lets there be a good death. 3. Mirroring the Infinity of Things

Earth, sky, divinities, and mortals join together in creating the finite, relational thing. But it is not enough to arrange the four alongside each other. As Heidegger notes, "the united four are already suffocated in their essence when one represents them only as individuated actualities that are grounded through one another and are to be explained in terms of each other" (GA 79: 19/18). Instead, we must understand them in their fouring (Vierung), in their belonging together. a. Mirror-Play

The thing is a gathering of the fourfold and this concentration of the four enables the thinging of the thing. Without this gathering, there would be no things. So let us make no mistake, when Heidegger speaks of the coming together of the four, he is speaking of the very core or heart of things. He is telling us what transpires in the very make up of a thing at its most basic level. Thus it should come as no surprise that his depiction of this relationship is somewhat obscure, but this obscurity should not belie the profundity that is at
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stake. Heidegger presents the thinging of the thing, the gathering of the fourfold, as a kind of play, more particularly, a mirror-play (Spiegel-Spiel; GA 79: 19/18). Each of the four in its way mirrors the essence of the remaining others again. Each is thus reflected in its way back into what is its own within the single fold [Einfalt] of the four. This mirroring is no presentation of an image. Lighting up each of the four, this mirroring appropriates the essence of each to the others in a simple bringing into ownership [einfltige Vereignung]. In this appropriatinglighting way, each of the four reflectively plays with each of the remaining others. GA 79: 18/17. Here Heidegger is thinking the way in which the four belong together. We have proposed understanding the four as constituting the finite thing. The earth composed its phenomenal radiance. This required a medium through which to move, the sky. That mediated appearing was inherently meaningful, constituted as a message sent to us via the divinities, and directly appealed to us as exposed mortals. The four mirror each other in that none of them is anything stable or self-identical, but instead are ungrounded, shifting, sent, and dying. The same structure of mediated appearance appears in each of them. Each of the four can thus be said to mirror the others. But Heidegger goes further than this. To understand the thing as relational, as I am proposing, the core itself must be nothing self-same. As Heidegger explains it, each of the four belongs to the others. Mirroring appropriates the essence of each to the others. Each is sent out to the others, reflected over to them, but only in order to be reflected back to itself. Indeed, what it itself is, is nothing other than this originary reflection. Otherwise put, the four do not have distinct identities that can be aligned alongside each other. Each is so intricately involved with the others that each receives whatever
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identity it has from that relationship. To think the four as mirroring is to think them as bouncing past their own limits. It is to think the identity of the thing as nothing present. The language of appropriation here should not lead us astray. What is appropriated is only the constitution of a self that partakes in this fourfold, and does so from out of a prior reflection, a prior expropriation (Enteignung) as Heidegger explains: None of the four insists on its separate particularity. Each of the four within this bringing into ownership [Vereignung] is much more expropriated [enteignet] to what is its own. This expropriative bringing into ownership [enteignende Vereignen] is the mirror-play of the fourfold. From it is entrusted the single fold of the four. GA 79: 18/17-18. Mirroring thinks the expropriation at the heart of appropriation and belonging. At the center of the thing is no thing. Or better, at the center of the thing is the middle or medium (Mitte) through which the radiance of the four passes. The members of the fourfold at the middle of the thing each give themselves to and receive themselves from each other. They appropriate their existence from out of an original expropriation. In this relation, no member of the four remains within itself. The mirror play takes place beyond the plane of the mirror. The play does not take place within any of these mirrors. Rather the play occurs outside all of them, between them, in the middle (Mitte) of them. This is the expropriative heart of finitude. b. In-finite Finitude

At the heart of the thing there is no thing. Things are not confined from without by their limits, but neither are they contained from within at their core. The mirror-play is as much a "disassembly" of the thing as a "gathering." Nowhere
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are things encapsulated or objectively present. They are relational through and through. Even what we take to be the core of the thing, its interiority (Innigkeit) is ultimately a space of relation, the possibility of intimacy (Innigkeit). To be sure, we took this relationality to be the strongest mark of the thing's finitude. Only because it bore its limits could it exceed itself. Only because it ended could it relate. But ending and ending are not the same. Indeed, in the 1959 lecture Hlderlins Earth and Sky," where he returns to the fourfold, Heidegger will go so far to speak of the thing as "infinite" for precisely this reason. He writes, in-finite [Un-endlich] means that the ends and sides, the regions of the relation, do not stand on their own, cut off [from relation] and one-sided. Rather, relieved of one-sidedness and of finitude [Endlichkeit], they belong in-finitely to one another in a relationship that they thoroughly hold together from its middle (GA 4: 163/188, tm). If ends are points of closure, then things have their ends cut off, they are opened to the world, endlessly. Things are in-finite. Relationality begins at the middle, where no thing is. No thing is at this middle, because things do not pre-exist their relations through the middle. What are related here do not stand apart, independently extant, only subsequently to be drawn into a relation from the outside. Rather they emerge from the relation itself, from its middle. And this middle is in-finite. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when a fourfold act of mirroring sets in place an abyss of pure shine, four mirrors coming together endlessly, abysmally, in an infinite reflexivity. Relation arises from the middle. This disassembled middle allows the thing its emergence. Heidegger continues: The middle, which is so called because it mediates, is neither the earth, nor the sky, neither the god, nor the human. The in-finite that is to be thought here is abysally distinct from the merely endless [Endlosen], which, on account of its uniformity [Gleichfrmigkeit], allows for
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no growth (GA 4: 163/188, tm). We must think this growth as the movement of fruition whereby the earth enters into the sky as space of relation. All that grows does so upon the earth and under the sky. in their between, in this middle. In so doing, the thing relates to the world, endlessly, in-finitely. It lends support to that world and is supported by it. A familiarity arises, an intimacy that knows no interior: For what is not one-sided can more purely shine forth [zum Vorschein kommen] from out of the intimacy [Innigkeit] in which the four just mentioned are held to each other (GA 4: 163/188, tm, em). Heidegger's thinking of the fourfold returns us to this fragile, relational, in-finite, yet familiar world of things

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Heideggers Differential Concept of Truth in Beitrge James Bahoh (Duquesne University)

Heideggers account of truth [Wahrheit] in Beitrge1 is crucial to that texts project for a number of reasons, perhaps paramount of which is that the question of truth provides the primary conceptual pathway by which thought is able to gain a first, grounded stance within the event [das Ereignis]. The essence of truth, moreover, constitutes certain essential structures and dynamic operations of the event itself. Indeed, it is through Heideggers account of truth that he is able to begin developing a properly grounded account of the event, or of beyng [Seyn] as event. To these points, he writes, The precursory question [Vor-frage] of truth is simultaneously the basic question [Grund-frage] of beyng; and beyng qua event essentially occurs [west] as truth.2 In a number of other texts from the early-mid 1930s3 Heidegger maintains an account of the essence of truth given in terms of the dual, correlative structures of altheia4 (unconcealment or originary openness) and lthe (originary concealment or withdrawal). Much of the available scholarship on Beitrge maintains an account of truth in this text understood within this originary a-lthic

[GA65] Beitrge zur Philosopie (vom Ereignis) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003), abbreviated as B or Beitrge. In English translation as: (C) Contributions to Philosophy: Of the Event, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniella Vallega-Neu (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), henceforth C.
2

B 348/C 275

For instance: Vom Wesen der Wahrheit in Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004), henceforth WW. In English translation as: On the Essence of Truth, trans. John Sallis, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998), henceforth OET.
4

In this paper I have transliterated all Greek.

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schema.5 In this paper, I argue that such an interpretation falls short of the account of truth Heidegger gives in this text. Of course, the structures of altheia and lthe remain crucial. However, by inquiring into the ground whence these very structures are generated, Heidegger argues for an account of the essence of truth more primal than the a-lthic schema. Altheia and lthe are grounded in an originary difference or self-differentiation [Unterschied or Entscheidung], which constitutes an essential aspect of beyng as event itself. In other words, Heideggers concept of truth in Beitrge is most primally differential, not a-lthic.6 To demonstrate this, I will begin by outlining two major philosophical shifts in Beitrge necessary for framing its account of truth: the shift of the focal term from Sein to Seyn and the shift from the Leitfrage to the Grundfrage. This will lead to an account of Heideggers conception of the essence of truth as die Lichtung fr das Sichverbergen [the clearing for self-concealing] or Lichtung des Sichverbergens [the clearing of self-concealing], together with a discussion of Heideggers conception of difference in this text.7 1: The Shift from Sein to Seyn In Beitrge, Heidegger advances a shift in how he understands being with respect to beings. Recall that in Sein und Zeit, being was always framed as the Being of

As a general statement of such a position: For Heidegger, the essence of truth is always understood in terms of unconcealment [Mark A. Wrathall, Unconcealment, in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (Malden/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell, 2005), 337].
6

One crucial consequence of overlooking this is that since it is through the question of the essence of truth that an account of the nature of the event is first properly grounded it greatly inhibits our ability to grasp the account of the event Heidegger develops in this text.
7

B 348/C 275, italics removed; B 329/C 261

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beings.8 There, the human Dasein a being can work toward developing an authentic understanding of being by developing an authentic understanding of its own existence. In other words, I can come to understand being on the basis of the relation of being to a being Dasein, my own existence. In Beitrge, Heidegger makes a radical shift: he finds it necessary to disassociate being from all beings. In other words, being is to be thought independently of any relation to beings. The reason for the shift, Heidegger argues, is that The attempts to represent both [being and beings] together stem from metaphysics.9 [M]etaphysics asks about beingness [Seiendheit] on the basis of beings (within the inceptual i.e., definitive interpretation of physis) and necessarily leaves unasked the question of the truth of beingness and thus the question of the truth of beyng.10 This shift is signified terminologically by rewriting Sein [being] in the archaic form Seyn [beyng].11 Sein signifies being as understood still in relation to beings for instance, as the condition for beings12 (which must be distinguished from Heideggers concepts of ground13).
8

Sein und Zeit (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006), abbreviated as SZ. In English translation as Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Harper and Row, New York, NY 1962), henceforth BT. BT 26/SZ 6: translation modified.
9

C 375 B 279/C 235

10

11

It should be noted, though, that Heidegger is not always consistent with the use of this convention in Beitrge.
12

Cf. B 268.

13

Namely, Grund der Mglichkeit [ground of possibility] and ground as das Sichverbergen im tragenden Durchragen [self-concealing in a protrusion that bears]) (B 297/C 234; B 379/C 300). In WW we find the former as Grund der Ermglichung [ground of enabling], which is sometimes found in Beitrge as Grund der Mglichkeit [ground of possibility] (WW 177/OET 136 fn. a; B 297/C 234). This must not be confused with traditional concepts of a condition of possibility. A condition of possibility is always a condition for something. It is a condition for
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Being [Sein] is the condition for beings, which are thereby already established in advance as things [Dinge] (the objectively present at hand). Being conditions [be-dingt] beings either as their cause (summum ens d!miourgos [craftsman]) or as the ground of the objectivity of the thing in representation (condition of the possibility of experience or in some way as the earlier, which it is in virtue of its higher constancy and presence, as accords with its generality).14 Hence, Sein remains metaphysical in its signification. Seyn, on the other hand, signifies being as thought independently of any relation to beings.15 The
a being or for experience, for instance. In this way, it is always determined at least in part by that for which it is a condition. Casting ground as a condition would be to remain within the scope of the Leitfrage and the metaphysical determination of beyng as being. For Heidegger, on the other hand, ground of possibility or enabling is that which enables what is grounded on it to be, but is not itself essentially determined by the latter. Although he points out that [g]round of possibility is still a metaphysical expression, it is modified insofar as it is thought out of the abyssal and steadfast belongingness [Zugehrigkeit] (B 297/C 234). In other words, it is conceived on the basis of the inherent grounding character of the event, not its relation to what is grounded. Yet, ground is also that which is most proper to what is grounded. It bears the gravity of essence (recall that in WW, essence was provisionally understood to mean ground of enabling or ground of the inner possibility) (OET 136;143). In Beitrge ground is given a more technical formulation as das Sichverbergen im tragenden Durchragen [selfconcealing in a protrusion that bears] (B 379/C 300). This is further differentiated into Ergrnden [creative grounding or Fathoming the ground] and Das ursprngliche Grnden des Grundes [The original grounding of the ground] or grndende Grund [grounding ground], each of which are again further differentiated (B 307/C 243).
14

B 478/C 376

15

The sense in which beyng is separated from beings is clarified in the lecture record composed by Dr. Alfred Guzzoni, Summary of a Seminar on the Lecture Time and Being, published in On Time and Being, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 33: Then the phrase to think Being without beings was discussed. Along with the expression without regard to the relation of Being to beings, this phrase is the abbreviated formulation of: to think Being without regard to grounding Being in terms of beings. To think Being without beings thus does not mean that the relation to beings is
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sense of this can be clarified as follows: Seyn is not to be determined as the being of beings, nor is it to be understood in any other way co-determined by a relation to beings as its counterpart, and consequently the question of Seyn cannot be oriented by the question of the being of beings. The nature of this separation of beyng from beings is complex, though. For, beings remain dependent on beyng. Thus, there is a one-way relation of dependence. As we will see momentarily, this shift also leads to a shift in how Heidegger understands difference. The question of Seyn cannot be oriented by the ontological difference between being and beings because in that configuration being remains co-determined by the differential relation to its counterpart - beings.16 Thus, Heidegger argues, There is no immediate difference between beyng and beings, because there is altogether no immediate relation between them. Even though beings as such oscillate only in the appropriation [Ereignung], beyng remains abyssally far from all beings.17 Importantly, Heidegger is not claiming beyng has no relation to beings, but that beyng has no immediate relation to beings. Beyng is related to beings only mediately through der Streit von Welt und Erde [the strife of world and earth].18

inessential to Being, that we should disregard this relation. Rather, it means that Being is not to be thought in the manner of metaphysics, which consists in the fact that the summum ens as causa sui accomplishes the grounding of all beings as such (cf. Leibnizs so-called twenty-four metaphysical theses in Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. II, pp. 454 ff.). But we mean more than this. Above all, we are thinking of the metaphysical character of the ontological difference according to which Being is thought and conceived for the sake of beings, so that Being, regardless of being the ground, is subjugated to beings.
16

As is worked out via the problematic of the essence of truth in Beitrge, in contrast, Heidegger shifts this differential relationship from one between being and beings to a selfdifferential operation internal to beyng itself.
17

B 477/C 375 B 477/C 375

18

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2: The Shift from the Leitfrage to the Grundfrage The distinction between Sein and its conceptual successor, Seyn, correlates with a distinction between two configurations of the question about Sein (or Seyn): the Leitfrage or guiding question and the Grundfrage or basic question.19 The Leitfrage is governed and oriented by the question about beings as beings (on h!i on).20 Because this is its point of departure, when it comes to ask about being, it asks the question of the being of beings.21 Aristotle, Heidegger believes, gave this question Its most general form, rendered as ti to on (What are beings?) and ultimately determined his response in terms of ousia, the beingness of beings.22 On the basis of this determination, despite the denial that being has the character of a genus, being (as beingness) is always and only meant as the koinon, the common and thus what is common to every being.23 The meaning of the term Sein ultimately remains determined by this framework of the Leitfrage. Thus, Heidegger supplants the Leitfrage with the Grundfrage, for which the starting point is not beings.24 It is the question of the essential occurrence [Wesung] of beyng which interrogates the openness for essential occurrence [Offenheit fr Wesung] as such, i.e., truth which essentially occurs in advance of the determination of 1) beings, 2) the Leitfrage, and 3) the historical epoch of
19

B 75-76/C 60 C 60 C 60 C 60 C 60 C 60
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20

21

22

23

24

metaphysics.25 In other words, the Grundfrage inquires into the ground that enables these grounded structures to be (in their distinctive determinations), but not on the basis of any relation of this ground to what is grounded. Rather, it asks about this ground independently of any such relation. 3: The Originary Ground of Heideggers A-lthic Framework: The Essence of Truth as the Clearing for/of Self-Concealing Within these conceptual transformations, let us now return to the question of truth. As a point of emphasis, the problematic of truth is an essentially ontological26 problematic it pertains directly to the nature of beyng as event. As noted, in Beitrge, Heidegger reformulates the essence of truth as the clearing for or of self-concealing.27 This is recognizably related to the a-lthic formulation of truth, but in fact articulates a fundamental transformation. Recall the strong a-lthic account of the essence of truth presented in WW, composed of two correlated structures: 1) truth as altheia, the freedom or openness through which the movement of unconcealment, the disclosure of beings, or generation of a meaningful world are enabled, and 2) untruth as originary concealment, the ground enabling unconcealment; or the lthe of which altheia is the alpha-privative. Truth there, in its most originary sense, is this

25

C 60

26

I mean ontological in a non-technical sense here: simply pertaining to the problematic of being (or, rather, beyng). I dont mean it in the sense of Heideggers technical use in this text.
27

Die Lichtung fr das Sichverbergen [the clearing for self-concealing] or Lichtung des Sichverbergens [the clearing of self-concealing] (B 348/C 275, italics removed; B 329/C 261). The connection of this with beyng is again highlighted in the alternative formulation: the essence of truth is die lichtende Verbergung des Seyns [the clearing concealment of beyng] (B 380/C 300).
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altheia/lthe dynamic process in which a world of beings or meaning comes to be, but which is grounded in an essential withdrawal, closedness, or refusal. The core discussion of the essence of truth in Beitrge comes in Part C) of the fifth joining, Die Grndung,28 which opens by posing an alternative formulation of the question of truth as a question about the truth of the truth.29 Heidegger is well aware of the obvious charges of circularity or vacuity this is likely to draw.30 However, this formulation escapes such charges because truth is used in two different senses, one of which signifies the ground or essence of the other. Indeed, Heideggers distinction between these two senses aligns his analysis of truth with the conceptual shifts discussed above. Truth, in this formulation, signifies on the one hand [d]ie Wahrheit selbst (truth itself) and on the other das Wahre (what is true).31 By what is true Heidegger means the world of disclosed beings or meaning, the domain of the Da (the there), or again the Entwurfsbereichs (domain of projection).32 Truth itself is prior on the axis of ground and signifies the essence of truth or the ground enabling what is true to be or come to presence. In other words, truth itself is the original [ursprngliche] truth of beyng (event).33 The question of the truth of the truth inquires into truth itself, not what is true. Thus, we are no longer asking about the domain of projection itself as, for instance, in Sein und Zeit where the existential analytic operated within the bounds of the horizon of
28

This section itself proceeds under the heading, Das Wesen der Wahrheit (B 327/C 259). B 327/C 359: nach der Wahrheit der Wahrheit. C 259 B 345/C 273 B 327/C 259 B 329/C 261
115

29

30

31

32

33

temporality constituted by Dasein as thrown projection. Rather, what counts here is the projection [den Wurf] of the very domain of projection [Entwurfsbereichs].34 The immediate upshot of this distinction is that truth that is, truth itself is definitively detached [abgelst] from all beings.35 Or, rendered more poetically, Truth is the great disdainer of all that is true.36 Truth itself is an operation of the event prior to and independent of that which it enables to become manifest, that is, what is true. This is a one-way independence, though, for the manifestation of what is true is dependent upon truth itself. Conceptually separating these two renders the separation of beyng from beings in terms of the problematic of truth. And it is evident why Heidegger would want to make this rather striking move: if to think being on the basis of its relation to beings renders an account that remains metaphysical, and truth is an essential dimension or process of beyng itself, then truth itself must be accounted for independently of any relation to beings, lest the account of it remain metaphysical or re-inscribe beyng with metaphysical content. I identify two lines of argumentation in Heideggers thought that aim to legitimate and clarify this detachment of the essence of truth from what is true, but omit discussion of them here to keep this paper from carrying on too long. The decisive point is that since truths essential structures are the ground for the determination of any world of beings, beings are dependent on truth itself but truth itself is not dependent on beings, i.e., what is true. There is, again, a one-directional relation of dependence. Truth itself must be thought as detached from any relation to beings. Daniela Vallega-Neu puts it nicely in the register of
34

B 327/C 259, my italics B 329/C 261 C 262, italics removed

35

36

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beyng as follows: there is no immediate relation between be-ing [Seyn] as enowning withdrawal and beings, even if a being shelters the truth of be-ing [Seyn]. Why not? Because the essential swaying [Wesen] of be-ing [Seyn] occurs in (but not only in) the not of beings, because the withdrawal of be-ing [Seyn] is precisely what withdraws in the concealing-sheltering [verbergen] of truth.37 So, the truth of truth, i.e., the essence of truth, is detached from all beings. The main methodological importance of this for Heidegger is that it allows him
37

Daniela Vallega-Neu, Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), henceforth HCP, 112. It is important to make the point that this separation of truth (and for that matter of beyng) from beings does not mean that Heidegger reinstates a metaphysical transcendence into his ontology (cf. B 152). Truth itself is not transcendent. In fact, he argues the concept of transcendence belongs to the configuration of truth as correctness and of beings as objectively present (cf. B 227, 7). Truth is immanent to any disclosed world and enables the existence of finite beings (us, for example). By immanent here, I do not mean that truth itself is of the same domain as the world of beings (i.e., on an equiprimordial plane of ground). I mean truth itself (which is the truth of the event) is implicated within beings or the world of beings, without any type of real difference (Descartes) between them and without positing any hierarchy of substantialized planes of reality that would make truth or the event transcendent to this plane. Heidegger nicely allegorizes the immanence of truths dimension of openness, for instance, as follows: [T]he open realm, which conceals itself at the same time that beings come to stand in it, is in fact something like an inner recess [hohle Mitte], e.g., that of a jug. Yet it must be recognized that the inner recess is not just a haphazard emptiness which arises purely on account of the surrounding walls and which happens not to be full of things. It is just the opposite: the inner recess itself is what determines, shapes, and bears the walling action of the walls and of their surfaces. The walls and surfaces are merely what is radiated out by that original open realm which allows its openness to come into play by summoning up, round about itself and toward itself, such-andsuch walls (the particular form of the vessel). That is how the essential occurrence of the open realm radiates back from and in the embracing walls (C 268). From the standpoint of beings, the openness of truth is an immanent structure through which the singular, finite contours of their being are determined and given the space to be differentiated from one another. From a standpoint independent of this relation to beings, the openness of truth is a structure of the essence of truth; that is, a structure of the event as it occurs in and through truth.
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to generate an account of the essence of truth that does not rely on its relation to beings, i.e., which is non-metaphysical. What, then, are we to make of the formulation of the essence of truth as the clearing for/of self-concealing? To render this formulation, Heidegger follows the question of ground, driving thought into a more originary terrain.38 If the major dimensions of the a-lthic articulation of the essence of truth as crystalized in the earlier WW, for example are originary openness (unconcealment; disclosedness) and concealment (closedness; withdrawal), which co-determine each other and operate in a dynamic that, while independent of any relation to beings, enables any world of beings to become manifest, the question is: whence and wherefore concealment and openness? That is, what is the genesis of these two primordial moments of the essential structure of truth? This question marks a major development in Heideggers ontology. It is important to point out that Heidegger poses this questions as: whence and wherefore concealment [Verbergung] and unconcealment [Entbergung]?39 But, though he uses the term unconcealment here, he quickly makes it clear that the real question at hand does not take this in the derivative sense of the unconcealment of beings, nor even as the more originary openness of beings as a whole; it is to be understood in its essence, as the openness of self-concealing (being), that is, the openness of the essence of truth.40 This crucial question is easily and often overlooked by commentators on Beitrge. It is posed parenthetically in 207 and not emphasized prominently in the text elsewhere. However, it is key for making sense of the distinction Heidegger
38

Here, more originary than WW. B 330/C 261 C 266

39

40

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draws in Beitrge between altheia and the essence of truth as clearing for/of selfconcealing. Of central concern, he argues, is that the interpretation of concealment in terms of a-ltheia is ultimately insufficient: A-ltheia means unconcealment and the un-concealed itself, but in that case concealment itself is experienced only as what is to be cleared away, what is to be removed (a-).41 Arguably, this definition of altheia does not express the most developed or richest account of the concept in his work. Yet, the point is that accounting for the structures of truth within the a-lthic framework misses the crucial question he wants to raise: it does not address concealment itself and its ground.42 It consequently misses attaining the question of the self-differentiation that he will argue originates concealment and openness: an account of the structures of truth that does not question into their very originary ground is unable to arrive at an articulation of the essence of truth as the clearing for/of self-concealment.43 Truth as the clearing for self-concealing is thus an essentially different projection [Entwurf] than is altheia and this difference is established precisely in the moment of asking about the originary ground of concealment and openness.44 It is important to be clear what this does not mean: it does not mean that Heidegger disavows his earlier accounts of truth as altheia, but the a-lthic framework must be understood as grounded by a more originary essence of truth, the clearing for/of self-concealing. In WW, the withdrawing action of originary concealment both opened up the primal opening (Da-sein - the ground via which beings are disclosed) and
41

C 277 C 277, my italics ref. C 226 B 550/C 277

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42

43

44

refused the possibility of total disclosure, thus enabling the finite disclosure of a world of beings. This arrangement seemed to make concealment more originary than openness on the axis if ground (though, because these structures operate there in a correlative dynamic, this is a bit overly simplistic). Moreover, these were the most primordial ontological structures thinkable they formed the limit or horizon of thoughts ability to articulate the nature of truth, ground, or being. In Beitrge, after dissociating the structures of concealment and openness from beings and affirming the consequent necessity of rethinking them, their basic arrangement is reconfigured via the question of the ground whence they are originated. Here, Heidegger rotates them onto an equiprimordial axis with respect to one another,45 then questions along the axis of ground into the ground enabling the genesis of these structures themselves. This is structurally akin to Hegel reframing Kant by arguing that the very difference between the phenomenal and noumenal is itself a moment of the absolute. A sense of this questions radicality can be gained by isolating one of its dimensions for a moment and asking: whence concealment? (!) What is the genesis or origin of concealment itself? This question was unthinkable via the conceptual structure available in WW (because its horizon was still determined by thinking the nature of the essence of truth in relation to beings). To ask whence concealment? is to question into the origination of the most originary ontological structure thus far thinkable one the eclipse of which constitutes the foundation of the epoch of metaphysics. Yet, the question is not just about concealment. Concealment and openness are correlative; they always go hand in hand. Concealment is a withdrawal from or refusal of openness; openness is a breaching of concealment.
45

This is again a bit over simplistic, since the correlation between these two is complex, but it gives shape to the basic move he is making.
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Like the apparent two sides of a Mbius strip,46 they present themselves as irreconcilably conflictual (in strife), yet an ursprngliche Innigkeit [original intimacy] must hold for them to correlate at all.47 Otherwise, to use atomistic language for a moment, they would be like two Lucretian atoms falling parallel prior to the clinamen with no possibility of encounter. Thus, to ask whence and wherefore concealment and openness? is to inquire into the intimacy that itself differentiates and generates these two; the very fabric that distends and differentiates itself into them; or the curve that traverses the difference between them. It is to ask how these very structures are originated. The formulation the clearing for/of self-concealing is meant to articulate the answer to this question. How, then, are we to understand this such that it grounds and generates concealment and openness? The key, I think, is in Heideggers concept of decision or self-differentiation. 4: Difference and Decision As mentioned, Heideggers account of difference undergoes a major reconfiguration in Beitrge. Here, he develops a concept of primal difference or self-differentiation [Unterschied or Entscheidung] that constitutes an essential operation of beyng as event, itself. He arrives at this via two more local tacks: one oriented by the problematic of the ontological difference [ontologischen Differenz] and the other by the problematic of historical decision [Entscheidung].48

46

Mbius strips have only one side. B 345/C 275 B 465/C 366; B 87/C 70
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47

48

4.1: The Ontological Difference The ontological difference is, of course, the difference between being and beings so crucial to Heideggers earlier work. In Beitrge, this is now seen as a transitional concept, to be replaced by an account of the more originary ground enabling that difference to be conceptualized at all. This is a necessary move, because the concept of the ontological difference is insufficient for the program of inquiring into the nature of beyng as event it remains fundamentally structured by the problematic of the Leitfrage and thus carries the inscription of metaphysics. Namely, on the basis of the ontological difference between being and beings: 1) being remains understood in a way co-determined by its counterpart beings, 2) being is understood as the being of beings, and 3) the question of being is thus oriented by the question of the being of beings. In Heideggers words: as necessary as the distinction [between being and beings] is and even if it must be thought in terms of the tradition in order to create a very first horizon for the question of beyng, it is just as fatal since it indeed arises precisely from an inquiry into beings as such (beingness).49 Yet the concept of the ontological difference is not simply discarded. Rather, The question of beyng, as the basic question [Grundfrage], is driven immediately to the question of the origin of the ontological difference.50 Through this question Heidegger arrives at a more originary conception of difference that operates at the heart of the essence of truth and, in turn, the event. The conceptual difference between being and beings is possible,
49

C 197. Or again: The ontological difference is a passageway which becomes unavoidable if the necessity of asking the basic question is to be made visible on the basis of the guiding question (C 367).
50

C 366

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Heidegger arguers, only because beyng is of such a nature that it sets itself off in relief [abhebt] over and against beings.51 In other words, this setting itself off in relief is the mechanism by which beyng is structurally able to crystallize in the conception of the difference between being and beings. Yet, this setting itself off in relief over and against beings can originate only in the essential occurrence [Wesung] of beyng.52 Why, then, is beyng such that it sets itself off in relief over and against beings? In Heideggers words, it is because: Beyng, as the between which clears, moves itself into this clearing and therefore, though never recognized or surmised as appropriation [Ereignung], is for representational thinking something generally differentiable, and differentiated, as being. This applies already to the way beyng essentially occurs in the first beginning, namely, as physis, which comes forth as altheia but which is at once forgotten in favor of beings (ones that are perceivable only as such only in virtue of altheia) and is reinterpreted as a being that is most eminently, i.e., as a mode of being and specifically the highest mode.53 In other words, because beyng brings itself to determination (in part) in the operation of truth, the possibility is established that thought accounts for beyng in terms of that determinate dimension, and that thought does so in terms of a co-determinate differential relation with beings which, consequently, opens the possibility of understanding beyng as a being that is most eminently. Here, the
51

B 465/C 366 B 465/C 366 B 466/C 366-367

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52

53

ontological difference is exhibited as the merely metaphysically conceived, and thus already misinterpreted, foreground [Vordergrund] of a de-cision [Entscheidung] which is beyng itself.54 The clearing operation which we gain access to first as the essence of truth belongs to the essential occurrence of beyng as event. And clearing operates precisely as a de-cision or differentiation which is not a difference between two beings, but difference itself. That is, it is an operation of self-differentiation that generates things that have differences between them, but is not to be understood on the basis of those things or their differences. It is more originary than them. In part, the heart of Beyng as event is self-differentiation. The event of ap-propriation includes the de-cision: the fact that freedom, as the abyssal ground, lets arise a need [Not] out of which, as the excess of the ground, the gods and humans come forth in their separateness.55 This originary self-differential operation of the event Heidegger calls the decisional essence of beyng.56 4.2: Decision Heidegger articulates this self-differentiation or clearing earlier in the text (division 1: Prospect) as the ground of historical decision [Entscheidung] or decision [Ent-sheidung].57 Again, decision is meant here in the sense of separating or, as Vallega-Neu describes, partedness or parting.58 As should be clear, it is in no way a human act, choice, resolution, the preferring of one thing and
54

B 474/C 373 B 470/C 370 C 359 B 87/C 69 HCP 109

55

56

57

58

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the setting aside of another.59 Such would fall under what Heidegger calls the existentiell misinterpretation of decision, which is indeed an existentiellanthropological misinterpretation: it takes the human being as a subject making this decision, whereas for Heidegger the human being is subject to or structured by the dimensions of truth generated in originary decision.60 It should be noted that, indeed, the notion of decision does come into play heavily in Heideggers account of history and the role of the human being in producing a new beginning for thought (cf. B 43-49). But those issues address consequent structures based on this antecedent, more primal ground: What is here called de-cision proceeds to the innermost center of the essence of beyng itself.61 Decision should be understood in the current context as this separating or differentiation occurring in the essence of truth. As Heidegger writes: de-cision refers to the sundering itself, which separates [sheidet] and in separating lets come into play for the first time the ap-propriation [Er-eignung] of precisely this sundered open realm [Offenen] as the clearing for the self-concealing.62 4.3: The Differential Originary Grounding of Concealment and Openness The essence of truth as the clearing for/of self-concealing is differential in the sense above. Heidegger stops short, though, of developing a full account of the operations through which this primal difference generates the a-lthic structures. However, I think the resources for doing so are present in the text, even if its

59

C 69 C 70, my italics C 70 B 88/C 70

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60

61

62

author did not recognize this. On the basis of Heideggers concepts, let us propose the following genetic account of concealment and openness. Concealment and openness are in their differentiation from one another. As a point is extended into a line, openness is breached and generated as the distention of this differentiation differing from itself. As the limits of a line recede, drawing it out, difference refuses to be that which it generates; concealment is this refusal, generated as differentiation differing from itself. We can highlight different aspects of the formulation of the essence of truth to clarify: The clearing for/of self-concealing is this originary differentiation. It is a clearing in the sense of a distancing or a sundering [Auseinandertreten]: as two passing ships clear one another, concealment clears openness and openness clears concealment.63 Yet they remain correlative, for this distancing is itself the breaching open of openness. Clearing is the breaching of a space between or distension that itself constitutes openness and concealment by constituting their difference. In this sense, with respect to concealment, for instance, Heidegger writes: That a clearing might ground what is selfconcealing that is the meaning of the dictum that truth is primarily clearingconcealing.64 But the clearing for/of self-concealment is not one or the other, concealment or openness. To think the essence of truth is to think into the differentiation that originates concealment and openness. This exhibits the faultiness of a common interpretation that the essence of truth (and in turn of the event) in Beitrge is self-concealment.65 It is not. This mistake misses the critical question: whence and wherefore concealment and openness? Self63

B 88/C 70 C 271 Another version of the a-lthic interpretation.

64

65

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concealment is a moment of the evental dynamic. The essence of truth is differentiation differing from itself, self-distending or self-displacing in the manner of clearing for/of self-concealing. This is clearing for and of self-concealing because differentiation both generates concealment and clears it from openness, while concealment itself takes part in generating the clearing of openness. It is self-concealment because it is differentiation itself that withdraws from its own clearing: concealment is the self-refusal enacted by differentiation. 5: Conclusion The essence of truth is, in its core, differentiation or the clearing for/of selfconcealment. Rendering this account establishes a position for thought in a more originary domain than was previously available: thought breaches into the evental nature of beyng. It accomplishes this by pursuing the Grundfrage, stepping back along the axis of ground into the primessential moment of decision or, as William McNeill nicely puts it, event of differentiation.66 The event of differentiation is not just the heart of truth, but an essential aspect of the event of beyng itself.67 For, this truth of beyng is indeed nothing distinct from beyng but rather is the most proper essence of beyng.68

66

William McNeill, The Time of Contributions to Philosophy, in Companion to Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy, ed. C. E. Scott, S. M. Schoenbohm, D. Vallega-Neu, and A. Vallega (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 139.
67

In Daniela Vallega-Neus words, it is a differencing which occurs within the essential swaying [Wesen] of be-ing [Seyn], HCP 111.
68

C 74
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Beyond Heideggers Differential Ontology: Deleuzian Com-plication Janae Sholtz (Alvernia University)

Abstract The Heidegger/Deleuze affiliation is a rhizomatic crisscross of ontological, aesthetic and political paths. Both restore philosophy to ontology, re-positing the inceptive question of the relation of being and thinking by conceptualizing difference at the heart of being, identify a double movement of Being, propose theories of the event, and posit a people-to-come. Though their lexical and procedural similarities are alluring, Deleuze maintains that Heideggers ontological difference is too fixed, his conception of Being too formally and categorically bound to the powers of representation and that Heidegger introduced a necessary shame into philosophy. In this paper, I treat theirs as an encounter of provocation and productivity, attending to this relationship where it is articulated most extensively. Through the analysis of concepts such as the fold, difference, and event, I develop the political and ethical complications of Deleuzes thought.

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A precursor, a transition, a pointing before and behind but, as the plurality of voices attest,1 everywhere ambiguous (WCT 51), the Heidegger/Deleuze affiliation is a rhizomatic crisscross of ontological, aesthetic and political paths. Both restore philosophy to ontology, re-positing the inceptive question of the relation of being and thinking by conceptualizing difference at the heart of being, identify a double movement of Being, propose theories of the event, and posit a people-to-come. Though their lexical and procedural similarities are alluring, Deleuze maintains that Heideggers ontological difference is too fixed, his conception of Being too formally and categorically bound to the powers of representation and that Heidegger introduced a necessary shame into philosophy. We will endeavor to treat theirs as an encounter of provocation and productivity, attending to this relationship where it is articulated most extensively: Diffrence et rptition, Foucault, and Questce que la philosophie? In Notes on Heideggers Philosophy of Difference (DR 89-91/64-66), a five-point summary of Heideggers theses, Deleuze positions Heidegger with respect to his own project of bringing difference out of its cave. Previously, Deleuze has argued that the concept of difference has always been mediated through the concepts of identity, opposition, analogy and resemblance. In all of these instances, difference is thought in terms of negation of a prior more original term from which it differs, thus relying on the priority of the identical which is derivative of the Platonist conception of the One (DR 82/59). Reversing Platonism paves the way for concentrating on difference in itself.
1

Alain Badiou argues for their proximity based on the univocity of Being; Constantin Boundas views Deleuzes Difference and Repetition to be a response to Heideggers Being and Time but claims the lines of divergence ultimately outweigh those of proximity; Miguel De Beistegui draws them together as thinkers of different sides of Being, ultimately irreconcilable. Claire Parnet identifies a correlation in their occupation with the non-thought within thought, yet insists Nevertheless, you are not a Heideggerian (Dialogues, 23).
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Heideggers project also demands the overturning of Platonism. Heidegger locates the occlusion of ontological difference in the Platonic appropriation of the pre-Socratic inception of thought. Traditionally, Parmenides paths have been interpreted as exposing the inappropriateness of thinking both being and the existence (being) of non-being. The Platonic solution to Parmenides renowned problematic established a regime of representation through prioritizing transcendent Being. Being must be the permanent, fully present One, transcendent to the world of sensible beings, else falling into that which both is and is not. Beings, then, can only be thought as approximations in terms of their resemblance to Being, providing the basis for an image of thought based on representation, for the understanding of truth based on correspondence, and for the priority of presence in metaphysics. Against this species of interpretations that bar the way to thinking Nothing as anything but the logical negation of Being, Heideggers interrogation of the Not initiates the question of difference (pt 1): Nothingness is the Not of being and thus is Being experienced from the point of view of being. The Ontological Difference is the Not between being and Being. Yet Being, as the Not of being, is no more a nothingness in the sense of a nihil negativum than the Difference, as the Not between being and Being, is merely a distinction of the intellect (ER, 3). Thus, the Not, as difference, refers to questioning (pt 3) about this difference, and for Deleuze, the correspondence between difference and questioning is fundamental: Being corresponds to the essence of the problem or the question as such. It is as though there were an opening, a gap, an ontological fold which relates being and the question to one another. In this relation, being is difference itself (DR 89/64). In questioning Being, Heidegger also reopens the question of the relation of Being and thinking, yet another touchstone with Deleuze, for whom the variable problematic structure of Being requires a new image of thought.
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Ontological Difference (Zweifelt): At stake is the nature of the twofold relation at the center of Heideggers philosophy, exemplified by the notion of the fold, and, since the fold and unfolding [is] arguably the key to the whole of Heideggers philosophy (N 112), this evolving trope, taken up by both Heidegger and Deleuze, is a constant touchstone to their relationship and to the philosophy of others. Deleuze inaugurates his discussion of Heideggers ontological difference as the Fold (pt 2) to emphasize that difference is not between in an ordinary sense, but is itself constitutive of Being. Deleuze indicates that Heideggers own thinking of the non-representational nature of this relation, or fold, undergoes a change from his early (1929) renditions of ontological difference (pt 4). The problem with understanding difference as between Being and beings is that this instantiates the priority of identity once again, in relating difference to the third figure of the between. This representational understanding of difference, still existed in Heideggers early thinking in the form of the transcendence of being-there, Dasein. The folding of Being a beings is immediate yet implies an activity of relating, thus this topology evokes the generative, differentiating nature of difference, a point that cannot be underestimated for Deleuze, for whom difference must immediately relate the differing terms to one another (DR 154/117). Deleuze signals this as an important turning beyond metaphysics, when Heidegger moves away from the question of Being in terms of Da-sein and towards the event of unfolding of Being itself: Being itself can open out in its truth the difference of Being and beings preserved in itself only when difference explicitly takes place (OM, 91) (DR 90/65). Deleuze moves to several new references (pt 4), notably Jean Beaufrets Introduction to Pome de Parmenide. Beaufret honors Heideggers translation of the Parmenidean phrase, The Same is at once thinking and being, as it entails a unity of difference based on belonging rather
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than the identical. The Same implies the active nature of identity, 2 an event whereby man and Being are delivered over to each other.3 The particularity of Heideggers translation is that it submits thinking to Being rather than making the subjective turn of modernity. Thinking is not so much Daseins creation, as it is the force of the outside, an eminent concept in post- phenomenological French thought. Heideggers lectures on Parmenides correspond to the shift in focus from Dasein to the unmediated, destinal unfolding of Being and the Greek experience of truth as a-letheia. Being shows itself in a constant unfolding or unveiling of various appearances. A being is always a modality of its Being, thus Heidegger relates beings in their difference to the fullness of Being. Only those who think ontological difference can understand how Being is at once a unity but of difference. A truly sapient man is one who is always cognizant of all three paths, that of being, that of nonbeing, and that of appearance (GA40; IM 113).4 The question of ontological difference yields the truth of being, aletheia, which, in turn, illuminates the nature of the relation of Being and thinking.5 Heidegger writes, In one respect thinking is outside the duality toward which it makes its way, required by and responding to it. In another respect, this very making its way toward remains within the duality, which is never simply an indifferently represented distinction between Being and beings but rather comes

Identity and Difference. 39 (GA 11) Ibid. 36.

Beaufrets insistance that Heideggers interpretation of three Parmenidean paths is a critical reworking of the problem in terms of and rather than either/or assumedly opens the path for Deleuze to read affirmation in Heideggers ontology.
5

Point 3: ontological difference corresponds to questioning. It is the being of the questions (DR 90/65).
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to presence from the revealing unfolding (GA 19; Moira 96). The withdrawal of Being leaves a caesura, opening a space which calls thinking. Thinking happens as a response to this withdrawal. Thinking, therefore, concerns what is withheld from the duality, the Not not the poles of duality, but relation itself. Thinking arises from question of difference in itself. But, Deleuze wonders, does he truly get there? Even if the Same necessarily includes differentiation, difference based on belonging is problematic. Belonging together happens through gathering by way of difference, but thinking is gathering,6 thus leaving us with an immediate folding of Being and thought of which Deleuze ultimately remains suspicious. Deleuze concludes that positing relation in terms of the Same is not enough to think original difference; a judgment he refers back to Heideggers interpretation of Nietzschean eternal return as of the same, which connotes the return of the identical rather than the different.7 Preferring (non)being to Heideggers manner of striking through Being (DR 91/66), Deleuze detects an absence of affirmation in Heideggers rhetoric. Though in concurrence that it is the peculiarity of questions to draw a response (DR 106/78), rather than the enclosing fold of call and response that practically negates the difference, Deleuze insists upon the perpetual openness of the question (ibid) as that which problematises a being in such a way as to open it for the mark of its difference8 Thinking is not a return to the fold of Being but finite affirmative responses to problematic (non)Being constituted in
6

In What is Called Thinking (GA8), thought is related to original saying, logos and legein, which express the gathering of opposed elements.
7

For Deleuze, the return is a selection that screens the identical (reactive), allowing the different to return, thus guaranteeing the production of the new. (NP, 68-71).
8

Jonathan Dronsfield. Between Deleuze and Heidegger There Never is Any Difference. David Pettigrew & Franois Raffoul (eds.), French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception. SUNY Press. 2008.
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singular events, which, in their differentiation, infinitely displace the response. In the final paragraph, we receive a clue as to where this path leads: to effectuate the conversion after which univocal Being belongs only to difference, and, in this sense, revolves around being (DR 91/66), implying two things: (1) Being, rather than being differentiated, is difference, pure difference, and Being revolving around being is pure immanence. These concepts provide the basis for characterizing the response (relation) of thinking to Being as effect rather than autoaffection of Being, and difference as constitutive of this relationship, rather than engendered by it. Univocal Multiplicity (les replis) Rather than difference as twofold duality between Being and beings, Being is univocal differentiating difference, exemplified by the figures of multiplicity and intensity. Intensity (expressed as a difference in degrees of force) is the problematic field of Being (plane of immanence), which resolves itself into extensive actualizations. 9 Multiplicities are comprised of differential elements, which are reciprocally determined. The individuation of these intensity differentials explains how Deleuzes system can be both univocal and immanent, as well as differenciated and genetic. There are an infinite number of potential relations/interactions within the intensive field, which can be expressed, or actualized, as the resolution of particular relations. Deleuzes ontological plane is a manifold of intensive multiplicities that continuously folds, unfolds, and refolds,

Deleuze uses differential calculus to explain the double nature of Being, the Virtual and the Actual, as a problematic ontological field of interaction. A differential relation may have an infinite spectrum of values, and solutions; at the point of resolution, the difference (or problematic character) disappears, leaving an extensive quantity, the Actual. But as values reach zero in a differential relation, the solution becomes nil, while the relation itself remains, virtual and intensive (DR 221-366/171-182).
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a single field of interaction in which the intensive tends towards the limits of virtuality and actuality. As opposed to Heidegger, at the level of the intensive, Being is not a relation or gathering of things that differ, even if these differents are formal structures; rather, it is the pure structure of relation, or difference in itself (dx/dy). This ontological account is also the explanatory power behind Deleuzes account of the immanence of thought and Being. The element of intensity subtends both the quality in the sensible and the transcendent exercise within the sensible (DR 188/144); they are both constituted out of the prior manifold of intensive multiplicity, the transcendental condition of real experience. The Open versus the Outside Heideggerian difference is folded by the tropes of belonging and responding into a homology between thought and that which is to be thought (DR 188/ 144, ft.11). Deleuze finds an alternative in Foucaults account of the fold (F111), which underscores a fundamental disproportion between Being and thinking. Foucaults double challenge to phenomenology [and Heidegger] concerns the separation of speaking and seeing as two irreducible forms of knowledge: Neither language nor light will be examined in the areas that relate them to one another... all intentionality collapses in the gap that opens up between these (F109). For Heidegger, the fold of Being is sufficient for breaking with intentionality; thought happens at the point of the fold, the Open as veiling/unveiling of Being. Yet Heideggers description of the clearing [Lichtung] as the Opening for light and sound re-establishes a representational correlation of what is seen and what is spoken, replicating intentionality at the ontological level.

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Foucaults topology establishes a more complex relation between being and thought, in terms of the Outside and the Inside, drawing upon a tri-figured ontology of knowledge, power and self. Light and sound, as forms of exteriority, are non-relational dimensions of knowledge-being, which cannot merely resolve themselves into a laconic giving (Heidegger) or chiasmatic intertwinement (Merleau-Ponty); they flow from an informal element, power-Being, as a nonstratified substance capable of explaining how the two forms of knowledge can embrace and intertwine on each stratum (F 121). This Outside is akin to the Deleuzian intensive manifold, a pure relation of forces: a turbulent, stormy zone where particular points and relations of forces are tossed about (F 121). Self-being, the Inside, is the folding of forces which happen along multiple axis [a fourfold] ultimately predicated on the fold of the outside itself (F, 104). The Self is always subjectivized from particular stratico-strategic interlockings whose conditions are not apodictic but problematic (F 114). Foucaults is a complex, layered Event, which explains the appearance of the Subject as a corollary of the Outside and prompts the Nietzschean inclination to recover force, to discover this outside as a limit, the last point before Being folds (F 113). In what amounts to a double displacement, thinking is not merely the folded inverse of Being, it is the disjunctive spacing between the various foldings of the Outside that condition speaking and seeing [the Subject] in the first place (F 116). Being is a violence constituted by a pure difference that is done to [and thereby constitutes] thinking. To think is to fold the Outside, but in a constant confrontation and exchange which unfolds thought to think otherwise. Thus the ontological becomes inseparable from the political, a micropolitics. In light of this, we can analyze the fact that Heidegger folded too quickly (F 112), leading to the deep ambiguity of his technical and political ontology (F 113).

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Being and the Event The Foucauldian fold exposes the relation of forces constituting the interiority of thought (F 129), forces which Deleuze identifies with an intensive, self-differentiating and immanent plenum. The fold is Power force itself is an act, an act of the fold (TF 18). Confrontation with the Outside necessitates an understanding of the fold of Being and thought in terms of becoming, as an Event, and, undeniably, Deleuzes quintessential focus is the secret of events (LS, 9): the emergence of sense/events out of chaotic, intensive multiplicity, and the emergence of individuals from immanent continuity. In The Fold, Deleuze claims that the formal element of the fold only appears with the Baroque condition of infinite process (L 38), prompting him to consider the nature of event in terms of Leibnizs infinite series and Whiteheads process metaphysics. Expanding beyond the folds of subjectivation, folding and unfolding denote real movements of connection and dissolution producing singular, continuous events that occur on a pre-personal, pre-subjective level. The affinity with Whitehead lies in the scope of the event, such that everything is event/becoming, and in the inclusion of incompossibilities within the same world, such that beings are open to the outside rather than irremediably closed-off, i.e. monads. Rather than substances or objects, events comprise the nature of being, fluvia unfolding in infinite directions. In Logic of Sense, Deleuze unequivocally relates the Event to the emergence of sense and to language (language as the house of being?) (LS 22/12), yet the Event only occurs in relation to the Outside, the becoming of corporeal bodies/things. Thus the event is double-sided, at once referring to conditions of its emergence and to the generation of incorporeal expression or sense. Differentiation, the logic of becoming, illuminates the double nature of a bidirectional event: an ideal half, which reaches into the virtual and is constituted
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both by differential relations and by concomitant singularities; and an actual half, constituted both by the qualities that incarnate those relations and by the parts that incarnate those singularities (DI 100). The two-fold of the virtual/actual is subdivided on each side, giving us a world perhaps understood as a fourfold (DI, 103). The Event is likened to a surface or border between this mixture of forces and the incorporeal effects that take place on this surface: the boundary between propositions and things (LS 22). Occupying a paradoxical ontological status, neither word nor being, it is extra-Being (ibid), beyond but bound to Being. Deleuze insists upon the autonomy of events/surface effects; they are caused but not reducible to the mixture of bodies. Though the actualization of singularities is itself unforeseeable outside of the chance encounter of the series/state of affairs, the selection of particular elements within said actualization renders the event ideal and neutral with regard to its cause. Events are also impacted by quasi-causal relations, which act as agents of communication between series of ideal events or singularities, through which events are circulated and proliferated, skimming along the surface. Ideal events or singularities are excessive to their actualization, contained within as a virtual multiplicity of the effect, thus there is an inherent condition of nonresemblance included in the twofold. Hence we can understand how Deleuze can maintain the Zweifelt as the ideal fold (TF), yet still critique Heideggers identification of the two sides as a re-presentational homology. Event is a contestation, where potentialities are continuously being determined, an infinite surface containing ideal events/singularities. Ideal events, contained potentially in the Event, are selectively/creatively expressed or differentiated. Their actualization [to be actualized is also to be expressed (LS 110)] are surface effects, producing a quality that points back to differential
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relations and the distribution of corresponding singularities (DI 96). These event-flashes are the donation of sense (LS 8 9/71), but also reflect the realm of non-resembling, sense-less, affective intensity beneath the level of meaning. Sense becomes even more complicated because the produced effects are themselves related in heterogeneous series through the quasi-causal paradoxical agents (non-sense) that connect and proliferate senses. Therefore, Event en-folds a pure potentiality of virtual, ideal events, and, for philosophy, it is this aspect of the event that must be thought. Philosophical thinking must be a counter-actualization of the event, a mapping of the possible divergent series (other than the actualized) included in the event/fold, making the depth rise to the surface. Though the emergence of the event is accidental, thinking transforms the event into a selective, creative process, thus constituting the work of philosophical concept creation. Thus complexity of the event: it is the nature of Being as eventum tatum, is a sign of the struggle between chaos and order, provides for the passage to the new, and is the subject for philosophy/thought. The culmination of Heideggers post-metaphysical account of Being also turns on a notion of a fourfold event. As a further differentiation of the Zweifelt, Heideggers Ereignis approaches many of the characteristics of Deleuzes event: singular, temporal, differential. As a gathering of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, Ereignis plays on notions of presence/absence, which could be easily associated with the virtual/actual. Earth and divinities are both indicative of concealment, the depths of the past and the unknown future. As well, each event brings to presence, generates, a previously absent relation: The appropriative mirroring sets each of the four free into its own, but it binds these free ones into the simplicity of their essential being toward one another (GA 7; PLT 179). That a thing can only be what it is through the interplay of the fourfold implies
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that the thing, rather than essential and substantive, is always singular. Yet, this singularization of the thing only reflects one side of Deleuzean singularity, actualization. Singularities are also said of the differential yet non-differentiated components of a virtual multiplicity, and as such singularities express the generative, infinite unfolding of difference always to come. The difference is between an unveiling singularity of truth and an unfolding genesis of singularities; a difference that underscores the problem of origin. Deleuze claims that singularities never indicate a pre-given unity, but, form from random selections, contingencies, obscure precursors, which create the medium of their own existence (TF 76),10 whereas the Heideggerian new is constituted by returning to a past, albeit, one that was never present. Appreciably, the gathering of Being happens through the thing (i.e. jug, bridge, river), rather than Dasein, and Heidegger re-casts man as one element among four, the counterpart to concealed divinities. Yet despite Heideggers gestures toward a post-subjective, purely differential ontology, Ereignis remains for us, as the bearers of finitude, an event of coming into ones own in which man and Being are delivered over to each other (ID 36), however mutually determined, and this definitely separates this experience from Deleuze, who maintains the Event occurs at the pre-personal level. Finally, with regard to tenor of the event, Heidegger may begin Strife [between earth and world], but the fourfold is ultimately characterized by unity. Deleuzes ontological field is likened to a battle, the effects of actualization and counter-actualization, likened to little deaths, reflecting the never-ending movement between chaos and order.

10

An insight many attribute to the influence of dynamical systems theory and principles of self-organization therein.
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Politico-Ontological: A Philosophers Shame Thinking for Heidegger and Deleuze is a response to Being, but, in terms of Being-as-Event, that response is counter-actualization, which suggests thinking is out-of-joint with respect to Being rather than belonging to it. Counter-actualization is geared towards unearthing potentialities of the Idea/multiplicity, those that were not actualized but are nonetheless real. Politically, these counter-actualizations shatter the present, inciting other futures, paving the way for new peoples and new earths. Heideggers paths for thinking inspire a similar regard for transformation and journeying, signified by a similar foray into the unthought. Though Heideggers unthought is determined from a particular Greek past. Moreover, this unthought has the same nature as thinking, while Deleuzes virtual is what cannot be thought because it constitutes thought. That Heidegger got the wrong people, earth, and blood (WIP ) is an outgrowth of a certain ontological blindness. Heidegger understood the movement of being, its grounding groundlessness, but not its scope. Rather than a proliferation of infinite movements (i.e. becoming), there is only one instance of infinite movement (i.e. the forever repeated question of being and Being): metaphorically, the wrong earth. Due to his emphasis on origin and unity, philosophys Greek beginnings and Beings original simplicity, Heideggers philosophy is destinal rather than visionary, bound to notions of return, repetition and history. In Heidegger it is not a question of going farther than the Greeks; it is enough to resume their movement in an initiating, recommencing repetition (WIP 95). Given Heideggers insistence on Germanys role in fundamental ontology and its connection to the Greeks, ontology becomes an unfortunate politics. To become a Volk, the Germans must become historical (by returning to the Greek originating point of the question of Being) at the most desperate point of the oblivion of Being and the
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mechanization of the world, which Heidegger gauged to be the present milieu, reterritorializing a wrong German people on a chimerical Greek earth. Shame entered philosophy through the subsumption of human [specifically German] and ontological destiny. But, as Deleuze intimates, the philosophical destining of man and being had to be broken in order that real contingency of the paths of reterritorialization, paths without directive signs could enter into philosophy. That Heidegger is mistaken highlights that the roads of differentiation are not destined, opening the way to a new view of philosophy: Philosophical time is thus a grandiose time of coexistence that does not exclude the before and after but superimposes them in a stratigraphic order crosscuts its history without being confused with it (WIP 59). Philosophys uniqueness is the creation of concepts, and concepts are not bound to history. What history grasps in an event is the way its actualized in particular circumstances; the events becoming is beyond the scope of history (N 170). For the race summoned forth by art or philosophy is not the one that claims to be pure but rather the oppressed, bastard, lower, anarchical, nomadic, an irremediably minor race (WIP 109) is above all a political insight. These remain on the periphery of systems of power, fissures to the molar structures that impose identity and unity upon them. A good group does not take itself to be unique, immortal, and significant but instead plugs into an outside that confronts the group with its own possibilities of nonsense, death, and dispersal (DI 193). That is why the people-to-come, the future in general, will have to come from the minor, what leaks, contaminates, challenges, representing counter-actualizations of dominant forms. It is not merely that Heidegger picked the wrong people, German rather than French, but that he had the wrong conception of what a people must be. Deleuzes imperative is to make of us a cosmic people, continuous wanderers who have no place to which to return.
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Confronting the underlying chaotic ebbs and flows of the earth, where the closed off fold of interiority communicates with the outside, yields a people-tocome always on the periphery, mutating and shooting off into a new direction so that we can barely keep up and must constantly say, the people is missing.

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Uncanny Belonging: On the Enigma of Solitude in Heideggers Work Will McNeill (DePaul University)
In his last lecture course What Is Called Thinking?, delivered in 1951-52, Heidegger, speaking of the path of thinking, of thoughts emergence and of its precursory character, remarks that this precursory character of thinking for its part resides in an enigmatic solitude, taking this word in a high, unsentimental sense.1 The word solitude, in German, Einsamkeit, is notably absent from Heideggers lectures in the earlier Freiburg and Marburg periodsabsent too from the major published work of that period, Being and Time (1927).2 It begins to make an appearance, albeit tentatively, around 1929, most prominently in the title of the Freiburg lecture course from the winter semester of 192930, published under the title The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and bearing the subtitle: WorldFinitudeSolitude;3 and from that point on it remains a recurrent theme in Heideggers thought, even though he invariably broaches it with some hesitation and by way of warding off a certain misinterpretation. It will indeed always be a matter of reserving a certain height, a dignity and even unreachability for this phenomenon named as solitude, and of distinguishing it
1

Was Heit Denken? (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1984), 164. Henceforth: WHD. Translated as What Is Called Thinking? by J. Glenn Gray (New York: HarperCollins, 1976), 169 (translation slightly modified). Henceforth: WCT.
2

Significantly, there is not a single occurrence of either the noun Einsamkeit or the adjective einsam in Being and Time.
3

Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: WeltEndlichkeitEinsamkeit. Gesamtausgabe Bd. 29/30 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983). Henceforth: GA 29/30. Translated as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). Henceforth: FCM.
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from phenomena such as loneliness, isolation, and being alone, and from the commonplace interpretations of such phenomena. Solitude names a kind of inner sanctum or sanctuary, yet one that is never simply given in advance, but that must rather be brought about in and through a certain engagement and accomplishment of thinking. In my present remarks I shall simply try to trace something of the semantic resonance and hermeneutic significance of this word in Heideggers thinking, and to indicate the phenomenon to which it refers. I shall propose three theses: First, that such solitude is inextricably linked to what, in Heideggers earlier work, was called the finitude of original, ecstatic temporality, and that this connection points to a profound continuity of the later thought with the earlier, important differences notwithstanding. Second, that Heideggers appropriation of the term solitude occurs under the influence of Nietzsche and of a renewed reading of Nietzsche that begins at least as early as 1929.4 And third, that this theme of solitude in Heidegger, not least by way of this Nietzschean influence, dwells in inevitable proximity to questions concerning the human animal relationship, concerning phusis and life, in short, concerning what Heidegger at one point refers to as abyssal kinship.5 For solitude, we shall see, is, paradoxically nothing other than a word for kinship and belonging, for abyssal kinship or for the abyss of kinship itself.
4

I say renewed because Heidegger certainly read Nietzsche much earlier, and Nietzsche has a considerable presence in Being and Time. On this point, see my essay [*removed for anonymity].
5

I am thinking here, of course, of the Letter on Humanism, where Heidegger writes of our abyssal bodily kinship with the animal. See Wegmarken. Gesamtausgabe Bd. 9 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976), 326. Translated as Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 248 (translation modified). Henceforth: GA 9 / PM.
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I. Solitude and Ekstasis With regard to the first point, I noted a moment ago that the apparent first usage of the term solitudeat least in a terminologically circumscribed senseis a tentative one. For according to both Walter Brcker and Heinrich Wiegand Petzet (both of whom attended this course) the original subtitle of the 192930 course listed, in Heideggers handwriting, on the notice board that announced the schedule of courses at Freiburg university was not World FinitudeSolitude but WorldFinitudeIndividuation. The manuscript of the course, however, substitutes the word solitude in the subtitle.6 Solitude thus appears to be a translation of sorts of the word individuation, Vereinzelung, a word that is used extensively in Being and Time.7 And this is indeed confirmed by the initial discussion of the phenomenon of solitude in the 192930 course itself. While world is identified with being [Sein] as a whole, and finitude with our relation to this whole, with a fundamental way of being that must be safeguarded and preserved through our becoming finite, this appropriation of our finitude entails individuation, an individuation that transports us into solitude. Heidegger writes: Finitude is not some property that is merely attached to us, but is our fundamental way of being. If we wish to become what we are, we cannot abandon this finitude or deceive ourselves about it, but must safeguard it. Such preservation is the innermost process of our being finite, i.e., it is our innermost becoming finite [Verendlichung].
6

See the Editors Epilogue to GA 29/30 for details.

Perhaps significantly, the term Vereinzelung and the associated verb vereinzeln appear to be largely absent in Heideggers earlier work, suggesting that the introduction of this terminology in Being and Time was itself tentative.
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Finitude only is in truly becoming finite. In becoming finite, however, there ultimately occurs an individuation [Vereinzelung] of man with respect to his Dasein. Individuationthis does not mean that man clings to his frail little ego that puffs itself up against something or other which it takes to be the world. This individuation is rather that solitariness [or becoming solitary: Vereinsamungthe word suggests the arising or undergoing of solitude] in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What is this solitude [Einsamkeit], where each human being will be as though unique?8 Becoming finite, or undergoing finitude, Verendlichung, entails individuation, Vereinzelung, which, properly conceived, is nothing other than a becoming solitary, Vereinsamung: an entry into solitude or the undergoing of solitude, in which each will be as though unique or singular, einzig. Heidegger here coins the terms Verendlichung (a word used already in the inaugural Freiburg lecture, What Is Metaphysics?9) and Vereinsamung (a word that appears in a letter to Karl Jaspers dated December 3, 1928) to underscore the temporal becoming, yet also a kind of undergoing, entailed in this appropriation of our ownmost being: it is indeed a matter of becoming what we are.10 The term Vereinzelung, by contrast, as just noted, appears frequently in Heideggers earlier work, and, together with the associated verb vereinzeln, plays a pivotal role in Being and Time.
8

GA 29/30, 8/ FCM, 6. See GA 9, 118 / PM, 93 (here translated as the process of finitude). GA 29/30, 8 /FCM, 6.
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10

There, we recall, individuation occurs as a key moment of transition, of the transition from the inauthenticity of Daseins falling everydayness to its authentic appropriation of its ownmost potentiality for being. This critical moment of transition happens via the fundamental attunement of Angst which, in first bringing Dasein before the phenomenon of world as world and before the fundamental possibilities of authenticity and inauthenticity, is said to individuate Dasein: Angst, writes Heidegger, individuates Dasein down to its ownmost being-in-the-world; it discloses Dasein as being possible, as a being possible that it can be solely of its own accord, as individuated in its individuation.11 Angst is an exceptional attunement precisely because it individuates, in a individuation that retrieves Dasein from its falling and makes manifest the fundamental possibilities of its being, authenticity and inauthenticity.12 Yet the very characterization of this eventan event that is nothing other than the happening of Daseins minenessas individuation was (and continues to be) all too readily misunderstood as a kind of factical isolation of Dasein, or as an egoism or subjectivity, and this was a misunderstanding that Heidegger continually had to defend against. The situation was certainly not helped by his unfortunate appeal to this individuation as entailing an existential solipsism in Being and Time, where, well aware of the misleading connotations of the word solipsism, Heidegger already tried to ward off such impending misunderstandings. Angst, the text states,

11

Sein und Zeit (Niemeyer: Halle a. d. S., 1927), 187-88. Henceforth: SZ. Translated as Being and Time by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 182 (translation slightly modified). Henceforth: BT.
12

SZ, 191 / BT, 184 (translation modified).

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individuates and thereby discloses Dasein as solus ipse. This existential solipsism, however, is so far from transposing an isolated subject-thing into the harmless vacuum of a worldless occurrence that it brings Dasein in an extreme sense precisely before its world as world, and thus brings itself before itself as being-in-the-world.13 Similarly, a course delivered just before the 192930 course, the Introduction to Philosophy from winter semester 192829, continues to use the word Vereinzelung while defending it against being misunderstood as isolation: Vereinzelung does not mean isolation [Isolierung], but in each case brings Dasein, rather, in the whole of its relations into the midst of beings.14 What is at stake, he explains, is not isolation, but individuation (Individuation), a temporal individuation: individuation from out of the being itself: temporality15an individuation that would first clarify the proper meaning of the traditional thesis concerning time as the principle of individuation, a topic that Heidegger had addressed as early as the 1924 Concept of Time lecture.16 Might one not indeed speculate, therefore, that the shift to the language of solitude and away from that of individuationa term that certainly recedes, perhaps even disappears, in Heideggers work from the 192930 course onoccurs precisely in an attempt

13

SZ, 188 / BT, 182 (translation modified). The reference to solus ipse suggests that Heidegger understood this individuation of Dasein as a corrective to Husserls rejection of the solus ipse view of the individual in 18f.) of the Ideas.
14

Einleitung in die Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 27 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2001), 334. Ibid.

15

16

Der Begriff der Zeit (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1989), 26-27. Translated as The Concept of Time by William McNeill. Bilingual edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 21.
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to avoid the misleading connotations of egoism, solipsism, and isolation that the term individuation all too readily implies?17 Now the appropriation of Daseins ownmost potentiality for being, a possibility brought before it in Angst, is Daseins taking up, understandingly, this liminal individuation as its own in authenticity. And this occurs in and as the movement of anticipation, of anticipatory being-toward its ownmost end, being toward death. Anticipation, Vorlaufen, which is literally a running ahead or precursion, is the temporalizing of the authentic futurality of Dasein, its coming back toward itself in and from out of its ownmost possibility, the happening of its ownmost individuation. And this individuation is nothing other than the happening of the finitude of originary, ekstatic temporality, which temporalizes primarily out of the future. The ekstatic character of the originary future, Heidegger writes, lies precisely in the fact that it closes our potentiality for being, that is, is itself closed, and as such enables the resolutely open, existentiell understanding of nullity18that is, enables an authentic self-understanding, Daseins becoming authentic. Daseins appropriation of its individuationof an individuation, therefore, that is not entirely, never yet its own, but rather brought before it in the Unheimlichkeit of Angstthus occurs in the thoughtful understanding of its ownmost potentiality for being, in Daseins running ahead or precursiveness, as a preserving and safeguarding of its finitude, an appropriation of finitude, a becoming finite. Its undergoing finitude is its passing under the eyes of death19of death which individuates Dasein.20
17

I owe this suggestion to [*removed for anonymity]. SZ, 330 / BT, 315 (translation modified). SZ, 382; cf. 384 / BT, 364 (translation modified); cf. 365-66.

18

19

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And would this not be precisely what, in 192930, Heidegger calls the human beings solitariness, his or her entry into solitude? Running ahead, Vorlaufen, as authentic being toward death, Heidegger emphasized in Being and Time, is indeed nothing other than the thoughtful, explicit retrieval and appropriation of the very movedness of Daseins being: Being toward death is running ahead into a potentiality for being of that being whose way of being is running ahead itself.21 And is it not in terms of this very precursiveness that Heidegger continues to understand the movement of authentic thinking or authentic thoughtfulness some twenty-five years later, in What Is Called Thinking? Thinking, he there insists, is the most precursory of all precursory activities of man22not because it is something provisional that would be superseded by action, but because it occurs as a running ahead, always in advance, into that which withdraws, that which has, from time immemorial, withdrawn: into the not yet of what is most thought-provoking, namely, that we are still not, not yet, thinking. If the pre-cursive character of thoughts being underway lies in an enigmatic solitude, it is because it is drawn into this happening of finitudenow thought as the withdrawal of beingthat cannot be superseded (that is unsurpassable, unberholbar), an event of withdrawal to which thought is always exposed in advance.23
20

SZ, 264 / BT, 253 (translation modified). SZ, 262 / BT, 251 (translation modified).

21

22

WHD, 161: Das Denken ist das Vorlufigste alles vorlufigen Tuns des Menschen / WCT, 160. In the same vein, Heidegger elsewhere characterizes authentic thinking as a thinking ahead (vorausdenken). See the 1937 lecture course on Nietzsche, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, in Nietzsche, Bd. I (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), 398. Henceforth: NI. Translated by David Farrell Krell as Nietzsche, Volumes One and Two (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), Volume Two, 135 (translation slightly modified). Henceforth: N2.
23

It is such being drawn into the event of withdrawal that constitutes our belonging to the
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II. The Shadow of Nietzsche At this point I would like to turn to my second claim: that Heideggers appropriation of the word solitude in the 192930 course occurs under the marked influence of Nietzsche. The text of the 192930 course everywhere bears indications that Heidegger was, at this juncture, engaged in a renewed reading of Nietzsche, even though there is no sustained interpretation of Nietzsche presented in the course. We do indeed find several pages in 18 identifying Nietzsche as the underlying source of prevailing diagnoses of culture that operate in terms of the opposition between life and spirit (the interpretations of Spengler, Klages, Scheler, and Ziegler), and indicating that Nietzsche is the place where the confrontation proper must occura confrontation or Auseinandersetzung which, as we know, would not be explicitly articulated until the Nietzsche lectures of the mid- to late 1930s. The opposition between life and spirit is said to arise from Nietzsches distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, although Heidegger provides no real interpretation of this here, but merely cites a number of passages from The Will to Power that discuss the
arrival and departure of thought, indeed, our belonging to the Ereignis of language. And solitude names the happening of this enigmatic belonging. Thus, in his 1959 essay The Way to Language, which engages once again in a dialogue with Novalis (as in the 192930 course of 30 years earliersee below for details), this time concerning the mystery (Geheimnis) of language as monologue, Heidegger characterizes our belonging to the speaking of language in terms of solitude, distinguishing the latter from any connotations of aloneness or isolation: It is language alone that properly speaks [Die Sprache allein ist es, die eigentlich spricht]. And it speaks solitarily [einsam]. Yet only one who is not alone can be solitary; not alone, i.e., not set apart, isolated [nicht abgesondert, vereinzelt], without any relation. On the contrary: In what is solitary, it is precisely the lack of anything common [der Fehl des Gemeinsamen] that prevails as the most binding relation to the latter. Sam is the Gothic sama, the Greek hama. Einsam means: the Same in that which unites those who belong to one another. Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1979), 26566. Translated by Peter D. Hertz in On the Way to Language (New York: HarperCollins, 1971), 134 (translation modified).
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significance of these terms. More significant than these references, however, and more striking, is that fact that, at the end of an extensive, philosophical investigation into what world isan investigation that proceeds, we recall, via an interpretation of the attunement of boredom and its various forms; and then through a comparative examination that contrasts the world-poverty of the animal with the world-forming essence of manafter, that is, more than 500 pages (in the published volume) of incisive philosophical and conceptual analysis, Heidegger concludes the lecture course by reciting part of The Intoxicated Song from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, telling us that it is here, in this poetic word, that we experience what the world is. A strange ending to a work of unprecedented philosophical rigor! Yet it is not just in these explicit references to Nietzsche that the presence and influence of Nietzsche is palpable in the 192930 course. Although not explicitly named there, Nietzsches presence is manifest not least precisely in the section that introduces the theme of solitude (2 in the published text). Who can fail to hear the echo of Nietzsche in the insistence that we human beings are a transition (bergang), underway toward the whole, toward world, yet torn back by a gravity (Schwere) that draws us downward; in the exhortation to become what we are; in the reference to the hammer of conceptual comprehension;24 or in the question What is man? A transition, a direction, a storm sweeping over our planet, a recurrence [Wiederkehr] or a vexation for the gods?25 Significantly, however, all of these allusions, together with the Nietzschean theme of solitude, are inscribed within the over-arching perspective

24

GA 29/30, 8-9 /FCM, 6-7. Ibid., 10 / 7.

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25

of a word from Novalis, namely, the claim that philosophy is really homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere.26 The 192930 course not only ends with the word of a poet (or of a philosopher-poet), but finds its proper beginning in the word of a poetand this despite Heideggers introductory insistence that philosophy should be determined only on its own terms, solely from out of itself, and not by way of detours or circuitous paths (Umwege), such as art or religion! The Freiburg lecture course of 192930, its intensive engagement with biological science and with the apophantic logos of philosophical conceptuality (the logos of assertion) notwithstanding, is thus already underway toward inhabiting the proximity between poetizing and a thinking more originary than philosophy, a proximity that will attune the later lectures on What Is Called Thinking? from beginning to end. How does Heidegger, in this introductory section of the 192930 course, develop this word of Novalis that philosophy is really homesickness, Heimweh? Does homesickness, he asks, even exist today? Is it not a romantic notion, a kind of nostalgia that has long since been eradicated by contemporary city man, the ape of civilization? What is implicit in Novaliss elucidation that philosophy, as homesickness, is an urge to be at home everywhere? Manifestly, philosophy can be such an urge only if we who philosophize are not at home everywhere. What, asks Heidegger, does it mean to be at home everywhere? He writes:

26

Ibid., 7 / 5. Nietzsche too, of course, characterizes philosophy as homesickness: German philosophy, as a homesickness or nostalgia for the Greek world. See the fragment reproduced as 419 of The Will to Power (original in: Nietzsche, Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 1967ff.), 7. Abt., 3 Bd., 412.) In the 192930 course, Heidegger is concerned with the issue of metaphysical homesickness, and not yet with the question of the historical determination of homesickness and homecoming in relation to the Germans and the Greeks that would become his focus with the turn to Hlderlins poetizing from 1934-35 onward.
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To be at home everywherewhat does that mean? Not merely here or there, nor even simply in every place, in all places taken together one after the other. Rather, to be at home everywhere means to be at once and at all times within the whole. We name this within the whole and its character of wholeness the world. We are, and to the extent that we are, we are always waiting for something. We are always called upon by something as a whole. This as a whole is the world.27 Philosophy, as an urge (Trieb) to be at home everywhere, would thus first find its fulfillment, its answer and its end, in our coming to be at home everywhere, in our coming to dwell within the world, a learning to inhabit the world as our proper dwelling place. Such dwelling would mark the end, perhaps, of philosophywhich, we may recall with a certain withdrawal from the immediacy of worldly dwelling in order to contemplate the world by way of the"riaand the beginning of a thoughtful, yet poetic dwelling. Yet this proper dwelling place, our home or Heimat, is, Heidegger goes on to insist, nothing other than solitude. It is in individuation, correctly conceived as becoming solitary or entering into solitude, Vereinsamung, he states, that each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What is this solitude, in which each human being will be as though unique?28

27

Ibid., 7-8 / 5. Ibid., 8 / 6.

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28

Two points merit special attention here. First, this identification of solitude as our proper home or dwelling place is, of course, an eminently Nietzschean theme, or more properly, that of Zarathustradespite the fact that Heidegger does not explicitly relate this theme to Nietzsche or to Zarathustra here, in this context. It is in Part Three of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, at the opening of the section entitled The Homecoming, that Zarathustra proclaims: O Einsamkeit! Du meine Heimat Einsamkeit! Zu lange lebte ich wild in wilder Fremde, als da ich nicht mit Trnen zu dir heimkehrte! O Solitude! Solitude, you my home! Too long I lived in the wild, in wild and foreign parts, not to return home in tears to you! Second, however, if solitude is indeed our proper home and dwelling place, it is a place we can never entirely inhabit, just as we can never entirely inhabit the world. Solitude may bring us into a nearness to world, but this proximity, this nearness to what is essential in all things, remains exposed to the unsettling happening of finitude, of what Heidegger has identified as a fundamental unrest: This is where we are driven in our homesickness: to being [Sein] as a whole. Our very being is this restlessness. We have somehow always already departed toward this whole, or better, we are always already on the way to it. But we are driven on, that is, we are somehow simultaneously torn back by something, resting in a gravity that draws us downward. We are underway to this as a whole. We ourselves are this underway, this transition, this

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neither the one nor the other. [...] What is this unrest of the not? We name it finitude.29 Our not being at home is not something to be overcome: it is, rather, precisely what must be brought to the fore, acknowledged as the fundamental Unheimlichkeit of our beingas occurs in Being and Time through the attunement of Angst, which, in individuating Dasein, first brings it before the world as world. If solitude is our home, is it not, paradoxically, a home that is no home at all, a being at home or coming to be at home in not being at home, a dwelling within and from out of a fundamental uncanninessan Unheimlichkeit that, as Heidegger insists already in Being and Time, is more fundamental than any and all being at home?30 III. Solitude and Phusis Although Heidegger does not explicitly connect the theme of solitude to the Nietzschean discourse in the 192930 course, as just noted, he does devote considerable attention to Einsamkeit in the second of his major lecture courses on Nietzsche, the course on The Eternal Recurrence of the Same from 1937. The first communication of this thought of thoughts, the thought of eternal recurrence, occurs in aphorism 341 of The Gay Science, entitled The Greatest Burden, which opens by addressing the reader in his or her most solitary solitudeyet also in relation to the spider, the moonlight, and the trees:

29

Ibid., 8 / 5-6. SZ, 189 / BT, 183.

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30

What would happen if one day or night a demon were to steal upon you in your most solitary solitude and say to you, You will have to live this lifeas you are living it now and have lived it in the past once again and countless times more; and there will be nothing new to it, but every pain and every pleasure, every thought and sigh, and everything unutterably petty or grand in your life will have to come back to you, all in the same sequence and ordereven this spider, and that moonlight between the trees, even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence turning over and over and you with it, speck of dust! In his reading of this aphorism, Heidegger initially asks what kind of knowing is meant to be invoked as the science of The Gay Science: it is, he claims, science in the sense of a stance and will toward essential knowing,31 which he will go on to characterize as tragic knowingthat knowing that is first portrayed poetically in the figure of Zarathustra, whose downgoing is announced in the opening words of the next and final aphorism of Book Four: Incipit tragoedia. It is in terms of such knowing that we must then reflect upon what it means that a thought, the thought of eternal recurrence, can become a burden: a determinative force and center of gravity that weighs upon all of our actions. Yet no less decisive are the circumstances under which this thought arises, namely, in ones most solitary solitude. Such solitude is not found in ones everyday, self-oblivious running around and busyness, comments Heidegger, yet nor does it mean the human beings simply withdrawing and becoming occupied with his ego. It is found, rather, where the human being is altogether himself, standing in the most essential relations of his historical Dasein in the midst of beings as a
31

NI, 271 / N2, 20 (translation modified).

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whole.32 And this sense of solitude must once again be differentiated from individuation, or more precisely, from individuation misunderstood as isolation: This most solitary solitude lies prior to and beyond every distinguishing of the I from the You, and of the I and You from the We, of the individual from the community. In this most solitary solitude there is no trace of individuation [Vereinzelung] as isolation [Absonderung]. It is rather that kind of individuation [Vereinzelung] that we must grasp as becoming authentic, in which the human self authentically comes to itself [sich zu eigen wird]. The self, authenticity, is not the ego; it is that Da-sein in which the relation of the I to the You [singular], and of the I to the We, and of the We to the You [plural] is grounded....33 Solitude is once again affirmed as indeed a certain kind of individuation, and explicitly related to authenticity, to the authentic appropriation of oneself. Significantly, not only does Heidegger here, in 1937, once again resurrect the language of authenticity from Being and Time, but coins a word for becoming authentic that explicitly resonates with the language of the 192930 course, namely, Vereigentlichung: a word that continues the chain of verbal substantives with the prefix Ver-, suggesting a becoming or coming to be that we explicitly undergo, that happens to us: Vereinzelung is Verendlichung, Vereinsamung, and now, Vereigentlichunga word that, to the best of my knowledge, here makes its sole and unique appearance in Heideggers work.

32

NI, 275 / N2, 24 (translation slightly modified) . Ibid., 275-76 / 24-25 (translation modified).
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33

In poetizing the figure of Zarathustra, notes Heidegger, Nietzsche projects the space of this most solitary solitude.34 Yet such solitude is not only to be understood in terms of individuation correctly understood, and ultimately in terms of the Moment (Augenblick) of thinking the thought of eternal return. The space and realm of solitude is also first delineated in relation to Zarathustras animals, the eagle and the serpent, representing pride and wisdom respectively. These animals are Zarathustras own animals, emphasizes Heidegger, they belong to him in his solitude, and when his solitude speaks, it is his animals who are speaking.35 Yet Zarathustras animals, Heidegger insists, are not petsnot Haustiere, not animals of house and home; they are remote, rather, from all that is habitual and accustomed, from the realm in which we normally dwellindeed, they alienate us from this very realm. And in so doing, they first determine our most solitary solitude, which is something other than habitual opinion conceives it to be. Whereas habitual opinion regards solitude as freeing and releasing us from everything, so that we are no longer disturbed, quite the contrary is the case, Heidegger emphasizes. For in our most solitary solitude precisely that which is most grave and perilous is let loose upon us ourselves and upon our task, and this is something that cannot be deflected onto other things or other people; it must pass through us, not as something to be eliminated, but as something to be known in its belonging, known in authentic knowing and supreme discernment.36 It is this magnificent concept of solitude, Heidegger

34

Ibid., 286 / 34 (translation modified). Ibid., 298 / 45 (translation modified). Ibid., 300-01 / 47 (translation modified).

35

36

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remarks, that must be thought here, and thought in relation to Zarathustras two animals. I cannot here recount the entire richness of Heideggers 1937 interpretation of Zarathustras animals and of the solitude that arises in their proximity and in dialogue with them, an interpretation that contains Heideggers most extensive and explicit remarks on the theme of solitude. But what is particularly intriguing is that it is precisely in the company of these animals that the solitude of the thinkerhere of the thinker of eternal return, of the finitude and individuation of the Moment as the Moment in which world is disclosedis said to arise. A love of animals, writes Nietzsche in a note from the Nachla, which Heidegger here cites, in all eras people have recognized those who are solitary [die Einsiedler] from this.37 It is as though it is only in and through the presence of these non-domestic animals, alien to house and home, and of their strange speaking (of what and how they speak, for their speaking, we recall, is a critical dialogue in the section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra called The Convalescent)or, let us say more broadly, the presence of phusisthat the solitude of the human being in the midst of beings as a whole can properly emerge and resonate in the full spectrum of its abyssal character. Certainly, one could relate this issue to the traditional determination of man as animal rationale, the rational animal, and to Nietzsches characterization of man as the as yet undetermined animal, as the rope stretched over an abyss between animal and Overman, that figure of man whose essence will first be cast in and through the thinking of eternal return. Yet, if the suspicion is correct that it is from Nietzsche that Heidegger adopts the term Einsamkeit in 1929, then this also casts a somewhat different light on the whole of the 192930 course and its trajectory.
37

Ibid., 298 / 45 (translation modified).

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For in that course, having introduced the theme of solitude in his initial remarks via the tentative translation we have mentioned, Heidegger then leaves it suspended, so to speak, over the entire lecture course, never again to return to it, beyond the briefest mention. He leaves it suspended, we may recall, in order to devote himself, first, to an interpretation of the attunement of boredom and its temporal oscillationsan interpretation in which the Moment of worlddisclosure is pivotaland second, to an extensive comparative interpretation of the animal and of animality in relation to the Dasein of man. The characterization of the animal as poor in world by contrast with the worldforming Dasein of the human being does not simply drive a wedge between man on the one side and the animal on the other, but opens up a rift, so to speak, in which each is held toward the other, held in proximity to the other, precisely over and across the abyss of world.38 Must one not suspect that the sustained engagement with the animality of the animal that Heidegger pursues in the 192930 course is just as much a unspoken confrontation, at a distance, so to speak, with Nietzsches thinking of animality, and of life in general as drive and instinct (Trieb, Instinkt), as it is the elaboration of a problematic announced in Being and Time, that of a privative interpretation of lifeyet a confrontation in which the theme of solitude is, for the time being at least, quietly removed from the purview of animality?

38

For references to the abyss (Abgrund) in the 192930 course, see GA29/30, 384, 411 / FCM, 264, 283. In the first, Heidegger suggests that if the animal is unable to apprehend something as something, something as being, then the animal is separated from man by an abyss. In the second reference, however, the abyss is no longer simply between the human and the animal, but is an abyss of Dasein in the midst of Daseinan abyss, that is, that opens up in and as the phenomenon of world itself. I have elsewhere suggested that Heideggers equating of the apprehending of something as something with something as being (something) is too hasty. See [*removed for anonymity].
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IV. Heideggers Solitudes A few remarks by way of conclusion. The enigma of solitude in its high or elevated sense lies not only in the paradox that, in the very event of temporal individuation, it brings us into a proximity to being as a whole, to the presence of all those beings that manifest themselves on a given occasion. Solitude is not just the temporal moment of the happening of finitude that enables us, in our most extreme individuation, to participate in the presence of other beings, to share in that very presence, in short: to participate in a world. When Heidegger, after naming the enigmatic solitude which the precursory character of thinking inhabits, immediately adds: No thinker has ever entered into the solitude of another. And yet every thinking speaks only from out of its solitude in a concealed manner into the thinking that follows or precedes it, this suggests that solitude is also an over-arching attunement, an attunement into which, in a concealed manner, a thinkers thought is gathered in advance, a singular attunement that attunes his or her thought from beginning to end. To the attunement of solitudeof Heideggers solitudethere belongs, I would suggest, a certain experience of phusis, of the being or Waltenthe prevailing, as he called it in the 192930 courseof nature that prevails through yet exceeds the human, and of the animal. And it is perhaps in his more personal and autobiographical reflections, rather than his public lectures, that one can intimate most directly Heideggers solitudes and their vicissitudes. Allow me, in closing, to cite just two such reflections.39 In December 1931, just 18 months or so after the conclusion of the 192930 course, he writes to Karl Jaspers:
39

To be sure, there are numerous other mentions of solitude by Heidegger to which one might refer here, and not all convey the same attunement. A few years after the reflections cited here, following the disastrous failure of the Rectorship, one cannot help but hear a very different pathos in his use of the word Einsamkeit, one not so readily removed from the commonplace
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Tomorrow, we [i.e., the family] move to the cabin [the Htte in Todtnauberg] for the entire holiday. Then there will be snow storms once again, and the howling of foxes in the snowy woods, and the vault of the heavens at night, and solitary excursions into the silent mountain valleys.40 In his 1933 reflection Why Do We Remain in the Province?, following his characterization of the high time of philosophy as occurring in the midst of a snow storm that rages around the cabin, Heidegger again appeals to the attunement of such philosophical work as that of solitude: City dwellers often wonder about the extended, monotonous being alone among the peasants amid the mountains. Yet it is no being alone, but presumably solitude [Einsamkeit]. In the big cities the human being can indeed readily be so alone as scarcely anywhere else. But he can never be solitary there. For solitude has the properly primordial power that it does not isolate us [das sie uns nicht vereinzelt], but casts our entire Dasein away into a far-reaching nearness to the essence of all things.41

connotation of loneliness. Writing to Jaspers in 1935 to acknowledge receipt of some lectures that Jaspers had sent him, Heidegger states: I thank you from the heart for this greeting, which made me very happy; for my solitude is almost total [denn die Einsamkeit ist nahezu vollkommen]. Letter to Karl Jaspers of July 1, 1935. In: Martin Heidegger / Karl Jaspers: Briefwechsel 1920-1963, edited by Walter Biemel and Hans Saner (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990), 157.
40

Letter to Karl Jaspers of December 20, 1931, ibid., 145.

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Is it not in a certain dwelling with nature, or more precisely, with phusis, exposed to the howling of foxes amid the silent mountain valleys, in the space opened up by the vault of the heavensis it not amid all of this that uncanniness, to deinon, das Unheimliche arises, and that one may first experience what Heidegger seeks to describe as solitude, which is, above all, an experience of uncanny belonging?42

41

Denkerfahrungen (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983), 11. Here, Heidegger apparently concedes the inevitable connotation of isolation that attends the verb vereinzeln, and explicitly distances it, together with loneliness, or being alone (Alleinsein), from the experience of Einsamkeit.
42

A first version of this essay was presented at [*removed for anonymity]

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My Language Which Is Not My Own: Heidegger and Derridas Challenge to Linguistic Determinism Carolyn Culbertson (University of Maine Farmington)
Questioning Linguistic Determinism Language is a deeply intimate part of our lives. Neither purely internal nor external to the self, languages presence in our lives defies this common way we delineate self from world. Language is not mine like my body is after all. I was not born into the world with it. Nor is it mine like private property is. A truly private language would be no language at all; it is something I must share with others. But if language is not just mine, who I am is nevertheless deeply tangled up with language. A painful remark may linger with me years after the initial wound. If language were purely external to who I am, surely the remark would be easier to extract. But language often appears inalienable, precisely because who one is relies in many ways on linguistic description and performance. With it, we can bear witness to our experiences for others, we can speak our mind, and we can even use it to reject unwanted addresses. But despite our reliance upon it, language always remains something we do not fully possess. This kind of phenomenological description of individual experience is strongly at odds with a common way of talking about languages impact upon our lives, namely, a kind of linguistic determinism, which presents language as a force that thoroughly influences thought. On this view, to possess a language is to be possessed by it. It shapes the way we think and thus what we do in the world. It shapes how we interact with one another. There is perhaps no better evidence of the popularity of linguistic determinism than the willingness of many
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today to equate language and worldview, for example, when pointing to some feature of language to explain a peculiar way of thinking characteristic of some group of people. This resignation to language finds a parallel in the work of several influential thinkers over the past century who have in some way been associated with the linguistic turn, arguably one of the strongest common threads linking disparate philosophical traditions over the past century. Within the early analytic tradition, Wittgenstein, for example, famously argued that the limits of ones language indicate the limits of ones world.1 Richard Rorty, a neopragmatist philosopher, makes a similar case, arguing that the debt of thinking to language requires philosophers to abandon the search for foundational truths beyond a given vocabulary. For Rorty, we have no prelinguistic consciousness to which language needs to be adequate, no deep sense of how things are which it is the duty of philosophers to spell out in language. What is described as our consciousness, Rorty continues, is simply a disposition to use the language of our ancestors, to worship the corpses of their metaphors.2 For these philosophers, we do not happily transcend the limits of language. Rather, these limits are thick walls so high that we cannot see beyond them. Indeed, for most, the very idea that something exists hidden to our view beyond the walls of language is misguided, since the world itself is linguistic. Recently, some have argued that the orientations of Martin Heidegger and of Jacques Derrida belong to this pattern of linguistic determinism. Indeed, both demonstrate how our present ways of thinking and living are greatly indebted to
1

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C.K. Ogden (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010), 5.6, 88.
2

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 21.
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the historical language of metaphysics. The writings of both continually bring us back again and again to the scene of this inheritance, even as they hope to recover another beginning, another unrealized possibility through this return. To the extent that this inheritance does indeed determine what can and cannot be thought, both Heidegger and Derrida appear to espouse a kind of linguistic determinism. Thus, Cristina Lafont situates Heidegger in what she identifies as the linguistic turn in German hermeneutical philosophy. For Heidegger, according to Lafont, language continues to be a historical inheritance that ultimately renders tragically inadequate our knowledge of the world as well as our ability to communicate with others.3 Lafonts interpretation is not unique. Rorty comes to a similar conclusion about Heidegger, one Ill revisit later, although, for him, Heideggers recognition of the historical and linguistic contingency of philosophical thought is not a liability but a shining achievement of his project. While this interpretation of Heidegger as a linguistic determinist has only recently currency, Derrida has been interpreted this way for some time now. His now infamous statement from Of Grammatology that there is nothing outside of the text has rendered him in the eyes of many a monistic thinker for whom language is a quasi-transcendental structure (contingent yet a priori) governing all.4 In this essay, I will argue, however, that linguistic inheritance for both Heidegger and Derrida cannot be adequately understood as a form of
3

As Lafont puts it, Heidegger views language as the final authority for judging intraworldly knowledge, one that is not open to revision based on any intraworldly experience. She notes the resemblance between this and Humboldts claim that every language places definite boundaries upon the spirits of those who speak it. (Lafont, Heidegger, Language, and WorldDisclosure, 7)
4

David Novitz, for example, argues that Derridas thinking entails linguistic idealism, since, for Derrida, language is never constrained by a non-linguistic world. See Novitzs The Rage of Deconstruction, Monist, Vol. 69, 1 (1986), 39-55.
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determinism and that, in fact, one finds in their work important grounds upon which to challenge linguistic determinism. For, on the one hand, both explore how human beings are entangled in language, an ambiguous state of being that linguistic determinism cannot account for. Secondly, both question how the discursive world gains its authority, its command upon us. In this, they do not deny the deep role language plays in our relationship to the world, but in attending to the phenomenological and, for Derrida, the political details of this intimate relationship, both show how languages power upon us is not absolute. The first half of the essay traces out the development of this point in Heideggers Being and Time, where Heidegger distinguishes the inheritance of ready-to-hand language from the passive absorption of a cultural world-view. In the second half of the essay, I turn to how, in his Monolinguism of the Other, Derrida follows Heidegger in questioning the immediate givenness or naturalness of languages power, this time by exposing the social-political arrangements that must be reiterated in order for language and world to appear so inseparable. The next two sections will then trace out the challenge presented by these thinkers to linguistic determinism. Heidegger on the Linguistic Entanglement of Dasein While Heideggers later work focuses more on the topic of language, my discussion draws primarily from Division I of Being and Time which already presents a set of rich phenomenological insights into the role of language in our lives, insights that are the basis for Heideggers later explorations. For our present purposes, what is most relevant is the way Heidegger sets up here the scene of language inheritance. To understand this scene of inheritance, Heidegger suggests that we first need to consider the inconspicuous role that language plays in our daily lives.
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Thoroughly woven into our primary experience of the world, we first encounter language for the most part as what he calls ready-to-hand (zuhanden), that is, as belonging to a totality of equipment (Zeug). Words, in a sense, come to us folded into the world of our ongoing practical concern. We do not first perceive something and then put it into language. This is not to say, however, that we first have a language and only later, on the basis of it, understanding. As Heidegger points out, language is always language about something, meaning that we find it bound up in a holistic complex of meaning.5 We do not first perceive bare language and only then determine its use. This is to say that the world is always already in language, only while, at the same time, language is always already in the world. Language is not something like a pre-worldly net into which all things are caught so as to be processed as perceptions. For example, to apprehend this thing before me as a table means, not that I see it according to some set of letters making up a two-syllable word, but that I know it by its particular use dining, that I understand it according to its symbolic function representing sustenance, sociality, family, perhaps hierarchy associations which have been communicated to me by others with whom I am in relation. From this, it follows that, for Heidegger, we cannot separate the discursive world, the world we talk about, from understanding and interpretation.6 These processes are already at work. What we speak about is constantly interpreted according to the purposes to which it is assigned. These interpretations are, for the most part, not privately generated. Indeed, these
5

Heidegger says, :7).% is always :7).% ,('7%, language about something in particular. We find words present together, united for the purpose of making something manifest. (Heidegger, Being and Time, 33, 201)
6

As Heidegger puts it, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement gets laid out by interpretation. (Heidegger, Being and Time, 32, 191)
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socially-based interpretations come to serve as an important basis for how we orient ourselves alongside others in the world by providing us with shared worlds of meaning and a wealth of pre-reflective understanding. This is no doubt why so many people resist political efforts to change the language theyre accustomed to. It is difficult for us to extricate the thing or the person we see from the way we have always talked about it, the words that bring it to mind for us. For the most part, then, for Heidegger, languages role in our lives is inconspicuous. As ready-to-hand, language has the character of equipment, which Heidegger explains is distantially close but environmentally remote. As an illustration, Heidegger describes a pair of spectacles that are sitting right on your nose. He observes that they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall. Such equipment Heidegger designates as the inconspicuousness of the proximally ready-to-hand.7 Folded into our daily praxis, equipment is inconspicuous. Likewise, like the road beneath ones feet or the glasses on ones nose, language is something we use without paying it much mind. For Heidegger, the inheritance amounts to much more than a set of names and associations though. We also inherit concepts, concepts that can become deeply ingrained in our habitual thoughts. For example, for most people, it would be absurd to imagine a world without subjects and objects, possibilities and actualities, matter and form, etc. These categories are so basic to our world, so deeply naturalized in our thinking that it can even be offensive to some to call attention to the interpretive history continually underway with their usage. But to inherit a language means to inherit not just
7

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1962), 23, 141.
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language passed down through history but history passed down through language. As Heidegger says in his later work, There is no such thing as a natural language that would be the language of a human nature occurring of itself, without a destiny. All language is historical.8 Part of this inheritance is the concept of language itself something Heidegger acknowledges as a great impasse, when he writes that: We speak and speak about language. What we speak of, language, is always ahead of us. Our speaking merely follows language constantly. Thus we are continually lagging behind what we first ought to have overtaken and taken up in order to speak about it. Accordingly, when we speak of language we remain entangled (vertstrickt) in a speaking that is persistently inadequate.9 To the philosopher, this entanglement renders ones speech inadequate, because the intention is to address the being or the nature of the thing in this case, language, not its history.10 Now, it may seem that this entanglement simply points to the truth of historicism, the idea that our reasoning is thoroughly contingent upon a particular historical era. If this is the case, it would seem that Heideggers theory does not depart from the linguistic determinism with which we began. Indeed, this is what gives support to Rortys interpretation of Heideggers philosophy of language as a species of radical historicism. For Rorty,

Martin Heidegger, The Way to Language in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 133.
9

Martin Heidegger, The Nature of Language, in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 75.
10

Note that the word translated as entangled in the passage from The Nature of Language is not the same as the term used in Being and Time, verfngt (translated by Macquarrie and Robinson as entangled) as in: The alienation of falling at once tempting and tranquillizing leads by its own movement, to Daseins getting entangled (verfngt) in itself.
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the project of destruction Heidegger first outlines in the introduction to Being and Time later becomes for him the central task for thinking, and according to Rorty, this project involves nothing other than coming to terms with the historical contingency of metaphysical language, reminding us that this language is not that of human reason but is the creation of the thinkers of our historical past.11 The determining force of such inheritance is, for Rorty, far-reaching. Citing Heideggers On the Way to Language, Rorty explains, For there will be no way to rise above the language, culture, institutions, and practices one has adopted and view all these on par with all the others. . . . Or, to put the point in Heideggers way, language speaks man. Languages change in the course of their history, and so human beings cannot escape their historicity. The most they can do is manipulate tensions within their own epoch in order to produce the beginnings of the next epoch.12 In his reading of Heidegger, Rortys understanding of language inheritance resonates deeply with the idea of linguistic determinism discussed earlier. But is Rorty right to assume that, for Heidegger, the experience of language entanglement must involve finding ones thinking, even ones world thoroughly conditioned by a vocabulary from which thought cannot escape? Or is it the case that, in finding oneself speaking a language that appears to us suddenly inadequate, one recognizes some other possibility? Indeed, in Being and Time, Heidegger insists that the breakdown of equipment opens our eyes, since it enables us to see the obstinacy of that with which we must concern ourselves in

11

Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Science, Metaphor, Politics in Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 16.
12

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 50.
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the first instance before we do anything else.13 Consider, after all, how languages readiness-to-hand can become disrupted when language confronts us as a suddenly unfamiliar object in the world, no longer behind-the-scenes equipment. For example, I may find myself suddenly struck by the etymology of a word that I constantly use. In such a case, the word becomes what Heidegger calls unzuhanden (un-ready-to-hand). Or consider another example that helps clarify Heideggers point namely, the possibility of a writers anxiety before the inheritance of language. Here the easy flow of language stemming from the writers familiarity with speaking becomes obstructed, and one finds oneself frustrated, at a loss for words. Language comes to stand before the writer conspicuously, and in its breaking down appears as something other than the immediate, given framework of his or her thoughts. Such an experience of Unzuhandenheit is articulated well by Roland Barthes, who in his Writing Degree Zero, explains: In front of the virgin sheet of paper, at the moment of choosing the words which must frankly signify his place in History, and testify that he assumes its data, [the writer] observes a tragic disparity between what he does and what he sees. Before his eyes, the world of society now exists as a veritable Nature, and this Nature speaks, elaborating living languages from which the writer is excluded: on the contrary, History puts in his hands a decorative and compromising instrument, a writing inherited from a previous and different History, for which he is not responsible and yet which is the only one he can use. Thus is born a tragic element in writing, since the conscious writer must henceforth fight against ancestral
13

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (San Francisco: Harper and Collins, 1962), 16, 103.
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and all-powerful signs which, from the depths of a past foreign to him, impose Literature on him like some ritual, not like a reconciliation.14 What the writer describes here as a tragic lack of reconciliation echoes Heideggers description above of finding oneself entangled in a speaking that is persistently inadequate. In entanglement, we experience our language as uncanny, simultaneously familiar and strange. Familiar in that, as Ive explained, linguistic concepts are as close to us as the things with which they belong in holistic contexts of meaning, and in that the discursivity of the relational totality provides an average intelligibility of all speech-acts in advance of any intentional interpretation. Unfamiliar when, for instance, we perceive the intricate system of signs within which we find ourselves always already circulating within as un-ready-to-hand. Note, though, that the instrumental language does not just appear as an alien imposition to the writer. It is an intricate part of his life. It is near to him in a way that perhaps few things are. And it is on account of this intimacy maintained with language that he struggles. Thought in this way, the struggle of the writer exemplifies the condition of entanglement, but not language determinism. The example of Barthes writer also helps clarify a feature of the facticity of the linguistic being that Rorty overlooks. For the writers anxiety illustrates the particular character of Daseins thrownness (Geworfenheit) into language. There must be, for Heidegger, a difference between Daseins character of facticity and the factum brutum of something present-at-hand. As Heidegger says, for Dasein, The that-it-is of facticity never becomes something that we can come across by beholding it, and thus, Thrownness is neither a fact that is
14

Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, trans. Annete Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 86.
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finished nor a fact that is settled. Daseins facticity is such that as long as it is what it is, Dasein remains in the throw . . . .15 Herein lies the starkest difference between Heideggers account of language inheritance and linguistic determinism. For Heidegger, it is not just that each of us is cast into a language and a history once and for all one we have no choice but to endure or to content ourselves with from that point on. Such a condition would at least, for Heidegger, not be anything like an existential structure of our being, for this condition of beingthrown would be external to Daseins being. It would be something that Dasein passively endures as something that befalls it. Such a characterization misses the way in which this thrownness is intrinsic to Daseins being. Yet as Heidegger addresses in section 37 of Being and Time, it is tempting to take everything as genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken even when they are not.16 In other words, it is tempting for us to miss the way in which the discursive world we dwell in is still in need of interpretation, to see it as reflected unproblematically by the language that is ready-to-hand. Such a bearing toward language is what Heidegger calls, in the vocabulary of Being and Time, inauthentic. It is inauthentic not because it involves inheriting a language that one did not author oneself (since, then authenticity would be equivalent to worldlessness), but because it overlooks the process by which the ready-to-hand emerges. This is why the experience of language entanglement, manifest, for example, in a writers anxiety, is important. When words appear to us as untrustworthy, we have occasion to think about our relationship to language in a way we usually ignore. It is with an invocation of this entanglement, after all, that Heidegger begins two of the essays in his
15

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (San Francisco: Harper and Collins, 1962), 29, 174.
16

Ibid, 217.

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later work, On the Way to Language, urging us to consider whether, despite our familiarity with language, we really have any experience of it.17 An authentic attitude toward language would begin, then, with precisely the ambiguity in this scene of inheritance, the questioning opened up here which is nonetheless hidden by our everyday comportment toward language. But is it not this ambiguity that linguistic determinism wants to deny, in insisting that we are always already in language and precisely in the same way whether we are engaged in philosophical inquiry, idle banter, poetic discourse, or sloganeering? Derrida on the Deep Conventions of Language We have seen so far how, according to Being and Time, each of us inherits a language that must still be inherited. From this, it follows, that our native language, so familiar to us, can be alien a task yet to begin, a promise yet to unfold. This is what authentic Dasein experiences as the ambiguity of its linguistic life. But where, other than in the writers anxiety previously discussed, might we find a concrete example of such an experience? As I see it, Derridas lecture, Monolinguism of the Other offers one of the best explorations of this ambiguity, presenting it in a context that sheds light on the political dimension of the phenomenon. In the lecture, Derrida puts forth two premises which, in their tension with one another, echo the Heideggerean exploration of the ambiguity of the linguistic being above, arguing that we only ever speak one language, yet in another sense, we never speak only one

17

In the opening remarks of The Nature of Language, Heidegger provokes his audience with the following line of thinking. We speak our language, he writes, How else can we be close to language except by speaking it? Even so, our relation to language is vague, obscure, almost speechless. (Heidegger, The Nature of Language, 58) A similar formulation also occurs at the beginning The Way to Language (see the epigraph at the beginning of my essay).
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language.18 As evidence for these two claims, Derrida draws from his personal experience of the French language. Derrida confesses to his audience: I am monolingual. My monolinguism dwells, and I call it my dwelling; it feels like one to me, and I remain in it and inhabit it. It inhabits me. The monolinguism in which I draw my very breath is, for me, my element. Not a natural element, not the transparency of the ether, but an absolute habitat. It is impassable, indisputable: I cannot challenge it except by testifying to its omnipresence in me. . . . I would not be myself without it. It constitutes me, it dictates even the ipseity of all things to me, and also prescribes a monastic solitude for me; as if, even before learning to speak, I had been bound by some vows.19 Notice here that, despite denying it as a natural element, Derrida strongly identifies with the French language, describing it as his dwelling, his element. Now, this proclamation might come as some surprise to those familiar with the complicated history of Derridas native land. Of all Arab countries colonized by the French, Algeria was, by most accounts, the most thoroughly taken over by French culture. Until the revolution in 1962, French infiltrated almost every corner of Algerian culture not only government but education, religion, and eventually nearly all aspects of cultural life.20 Like most Algerians

18

Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 17.
19

Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 1.
20

As a result, since the 1962 revolution, there have been several laws to make Algerian Arabic the only language used in schools, on street signs, and in government and politics the enforcement of which has not been very successful largely because of the populations linguistic diversity.
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of his day, French was the language that Derrida spoke at home and the language in which he was educated. Thus, very early on, Derridas world was bound up with French language and culture, so much so that it would not have dawned on him at the time to think about himself as an Algerian Jew assimiliated into French culture or into francophonie. After all, Derrida did not identify strongly, did not find a home as a child in Jewish culture. As he notes, nothing comparable to Yiddish was available for Derrida. Moreover, as a part of assimilation, many Jewish rituals, had been given Christian names and were inflected with Christian signification during French colonization. Derrida indeed found his intellectual identity as a young student within the rich landscape of French literature, the one part of his education, he reports, that he enjoyed, leading him to continue his education in France. For these reasons, Derrida is hesitant to separate himself from this language that guided him along the path of his maturation. Yet Derrida insists that this dwelling of his, this language in which he draws his breath, is not a natural element for him. It is never fully naturalized for him; indeed, it remains other. Part of this can be explained by considering the history of political events affecting the relationship between Algerian Jews and French culture. Derridas family were not citizens but subjects of France with limited rights until the Crmieux Decree of 1870 (Derridas grandparents were the first in his family to become French citizens). As Derrida recounts in this lecture, the status of his own national identity always felt precarious though particularly when during the Vichy period, when Derrida was a boy, Algerian Jews were stripped of their French citizenship. Derrida was forbidden to attend school for a year based on his Jewish ethnicity. It is no wonder, then, that Derrida feels estranged from the French language. In such a case, most people
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would readily make an exception to the normal rule of linguistic and cultural determinism. Indeed, they might even support a political initiative to reissue Algerian culture as it existed before colonization. But according to Derrida, his relationship to language is not exceptional. It is exemplary of a universal structure; he writes, it represents or reflects a type of originary alienation that institutes every language as a language of the other.21 If one were to miss this part of the argument and to see Derrida as presenting his story as exceptional, his story could then be seen to confirm our normal assumptions about language, culture, and identity. We would see someone caught between cultures and presume this is the reason for not feeling completely determined by a language. It would confirm for us that language is other only when one doesnt have a single language transmitted through a single culture.22 Only then, we expect, should one feel caught between worlds. The presumption then is that ones own culture or language can never by itself be strange to the one who inherits it, can never appear in need of interpretation or appropriation. As Geoffrey Bennington points out, Derridas argument that all language is the language of the other may seem to problematically conflate the situation of different political subjects (e.g., treating as synonymous the Kosovar Albanian, the Tibetan exile, and the English-speaking native-born American in Dallas), and, moreover, to justify or at least present as inevitable the very coloniality

21

Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 63.
22

This assumption appears especially problematic when we consider that the majority of the worlds population today speaks more than one language. This fact alone demands that we rethink the assumption that ones language provides one with his or her worldview.
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that the point is to protest against.23 If we take Derrida to be making Heideggers point though, namely, that language inheritance is always underway since the discursive world is never present-at-hand before us but is always being interpreted, Derridas point seems neither to assume a single framework for what this precarious inheritance looks like nor to suggest that we must protest against all forms of languages otherness. Every language is the language of the other, an originary alienation, because, as Heidegger argues, in always already having been understood and interpreted, the world is, for the most part, inconspicuous. We find ourselves having already listened and already spoken. This, the irreducible conventionality of our lives, runs deep, though, since the scene of this inheritance is thematically unrecoverable.24 Hence, in his attempt to retrace the steps in his own journey with the French language, Derrida finds himself caught up in what he calls autobiographical amnesia. This, then, is the difficulty of recovering language as something external and prior to me. In a later interview on the Monolinguism lecture, Derrida describes this difficulty in terms of a necessary signing or counter-signing that takes place whenever one inherits or receives a language. Derrida explains:

23

8.
24

Geoffrey Bennington, Double Tonguing: Derridas Monolinguism in Tympanum, 4 (2000):

A psychoanalytic influence upon Derridas thinking is also evident here, particularly Lacans argument that the unconscious is the Others discourse. Lacan argues that the unconscious is other by virtue of the arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified. In a passage from The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious that echoes Derridas own strained recollection in Monolinguism of the Other, Lacan puzzles over the radical heteronomy of the speaking being: Which other is this, then, he asks, to whom I am more attached than to myself [moi], since, at the most assented to heart of my identity to myself, he pulls the strings? His presence can only be understood in an alterity raised to the second power, which already situates him in a mediating position in relation to my own splitting from myself, as if from a semblable. (Lacan, crits, 436) Derridas autobiographical self is also an alterity to the second power, granting him a voice with which to narrate his own self-splitting.
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When one is born into a language, one inherits it because it is there before us, it is older than us, its law precedes us. One starts by recognizing its law, that is to say, its law, grammar, all this being almost ageless. But to inherit is not simply to receive passively something that is already there, like a possession. To inherit is to reaffirm through transformation, change, and displacement . . . . An inheritance must be signed; it must be counter-signed that is, to say, at bottom, one must leave ones signature on inheritance itself, on the language one receives. That is a contradiction: one receives and, at the same time, one gives.25 It is because inheritance of a culture involves transformation, change, and displacement that Derridas memories of growing up in Algeria are clearly memories of a life, his life even if that life now seems in retrospect often the product of external forces. Similarly, though the French language did not belong to him, it was nevertheless his language not because it was native but because it was integral to the world to-be-interpreted that he found himself in. Derridas account, then, challenges linguistic determinism in that, like Heideggers, it problematizes the kind of self-relation required for language to be determining or conditioning. For linguistic determinism, my language is not my own in any sense, for whether and how I have appropriated it or identified with it is irrelevant to its claim upon me. But for Derrida, the power of language to set forth a world is precarious. This is not to deny the force of language in our lives but to investigate the nature of that force, questioning the self-evidence of its power. In this way, we can gain a better understanding of the nature of

25

Jacques Derrida, Language is Never Owned: An Interview in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan, trans. Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 104.
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languages readiness-to-hand. But Derridas desire to speak here where linguistic determinism is silent, to give a deeper description of language inheritance and, indeed, of cultural assimilation, also has a political motive, namely, to expose the political manipulations by which language appears like a determining force for some and an estranging point of origin for others. As Derrida puts it: Because the master does not possess exclusively, and naturally, what he calls his language, because, whatever he wants or does, he cannot maintain any relations of property or identity that are natural, national, congenital, or ontological, with it, because he can give substance to and articulate [dire] this appropriation only in the course of an unnatural process of politico-phantasmatic constructions, because language is not his natural possession, he can, thanks to that very fact, pretend historically, through the rape of a cultural usurpation, which means always essentially colonial, to appropriate it in order to impose it as his own. That is his belief; he wishes to make others share it through the use of force or cunning; he wants to make others believe it, as they do a miracle, through rhetoric, the school, or the army. It suffices for him, through whatever means there is, to make himself understood, to have his speech act work, to create conditions for that 26 Here Derrida analyzes a dimension of languages power that Heidegger himself did not broach, elaborating on the way languages obviousness rest upon certain social arrangements. More specifically, we see that languages readinessto-hand is inseparable from an unnatural process of politico-phantasmatic
26

Jacques Derrida, Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 23-24.
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constructions which through force and cunning ensures the felicity of certain speech acts. We might recall here Austins suggestion that all language (even in its constative form) has a performative dimension. Take, for example, the power of naming. Naming requires an intricate social convention not just a theory of beings relationship to the word. Without others to accept my naming ritual, without institutions to regulate it to assess its felicity or infelicity, the metaphysical power of naming would be nil.27 From this, it is not hard to see why the colonial power of France insisted upon translating Jewish rituals into the idiom of Christian ritual. The ritualistic power of speech, the capacity for it to work in performing any number of socially-significant tasks (such as giving a name), is what is most ready-to-hand for that being who exists essentially as being-in-the-world. And yet, just as the discursive world we inherit calls for interpretation and contestation, so too do performative speech-acts call for these. The conditions that satisfy the efficacy of a ritual, after all, are often ambiguous, often contested. Indeed, as Derrida argues in Signature, Event, Context, it is not always clear whether a speech-act works, for this event is irreducibly conventional, always

27

To be clear, this does not mean that languages power is not real. A performative utterance (e.g., I bequeath ) has real power, after all, but this power is essentially that of ritual and, in this, cannot be separated from the set of conditions and assumptions that comprise it. So, for example, the power of naming both rests on ritual and is real. I was given a name by my parents. I did not choose it, but I have had to answer to it since I first began to speak. I can pronounce it to introduce myself. I can sign it if I want to give my guarantee. It is me by the power of reference. If I wanted to change it, I could go through a legal process to do so, but even then my friends and family might refuse my choice unless, of course, there was an established convention for the name change. The power of the name is real, but it is inseparable from a set of social and political rituals and from a metaphysical framework. The specificity of these conditions is easily lost with an over-simplistic account of language determinism.
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part of the world that is to be interpreted.28 One may surely protest that Frances redesignation of Jewish rituals was infelicitous, for example. But such counter-signing is often prohibited or foreclosed in advance as antithetical to the common sense interpretations of speech. This brings us to the last point in this section before we return to look again at linguistic determinism in light of these accounts. As we have seen, for both Heidegger and Derrida, the process of re-negotiating the inheritance of our discursive world is inevitable; at the same time, it is also one that many go to great lengths to avoid. Heidegger describes such evasion as inauthenticity. For inauthentic Dasein, there is no ongoing task of interpreting the discursive world, since nothing is allowed to exist or to count that does not make itself immediately intelligible to the they. But while Heidegger insists that being inauthentic need not entail any moral failure, Derrida clearly has more condemnation for the one who, lacking a natural possession of language, manipulates social arrangements so that language can remain unproblematically ready-to-hand. It is to such a person that Derrida speaks most of all when he insists that language is other for us all other, no matter how deep our identification with it. Conclusion Let us return now to the central claim of linguistic determinism, namely, that language is something that determines the way we think, making it impossible to think outside of the worldview it provides. On this account, this worldview is something that we share with others but only those with whom we share a language. Having explored the descriptions that Heidegger and Derrida offer of language inheritance, we can now make clear what such a claim
28

Derrida asks: Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a coded or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as a citation? (Derrida, Signature, Event, Context, 18)
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overlooks. First, then, we have seen that to be thrown into a discursive world does not mean that all possible meanings are worked out in advance somehow by the language itself. As Heidegger explains, language is always part of a world. It is a significant way that Dasein brings entities near to it. In talking about something, what is spoken about is brought near, just as in talking to someone, they too are brought near. But if language is an atomistic worldview, that is, in relation to nothing else, then there would be nothing beyond it, nothing other to it. It would be self-referential, not equipmental in other words, without world. This is why being thrown into a discursive world does not mean that all possible meanings are worked out in advance. On the contrary, languages belonging to the world means that we never encounter it outside of particular contexts of understanding and interpretation. Thus, for Heidegger, it would be misleading to say that language is the context through which we understand everything, since language would be meaningless without its own contexts. Next, we have seen how, just as linguistic determinism fails to look at how the general bearing of Dasein enables languages readiness-to-hand, it also overlooks the influence of certain social-political arrangements, namely, those that obscure either the history or the conventionality of language. But if the language of metaphysics is ready-to-hand for us, even determining for us, its being-so is indistinguishable from how it is reiterated throughout history in the organization of our social world. The common intelligibility of the word I, for example, should not be understood apart from the specific ways it is reiterated in so many socially significant speech-acts. On the one hand, this oversight is understandable. While we are thrown into a world where language is already at work for example, as part of our social rituals, it is easy to forget what makes languages efficacy possible in the first place, that is how it works in our lives. However, there is something valuable in recognizing this. Its not just that
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recognizing the historical contingency of our language reveals how it is revisable rather than absolute, since this non-permanence is neither good nor bad in itself. More importantly, recognizing the historical and social context of some particular part of language can be necessary for us to bring near those entities language aims to bring near. In other words, in order to really understand them, we need to be able to introduce new interpretations of and potentially revise how we speak about things and about others. To consider the contingent social institutions that have over time given an aura of common sense and inevitability to language would mean to speak more truly in precisely Heideggers sense of truth as !:3-&(!, letting something be seen as something unhidden.29 Lastly, we have seen that linguistic determinism fails to recognize the difference this contingency makes for people, most of whom will at some point in their lives, venture a critical incision into, an explicit counter-signing of the language that is allegedly unrevisable for them. Indeed, it has no way of even recognizing the interpretive disputes that arise within a linguistic community or, for that matter, that arise within a single mind trying to negotiate its path in the world. If to share a language, after all, is to share a worldview, there should be no basis for inter- or intra-subjective disagreement about speech. Yet, as Heidegger and Derrida show, such struggles over language inheritance do exist both for individuals and communities, since as David Loy puts it, the life we are thrown into is a storied one where the task of interpretation is unavoidable and always incomplete.30 The existence of these struggles challenges not only the assumption that language single-handedly provides a worldview but also the assumption that individuals effortlessly transcend the language they inherit.
29

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (San Francisco: Harper and Collins, 1962), 7, 56.
30

David Loy, The World is Made of Stories (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010), 10.
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While languages force is anything but determining for us, its impact on our lives is nevertheless profound.

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. Translated by Annete Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Bennington, Geoffrey. Double Tonguing: Derridas Monolinguism. Tympanum, 4 (2000). Derrida, Jacques. Language is Never Owned: An Interview in Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. Translated by Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. --- Monolinguism of the Other, or the Prosthesis of the Origin. Trans. Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. --- Signature, Event, Context in Limited, Inc. Translated by Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Macquarrie and Robinson. San Francisco: Harper and Collins, 1962. --- The Nature of Language in On the Way to Language. Translated by Peter Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. --- The Way to Language in On the Way to Language. Translated by Peter Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Kronick, Joseph. Philosophy as Autobiography: The Confessions of Jacques Derrida. MLN, Vol. 115, No. 5, Comparative Literature Issue (Dec. 2000), 997-1018. Lacan, Jacques. The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious in crits. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. Lafont, Cristina. Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure. Translated by Graham Harman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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Loy, David. The World is Made of Stories. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010. Novitz, David. The Rage of Deconstruction. Monist, Vol. 69, Issue 1 (1986): 39-55. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. --- Philosophy as Science, Metaphor, Politics in Essays on Heidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C.K. Ogden. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010.

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Waiting to Die ? on Derridas reading of Heidegger in Aporias Hakhamanesh Zangeneh (California State University, Stanislaus)
Abstract In the reading of Heidegger presented in Aporias, Derrida thematizes a number of issues that are central to his work, early and late: temporality (waiting), undecidability (the im-possible), and humanism (animality). Here, we examine the oddly neglected Heideggerian context of these Derridian questions in Sein und Zeit. We propose to examine the textual articulation of Derridas argument, attempting to draw attention to neglected aspects and unseen consequences in that reading. We will ask how these consequences, in the final analysis, complicate Derridas larger argument. Our aim is not to subvert the latter, but rather to unfold the tensions that it contains and the difficulties that it quietly negotiates. I. Motivation Approximately twenty years after its original publication in France, Derridas Aporias1 has recently resurfaced as a central text of discussion in continental philosophy. It is invoked today, on the one hand, in the emerging discipline of critical animal studies,2 but also more directly and forcefully in re-

Apories : Mourir sattendre aux limites de la vrit, (Paris : Galile, 1996). All Derrida citations will be from the original French, hereafter cited as Apories. All Heidegger citations will be from Sein und Zeit, (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1927). Herefter cited as SZ.
2

See e.g. L. Lawlor, Waiting and Lateness: The Context, Implications and Basic Argumentation , in Research in Phenomenology, 38 (2008): 392-403 (this essay is essentially reproduced in his This Is Not Sufficient, [New York: Columbia, 2007]); M. Calarco, On the
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articulations of deconstructionist ethics.3 Beyond these recent invocations, Aporias is also a central text to Derrida studies in general, for it is a privileged site of articulation for the crucial Derridian notion of the im-possible, especially as it relates to Heidegger. As is always the case with Derrida, the text is very rich in implications and condensed in its argumentation. In the following we will isolate and examine closely one locus in Derridas reading of Heidegger in Aporias. That locus, as it turns out, is an interstitial one, i.e. it is a site where French, German and English intersect. We will be focusing our attention on Heideggers term Bevorstehen as read by Derrida. No one has taught us better than Derrida himself that the passage from one language to another is hardly ever grasped by the image of a simple terminological substitution, verbum pro verbo. It should therefore not surprise us that the intersection of languages in Derridas reading of Bevorstehen will also produce effects of interference and semantic diffraction. These effects should perhaps not be viewed as purely arbitrary, contingent or simply remediable. To focus our attention on such effects is to read Derrida in the strongest sense of the term, it is to take the articulation of his text as seriously as he takes the texts of the tradition. II. The general argument To begin, then, it is useful to map out the path taken by Derrida in Aporias, so as to be able to locate in that trajectory the particular step that we shall later isolate. The crux of Derridas argument is clearly his reading of death as the interweaving of modalities.4 Every notion that Derrida will comment upon will
Borders of Language and Death: Derrida and the Question of the Animal, in Angelaki, 7, 2 (2002): 17-25.
3

See F. Raffoul, The Origins of Responsibility, (Indianapolis: Indiana, 2010). One will object that the possibility at issue is not merely a question of logical modality. No

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be led back to the possibility and the impossibility of death, every distinction that he will analyze will be shown to depend on this latter phenomenon. This modal dyad, this knot is thus something like the nucleus of his reading insofar as all differences are organized around it and can be said to flow and follow from it in fact, it is so clearly central that it has also monopolized readers attention to the point of suppressing reflection on the preceding steps or ancillary issues.5 The distinction between Dasein and animal is put into question by Derrida by way of an interrogation of the different forms of relation to death: in the case of Dasein and in the case of the animal. It is here that we cycle through Heideggers terminology, variously translated, of sterben, verenden, ableben. It is here that we find Heidegger essentially according Dasein a privileged relationship to death, one that he denies to the animal. In the subsequent step, Daseins relation to death is analyzed in terms of its components Bevorstehen and possibility. Here we come upon the peculiar instance of modality which is the possibility of my own death, i.e. the possibility of impossibility. The chain of related concepts and it must be noted that each node is actually a distinction or opposition is as follows: Dasein animality ! Modes of dying ! Possibility Impossibility

doubt, for Heidegger possibility is crucially understood as capacity, and Derrida is attentive to not only this sense of the word but many others as well. Some of these multiple senses are found on Apories, pp. 113. That we name the dyad modal should not be taken as indication of an ignorance of this plurivocity but rather as terminological shorthand. A logicist reduction seems to be behind all the reflections of I. Thomson, in Can I Die? Derrida on Heidegger and Death, in Philosophy Today, 43, 1 (1999): 29-42.
5

While both Lawlor and Raffoul study the modal dyad at length, neither of them reflects on the interpretation of Sein und Zeit that is formulated on the way to that notion. The exception to this rule is to be found in the rich analyses contained in Paola Marratis Genesis and Trace, (Stanford: SUP, 2005) pp142-177. All agree however, that the possibility of impossibility is the linchpin of the argument. See, e.g. Marrati, Genesis and Trace p.156.
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Our construal of Derridas argument as such a dihairetic structure, lays the groundwork for our closer look at the oppositions in the analysis of the modes of dying, further below.6 Since there is great consensus on the larger ambitions of Derridas text, we can defer to other commentators on those issues. Briefly put, if Derrida can claim to have deconstructed the modal dyad, then he will have destabilized all the distinctions. The bulk of our attention will now be dedicated to one single step, one single topos or interstice in this Derridian dihairesis, his interpretation namely of Bevorstehen, Daseins relation to its end, to its death, as waiting.

III. Waiting, Bevorstehen - sattendre

Turning now to the link in Derridas argument that we would like to focus on, we can begin there, where Derrida examines Daseins privileged relationship to death, Sein-zum-Tode. He astutely isolates a statement wherein Heidegger proposes a connection between Daseins relation to its death, as Bevorstehen, and Daseins most proper, eigenste, possibility/capacity of being: Mit dem Tod steht sich das Dasein selbst in seinem eigensten Seinknnen bevor. (SZ, p.250) And yet, in an act of translation whose effects and influence can hardly be overestimated, he chooses to translate Bevorstehen by sattendre waiting. The viability of this translation has, oddly, been ignored by readers, even though we will see that for Derrida it is anything but straightforward. Indeed, Derridas text pauses at this word and reflects on not just the existing French translations
6

Lawlor (Waiting and Lateness, p.398) and Marrati (Genesis and Trace p.169) reconstruct Derridas argument with greater reliance on the latters own phrasing.
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(Vezin and Martineau)7 but also on the older English translation (MacquarrieRobinson).8 It is essential to note that Derrida does not adjudicate among these translators he does not choose one term out of the list. Rather, he seems, at first sight, to use the variants to map-out a semantic terrain as it were, erecting signposts that would delimit a field of meaning. Here is the passage where Bevorstehen turns into waiting it would behoove us to examine at least briefly its structure and rhetorical execution: Le sattendre par lequel jai traduit une certaine phrase de Heidegger implique limminence, certes, lanticipation inquite de quelque chose mais aussi cette double ou plutt triple transitivit (non rflexive et rflexive) du sattendre quelque chose qui arrivera comme le tout autre que soi mais du sattendre en sattendant du mme coup soi-mme, en se prcdant soi-mme comme si on avait rendez-vous avec un soi-mme quon est et quon ne connat pas. La phrase allemande dit Mit dem Tod steht sich das Dasein selbst in seinem eigensten Seinknnen bevor... Martineau traduit le steht sich bevor par se pr-cde ( Avec la mort, le Dasein se pr-cde lui-mme en son pouvoir-tre le plus propre ). Vezin traduit le steht sich bevor par a rendez-vous ( Avec la mort le Dasein a rendez-vous avec lui-mme dans son pouvoir-tre le plus propre. ). Macquarrie et Robinson rappellent une autre connotation de ltre-devant-soi en traduisant plus littralement par stands before itself ( With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-being. ). Avec la
7

Etre et Temps, trad. F. Vezin, (Paris : Gallimard, 1986); Etre et Temps, trad. E. Martineau, (Paris : Authentica, 1985).
8

Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie-Robinson, (New York: Harper, 1962).

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mort, le Dasein est en effet devant lui-mme, avant lui-mme (before, bevor), la fois comme devant une glace et devant un avenir : il sattend, il se prcde, il a rendez-vous avec lui-mme. 9 The hesitation in the flow of Derridas text here, the triple iteration of the phrase, but also the extraordinary intersection of the three languages among three translators should have otherwise called readers attention to the sensitivity and fragility of this juncture, the delicate transition namely, from Bevorstehen to sattendre. Instead of this issue, readers have focused on the three variants of the idiomatic French expression sattendre, but the question of these variations on waiting clearly assumes the underlying translation to be unproblematic. An analysis of the three variants, we maintain, presupposes a reflection on the latter fundamental issue, indeed a reading of Aporias that avoids commenting at least cursorily on the performance of the above passage can only be deemed incomplete and unsatisfactory. Although Derrida renders Bevorstehen by sattendre, (waiting), he also, in this passage, mentions the three translations se prcder, avoir rendez-vous, tre devant/avant (to precede, to have an appointment, to be in front of/before: Martineau, Vezin, Macquarrie-Robinson respectively). Obviously each one of these terms would call for a reflection of its own each one contributing some insight into Bevorstehen, but each one also risking the importation of connotations that could lead astray. Hence, one might surmise, the plural citation. Once again, Derrida does not criticize the translators here, but only enlists their suggestions in a sequence of terms including sattendre, waiting. Notably though, out of that list, waiting quickly asserts itself in Derridas text to the detriment of the other variants. Indeed, the privileged notion for the deconstruction of the modality of death henceforth in the text will turn out to be this (admittedly very nuanced
9

Apories, p.118-119.

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and uncommon) notion of waiting, sattendre and not advancing, preceding or standing before. It is only sattendre that manifests the threefold connotation of transitivity and heterogeneity, only sattendre that allows the introduction of alterity into a structure that references ipseity and ownness. But it must be recalled that no single one of the translators ever employs the term waiting, sattendre, or a variant thereof to render Bevorstehen. So, while Derrida seems to acknowledge the translations of Martineau, Vezin and Macquarrie-Robinson, he in fact privileges a term that none of them employed. The term waiting is introduced in the company of canonical translations, but then immediately turns out to supplant them in the analysis. One might suspect that here, in this text, the reference to the translators only serves to legitimate (by association) the importation of the notion of waiting. One might also suspect that in Derridas text, waiting functions much like what he had elsewhere specifically named supplement. At this juncture, previous readers have immediately moved to take apart the threefold structure of waiting as thought by Derrida. But if we were to pause here and refrain preliminarily from analyzing that triple waiting, we might be able to reflect on that list of alternative, potentially overlapping, translations. What exactly is the overlap or common implication between, on the one hand, the phenomenon of waiting, in general, and on the other hand, the idea of meeting or of having an appointment (avoir rendez-vous)? Clearly both notions point to something in my future, but the question is one of how one relates to that future in waiting for a meeting. What is more, when the terms are thus conjoined, waiting for a meeting, the phenomenon envisaged certainly lacks the instance of heterogeneity in ipseity arguably the most subtle usage of sattendre as introduced by Derrida. Between waiting and preceding how do these experiences overlap in content? Can we think Daseins ownmost relation to its
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death along the lines of such a sequential anteriority to a telos? Is sequential anteriority by itself a dispossession of ipseitys hold upon itself? And when we add waiting to the idea of standing in front of a mirror (devant une glace)? Here, the overlap seems to depend wholly on an image that is spatial, indeed objective and physical. Waiting and being ahead (avant)? Perhaps we can distinguish two directions of connotation emanating from Heideggers text and the translations: a more formal one would insist on a minimally prepositional sense, a syntactical function emphasizing before, ahead, pre-; another more material sense would think through images of waiting and standing in a literal, realist manner. Of these two, not unrelated directions of implication, clearly the second one risks insisting on a host of ontic implications which are anathema to Heidegger. But if it is the first direction of meaning that is to be foregrounded, is not the term waiting intuitively out of place in that list of phenomena? If that is the sense that is to emerge, does waiting not indeed risk pushing that prepositional sense towards those objective connotations? Is not the addition of that term to the list precisely what imposes an interpretation that privileges a semantic over a syntactic function? And yet it was a peculiarity of waiting, or more precisely, a peculiarity of the French term sattendre to interweave transitivity and heterogeneity in an original way. If Derridas translation of Bevorstehen by sattendre seems oddly unmotivated, his meditation on that translation seems to be distracting and, even worse, misleading, since he actually does not retain any of the translators suggestions. A dangerous supplement indeed, an addition from the outside, at first seemingly innocuous, indeed aiming at clarification, but then supplanting the chain of terms entirely, waiting functions so as to dis-articulate and render less intelligible Heideggers text. But the issue does not stay here, on the level of a lexical choice it is more complex than previously noticed.

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In fact, the term sattendre does make an appearance in the text of the French translation of SZ, in the second half of the work. We do not have to look far to find a candidate for Derridas likely source. (And indeed we would insist on this question of potential sources in the case of Derrida, for he would never have claimed to have been engaged in a formal analysis in an artificial language, defining terms like mathematical variables, being, quite to the contrary, a thinker intimately concerned with questions of tradition and inheritance, working in historically determined ordinary languages.) The term sattendre is actually employed by Martineau, but, significantly, not for Bevorstehen. It is used instead in section 68a, in a passage importantly not cited by Derrida: Lavenir inauthentique a le caractre du sattendre. (Martineau) The inauthentic future has the character of waiting. Die uneigentliche Zukunft hat den Charakter des Gewrtigens. (SZ, p.337) It should be clear that Derridas omission of this reference to waiting is not accidental indeed he cannot cite it without sending his argument into a vertiginous tailspin. Waiting cannot be identified both with uneigentliche Zukunft and Bevorstehen these notions are clearly not to be equated according to the structure of Heideggers temporal theory. If waiting is characteristic of the inauthentic future (Gewrtigen) can this phenomenon be our paradigm for inquiry into a neutral undifferentiated Dasein distinguished from animality in general? Can it furnish insights into authentic temporality, or into authentic being-towardsdeath (and yet this was the connection made by the passage cited by Derrida at the outset)? Does it not seem that if waiting is of the inauthentic, then Daseins relation to its ownmost possibility of being cannot be of the order of sattendre? This then raises the question, first, of which term if any to translate as waiting: Gewrtigen or Bevorstehen. Second, it also poses the substantive and not simply
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terminological question of knowing where to situate the phenomenon of waiting in the architecture of SZ. Is waiting a phenomenon of the inauthentic temporalisation of Dasein, or is it an intrinsic, undifferentiated feature of Dasein prior to the modalisation into authentic and inauthentic? Is waiting an existential structure or is it an existentielle modification? If the above questions arise when we try to triangulate waiting with respect to Heideggers text, a related dimension opens up when we take a brief detour, away from Heideggers German, and turn to the philosophical history of the word sattendre. The French word attendre is obviously composed of the preposition and the verb tendre, and like its English cognate to tend (to/towards), tendre is derived from the Latin tendere, to stretch or to reach. Indeed Derrida tellingly makes use of this historical sense, when he finds in sattendre a function of stretching towards: le se-tendre-vers du sattendre (Apories, p.126). Now, the Latin tendere, it must be noted, plays a prominent role in the history of the concept of time, its most famous instantiation being found in Augustines Confessions, XI though Derrida curiously does not mention this reference. There it will be recalled, Augustine defines time as distentio animi, a distention of the soul. Distention, here, is just dis + tendere. In fact all of Book XI is shot through with variations of tendere: ad-tentio, ex-tentio, in-tentio, tendo. Whereas the Aristotelian conceptualization of time is organized by an objective lexicon of kinetics, arithmetics and sequence, the Augustinian tradition thematizes time as subjectivity and interiority, but is paradoxically organized by the spatial rhetoric of stretching. Now, bringing our detour back to Heidegger, we might ask what is the significance of Derridas resorting to this Augustinian register in his reading of Heideggerian temporality? Of course, both Aristotle and Augustine figure importantly in the genealogy of Heideggers Sein und Zeit. But is Derrida here simply noting that pedigree? How insightful is it to
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introduce the spatial stretching into Heideggers text at the site of this waiting sattendre (ostensibly, Daseins most proper relation to death)? Everything turns, again, on the fact that the recourse to the Augustinian language takes place in a moment of translation. Derridas phrase le se-tendre-vers du sattendre is, in fact, a translation-gloss on the German phrase Im Vorlaufen (SZ, p.262). What is more, this gloss constitutes the third syntagm by which Derrida, in the same phrase, attempts to translate Im Vorlaufen. The first attempt is a word for word translation: la course en avant. The first explanatory gloss parenthetically adds la prcursivit anticipatrice. To which is added le se-tendre-vers du sattendre10 Again, we find Derridas text stuttering at the instant of translation. Again, we find the vocabulary of temporality producing a hesitation, a strange iteration in Derridas text. Strange indeed, when we notice that Vorlaufen is in fact Heideggers term for the authentic future. Thus, not only does Derrida want to read temporality in terms of, as we can now affirm, the problematic Augustinian language of spatial stretching, but he also tacitly reads this stretching/waiting into various, if not all, levels of temporality: Bevorstehen, Vorlaufen and Gewrtigen. If Derridas reading of all of modes of Daseins relation to death in terms of waiting does not receive any further justification in his text, then we might surmise that its hidden warrant, the implicit, absent ground holding together the entire reading, is none other than the assimilation of SZ to the Augustinian lineage. An assimilation if not a total reduction. Would it not be the most obvious conjecture that when Derrida reads Heideggerian temporality he essentially reads it as novel episode in the history of distentional time and that this figure overdetermines temporality for Derrida to such an extent that he fails to demarcate and distinguish the various instances of temporality?
10

The English translation lacks the first phrase completely; in its place the translator simply iterates the subsequent phrase. Ibid.
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IV. Multiple futures In order to address the questions that arise as a result of Derridas reading and to untie the translational knot created by the latter, we must above all restitute some of the context from Sein und Zeit, by elucidating the notions of Bevorstehen, Gewrtigen, and Vorlaufen. We shall analyze these terms seriatim since each one is a conceptual refinement of sorts on the previous. Heidegger moves in that list from a general, through, to a very narrow and differentiated relation to the future. Bevorstehen - 50 Recalling briefly the order of Heideggers analysis, it will be remembered that by par. 45 the being of Dasein had already been completely determined as care, Sorge. However, Heidegger then asked whether care had been grasped originarily. An originary grasping of Dasein would be a manifestation of the latter in authenticity and wholeness. It is this feature of wholeness that would have been missing from the analysis up to par 45 and it is in the interest of this question that Heidegger turns to an analysis of being towards death. Since Dasein is always underway to death, it is underway to an end, it is incomplete, not whole. In par. 48, Heidegger analyses various notions of end and completion requisite to thinking wholeness. However, according to Heidegger, end and incompletion in the ordinary sense, while apt to describe entities of the order of Vorhandenheit, are not adequate for the being of Dasein. Subsequently, in par. 50, Heidegger first introduces the Dasein-related ideas of Bevorstehen and Bevorstand while opposing them to the ontic ideas of Ausstehen and Ausstand (SZ, p.250). The opposition that is in play here is clearly not that between two modes of Dasein
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(authentic and inauthentic), but rather, the one between two ways of being, namely Dasein and Vorhandenheit. We are dealing here with a difference belonging to the order of reasons as it were, a difference and an opposition of a conceptual, philosophical nature. The opposite of Bevorstehen, namely Ausstehen, would only incorrectly be used to describe the incompletion of Dasein. In other words, this difference is basically that between a correct and an incorrect conceptualization of Dasein. To think Daseins end in the way opposite to Bevorstehen would be simply to think Dasein as an object. If Bevorstehen is understood by some variant of a notion of waiting, then that waiting would contrast essentially with ontic incompletion. Then, waiting would be an ontological structure proper to Dasein and absent in the ontic. This is the first opposition that we must hold on to. To elaborate on the other opposition relevant to our discussion, we must continue with our rsum of SZ while paying attention to the changing sites in the topography of the argument.

Originary Future - 65 As the analysis advances, Heidegger turns to focus on his particular notion of death as possibility, pondering the phenomenon of being-towardsdeath as a peculiar being-towards-a-possibility. By par. 52, he will have repeatedly insisted on keeping the possibility in Daseins constitution pure, and that means unrelated to actuality. In par.53, he asks, quite incidentally, whether such a structure as waiting, Erwarten, can adequately grasp a relation to possibility which does not enroll that possibility in an actualisation. His answer is resoundingly no.11 On Heideggers analysis, waiting is always directed
11

This is where Heidegger maintains that all manner of Warten and Erwarten is founded in Gewrtigen.
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towards some ontic condition which does not yet hold but is going to (SZ, p.262). Stated in non-Heideggerian terminology, we might surmise that waiting is rendered inauthentic by a relation not just to some real object but already by virtue of a relation to some intentional object. What contrasts with this sort of actualising (and thus inconsistent) relation to the future, is what Heidegger terms Vorlaufen and it is derived from the structure of vorlaufende Entschlossenheit. This type of relation to death, which is at first only theorized, preserves possibility as possibility (again, why this is the case is ulterior to our interests here). So to emphasize again the differing sites of distinction, at this stage, we are now dealing with an opposition between an actualizing relation to possibility and one which preserves possibility as possibility. Furthermore, we have explicitly identified waiting as having the former type of structure. After sketching out the essential properties of an authentic relation to death as possibility, he then points out that such a sketching out falls short of a phenomenological disclosure. To address this, he enters into a discussion of conscience and guilt. These phenomena are intended to remedy the unphenomenological character of the analysis of death up to that point. With par. 65 Heidegger returns to the main narrative dedicated to temporality and deduces the latter from the structure of care. This deduction takes as its base and this is crucial to note authentic and whole care. So in par. 65 we see Heidegger deduce an originary notion of temporality (hence originary, authentic future) from the care structure (now authentic and whole). Having laid bare a phenomenological attestation of vorlaufende Entschlossenheit, having thus constituted authentic and whole care, he will then have a phenomenologically attested instance of authentic and whole, hence originary future. This originary concept of the future, this authentic relation to death as possibility, is again, certainly not one of waiting but, instead, one of Vorlaufen, (which we could
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provisionally translate as advancing or, more loosely, running ahead). We should note that the reason for the two different thematisations of Vorlaufen in the flow of SZ are due to the structure of the argument. First, Vorlaufen is sketched out unphenomenologically, then after an attestation remedies that lacuna, it is derived from authentic whole Care. At this stage, i.e. by par 65, Heidegger has introduced a general opposition between two relations to possibility, an actualizing and a non-actualising one. At this stage the opposition seems still quite formal. It gains some descriptive content when the authenticityinauthenticity distinction is introduced into the discourse on temporality. Authentic Future - 68a When Heidegger specifically contrasts the ekstasis of the authentic future with the inauthentic one in par 68, he offers his longest analysis of the phenomenon of waiting. It is here that we can study the opposition or distinction between waiting qua Gewrtigen (inauthentic future) and, again, advancing or Vorlaufen (authentic future). This distinction is in fact nothing other than the distinction between two possible projections (Entwerfen) in the understanding of Dasein. In the inauthentic projection, Daseins advance ahead of itself, its sich vorweg, is tied up with the ontic. Hence, Dasein understands itself inauthentically through ontic contents. Here, the future is derived from a something that is not yet at-hand, but will be. This is the most intuitive and pre-philosophical notion of the future we are familiar with: I wait for the end of the work week, the child waits for Christmas when she will receive gifts, the religious wait for the return of God and the resurrection of the dead, etc. The futurality of this expectation is quite simply derived from the fact that the awaited is not now here, not now at hand, but most certainly will be, will come at another moment. The awaited is in each case an ontic state-of-affairs, the date or the moment when I will be capable
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of doing this or that, of carrying out some comportment closely tied to my environing world. The awaited is some configuration of my equipmental context. In these cases, possibility is taken up in some activity aiming at its realization and this obviously compromises already its status as possibility insofar as it is tied to some effective reality (Wirklichkeit). The situation in authenticity is symmetrically opposed to what we just sketched out. When the projection in Daseins understanding is accomplished based on Daseins most extreme possibility of being then Dasein approaches itself (kommt auf sich selbst zu) from out of its authentic possibility of being itself. It is then in relation to an authentic future. Again, in authenticity, in Vorlaufen or advancing, Dasein understands itself from out of a possibility proper to it, namely the possibility of its own death, the possibility of not or no longer being. Here the future is not derived from a form of the present and the pure possibility at issue is not tied up in any sort of actuality or actualization. The future of advance is thus distinguishable from the future of waiting and anticipating insofar as the former: (1) does not refer to an ontic something, (2) is not based on a foregoing concept of the present functioning like an anchor of reference for the future, (3) does not marginalize pure possibility in the interest of actuality.

VI. Modal Slippage or Modal Convertibility? Our general construal of Derridas path is not textually controversial; indeed, it overlaps with work by other commentators. Readers are in agreement everything, literally every notion mentioned previously, depends on the modal dyad of death. The crucial core of Derridas reading is then a problematisation,
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or deconstruction, of that modal dyad. Very simply put, on this reading, the dihairetic structure depends for its very articulation on the separability of the modal dyad. In other words, if the difference between possibility and impossibility in the phenomenon of death is shown to be less than rigorous, if it is shown to be compromised, fluid, unstable, etc. then the entire system of distinctions is vitiated. Again, all the previously mentioned distinctions depend on the distinction between possibility and impossibility. Now, as with any Derridian deconstruction, the outcome is not going to be a complete and total negation of the distinction in question. Rather, instead of a thoroughgoing untenability, Derrida is going to argue for instability. In other words, it will suffice for him to show that the distinction can become undecidable, or to use another persistent figure from his writings, it will suffice to show that one side of the distinction contaminates the other. Which is to say that he will claim that in the phenomenon of Daseins relation to death, possibility can turn into impossibility and vice-versa. While Heidegger never states that possibility in general turns into impossibility in general, the intertwining of modality in death, we maintain, virtually implies it and this can be shown based on multiple arguments. One way of doing this, from out of Derridas text, would be to reflect on this latters underlining of the notion of truth in the discussion of the modal dyad. Truth, for Heidegger, is of course not a primarily epistemological category but an aletheiological one, and aletheia, as manifestation, poses the question of phenomenality. Which is to say that with the thematisation of the truth of the modal dyad, Derrida is raising the question of its phenomenality. No doubt, the question of the phenomenality of death is a subtle one in SZ. Without unfolding it in its entirety we can simply inquire, with Derrida (e.g. Apories, p.125), into the phenomenality of such a thing as the possibility of an impossibility. In other
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words, we ask, again, with Derrida, how would the possibility of an impossibility appear, and how would this appearance differ from the appearance of its converse, i.e. the impossibility of a possibility? Derridas argument is that on the phenomenological, aletheiological level, there would be precisely no difference. Both manifest themselves as essentially aporia. This would be one manner of rendering the modal dyad of death symmetrically convertible and of legitimizing a claim regarding possibility as impossibility. Another argument would proceed analytically from Heideggers own definitions. While death is a possibility for Dasein, Dasein can never be dead. Death can never be an actuality, an effectivity for Dasein. Although Dasein can be underway towards death, although it can be sterbend, it cannot be gestorben. The first person present conjugation of the verb to be does not tolerate the predicate dead. The locution I am dead can only ever be enunciated figuratively. If this is the case, if death can only ever be possibility and never an actuality, then we could also infer that it is an impossibility in the sense of an impossible condition for Dasein to be in. If Dasein is, then it is not dead, and if it is dead, then it cannot be. Which, again, is to say that the possibility of my death is actually impossible for me, and hence is a possibility as impossibility. Hence we see that Heideggers interpretation of death can be shown to already imply the convertibility of the modal dyad, thus already virtually implying that death (in a sense) is an impossibility but also (in another sense) a possibility. The deconstruction of the modal dyad is already contained in Heideggers own texts. Indeed, it is by formulating the strongest possible reading of Heidegger that we see Derridas acumen, not the converse.

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VII. Implications Finally, after these two passes over Derridas argument, after these remarks on waiting and on the phenomenality of death, we have to step back to ask what the ultimate implications of our reading are for Derridas argument. As for the triple, idiomatic character of waiting that Derrida had emphasized and which other commentators have fixated upon, we have to say that the whole nexus of issues hinges on a radically destabilizing translation. More distantly, the question of course arises as to the plausibility of Derridas dihairetic sequence of distinctions. How does that dihairetic structure fare under a problematisation of the status of waiting? How much in Derridas argument depends on his introduction of the notion of waiting as a translation of Bevorstehen? The aim of Derridas argument was to study closely Daseins privileged relationship to death, i.e that relationship which the animal is deprived of. The analysis of waiting was to introduce an instance of alterity into that which was Daseins most own. That introduction depended on the impossible rhetoric of waiting. While we may have shown the abyss that hides behind that translation, we have shown how the modal dyad in death is itself unstable and that the relation between possibility and impossibility can be reversed from the perspective of phenomenality. Which is to say that Heideggers text already contains in nuce its own undoing, for, the modal convertibility of death also implies their inseparability and that implies, in turn, an inseparability of Daseins relation to death from that of the animal. As we have shown above, the analysis of waiting, as articulated in Derridas text, as it stands, is aberrant. In the strictest sense of the word, the translation of Bevorstehen by sattendre leads us astray, throwing us onto an errant path that disarticulates Derridas own argument by virtue of the terminological identifications that it engenders. On the other hand, the critical questioning of modality, the interrogation of the phenomenality of the modal dyad, which is
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separable from the question of waiting, seemed already, implicitly, legible within Heideggers own text. Hence, at least as far as these two moments of Derridas reading are concerned, we might say that he both fails to do justice to the text, but also, at the same time, remains so close, so faithful to Heidegger that he only re-articulates what is already contained in that thought. Too much and too little, too wild and too restrained, at the same time, in the same text, Derridas reading cannot accompany Heideggers text, unable to occupy the same time, the same space, fundamentally not coinciding with it, etc. The Derridian tropes that we might employ to describe this conjuncture are of course legion. But it is worth noting that we owe all of those tropes to none other than Derrida himself. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a reading sensitive to all of these effects noted above, both in Derridas and Heideggers texts, that could have been carried out in the absence of the formers instruction.

210

Towards a Critique of Walten: Heidegger, Derrida and Henological Difference Adam Knowles (New School for Social Research)
Thus Plotinus (what is his status in the history of metaphysics and in the Platonic era, if one follows Heideggers reading?), who speaks of presence, that is, also of morph!, as the trace of nonpresence, as the amorphous (to gar ikhnos tou amorphous morph!). A trace which is neither absence nor presence, nor, in whatever modality, a secondary modality.1 Introduction: Heidegger, Derrida and Walten In his reading of Heidegger in his 2003 seminar The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida is particularly troubled by one particular aspect of Heidegger: Heideggers superabundant use of the language of Walten.2 As you see, Derrida writes of Heideggers use of Walten, late in my life of reading Heidegger, I have just discovered a word that seems to oblige me to put everything in a new perspective. And that is what happens and ought to be meditated on endlessly3 Derrida discovers this forceful, even violent language

Jacques Derrida, Ousia and Gramm!: Note on a Note from Being and Time, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 66n. 41.
2

Jacques Derrida, The Beast & the Sovereign, Vol. II, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 280.
3

Derrida, Beast II, 279.

211

of Walten in texts by Heidegger that span the period from 1929 to 1957,4 including its rather prominent usage in the primary text under analysis in The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. II: Heideggers 1929-1930 seminar The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.5 In the seminar, Heidegger introduces the language of Walten as a translation of the Greek phusis, which according to Heidegger bears within it an ambiguity of two meanings: ;/9(%, that which prevails, means not only that which itself prevails, but that which prevails in its prevailing or the prevailing of whatever prevails [das Waltende in seinem Walten oder das Walten des Waltenden].6 While phusis cannot be reduced to any single one of these options, what will be of interest here is the forcefulness of the prevailing of what prevailsa centering, a gathering, a pulling together, in a continual agon that always pulls against a pulling apart. And what is to be made of this ambiguous forcefulness given that, for Heidegger, philosophy is meditation upon the prevailing of beings [Walten des Seienden], upon ;/9(%, in order to speak out ;/9(% in the :7).%.7 What is this phusis? What is this logos? And what is the force that binds them? What, moreover, is to be made of Derridas endless re-thinking of Heidegger through
4

For Heideggers use of Walten see Heidegger, The Thing, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper: New York, 1971), 175ff.; Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1971), 61ff.; Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 15ff.; Derrida notes correctly that the language of Walten does not appear in Being and Time (Derrida, Beast II, p. 43).
5

Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, vol. 29/30 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), 40ff.; Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 28ff. Hereafter cited as GA 29/30 with German/English pagination.
6

Heidegger, GA 29/30, 46/30. Heidegger, GA 29/30, 42/28.

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the pervasive language of Walten? In what follows, I will argue that potential answers to these questions are in part already latent in Derridas earlier work, and are best approached through an analysis of Reiner Schrmanns concept of henological difference8an originary process of difference within the One that is, in Platos phrase from Republic 509B, beyond being (epekeina t!s ousias).9 The task of this paper will therefore not be to say what Heideggers Walten is, but instead to draw a perhaps contentious historical comparison with Plotinus in order to develop more fully the role played by this forceful reign in Heideggers thought.

I. Reiner Schrmanns Henological Difference Schrmann develops the notion of henological difference as an explicit response to Derridas repeated provocative hints about Plotinus exclusion from the Heideggerian history of metaphysics.10 In developing the concept of henological difference through a recovery of Plotinus agonistic thinking of the One,
8

Reiner Schrmann, Broken Hegemonies, trans. Reginald Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003); Schrmann first introduced the argument in Schrmann, Neoplatonic Henology as an Overcoming of Metaphysics, Research in Phenomenology, 13, 1 (1983). For a reading of these two texts, see John Sallis, Platonic Legacies (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004), Ch. 4: Platonism at the Limit of Metaphysics.
9

For the history of the phrase epekeina t!s ousias, see the important article by Hans Joachim Krmer, Epekeina t<s ousias, Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie 51,1 (1969). A detailed discussion including extensive references to Plotinus use of variations of epekeina (jenseits) can be found in Jens Halfwassen, Der Aufstieg zum Einen: Untersuchungen zu Platon und Plotin (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1992): 55-65. For a reading of Platos use of the phrase in the Republic, see: John Sallis, Being and Logos (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 401ff.
10

See above n.1. See also Derridas repeated references to Plotinus in Jacques Derrida, Sauf Le Nom (Post-Scriptum), in On the Name, trans. David Wood (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 70, 84-5; and Derrida, Form IsIts Ellipsis, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 172n.16.
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Schrmann argues for a differential theory of the singular,11 positing otherness as an originary process in the One.12 The One in Plotinus is prior to all difference, for difference exists only in second nature [en deutera phusei].13 But despite being prior to all difference, a dissension belabors the One from within14 since the One is a holding together of essentially opposed forces.15 The One holds together as a forceful centering, and as a centering is simultaneously both a force that puts beings in a constellation and is less than a being.16 It is less than a being, but it is not nothing. It is precisely the contested ontological status of the One that drives Schrmann to decisively break with the common onto-theologization of Plotinus by contesting the all-too pervasive assumption that, as the purported father of the Christian tradition of negative theology, Plotinus likewise represents an onto-theological concept of the One in the manner of those who followed in his wake and explicitly referred to him.17 It

11

Schrmann, Broken, 177.

12

Schrmann, Broken, 180. NB: Schrmanns translator has chosen not to capitalize the One. I have altered this aspect of the translation for the sake of consistency.
13

Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 12, 50. All citations of Plotinus are taken from the translation by A.H. Armstrong: Plotinus, Enneads, trans. A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) and are cited as book, chapter, section, and line.
14

Schrmann, Broken, 16. Schrmann, Broken, 95.

15

16

Schrmann, Broken, 143. In Plotinus vivid description: Just as a circle, therefore, which touches the centre all round in a circle, would be agreed to have its power from the centreit is like this that we must apprehend that Intellect-Being, coming to be from that Good and as if poured out and spread out and hanging out from it, is, by its own intelligent nature, evidence of something like Intellect in the One which is not Intellect; for it is one (Plot. Enn., VI, 8, 18, 8-22). See also Beierwaltes discussion of Plotinus circle metaphor in Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen, 51ff. as well as in Werner Beierwaltes, Die Metaphysik des Lichtes in der Philosophie Plotins, in Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung, 15, 3 (1961), 338ff.
214

is this common assumption that allows Heidegger to more or less fully obliterate Plotinus and the entire Neoplatonic tradition from his history of metaphysics.18 Despite the common onto-theological interpretations that present Plotinus as the father of a negative theology in which the One is that which exists in the highest degree,19 the three hypostases in Plotinuspsych!, nous, hendo not represent a scale ascending from the lowest to the highest degree of being in the classical onto-theological sense. Even though Plotinuss entire philosophical enterprise is formulated as an ascent to the One, this ascent is only in part an ascent from a lowest to a highest being, for, as Schrmann writes, Plotinuss onto-theology is his penultimate word, and [o]nto-theology differs from henology as the second hypostasis, nous, does from the first, hen.20 Our task in this section will be to allow a reading of Plotinus to emerge that rescues him from the history of onto-theology, for, in Schrmanns words, the architecture bequeathed by Plotinus was quickly furnished and inhabited by squatters: the
17

The entire story of the apophatic tradition from the later Neoplatonists Proclus to Porphyry through the Christian tradition and beyond to iterations in medieval mysticism and modernist literature cannot be told here, but an extremely useful summary and collection can be found in the detailed two-volume collection William Franke, ed. On What Cannot be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 2007).
18

For one of Heideggers sparse references to Plotinus, see the addendum entitled On the Destruction of Plotinus in Martin Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 202.
19

Schrmann, Broken, 164: The consequence is that Plotinus does not fallat least not without catching himselfinto the thetic monism of which historians of ideas make him the champion. For a strong representative of the onto-theological reading, see Halfwassens Der Aufstieg zum Einen. Halfwassen attempts to portray an unbroken tradition of negative and apophatic theology going back beyond even Plato via Plotinus through the representatives of the Christian tradition such as Pseudo-Dionysius.
20

Schrmann, Broken, 144.

215

Christian theologians. 21 Without using the term onto-theology in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger describes this squatters settlement as follows: What is essential is that the object of First Philosophy (metaphysics) is now a specific, albeit suprasensuous being It is instead a matter of the principle fact that the suprasensuous, the metaphysical is one domain of beings among others. Metaphysics thereby enters the same level as other knowledge of beings in sciences or in practico-technical knowledge, with the sole difference that this being is a higher one. It lies over, beyond, trans, which is the Latin translation of &,".22 Plotinus onto-theology comes to a halt between the first and second hypostases, for the One is not only beyond being, but even beyond any notion of a beyond. Schrmann situates his concept of henological difference precisely in this opening between the first and second hypostases, beyond the beyond, for the difference does not separate beingness and being, but the One from beingness and conjoined beings.23 If, according to Heidegger, the onto-theological ascent searches for the the first cause, the causa prima that corresponds to the reasongiving path back to the ultima ratio,24 treating it as yet another present-at-hand being, then the Plotinian ascent reaches instead a mystery, for [o]nly one

21

Schrmann, Broken, 139. Heidegger, GA 29/30, 66/43. Schrmann, Broken, 145. Heidegger, Identity, 60.

22

23

24

216

question haunts Plotinus: How did the One not remain in itself? (En. V, 1, 6, 6).25 Despite the mysterious nature of the One, which departed from itself in an act of inexplicable audacity (tolma), it is not an ineffability about which one ought to be silent in the manner of a Wittgensteinian injunction. Instead, the initiated thinker speaks about the One in the sense of speaking around (um, peri) it in an endless process of approach, an approach that forever approaches without getting any nearer.26 In this endless approach, one has always already saidas is always the case in the apophatic aporiaboth too much and too little about the One. As Schrmann introduces this aporetic mystery: There is an unfathomable mystery, that there is a coming-to-presence, that there is a manifestation. But just as mysterious is the becomingother in it That there is this world remains as unthinkableas trans-noeticas the seed of otherness which already, from within, ruins its safekeeping.27 As an unfathomable mystery, the One in Plotinus is beyond intellect [epekeina nou] and beyond knowledge [epekeina gn"se"s] 28 and is, therefore, truly ineffable: for whatever you say about it, you will always be speaking of a something.29 But even this ineffability is a continuous injunction to speak, even

25

Schrmann, Broken, 140.

26

Werner Beierwaltes, Selbsterkenntnis und Erfahrung der Einheit: Plotins Enneade V 3: Text, bersetzung, Erlaterungen (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1991), 151.
27

Schrmann, Broken, 168. Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 13, 1-2. Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 13, 1-2.
217

28

29

if doing so treats the one as a something. The One, which can only provisionally be designated as something, is prior to any possibility of designation, prior to the division implicit in the difference between designator and designated. Even if we are engaged in a silent monologue, we differ from ourselves to the extent that we can take ourselves as the object of a monologue with ourselves. As Plotinus describes this splitting: But the thinker must not itself remain simple, especially in so far as it thinks itself: for it will duplicate itself, even if it gives an understanding which is silent. 30 Were the One perchance to speak about itself, thus delimiting part of itself from itself as an object of its speech, it would, according to Plotinus, be telling a lie.31 At most, the One could be imagined uttering something along the lines of am am or I I.32 Yet while the One does not speak, even in this strange tautological saying, it can be spoken about in a speech that undermines its own performance. As Werner Beierwaltes masterfully demonstrates, metaphor, delimiting negation and the use of paradox constitute the three most important methods of nonsaying used by Plotinus,33 yet one must also add the operation of tautology to this list. And what is essential about this performative employment of hyperbole, repetition, tautology and analogy is that it should not be regarded as representing the failure of Plotinian thinking and saying of the One, but instead as the very fecundity and productivity of its ways of saying non-saying. In the performance of the tautology, this fecundity blooms in the desimplifying of
30

Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 10, 44-47. Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 10, 36-7. Plotinus, Enneads V, 3, 10, 38.

31

32

33

Beierwaltes, Selbsterkenntnis, pp. 150ff.; cf. Derridas discussion of paradoxical hyperbole in the apophatic tradition in Derrida, Sauf le nom, 63ff.
218

simplicity. As Schrmann writes: Tautology in the precise, literal sense is not the double discourse of identity: it is the simple discourse of the same. To grasp the one, we must desimplify simplicity.34 Or, to combine Derrida's insights with our reading of Schrmanns Plotinus: in de-simplified simplicity, a difference waltet between the elements of the same. This thinking takes place in the terror of the suspension of identity and difference 35 and the terror even of the suspension of the principle of non-contradiction.36 In desimplified simplicity, philosophy turns to tautological saying as an operation of difference. Das Walten waltet, das Ding dingt, das Wesen west, die Welt weltet, die Sprache sprichtthese and many other tautological formulations are familiar to any reader of Heidegger. Philosophy is philosophizing, Heidegger writes, [y]et however much we seem merely to be repeating the same thing, this says something essential. It points the direction in which we have to search, indeed the direction in which metaphysics withdraws from us. 37 This withdrawal of metaphysics is anxiety-ridden, uncanny, even terrible, taking our very mode of expression with it, leaving us at least initially with an incoherent babbling [wahlloses Reden] in its wake.38 As Schrmann describes this loss of language: To think the One, which everywhere is the issue of our elementary experience, we must unlearn the fascination for everything that can be
34

Schrmann, Broken, p. 72.

35

Beierwaltes, Selbsterkenntnis, pp. 151ff.; this is also a major theme of Beierwaltes Identitt und Differenz.
36

We shall see that we must not only put in question this venerable principle of metaphysics, which is based on a quite specific conception of being, but also cause it to shatter in its very foundation. Heidegger, GA 29/30, 91/61.
37

Heidegger, GA 29/30, 6/4.

38

Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik, in vol. 9 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), 112, tm.
219

represented.39 There may indeed be a certain silenceor perhaps a forceful silencingpeculiar to this terror as simplicity is desimplified, but this terrible silence is not the silence of quietness. If we must speak of simplicity, Schrmann writes, alluding to Heideggers repeated language of the simple (das Einfache),40 this simplicity will necessarily be agonistic.41 II. The Force of Walten As Schrmann recognizes, this simplifying operation of silence is repeated in a significant fashion as a fundamental gesture of Heideggers entire philosophical approach, thus revealing the extent of Heideggers debt to aspects of the apophatic tradition. After all, the use of performative negation, analogy, repetition, hyperbole and tautology are familiar to any reader of Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy. But placing Heidegger squarely within a particular history of the apophatic tradition that received its decisive formulation in Plotinus does not intend to trace any direct lineage of influence from Plotinus to Heidegger, but instead to merely draw attention to a significant convergence of themes that bear great importance for the understanding of Walten as we return to Derridas reading of Heidegger. Walten, I believe, is best understood as the agonindeed the polemos42of the same within itself as carried out through a

39

Schrmann, Broken, 156.

40

See e.g.: For thinking there remains only the most simple saying and the most austere image in the purest silence [Dem Denken bleibt nur das einfachste Sagen des schlichtesten Bildes in reinster Verschweigung]. Heidegger, Beitrge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis), vol. 65 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 72, tm.
41

Schrmann, Broken, 77.

42

On the role of polemos in Heideggers thinking, see Gregory Fried, Heideggers Polemos: From Being to Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
220

giving over or offering up of difference, a difference that is nonetheless a difference within the same. This agon is a centering, a constellation, indeed even a gathering of beingsbut a gathering that is at all times driven asunder against itself. This forceful pulling back-and-forth (auseinander-zueinander) 43 of the between is crucial for Heideggers understanding of not only the ontological difference, 44 but also his entire differentiated language of difference (die Unterscheidung des Unterschieds).45 At stake, therefore, is the entire series of related and equally violent cognates of scheiden (scission, slitting, cutting open, rendering asunder) such as der Unter-Schied, der Abschied and die Ent-Scheidung, all of which begin to appear with great frequency in Heideggers work from the 1930s onwards.46 As Derrida describes the convergence and intertwining of Walten with Heideggers variegated language of difference: At stake here is the difference of the differents, the difference in the same and even as the same, and of the far from obvious difference between Being and beings, between beings
43

Heidegger, Identitt und Differenz (Pfullingen: G. Neske, 1959), 57.

44

Klaus Kremer also recognizes the potential radicality of Plotinus, specifically in his understanding of the ontological difference. Kremer writes: However, if one transposes the ontological difference defended by Heidegger onto the Plotinian difference between the One and Being/beings, then Plotinus approaches us with a thinking that thinks the difference between the groundless ground and everything grounded by this ground at least as radically as Heidegger, if not even more so. Klaus Kremer, Zur ontologischen Differenz: Plotin und Heidegger, in Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung, 43, 4 (1989): 694, tm.
45

Dealing with this question of differentiated difference in full is beyond the scope of this paper, but one would have to examine the decisive hints Heidegger gives in later works about the ontological difference as a fateful reattachment [verhngnisvolle Rckbindung] to the tradition: Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grundes, in GA 9, 134; See also Heideggers remark in Zur Sache des Denkens: The main difficulty lies therein that it is necessary from out of the event of appropriation [Ereignis] to grant thinking a reprieve from the ontological difference. Heidegger, Zur Sache des Denkens (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 40-1.
46

This language is pervasive in many texts, but is prominent in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie, and is taken to an even further extreme in Heidegger, Das Ereignis, vol. 71 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2009).
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and beings as such. 47 However, one must avoid any hasty attempts at identification here. Walten is not the ontological difference and it is not the henological difference, nor indeed is it some other term for differentiated difference such as der Unter-Schied, and not merely for the simple reason that Walten is not anything. More importantly, the force of Walten is instead the enabling of the is, the opening of the between as the opening of a clearing in a continual event of opening. To the extent that Walten is anything, it is the irreducible play of auseinander-zueinander that opens up within the between in which beings come to essence. In Heideggers enigmatic use of the term, Waltento reign, to hold power over, to hold sway, to prevaildefies any single translation, but in common usage it refers most frequently to forms of political power, especially in the cognates verwalten, obwalten, and Gewalt.48 Yet in its more metaphorical uses, Walten can also designate gentler forms of force such as the pall of silence in a room, the weightiness of a mood, the enchanting power of a lover, or even the omnipotence of a god.49 In the context of his re-reading of Heidegger, however, Derrida warns against translations that leave Walten abandoned to its neutrality, even its non-violencedissociating what there might be of force and imposed violence (Gewalt, precisely) authority, power, reigning, and sovereign potency in

47

Derrida, Beast and Sovereign II, 253.

48

Not surprisingly, in the seminar Derrida makes occasional reference to Walter Benjamins Kritik der Gewalt and his own reading of Benjamins text in Force of Law. See for example his pun on Walter at Derrida, Beast and Sovereign II, 44.
49

For a perspective on the history and etymology of Walten, see the entry in Das deutsche Wrterbuch von Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm, available at http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/. The Wrterbuch notes that the verb walten had lapsed into disuse in most dialectics of German before being recovered in 19th-century poetic language, when it was used copiously by authors such as Goethe, Schiller and Hlderlin.
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Walten or Gewalt.50 By recognizing this aspect of force and imposed violence as an ontological necessity within Heideggers thoughta trait prevalent at least since Heideggers valorization of the role of communication and struggle in Being and Time51Derrida begins to significantly reformulate his earlier critiques of Heideggers nostalgia, hope, and longing for a lost native country of thought.52 What troubles Derrida in his earlier readings of Heidegger is what he sees as Heideggers desire for rigorous non-contamination 53 expressed through Heideggers privileging of the same within his thinking of difference.54 In these earlier readings, Derrida regards Heidegger as in effect betraying his own thought by revealing a longing for the metaphysics of presence continuously revealed into name but one prominent example that is not without great political significanceHeideggers portrayal of his own peasantly belonging in a Black Forest community that he would have us believe is present to itself as itself.55 Through his discovery of Walten, Derrida begins to rethink

50

Derrida, Beast II, 279.

51

Only in communication and struggle does the power of destiny become free. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), 436.
52

Jacques Derrida, Diffrance, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Cass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 27.
53

Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 10.
54

Heidegger runs the risk, despite so many necessary precautions, when he gives priority, as he always does, to gathering and to the same (Versammlung, Fuge, legein, and so forth) over the disjunction implied by my address to the other, over the interruption commanded by respect which commands it in turn, over a difference whose uniqueness, disseminated in the innumerable charred fragments of the absolute mixed in with the cinders, will never be assured in the One. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 34.
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precisely this aspect of Heidegger, and in The Beast and the Sovereign he attributes to Heidegger a difference within the same56 and an internal splitting of the same,57 both of which are decisively linked to Walten. Conclusion What this shiftsubtle, but profoundly significantpoints to is the recognition of a certain playfulness (Why after all do we take Heidegger to always be so serious?58) in Heidegger, an irreducible indeterminacy in his terms that is, in many respects, Nietzschean in its love for hiding itself and in its love for the terrible and abysmal. In this play, Heidegger posits terms and withdraws them; at one moment he privileges difference and at another moment simplicity, the same, or something like a gewaltloses Walten;59 at one moment he valorizes silence, yet he always does so within a manic saying.60 Within this play, the task of the
55

Perhaps Heideggers starkest formulation of his own belonging within this space can be found in Heidegger, Why Do I Stay in the Provinces? in Heidegger the Man and the Thinker, ed. and trans. Thomas Sheehan (Chicago: Precedent, 1981). In this mythical work of Selbstdarstellung, the silent gesture of a peasant friend persuades Heidegger not to take a professorial post in Berlin, but instead to remain among the peasants in the Black Forest. This silent gesture, which supposedly expresses a speech so fully present to itself as itself that even the word would be a violent imposition upon it, could be subject to the same critique that Derrida levels against Rousseaus valorization of the silent savage who speaks only in gestures in Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), esp. the subchapter Articulations.
56

Derrida, Beast II, 252. Derrida, Beast II, 254.

57

58

Avital Ronell has perhaps been most successful in bringing out Heideggers strange and even terrible humor in Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book: TechnologySchizophreniaElectric Speech (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
59

Krzysztof Ziarek, Das Gewalt-lose Walten: Heidegger on Violence, Power and Gentleness, paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle, Marquette University, 7th May, 2011.
224

reader is not, as Heidegger warns against in his reading of Nietzsche, to dispose of the indeterminateness in a simple way,61 but instead to situate ones reading within the terror of indecision and indeterminateness by recognizing the essential intertwining of contraries as the very sway of being. Heidegger slips into exalting what he denounces, according to Schrmann, but this slippage is not accidental.62 Philosophy is the fortitude of a questioning that holds sway within this slippage. A philosophy that is equal to the task of thinking Walten, therefore, will not be without its own aspect of violence; it cannot merely be the quietude of a letting-be. As the force that centers contraries around an unspeakable midpoint, and as the suspension of the principle of noncontradiction,63 a philosophical reckoning with Walten brings with it a palpable degree of terror, the terror of a complete lack of certaintya certainty rooted in a certain conception of truth. While that full reckoning has only been hinted at here, what has perhaps been opened is the possibility to re-read Heidegger, but also to re-read Heidegger against himself and his own portrayal of the tradition. Walten will remain an open question, but there is a significant difference between a question that is opened in its openness and to its openness and a question that remains open as if by accident, as if we simply have not said enough because of
60

John Sallis, The Manic Saying of Being, in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie: ein internationales Kolloquium vom 20. 22. Mai 2004 an der Universitt Lausanne (Schweiz), eds. Emmanuel Mejia and Ingeborg Schler (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2009).
61

Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 1, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper, 1979), 122.
62

Schrmann, Broken, 516.

63

Though it extends beyond the scope of this work, it is worth mentioning that the suspension of the principle of non-contradiction is likewise a major theme for Freud. Moreover, as Derrida recognizes, it it not without significance that Heidegger often describes Walten as a Getriebenheit, a drivenness, also rendered as restlessness (Heidegger, GA 29/30, p. 8/5). On a reading of Walten as a Freudian drive, see esp. Derrida, Beast II, 93-118.
225

the limits of the genre of the essay. If Walten is the openness of the opening, prevailing in its prevailing, then any attempt to fix it with a determinacy that is not in turn performatively undermined, as one always does in the classical apophatic operation, must be endlessly resisted. What is said about Walten must be unsaid in its very saying.

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Gewissensruf: A Summons to Martyrdom? G. Bart Kasowski (Collge Jean-de-Brbeuf)

Despite playing a pivotal role in Being and Time as the attestation of Daseins possibility of authentic existence, the concept of conscience (Gewissen) is barely even mentioned by Heidegger in his subsequent philosophical writings and talks. What Heidegger retains from his interpretation of the call of conscience (Gewissensruf) is not the notion of Gewissen itself but the experience of being called: the initiating summons, the call of being (Zuruf des Seyns) that opens up the question of Being.1 As Michael Inwood observes, Heideggers subsequent ways of describing the call reveal that this phenomenon has been uncoupled from the existential concept of Gewissen: Later, Heidegger still speaks of the call, especially the silent call (Ruf, Zuruf, etc.): the call of beyng, the call of men, gods, earth and world to each other, the call to us of poetry and the call involved in naming things. But conscience and guilt play little part in Heideggers work after Being and Time.2 Although Heidegger will insist on the continuity in the development of his thought, his decision to abandon the investigation of Dasein so as to pursue other approaches to the question of Being also marks the abandonment of his existential concept of conscience. After what Theodore Kisiel describes as
1

GA 65, 242, 384-385 / 268-269. For references to Heideggers Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works), the abbreviation GA is generally followed by the volume number, section number (when applicable), page number / page number of English translation (when applicable).
2

David B. Griffiths. The Keywords of Martin Heidegger: A Philosophical-Lexical Analysis of Sein und Zeit. p. 166. Footnote 286. With reference to Michael Inwoods A Heidegger Dictionary. p. 39.
227

Heideggers recognition that Being and Time was a failed project,3 the morallycharged term of Gewissen is virtually eliminated from his vocabulary. Heidegger offers, at least in the extant and publicly accessible texts, neither a retraction nor an explanation: the question of Gewissen is simply left hanging, suspended in silence. In recuperating his notion of the call, however, Heidegger continues to assert the connection established in Being and Time between the phenomenon of calling or summoning and the concept of death. In his University of Freiburg course during 1942-43 winter semester, for example, Heidegger bluntly asserts that the phenomenon of calling and the experience of ones mortality cannot be divorced from one another. Reflecting on the various ways in which the ancient Greeks understood truth (aletheia), Heidegger replaces his former notion of Daseins hearing the call of conscience with a purer experience of being called to an experience of sacrifice in the name of truth. As Heidegger writes: The highest form of suffering is the dying of death as a sacrifice for the preservation of the truth of Being. This sacrifice is the purest experience of the voice of Being.4 In a later reading of the poem by Parmenides, Heidegger confirms this essential connection between the call of aletheia (Ruf der aletheia) and the essence of the hearer as a mortal (Sterblichen).5 Without reprising his existential interpretation of Being-towards-death proposed in Being and Time, Heidegger nonetheless
3

Kisiel. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time. p. 458. GA 54, 249-250 / 166-167. GA 7, 260 / 100.

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emphasizes the relation between calling and death as he queries the mystery of Being, reaffirming the essential uncertainty of thought and the impossibility of grasping Being in the form of knowledge. With his post-Being and Time redeployment of the call sans conscience, Heidegger thus indicates that this problem of attestationunlike the phenomenon of conscience initially proposed as the solution to this problemremains essential to his approach to the investigation of Being. Perhaps due in part to Heideggers immediate abandonment of the existential concept of conscience proposed in Being and Time, relatively few commentators have focused on Heideggers Gewissen with an eye either to further developing this specific concept, to identifying the origins of its meaning (which may be formally indicated by Heideggers radical interpretation of the term), or to considering the methodological importance of the concept for Heideggers hermeneutical approach to phenomenology. The most significant legacy of Heideggers Gewissen to date has been its contribution to the philosophical problem of testimony.6 Indeed, several commentators have pointed critically to Heideggers silent call of conscience as evidence of the impossibility of attestation in Being and Timeor of any experience of testimony whatsoeverin the absence of a validating experience of the absolute7 or some metaphysical power that can produce or authorize such testimony.

The international symposium on Testimony organized by Enrico Castelli in Rome during the winter of 1972 provides a particularly interesting example of how Heideggers attesting phenomenon of Gewissen has been examined in relation to the problem of testimony. Although Heidegger was not present at this symposium, his concept of Gewissen influenced many of the texts that were presented and subsequently published, notably the contributions made by Ricur, Emmanuel Lvinas, Gianni Vattimo, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Castelli himself.
7

Paul Ricur. "L'hermneutique du tmoignage." Lectures 3 : Aux Frontires De La Philosophie. p. 107.

229

Ricurs Call to Again Take Up the Problem of Heideggerian Conscience In the writings of Paul Ricur, we find one of the most provocativeand insightfulanalyses of the problem of how Dasein can experience the attesting call of conscience. More specifically, Ricur was concerned with how the self-testimony of Heideggers Gewissen might inform the metaphysical problems of alterity and of the absolute. In his 1989 essay entitled Emmanuel Lvinas, penseur du tmoignage, Ricur explored how the experience of testimony can be understood by positioning Heidegger and Lvinas in extreme opposition to one another with regard to their concepts related to this phenomenon of attestation. Ricur proposes that their approaches can be compared on the basis of two criteria that he considers essential to any philosophy that merits the title philosophy of testimony: superiority (supriorit) and exteriority (extriorit).8 Based on his schema, Ricur claims that: [Superiority] and/or exteriority dont just constitute the

characteristic traits of philosophies of testimony through their intersection, but also furnish the criterion of their difference, in the sense that, as I will show, from Heideggerto Lvinas, the gradient of superiority increases with that of exteriority.9 On the superiority axis, Ricur sees Heidegger denying the attesting call of conscience even the slightest degree of transcendence with his description of the call as being content-free and originating in Dasein itself. On the exteriority scale, Ricur believes that Heideggers callwhich supposedly
8

Ricur. "Emmanuel Lvinas, penseur du tmoignage." p. 83.

Ibid. p. 84. Note that in these excerpts and our discussion of this essay, we havefor simplicitys saketaken out Ricurs references to what he considers to be an intermediate approach to testimony that lies between the Heideggerian and Lvinassian ones, which is the critriologie du divin proposed by Jean Nabert.
230

reveals the utter inauthenticity of the they-worldeliminates the possibility of Daseins being able to authentically engage with anything external to it. For Ricur, the call reveals that Dasein cannot authentically interact with any other because externality is essentially strangeness (trang(r)et)indeed, authenticity is experienced as strangeness without strangers (trang(r)et sans tranger).10 It is with regards to the strangeness of exteriority that Ricur sees the greatest distance between Heidegger and Lvinas when it comes to their concepts of testimony. As Ricur writes: It is in regard [to externality] that Heidegger and Lvinas seem the closest and are in fact the furthest apart. The closest in terms of their descriptions of the passivity, of the non-mastery, of the sensibility of the Being-summoned. The furthest apart when it comes to [Heideggers] reduction of the stranger that parallels that of transcendence [In Heideggers case,] strangeness is understood as a structure of the Being-towards that is dissociated from Beingwith. Thus the recourse to the neutral expression: es ruft, it calls.11 For Ricur, Heideggers stifling of both the superiority and the exteriority of his existential call is reflected in the fact that Heideggers conscience is as littlemoral as possible! (le Gewissen de Heidegger est aussi peu moral que possible !)
12

Rather

than

recognizing

the

others

identitylet

alone

acknowledging the absolutely superior Other advocated by Lvinas

10

Ibid. p. 86. Ibid. p. 86. Ibid. p. 84.

231

11

12

Heidegger is seen by Ricur to be concerned solely with the question of impersonal Being and the ontological conditions of nothingness (conditions ontologiques de la nantit), thus effectively denying the primacy of ethics.13 Hent de Vries echoes what is implied in Ricurs analysis when he emphasizes the problem of how one can actually experience Heideggerian conscience and ultimately condemns the attestation of Dasein in Being and Time as an impossibility.14 When Daseins essential thrownness is paired with the allegedly solipsistic phenomenon of the existential call, the requirement of attestation set by Heidegger at the opening of Being and Time is exposed as unachievable. In an almost circular modeand this reveals the aporetic [Heideggers] attestation is made possible by what it makes possible. In other words, this prescriptivity manifests itself only in the mode of a quasi-, if not un- or anti-phenomenological gesture of testimony, which does not lend itself to any descriptive or constative rendering, and has for that reason to be affirmed and assumed by a singular performative.15 On these grounds, de Vries seconds Ricurs claim that Heidegger seeks to profit from the superior force of authentification of the Gewissen without acknowledging its transcendent and absolute nature.16

13

Ibid. p. 87. de Vries. Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. p. 287. Ibid. p. 287. Ricur. "Emmanuel Lvinas, penseur du tmoignage." p. 85.

14

15

16

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Seen from the critical perspective adopted by both Ricur and de Vries, the attestation described in Being and Time appears impossible, or at least otherwise than being possible, and thus can be considered as evidence that Heideggers interpretation of conscience is flawed. Moreover, Ricur claims this problematic situation faced by Heidegger highlights the urgency of positing an absolute that can provide the orientation required for any phenomenological or hermeneutical investigation of existence. Having concluded his analysis of the Heideggerian conscience, Ricur asks: [Is it] possible, on the basis [of a] hermeneutics of testimony, to return to the problematic of Gewissen, of the moral conscience, of the injunction, to again take up the problem at the point where Heidegger left off?17 This question is one that Heidegger seems to invite with his sudden abandonment of the concept of Gewissen following the publication of his first major text. As demonstrated by Heideggers critical remarks on the work of Max Scheler in Being and Time, Heidegger was fully aware of the problem of the absolute and the implications of this problem for his existential interpretation of Gewissen. Indeed, Heideggers later recuperation of the enigmatic call to disclosednessstripped of any reference to conscienceindicates that the German thinker continued to struggle with the problem of how philosophy can produce testimony without positing an absolute. In responding to Ricurs challenge regarding the possibility of picking up the problem of conscience where Heidegger left off, however, we must keep in mind that the existential interpretation of Gewissen in Being and Time reflects a
17

Ibid. p. 95.
233

deliberate attempt to avoid any speculation about the calls absolute source. To be clear, this is a restriction rejected out of hand by Ricur whose interpretation of the Heideggerian Gewissen is primarily intended to serve as a foil for a concept of testimony that he considers to be its extremeand more attractiveopposite: the ultimate philosophy of testimony proposed by Lvinas. After Ricur makes his overture regarding a possible recovery of Heideggers Gewissen, what he ultimately recommends is not so much the recuperation as it is the surpassing of the call of conscience proposed in Being and Time, a surpassing which he considers to be already underway in the Lvinassian approach to testimony. In the aftermath of what he regards as the failure of Heideggers existentialontological project, Ricur seeks to remove the existential limitations placed upon conscience by Heidegger and to thereby initiate the hermeneutical investigation of an absolute source of the phenomenon of testimony. However, is this really the only way that one can take up the problem of conscience where Heidegger left off? Must we necessarily discard the methodological principles of Being and Time in order to reconsider the experience of Gewissen? Does the alleged inadequacy of Heideggers attestation of conscience leave us with no alternative but to accept the positing of a metaphysical absolute? Or can we point to an alternative way of understanding conscience as a possible experience of Being-withs selftestimony that respects the principles of Heideggers existential approach? This is the possibility which we will now explore. Martyrdom and the Certainty of Sum Moribundus Many commentators of Being and Time, including Ricur, Lvinas and Jacques Derrida, have explicitly noted that Heideggers concept of conscience
234

in Being and Time seems to require that Daseinas resolute Being-towardsdeathassume the stance of a martyr in order to produce the required attestation of authenticity as described in 54 of Being and Time. In Ricurs reading of the Heideggerian concept of Being-towards-death, this testimony of Dasein remains essentially unreliable and contingent. More importantly, the selfattestation of the martyr cannot convey the phenomenological truth of death: in Ricurs words, the trial (lpreuve) of death in martyrdom cannot be equated with proof (une preuve) regarding truth.18 Siding with Lvinas against Heidegger on this point that is determinative for each of these thinkers philosophies, Ricur insists that existence can only be understood by assigning priority to the encounter with an absolute source of life rather than to the limit situation of death. Ricur writes: The witness is capable of suffering and of dying for what he believes. When the trial of conviction becomes the price of life, the witness changes names: he becomes a martyr. But does the name change? martus, in Greek, means witness. Certainly it isnt without danger that we evoke this terrible relation between witness and martyr; the argument of the martyr is always suspect; the cause of a martyr isnt necessarily a just one. But this is precisely the point: martyrdom isnt an argument, even less a form of proof. Its a trial, a limit situation. A man becomes a martyr because he is first of all a witness.19

18

Ricur. "L'hermneutique du tmoignage." p. 116. Ibid. p. 116.

235

19

For his part, Derrida questions the supposed relevance of Heideggers notion of unexperienceable death to any attempt to disclose the meaning of existence. To justify his charge, Derrida illustrates how Heideggers interpretation of authentic Daseinwith its emphasis on Being-towards-death appears to have definitely dissociated existence from life. Derrida asks: But does Dasein have an experience of death as such, even through anticipation? ... Here we are not opposing death to life, but are asking what meaningful content we can give to death in a discourse for which the relation to deaththe experience of deathremains unrelated to the life of the living.20 The criticisms of the Heideggerian project made by Ricur, Lvinas and Derrida reflect their common refusal to accept Heideggers claim that attestation (Bezeugung) should itself be considered formally indicative, i.e. an existential concept that can only point to a possibility for Dasein. With his interpretation of conscience as the testimony of Being-towards-death, Heidegger is accused of illegitimately basing the meaning of existence or life on the phenomenon of death. There are, indeed, good reasons for raising this objection. As we have seen, many commentators contendas do wethat Heidegger was unsuccessful in his attempt to demonstrate how the wholeness of Dasein can be attested by the call of conscience in Being and Time, thus placing his entire existential-ontological project in doubt. In the absence of a legitimate account of how this testimony of authentic Being-towards-death can be produced, critics can justifiably claim that Heideggers description of

20

Jacques Derrida. Heidegger et la question : De l'esprit, Diffrence sexuelle, diffrence ontologique (Geschlecht I), La Main de Heidegger (Geschlecht II). p. 70, footnote 2.
236

everydayness maligns worldly experiencenotably all concern for common moralitywithout cause. Notwithstanding the relevance of these concerns regarding the ethics (or non-ethics) of Being and Time, there remains an alternative way of understanding the Heideggerian notion of Gewissen that both respects the existential spirit of his project and attests to the possibility of experiencing Dasein authentically as a whole. However, the search for such an alternative requires that we remain open to Heideggers existential interpretation of death. In other words, we must neither allow ourselves to immediately give priority to the notion of life nor rashly dismiss Heideggers approach to Daseins death as being utterly nihilistic. In his Prolegomena course given in Marburg two years prior to the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger preempts those critics who would read his existential analysis as a metaphysics of death, noting that his phenomenological explication of death does not prejudge any attitudes towards death.21 With his comments on death during the summer semester of 1925, Heidegger also indicates a way of testifying to what he describes as Daseins utmost, though indefinite, yet certain possibility. 22 Indeed, he considers such testimony to be the only experience of certainty that is possible for Dasein. This certainty (Gewiheit), that I myself am in that I will die, is the basic certainty of Dasein itself (die Grungegewiheit des Daseins selbst). It is a genuine statement of Dasein, while cogito sum is only the semblance of such a statement. If such pointed formulations mean anything at all, then the appropriate statement pertaining to Dasein

21

GA 20, 34, 434 / 314. GA 20, 34, 438 / 317. Emphasis is Heideggers.
237

22

in its being would have to be sum moribundus (I am in dying), moribundus not as someone gravely ill or wounded, but insofar as I am, I am moribundus.23 For Heidegger, certainty (Gewiheit) is the essence of Daseins witnessing of itself: the producing of testimony in the face of death is the act of Dasein authentically bearing witness to itself. This statement that I am moribundus is neither a communication regarding the everyday concept of death nor a form of discourse that is produced for the benefit of another: it is rather the resolution of the witness engaged in an existential struggle amidst the world. The unspoken self-testimony of sum moribundus provides Dasein with its only certainty because it reveals that ones ownmost potentiality-for-Being is the basis of all possible existence, even if this authentic truth is most commonly denied by the they-self. What is experienced in hearing the call of conscience is the attestation of Daseins essence as Being-towards-death, which can only be recognized through the enacted fusion of authentic calling and listening that reveals Being-in-the-world to itself as a whole. While Heideggers analysis reveals existentially that Being-towards-death is a constitutive phenomenon of Dasein, the experience of ones authentic mode of existence requires that Dasein recognize its potentiality-for-Being as a self-attesting martyr amidst fellow martyrs. In this stance of martyrdom, it can embrace its anxiety and willingly bear witness to its own authentic existenceas demonstrated by its caring for the authenticity of itself and of othersin the face of death.

23

GA 20, 34, 437-438 / 317.

238

Hearing the Martyrs Silence How are we then to understand the possibility of an authentic form of witnessing and producing testimony that can expose the inauthenticity of public everydayness? The existential concept of attestationwhich Heidegger introduces in Being and Time using the verb bezeugenmust be distinguished from the contemporary legalistic concept of witness, which has come to convey the sense of the supposedly neutral third-party of the Latin testis. Our analysis of the ordinary interpretation of testimonywhich reduces the act of witnessing to a possessing of knowledgehas confirmed the tendency of everyday Dasein to obscure the existential priority of self-testimony conveyed by the Heideggerian bezeugen. In valuing testimony that is mediated by objective detachment and reserve, the tradition of conscientia covers up the primordial sense of remembering that was originally conveyed by both the Greek martus and the German Gewissen: the producing of testimony that attests to ones care for authenticity and refuses to submit to the they. In interpreting the experience of Gewissen as the martyrs self-testimony, we can understand how Heideggers attestation can represent the disclosing experience of Daseins bearing witness to its authentic existence. The experience of attesting is constituted by the existential phenomena of remembering and indicating: the enactment of Daseins attestation as Being-towards-death reveals their authentic unity. In his article The Self and Its Witness, Christopher Fynsk attempts to disclose the original sense of witness that he finds in Being and Time: [If] in Being-with Dasein is already guilty towards another, this means that Dasein is something like the cause of anothers Being as
239

guilty, and is thus fundamentally bound up in the others essence. And it is perhaps here that the term witness appears most appropriate, for in German, the first meaning of zeugen (the word used to describe the callers act of attestation), before witness, is engender.24 With his insight regarding the relation between Being-with and bezeugen, Fynsk contributes positively to our effort to understand the experience of Gewissen as self-testimony, but he unfortunately does not follow through on this point in his essay. Fynsk concludes his analysis without proposing a way of understanding the first meaning or origin of Heideggers attestation. Let us immediately take up this unfinished task to see if Heideggers notion of bezeugen might indeed confirm how witnessing can be understood as the productive act of Daseins coming into existence as guilty Being-with. The literal meaning of the Proto Indo-European root dewk- of Heideggers bezeugen is to pull, whose meaning expanded over time to other notions of power and authority: to lead, to engender, and to produce.25 The meaning of the German witness, Zeuge, thus finds its origin in the sense of producing testimony, of disclosing by pulling into view. Heideggers bezeugen literally represents the act of bearing witness, of disclosing by pulling into view, of leading Dasein back the authentic place of its struggle as Being-with projected into the world and burdened with essential guilt.26 In this experience of bearing
24

Fynsk. "The Self and Its Witness: On Heidegger's Being and Time." p. 198. Pokorny. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wrterbuch. pp. 220-221.

25

26

The meaning of to pull, to lead, to engender conveyed by the PIE root dewk- at the heart of the German words bezeugen and Zeuge recalls the sense of the verb tragen, to carry, which Derrida notably focused on in his analysis of Heideggers description of hearing voice of the
240

witness, Dasein bears responsibility for itself and for others amidst the world: the resolute silence of authentic Being-in-the-world is the testimony of one who has chosen to accept the self-sacrifice of Being-a-martyr. Daseins encounter with the silent other facing martyrdom can be understood as a possible way of ontically experiencing the call to authentic self-testimony. As Heidegger notes in Being and Time, the event of the others passing cannot inform Dasein in any way about ones own death. However, can we not understand the silent resoluteness of the martyr facing death as something quite different than the factual death of another person? The hearing of the silent call cannot be reduced to the presence of a martyrs lifeless corpse can be objectively described as silent. From the existential perspective of Being and Time, the authentic silence of Being-towards-death can only be communicated through the reticent martyrs choosing to face death and accept the sentence of silence rather than acquiescing to the profanity of public discourse. The existential silence of the martyr does not originate innor even requirethe event of the physical death of the other. What is essential for Daseins experience of the call of conscience is the martyrs active refusal to heed the theya decision that can potentially free others for their own martyrdom. In hearing the martyrs call, Dasein recognizes the others stance as the
friend whom every Dasein carries with it (als Hren der Stimme des Freundes, der jedes Dasein bei sich trgt). SZ 34, 163 / 206. Reflecting on the French translation of tragen as porter, Derrida notes several implications of Heideggers describing the friends voice as something Dasein carries in it. Cf. Jacques Derrida. "L'oreille de Heidegger : Philopolmologie (Geschlecht IV) " Politiques de l'amiti ; suivi de L'oreille de Heidegger. pp. 347ff. Most notably, Derrida observes that Heideggers schema (or choice of words) seems to eliminate the possibility of an encounter with the friend because 1) this friend is reduced to just a voice and 2) this voice only exists because it is carried within Dasein itself. While Derrida offers a very extensive semantic interpretation of tragen in his analysis of Heideggers phrase, he does not mention that its Proto Indo-European root is tragh-, meaning to pull, to drag on the ground, to bear. (This root is also that of the English word drag.) Cf. Pokorny. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wrterbuch. pp. 1089-1090.
241

resoluteness of Being-towards-death, the experience of being willing to risk the ultimate penalty in order to preserve ones authenticity. In this sense, can we not conceive of the silence of the witness who willingly faces death as a privileged form of the call of conscience which can reveal to Dasein a way out of the rhetorical banter of the they and back to ones ownmost possibilities? If conscience is indeed related to what Heidegger describes as hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it,27 then this friend can be understood as the authentic witness of ones own essence as Being-towardsdeath. In hearing the friends voice, what Dasein hears is the indefinite (unbestimmt) yet incontestable (unbestreitbar) 28 echo of the martyrs silent testimony. With this paradoxical interpretation of Daseins authentic care enacted through the experience of the martyrs silent self-attestation, we have arrived at the limits of communicable discourse that formal indication ultimately cannot overcome. As stressed by Heidegger in his interpretation of the essential ambiguity of logos, 29 there is no absolute source of meaning that can be assertively established using worldly language to convey the experience of the call of conscience. Furthermore, the act of martyrdom itself inevitably depends uponand falls back intothe interpretation of existence understood in public and assertive terms. While we can interpret the silence of the martyr as a sublime call to authenticity, the conviction of the martyr is necessarily
27

SZ 34, 163 / 206. For references to Heideggers Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), the abbreviation 19th ed. Tbingen: M. Niemeyer, 2006. The abbreviation SZ is followed by the section number, page number (19th ed.) / page number of English translation (Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
28

SZ 56, 272 / 317. SZ 33, 159-160 / 201-203.

29

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founded on a relative understanding of worldly existence that cannot be severed from everydayness. The argument of the martyr is always suspect, as Ricoeur remarks, because the basis for his or her absolute confidence cannot be shared.30 How then can Dasein experience conscience authentically if it is unable to recognize the other as a legitimate martyr who has resolved to keep silent in the face of death? While the call of conscience may be assigned the pivotal role of attesting Daseins possible authenticity, there can be no assurance that Daseinmired in the worldly concerns of the theywill correctly identify the authentic silence of the martyr. Moreover, Heideggers account of Being-in-the-world clearly indicates that Dasein will revert to its assertive ways of understanding the martyrs sacrifice as it attempts to plug the disturbing void of silent reticence with judgmental statements regarding the martyrs cause and the value of such acts of self-sacrifice.31

30

Ricur. "L'hermneutique du tmoignage." p. 116.

31

Six years after the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger himselfin his role as newly appointed Rector of the University of Freiburgwould demonstrate how the experience of martyrdom is essentially mediated by rhetoric. On May 26, 1933, Heidegger participated in a commemorative ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the execution of Albert Leo Schlageter, a young veteran of the First World War, former Freiburg student and radical nationalist who was killed near Dsseldorf by a French firing squad for his involvement in acts of sabotage against the occupying forces. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Nazi officials had mounted a major propaganda effort to capitalize on Schlageters fate as the first Nazi martyr. At the Freiburg event, Heidegger proclaimed to the students and faculty: As he stood defenseless facing the rifles, the heros inner gaze above the muzzles to the daylight and mountains of his home that he might die for the German people and its Reich with the Alemanic countryside before his eyes. With a hard will and a clear heart, Albert Leo Schlageter died his death, the most difficult and the greatest of all (seinen Tod, den schwersten und grten). Student of Freiburg, let the strength of this heros native mountains flow into your will! Student of Freiburg, let the strength of the autumn sun of this heros native valley shine into your heart! Martin Heidegger. "Political Texts, 1933-1934." trans. William S. Lewis. The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. ed. Richard Wolin. pp. 4041. While the existential silence of martyrdom may provide an attestation of Daseins possibility of authentic experience, as we have attempted to show, this experience of martyrdom also reveals the essentially rhetoricalethical and also problematicalcharacter of
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understanding the appeal which Heidegger identifies with wanting to have a conscience. SZ 58, 288 / 334. For more regarding the appropriation of Schlageters martyrdom by the Nazi movement, cf. Jay W. Baird. To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon. pp. 13-40.
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Bibliography Baird, Jay W. To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. de Vries, Hent. Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Derrida, Jacques. Heidegger et la question : De l'esprit, Diffrence sexuelle, diffrence ontologique (Geschlecht I), La Main de Heidegger (Geschlecht II). Paris: Flammarion, 1990. ---. "L'oreille de Heidegger : Philopolmologie (Geschlecht IV) " Politiques de l'amiti ; suivi de L'oreille de Heidegger. Paris: Galile, 1994. 341-419. Fynsk, Christopher. "The Self and Its Witness: On Heidegger's Being and Time." Boundary 2: A Journal of Postmodern Literature and Culture 10. 3 (1982): 185207. Griffiths, David B. The Keywords of Martin Heidegger: A Philosophical-Lexical Analysis of Sein und Zeit. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. 19th ed. Tbingen: M. Niemeyer, 2006. The English translation used is Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. ---. Vortrge und Aufstze (GA 7). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 2000. English translation of cited text is from "Moira (Parmenides, Fragment VIII, 34-41)." Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi. Early Greek Thinking. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. 79-101. ---. Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA 20). Ed. Petra Jaeger. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1979. English translation is History of

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the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Trans. Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. ---. Parmenides (GA 54). Ed. M. S. Frings. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1982. English translation is Parmenides. Trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. ---. Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1989. English translation is Contributions to Philosophy: From Enownin. Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Inwood, M. J. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Kisiel, Theodore J. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Pokorny, Julius. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wrterbuch. 2 vols. Bern; Mnchen: A. Francke, 1959. Ricur, Paul. "Emmanuel Lvinas, penseur du tmoignage." Lectures 3 : Aux Frontires De La Philosophie. Paris: Seuil, [1989] 1994. 83-105. ---. "L'hermneutique du tmoignage." Lectures 3 : Aux Frontires De La Philosophie. Paris: Seuil, [1972] 1994. 107-39.

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The End of Entwurf and the Beginning of Gelassenheit* Joydeep Bagchee (Freie-Universitt, Berlin)
1. Introduction The concept of Entwurf (projection) is central to Heideggers writings from 19271930. In this paper, I argue that focusing on Entwurf in Heideggers writings gives us a new way of tracing his intellectual trajectory. Specifically, I argue for three phases in his thought: (1) an early phase, where Entwurf does not yet have the terminological sense it later acquires (Basic Problems of Phenomenology [hereafter GP 1919]), (2) a mature phase, marked by the working out of the concept of Verstehen in terms of the structure of Entwurf (in Being and Time [hereafter SZ] and Basic Problems of Phenomenology1 [hereafter GP]), and (3) a late phase, in which Heidegger continues to use the term, but the problems with it have become evident (Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, hereafter KPM). I also argue that it is only with the breakdown in the concept of Entwurf, as it becomes obvious to him from KPM onwards, that Gelassenheit becomes possible.2
*

I would like to thank Vishwa Adluri for our discussions surrounding this paper and for teaching me Heidegger. To Vishwa I also owe a debt of gratitude for showing me a path out of and beyond Heidegger. I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of Reiner Schrmann. I now realize that even before reading his work I was implicitly on a path traced out by him.
1

Martin Heidegger, Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie (1919/20), ed. Hans-Helmuth Gander (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993), published as volume 58 of the Gesamtausgabe. Note that this is not the same as Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), which is volume 24 of the Gesamtausgabe. To avoid confusion, I will refer to the former as GP 1919 and the latter as GP.
2

To make it absolutely clear, by end I do not mean that Heidegger never uses the term again, because there are references to it in later works. Heidegger is well known for recycling old philosophical concepts as well as for insisting that his journey has been a uniform progression and that he was always only on the path of this one question (whatever that question happens to be at the time). Thus, it would be excessive to claim that Heidegger stops
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2. First Reference to Entwurf: The Lecture Course Basic Problems from 1919 The first mention of Entwurf, albeit in the form of the nominalized verb das Entwerfen, is to be found in Heideggers lecture course from 1919/20, Basic Problems of Phenomenology. 3 A number of points are notable about this first occurrence: (1) Life is rooted in a world. This has been a mainstay of Heideggers philosophical thinking from his early Habilitationsschrift on Duns Scotus onward.4 In SZ, he will finally find a terminological designation for it; it will be
using the word altogether; but it would also be nave to place too much stock in these later references. By end of Entwurf I mean specifically that Entwurf ceases to be a viable mode for thinking about or construing the finitude of human existence and that it, for this reason, becomes progressively more rare in Heideggers thought. Whereas it is a central concept in SZ and GP (both from 1927), already by the time of KPM (1929) it has become relatively marginal. End, I emphasize again, does not mean disappearance, but marginalization.
3

Das Leben begegnet in jedem Moment seines Ablaufs einem anderen Weltstck oder es ist. Das Leben ist etwas, das nicht erst noch etwas zu suchen brauchteda es zuvor leer wre und dann erst eine Welt suchen mte, sich mit ihr zu erfllen, sondern es lebt immer irgendwie in seiner Welt. So ist das Leben, wie wir aus ihm selbst und in ihm selbst stehend erfahren, erjagen. Das ist fr jeden verstndlichin verschiedenem Ausma. Der wilde Indianer, der von einer erfolgreichen Jagd heimkehrt und seinen Stammesgenossen erzhlt, wird von ihnen verstanden. Jeder Mensch trgt in sich einen Fonds von Verstndlichkeiten und unmittelbaren Zugnglichkeiten. Es gibt fr bestimmte Gruppen von Menschen gewisse jedem in gleicher Weise zugngliche Weltstcke: die Gebrauchsgegenstnde des tglichen Lebens, Verkehrsmittel, ffentliche Einrichtungen (die ffentlichkeitder Markt des Lebens), gewisse jedem zugngliche Zweckzusammenhnge: Schule, Parlament usf. So lebt jeder in seiner lebendigen Gegenwart. So lebten die Menschen frherdas lassen wir uns erzhlen von der Geschichte. Es gab frher vielleicht andere Berufe, die Menschen dachten ganz anders. Dieses Leben ist nun einmal so. Das Lebenso unvollkommen es ist, so gewi es nie voll befriedigt, fragmentarisch bleibt und nach Vollendung ausschaut; auch dieses Suchen und Letzte-Erfllung-finden-wollen, das Entwerfen von Welt- und Lebensanschauungen (das Zusammenschauen in ein Ganzes und Einziges), die das Leben deuten sollen, sind Schpfungen des Lebens, des Lebens eines bedeutenden MenschenPropheten, der lebt in der besonderen Tendenz, eine Gesamtschau ber das Leben zu bekommen und sie anderen zu verkndigenAnschauungen, die selbst vielgestaltig sind und als berzeugungen in das Leben vieler anderer eingehen. (GP 1919, 34-35)
4

See, for example, the claim that he [Duns Scotus] discovered a greater and finer proximity

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described as lifes innerweltlichen character. For Heidegger, to live is primarily (and always) to exist in a world. It is from this relation or reference5 to the world that we originally draw meaning, albeit in an unthematized, unreflective, and preconscious way (that is, as Bedeutung rather than Sinn).6 (2) The world encounters in its character of significance. There is no bare world which is later filled with significance. This has been a consistent theme of Heideggers thought since the earliest 1919 lecture, Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression, where he speaks of the world encountering in the character of significance. It continues into the 1921 lecture on Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, where he specifies a number of characteristics of the world such as Reluzenz, Praestruktion, etc. under the heading of movement categories [Bewegungskategorien] of the world. It is also a cornerstone of his critique of Cartesianism in SZ.

(haecceitas) to real life in its multiplicity and potential for tension than the Scholastics before him. Martin Heidegger, The Doctrine of Categories and Meaning of Duns Scotus, trans. Joydeep Bagchee (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).
5

Translating expression such as Bezug and Bezogenheit (auf).

Heidegger does not use these terms, but he uses words like Bedeutsamkeit andVerstndlichkeit to characterize the world, whereas explicit ontological question always takes the form of asking about the Sinn of something (not only, most famously, der Sinn von Sein, but also der Sinn der Sorge, der Sinn der Alltglichkeit des Daseins, etc.). The Sinn von Sein is ultimately rooted in Zeitlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit is revealed as der Sinn von Sorge. Bedeutsamkeit and Verstndlichkeit are, no less than these formal ontological determinations, rooted in temporality, albeit of a different kindan implicit, nonthematic, everyday, relucent and ruinant temporality. Thus the entire fundamental ontological project can be conceived of as a way of conveying information humans know about themselves in an ordinary, vulgar mode of temporal existence back to them in a highly evolved and self-aware mode of temporal existence, thereby effecting precisely this change in their mode of temporal existence. This is why Heidegger will identify the essence of hermeneutics as hermeneuein as Kundgebung (SZ 37, see also SZ 32, 155156, 160-162, and 168 for the essence of logos [Rede or Sprache] as Aussage as Mitteilung). The project of SZ is thus that of a radicalization of the mode of temporal existence of man through an annunciation.
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(3) The world is a shared world. Life not only unfolds within a world (as innerweltlich), but it is also essentially lived in a Mitwelt. The understanding life possesses is, to use a phrase Heidegger will later introduce, initially and for the most part (zunchst und zumeist), a public understanding. It manifests itself in public institutions, the public, the marketplace, etc. (4) The worldly, inner-worldly, and co-worldly characteristics of life are existential determinations of it. Heidegger sees the public, everyday character of life as something that is shared across cultures and times. It has a transhistorical dimension for him. Later in SZ, he introduces a distinction between existentiell and existential structures. The former refers to the particular cultural or historical or social content life has at a time, the content the individual may give his life. The latter refers to certain determinations that, though they pertain to existence, are nonetheless truly constitutive of it. One such example, for instance, is that life is lived primarily in the mode of average everydayness (Alltglichkeit). (5) Entwerfen has two aspects, projection of world and life. These will later be identified with Weltentwurf and Selbstentwurf. The former is associated with the one (das Man) and characterized by publicness, anonymity, and inauthenticity. The latter is associated with self-appropriation, heedfulness (of the call of conscience) and hence self-awareness (Entschlossenheit), and authenticity. Thus, even at this early stage, Heidegger opposes a public and leveled (nivelliert)7 Entwurf to a personal and highly individualistic one.8
7

For the expression Nivellierung and its significance for everday existence, see GA 21. See also SZ 158 for a repetition of its argument of a Nivellierung of the hermeneutic als to the apophantic als. Elsewhere in SZ the term is only used for the leveling of original, ecstatic, existential time to world time.
8

However, I am far from claiming that Heidegger has already conceptualized the relationship of the public, shared understanding we possess qua existing in the world and existing with others to the personalized understanding we have of life and of the world qua projecting our own views. Only later will their relationship be framed in terms of the opposition between
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3. The Entwurf Character of all Understanding: Being and Time Early Heidegger, as we have seen, used the term Entwurf only once and that, too, only in the form of the nominalized verb das Entwerfen within the context of a phenomenological description of ordinary life. By the time of SZ, however, it has moved center stage. As the cornerstone of his theory of existential understanding, Entwurf takes on a major role in setting up the project of a fundamental ontology. Heidegger specifically reinterprets understanding, Verstehen, in terms of a projective structure, which he argues is originally responsible for the openness of mans world.9 Further, the concept of projection itself is now worked out in detail, offering the flexibility and sophistication necessary for accomodating fundamental ontology.10

inauthenticity and authenticity, with the personalized understanding representing a kind of struggle to detach oneself from publicness and, especially in division II of SZ, to focus on what is most essential and most personal about our existence, our impending death. At this stage, however, Heidegger leaves their relationship indeterminate.
9

Warum dringt das Verstehen nach allen wesenhaften Dimensionen des in ihm Erschliebaren immer in die Mglichkeiten? Weil das Verstehen an ihm selbst die existenziale Struktur hat, die wir den Entwurf nennen. Es entwirft das Sein des Daseins auf sein Worumwillen ebenso ursprnglich wie auf die Bedeutsamkeit als die Weltlichkeit seiner jeweiligen Welt. Der Entwurfcharakter des Verstehens konstituiert das In-der-Welt-sein hinsichtlich der Erschlossenheit seines Da als Da eines Seinknnens. Der Entwurf ist die existenziale Seinsverfassung des Spielraums des faktischen Seinknnens. Und als geworfenes ist das Dasein in die Seinsart des Entwerfens geworfen. Das Entwerfen hat nichts zu tun mit einem Sichverhalten zu einem ausgedachten Plan, gem dem das Dasein sein Sein einrichtet, sondern als Dasein hat es sich je schon entworfen und ist, solange es ist, entwerfend. Dasein versteht sich immer schon und immer noch, solange es ist, aus Mglichkeiten. Der Entwurfcharakter des Verstehens besagt ferner, da dieses das, woraufhin es entwirft, die Mglichkeiten, selbst nicht thematisch erfat. Solches Erfassen benimmt dem Entworfenen gerade seinen Mglichkeitscharakter, zieht es herab zu einem gegebenen, gemeinten Bestand, whrend der Entwurf im Werfen die Mglichkeit als Mglichkeit sich vorwirft und als solche sein lt. Das Verstehen ist, als Entwerfen, die Seinsart des Daseins, in der es seine Mglichkeiten als Mglichkeiten ist. (SZ 145)
10

This deepening is, of course, necessary, since the concept of understanding is key to
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Heideggers notion of Verstehen as Entwurf is frequently misunderstood as a theory of understanding. However, when Heidegger discusses Verstehen he is not presenting us with either a phenomenology or a psychology of human understanding. Rather, he is interested in a specific concept of Verstehen as a methodological tool, a Methodenbegriff, that permits him to solve the fundamental ontological problem he has set up. Verstehen and its correlate Auslegung are both levels of methodological articulation on the path to an explicit understanding of being.11 Heidegger constructs their dialectical relationship on analogy with what he thinks the relationship of philosophy (which, for him, is essentially identical with ontology) to factical life is: the one is the explicit articulation of the other. Philosophy always moves out of and in relation to factical life, seeking to bring a meaning implicit in life itself to clarity. This clarityif philosophy is to be true to lifecannot be such that it is attained once for all. Rather, it is rooted in and tracks the movement of life: once attained in the form of an explicit Interpretation, it itself serves as the Verstndnishorizont for a further, renewed interpretation. The struggle for appropriation of a meaning implicit to factical life never comes to an end.12
Heideggers aim of making explicit something that, he claims, humans, hitherto, have only had an implicit awareness of: what being means.
11

See Carl Friedrich Gethmann, Verstehen und Auslegung. Das Methodenproblem in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974).
12

Likewise, philosophy also tracks the movement of life in that, like life, it can fall prey to ruination and decay (Ruinanz and Verfall). Therefore, no less than life, philosophy is caught up in a process of struggle. There is, for Heidegger, no complacent gazing down upon life from the Olympian heights of a fully realized understanding of being of the nunc stans. Philosophy has been rendered radically immanent and this-worldly. It is, in many ways, a secondary phenomenon as compared to factical life, dependent upon the latter for meaning (Bedeutung), which it strives to raise up to the level of sense (Sinn), a task in which it must ever again fail and which it must ever again take up anew. This constitutes what Heidegger in the Natorp Bericht characterizes as die Last und die Bekmmerung radikalen Fragens (GA 62, 348) that genuine philosophy will never be able to lay aside.
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I have emphasized this point to show that what is at stake in Heideggers concept of Verstehen is not whether we possess a more or less useful theory of human understanding. Rather, what is at stake here is the project of fundamental ontology itself.13 Whether Heideggers concept of Verstehen is coherent or not has no effect on our view of human understanding. But it has a huge outcome on the chances of fundamental ontology succeeding, because Verstehen is primarily a methodological concept. It is the methodological concept through which Heidegger intends to solve the problem of fundamental ontology. To recall the main steps of this problem: (1) Human existence always exists in or with an understanding of being. (2) Indeed, this possession of an understanding of being is what distinguishes human existence from all other modes of being. Existence is ontically distinct in that it is ontological. (3) However, this ontology is not such that it would be possessed explicitly. It rather takes, initially and for the most part, the form of a preontological understanding. (4) Although this understanding illumines all areas of life and all our dealings with beings, the philosophical tradition has never sought to understand it radically. It has been content to take directions of meaning (being = ousia, being splits into essence and existence, etc.) without inquiring into the provenance of these concepts. (5) However, inasmuch as these so-called philosophical concepts of being arise from (and remain embedded) in factical life, the proper object of
13

This cannot be emphasized enough: on the structure of understanding as projection rests the entire possibility of carrying out the project of fundamental ontology. If ontology is the matter at stake, understanding is the formal structure through which that investigation both is made possible and is to be carried out. The discovery of the Fragestruktur that is accomplished in 1921 in the text Phenomenological Interpretations through the discovery of the formale Anzeige in a sense precedes the discovery of the Seinsfrage (also in the same text).
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philosophical investigation proves to be life itself. (6) Thus, we need to now carry out a hermeneutic return (hermeneutischer Rckgang) to the sources of our understanding to discover the original emergence of these philosophical concepts from a specific self-understanding of factical life.14 (7) Via this deconstructive return, we shall be able to specify the original, simple, naive ways in which life originally addressed itself (whose naivete, however, is still more sophisticated than the sophistication of the most sophisticated philosophical concepts of being of the ancients) and thence develop an explicit and authentic concept of being.15 (8) The way we shall do this is to look at what Heidegger calls die Selbstauslegung des Daseins (= its Verstehen).16 (9) Because this understanding consists in an addressing of itself in terms of a concept of being life has set up as archontic (archontisch, see GA 61, 50; GA 62, 374) for itself, we shall have to retrace the steps by which life, so to speak, reaches out ahead of itself to this horizon of intelligibility and returns to itself. (10) In other words, if Verstehen fundamentally has the structure of a projection, we shall have to undertake a renewed, explicit projection, thus
14

The need to return to the sources of our understanding entails that hermeneutics ultimately can only be carried out as a historical encounter. Because there is no understanding of being that arises outside of factical life, but factical life itself has emerged historically, the attempt to reappropriate our understanding of being will, ultimately, take the form of a return to the sources of our tradition. That is why Heidegger will insist that die Hermeneutik bewerkstelligt ihre Aufgabe nur auf dem Wege der Destruktion (GA 62, 368).
15

Ancient concepts, in contrast, are inauthentic, because they are not aware of their origins in factical life; they represent rather a fleeing from factical life instead of a radical encounter with it.
16

For the phrase, see SZ 42.

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raising Verstehen to the level of Interpretation. (11) This process, as I have emphasized earlier, never comes to an end, for, according to Heidegger, there are endless successive levels of understanding from which we can ever again unfold the question, what is being? We can continue to radicalize the question and, in this intensification of questioning (or Fragwrdigkeit as Heidegger calls it), we experience a complete transformation of our being: we are torn from all certainties, we experience a kind of vertigoinducing lack of security, we are constantly driven, by this lack of certainty and security, to keep asking who we are and what it even means to say, we are.17 (12) This radicalized, insecure, doubting mode of existence constitutes, for Heidegger, a mode of temporalization of factical life itself, an exceptional mode he often associates with concepts such as Darbung (his translation or his gloss of privatio and carentia), Sorge, and Bekmmerung.18 In this way, he is able to fulfill his promise (or, rather, a requirement he had placed on himself from the start of his philosophical career) that philosophy would have some way
17

See GA 61, 152, where the point is well made: Die Zwiesprache faktischen Lebens kann auseinandersetzungflchtig sein, und das in der Vollzugsweise berlegener unbekmmertheit um genuhemmende Frage- und Verstndigungstendenzen. Vom unmittelbaren Leben selbst her aber kann, mu nicht, gefragt werden nach der Gewiheit ber die insulare Unantastbarkeit seiner Unmittelbarkeit und deren mgliche Sicherung. Sie [diese Sicherung] ist prinzipiell fraglich, sofern faktisches umweltliches Leben als solches berhaupt eine Erhellungstendenz hat und solche beansprucht. Mit dieser Fraglichkeit macht die philosophische Interpretation der Faktizitt ernst, und zwar nicht so, da sie vermeinte, nun ihrerseits eine absolute ewige Entscheidung zu finden, sondern so, da sie lediglich konkret und in konkret verfgbaren Direktionen die Fraglichkeit zeitigt und behlt, und damit aber gerade den Vollzug des Zugangs zu faktischem Leben in der Lebendigkeit hlt. Heidegger here is clearly echoing Kierkegaards views on philosophy in Practice in Christianity, which he cites at the end of the book (Anhang II) under the heading Motto und zugleich dankbare Anzeige der Quelle (this loose page was evidently intended to be the dedication).
18

There is a clear moral judgment implied here. Whereas the masses, the hoi polloi, live their days out unknowing and unconcerned, authentic, upright existence lives in radical uncertainty and awareness of its fallibility. However, in its very lack of concern, everyday life attests to a more fundamental attunement, and philosophy is nothing but the radicalization of this latent, covered over concern (see previous note, especially the first two sentences of the quotation).
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of affecting life itself, not accidentally but essentially. Philosophy could not be an escape from life or a tranquilization (this was precisely the error of the Greeks, Heidegger contends).19 As he writes in the Natorp Bericht, it has to hold out in this difficulty, if it is to be genuine and if it does not want to miss its object.20 This brief outline of Heideggers project must suffice here. We can now understand the role Verstehen plays in this project of the legitimation and intensification of human finitude: if we want to avoid reflecting on being,21 then the only way to gain a concept of being is to go along with life.22 We go along with
19

There are obvious resonances with Luthers critcisms of the ancients here, capably analyzed by van Buren in his Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther, in Reading Heidegger from the Start, ed. Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 159-174.
20

Das faktische Leben hat den Seinscharakter, da es an sich selbst schwer trgt. Die untrglichste Bekundung davon ist die Tendenz des faktischen Lebens zum Sichsleichtmachen. In diesem an sich selbst schwer Tragen ist das Leben dem Grundsinne seines Seins nach, nicht im Sinne einer zuflligen Eigenschaft, schwierig. Wenn es eigentlich ist, was es ist, in diesem Schwer- und Schwierigsein, dann wir die genuine angemessene Zugangsweise zu ihm und die Verwahrungsweise seiner nur in einem Schwermachen bestehen knnen. Philosophische Forschung kann nur, wenn anders sie nicht von Grund aus ihren Gegenstand verfehlen will, an diese Pflicht gehalten sein. Alles Leichtmachen aber, alles verfhrerische Sichanbiedern an Bedrfnisse, alle metaphysischen Beruhigungen in den meist nur angelesenen Nten, das leistet in seiner Grundabsicht schon Verzicht darauf, den Gegenstand der Philosophie je in Blick und Griff zu bekommen und gar zu behalten (GA 62, 349).
21

This is the other way to gain a concept of being but it is one Heidegger rejects. He criticizes it as the error of the Greeks (and also of Hegel), for they thereby made life into an object, instead of remaining faithful to its process-like character (Vollzugscharakter). For the term and its significance to Heidegger, see the Jaspers Rezension of 1919 (the earliest reference according to me).
22

Heidegger makes this especially explicit in the 1919 Grundprobleme, which constitutes his sharpest critique of Hegelian reflection to date. There he also writes, concerning the idea of a going along with life (Mitgehen): ber das Sichversetzen ist noch andeutungsweise zu sagen Sich-ver-setzen in den betreffenden Erlebniszusammenhang, also Erlebnisse nicht gleichsam vor dem Blick paradieren, vorbei-marschieren lassen, womglich noch als psychische Vorgnge, sondern selbst mitgehen, so gegen, wie es der zunchst verstndliche Sinn (zu verstehender Sinn: Problem!) selbst vorschreibt. Weder nur vorbeiziehen lassen noch auch lediglich hintersehen, reflektieren, zu deutsch: das Nachsehen haben, auch nicht darber hinsehen Mitgehen! (GP 1919, 123, see also 161, 162-163). Also important are 158
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life not, of course, in the blind manner of everyday life, but with rapt attention to what this life is actually saying when it speaks of itself.23 This speaking of itself is not a negative or indifferent phenomenon; it is, in fact, pregnant with meaning, for it gives us our first clue as to how being has been understood. Thence, we derive a radicalized intuition of what being means. This meaning, howeverand this is important for Heideggeris not some transcendent philosophical meaning gained through reflection or contemplation of the eternal eide or the ultimate and simplest adiaireta; it is embedded in factical life and hence can only be understood out of it.24 It is only against the background of this conception of ontology as the explicit retrieval of a meaning inherent to life that the concept of Verstehen as Entwurf can be understood. However, we encounter a complication, since not only beings, but also being itself is understood by us. Consequently, we cannot just go from beings to their meaning (being), but must also understand what this being in in turn means.
(Diese ursprngliche Artikulation des Lebens, das Vertrautsein seiner mit der gelebten Welt und das Ansprechen dieser im Sinne der Lebensbewegung selbst wird deutlicher, wenn man im Leben mitgeht, sofern es im Erinnern sich hlt. Die Artikulation erfhrt eine lebensmige Dilatation, Ausweitung.), 185 (Verstehenals AnschauungMitgehen mit und in der Flle einer Situation und Verfolgbarkeiten des Tendenzhorizontes; Bezugseinheiten immer in ihrer fragmentarischen Vor- und Rckweisung. Im phnomenologischen Verstehen hat sich das Leben selbst im sinngenetischen Ausdruck seines Ursprungs [anschauendes Vor- und Rckgreifen is glossed as im Sinne des prozeartigen Mitgehens]), and 256 (Das eigentliche Organon des Lebensverstehens ist die Geschichte, nicht als Geschichtswissenschaft oder als eine Sammlung von Kuriositten, sondern als gelebtes Leben, wie es im lebendigen Leben mitgeht.).
23

Heidegger equates this speech with the Greek doxa and terminologically designates it as faktische Rede and das Gerede.
24

Even though the horizon of our understanding is, initially and for the most part, only implicit, it is nonetheless archontic for our existence, and that means, determinative for every following investigation. This is why the dialectic of Verstehen und Auslegung can only unfold historically beginning with a given factical situation.
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According to the logic pursued thus far, however, this meaning is not theoretical. Nor is it alien to life. Rather, life itself, when it speaks of being, must have understood being in some way; it must have projected being onto a horizon. Heidegger therefore argues that we can deduce this horizon via querying factical life itself; we find that whenever life speaks of being (either as changing or as constantly present or as eternal) it resorts to temporal determinations.25 These determinations, according to Heidegger, constitute die Zeitlichkeit des Seins; their explicit retrieval, in contrast, will constitute the Temporalitt des Seins. To gain a concept of being, then, we must project being itself onto the horizon out of which it has been (and therefore the sole horizon out of which it can be) understood: time. This constitutes the project of SZ. But in the attempt to do so, Heidegger runs into a problem. Why, if, within Heideggers conception, to understand something is to project it on to something else, why we do not also need a further horizon for time? Could we not continue the series of projections ad infinitum, thus vitiating the project of a retrieval? Why should we stop at the horizon of time? Is not time itself comprehended by us in some way? 4. Avoiding Regress: The Challenge of Being and Time The problem is a serious one and Heidegger is not unaware of the risk it poses to his entire project. If fundamental ontology is to work as conceived, it must remain within the bounds of a hermeneutic analysis, a term Heidegger claims originally designates the business of interpretation (Geschft der Auslegung, SZ 37) and glosses as the giving notice or annunciation (Kundgebung) of a knowledge to existence that it already (and originally) possessed regarding
25

This interpretation is central to Heideggers philosophy, but hardly unproblematic. It is questionable whether ancient thought understood eternity in temporal terms (as Heidegger contends). For a good introduction to the problem of Plotinus conception of eternity, see Werner Beierwaltes, Plotin, ber die Ewigkeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967).
258

itself.26 Thus, even if to achieve this goal we have to embark upon a two-step journey (from beings to being and from being to time), the direction of the journey must be reversed, we must return from this step beyond to existence, if we are to complete the project of fundamental ontology and, most importantly, if we are to remain within the bounds of an immanent, nontranscendental interpretation of being. Otherwise, fundamental ontology, no less than Greek and Scholastic ontology, becomes a dogmatic undertaking in the Kantian sense. We can now frame the problem thus: on the one hand, the conception of Verstehen in terms of a structure of projection (Entwurf) has led to the necessity of taking a step beyond; on the other, the conception of fundamental ontology as a form of radically immanent philosophizing requires that this step beyond be undone in a return to factical life. Fundamental ontology is thus both transcendental (in the sense that it discloses the condition of possibility of our understanding of beings as well as being) and hermeneutic (in that this condition of possibility is located nowhere else except in der Rede of factical life and, therefore, once explicitly grasped, must be returned back to it).27 A tension has appeared in herea tension that, I have argued, splits apart the very foundations of the project of SZ. For, if, on the one hand, we cannot rule out the possibility of successively more original horizons from which to unfold the question, what is being?, and, on the other, time is supposed to

26

Der logos der Phnomenologie des Daseins hat den Charakter des hermeneuein, durch das dem zum Dasein selbst gehrigen Seinsverstndnis der eigentliche Sinn von Sein und die Grundstrukturen seines eigenen Seins kundgegeben werden. Phnomenologie des Daseins ist Hermeneutik in der ursprnglichen Bedeutung des Wortes, wonach es das Geschft der Auslegung bezeichnet. (SZ 37)
27

This is what Heidegger means when he says Das Sein ist definitorisch aus hheren Begriffen nicht abzuleiten und durch niedere nicht darzustellen (SZ 4). It can therefore only be hermeneutically disclosed through inquiring into how existence conceives of being or uses the term being.
259

constitute the horizon for any understanding of being whatsoever, then the inquiry can either be left incomplete or abortedbut it cannot in any way be completed as originally planned. I have argued this elsewhere,28 and I therefore will not get into it here. However, I want to emphasize that, once the problem is set up in this way (understanding has the structure of projection, where the horizon that is projected upon always exceeds the projection such that we can never, in turn, grasp this horizon), the project of fundamental ontology is fated to collapse. Either that kind of explicit understanding is not possible (in which case fundamental ontology fails as an attempt to answer the question of being) or it is possible (in which case human existence is no longer bound by the projective structure of all understanding). Since this structure is also responsible for the finitude of human existence (for Heidegger argues that the finitude of

28

See my Return to Transcendence: The Project of Being and Time and the Problem of Human Finitude, PhD Dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2009. I cite the abstract here to give an intimation of my argument: The present study reconstructs the text of Heideggers Being and Time using the question of human finitude as its guideline. Heideggers project of a fundamental ontology undertakes a hermeneutic interpretation of human existence beginning from its average, pre-ontological understanding of being. It seeks to bring that understanding to renewed clarity in constructing an explicit concept of being. Fundamental ontology thus has the methodological character of a hermeneutics of facticity. Heidegger argues that interpretation and the need for interpretation and understanding is itself an index for finitude. Accordingly, fundamental ontology takes the form of a hermeneutics of the finite human subject. Yet, Heideggers project of a metaphysics of the finite human subject cannot remain a metaphysics of finitude, while then also attaining an explicit concept of being, since to arrive at such knowledge would be precisely to rescind human finitude. This breakdown is a sign of the fact that a purely immanent explication of human existence cannot be carried out in the manner Heidegger intends. I thus argue that we need to distinguish between a pre-linguistic, potentially infinite self as the witnessing consciousness and the self as constituted by discourse and finitude. The function of the hermeneutic circle would lie precisely in letting us see the structure of this relation between existences self-interpretation and its finitude and in thus letting us step outside this structure. Philosophy must seek to transcend its hermeneutic methodological character in becoming one with that consciousness in which it has its origin. In overcoming its hermeneutic methodological character in this step to the origin, philosophy is itself the explicit suspension [Aufhebung] of human finitude. As such, it is a return to transcendence.
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existence lies not in its temporal finitude but in the finitude of understanding29), this ultimately means that human existence is no longer finite.30 5. Time as the Original Selbstentwurf par excellence: Basic Problems The problem, however, is at first only latent, since SZ is only a preparatory work.31 By the time of GP, however, the problem has become unavoidable. Heidegger raises it thus: Im existenziellen Verstehen, worin sich das faktische In-der-Weltsein einsichtig und durchsichtig wird, liegt je schon ein Seinsverstndnis, das nicht nur das Dasein selbst betrifft, sondern alles Seiende, das grundstzlich mit dem In-der-Welt-sein enthllt ist. In ihm liegt ein Verstndnis, das als Entwurf nicht nur das Seiende aus dem Sein her versteht, sondern, sofern Sein selbst verstanden wird, auch das Sein als solches irgendwie entworfen hat. (GP 396) Nonetheless, Heidegger still thinks he can solve the problem, because if existence has an understanding of being, then it must also have some understanding, however latent, of that upon which it has projected being. The task becomes one of querying how, in ancient ontology (specifically, Plato and Aristotle), being was understood. This initial understanding will provide us a
29

See KPM 229 (Ursprnglicher als der Mensch ist die Endlichkeit des Daseins in ihm), ibid. (wir brauchen gar nicht erst nach einem Bezug des Seinsverstndnisses zur Endlichkeit im Menschen zu fragen, es selbst ist das innerste Wesen der Endlichkeit), and 233 (Die Endlichkeit des Daseinsdas Seinsverstndnisliegt in der Vergessenheit) (all italics Heideggers).
30

In my dissertation I chose this latter option. Heidegger is able to avoid this conclusion, because he evades the problem by insisting dogmatically upon the finitude of time (see GP 437, cited in n. 37 below).
31

The published text of SZ, as is known, only consisted of the first part of the envisaged threepart text and, specifically, that part which was to be concerned with the analysis of existence alone; GP, in contrast, is the core ontological portion of SZ.
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Leitfaden for an explicit projection of being, and thus of a recovery of the meaning of being.32 Explicitly, he tries to square the circle as follows: Wenn Dasein in sich selbst Seinsverstndnis birgt, die Zeitlichkeit aber das Dasein in seiner Seinsverfassung mglich macht, so mu auch die Zeitlichkeit die Bedingung der Mglichkeit des Seinsverstndnisses und damit des Entwurfs des Seins auf die Zeit sein. Die Frage ist, ob die Zeit in der Tat dasjenige ist, woraufhin das Sein selbst entworfen ist. (GP 397) Let us read this statement carefully. First, we note that existence possess an understanding of being. This understanding is not something it might occasionally possess, but constitutive of its essence: human existence is ontically distinct in that it is ontological. Second, Zeitlichkeit33 makes possible existence in its ontological constitution. The ontological constitution of existence, however, is
32

To be sure, the project has become a little more complicated, for, instead of the planned onestep return from being to existence, we now have to undertake a second stepfrom being to time. As Heidegger notes, wir stoen in der Analyse der Struktur des ontischen Verstehends auf eine ihn ihm selbst liegende und es ermglichende Schichtung von Entwrfen, die gleichsam einander vorgeschaltet sind (GP 396). However, he insists that von einer einlinigen Ineinanderschichtung von Entwrfen, von denen der eine den anderen bedingt, keine Rede sein kann (ibid.), for the Entwrfe (or their corresponding horizons) are not static principles. They are principles only in the sense of being principles for somethingand hence are reciprocally conditioned by that for which they function as principles. Thus, the requisite hermeneutic character of the inquiry is safe, and Heidegger does not foresee a problem in being able to turn back from the ultimate horizon (time) to the originary horizon (factical life). Indeed, his suspicion is that the two will turn out, ultimately, to be the same, i.e., that time will turn out to map the finitude of human life itself. (For Heideggers reflections on the principle character of a principle, see the lecture course Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles of 1921; GA 61, 23-25, esp. 23: Eine prinzipielle Definition gibt den Gegenstand als Prinzip. Prinzip ist er nur im Sein des Wofr, d.h. als Prinzip gehabt nur, wenn er nicht und das Prinzip nicht Thema sind, sondern wenn sie so ist, da er als Prinzip gehabt, bzw. das Haben so ansetzt, da die Tendenz dieser Vollzugsrichtung wach wird, das Verstehen also diese Direktion nimmt, das Haben prinzipiell ist, an das Prnzip qua Prinzip sich haltend.
33

I use the German instead of the English in order to avoid a confusion between Zeitlichkeit and Temporalitt.
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determined precisely by the fact of possessing an understanding of being. In that case, Zeitlichkeit itself must be the condition of possiblity of ontological understanding. Indeed, the two are so intimately linked that whenever and wherever a being possessing the temporal character of existence (i.e., a being whose manner of being is Zeitlichkeit) exists, something like ontological understanding must emerge. This ontological understanding, however, as Heidegger has already deduced via his analysis of the Greeks consists in understanding being out of (the horizon of) time. Thus, Zeitlichekit is not only the condition of possibility of ontological understanding, but also conditions this understanding in such a way that it is an understanding of being in terms of time. The mode of being we call Zeitlichkeit originally predisposes us to understand being in terms of time, such that we cannot but understand being in this way. The circle is thus closed offthere is no understanding of being that would not be temporal.34 However, even though the circle has been closed off, this does not suffice, for Heidegger still has to show that the transcendental character of the investigation can be reconciled with its hermeneutic character. In other words, the step beyond from being to its horizon of intelligibility must be undone in

34

This crucial statement must be understood in two ways: first, there is no understanding of being that is not temporal in the sense of being articulated in terms of time and, second, there is no understanding of being that would pertain to or be possessed by a being that is not temporal. If a god were to exist, he would not know what being is. Ontological understanding is an exclusive property of human existence; it is not just what is distinctive about existence (as Heidegger notes in SZ), but also its distinction (as it is called in KPM). See KPM 228: Mit der Existenz des Menschen geschieht ein Einbruch in das Ganze des Seienden dergestalt, da jetzt erst das Seiende in je verschiedener Weite, nach verschiedenen Stufen der Klarheit, in verschiedenen Graden der Sicherheit, an ihm selbst, d.h. als Seiendes offenbar wird. Dieser Vorzug aber, nicht nur unter anderem Seienden auch vorhanden zu sein, ohne da sich dieses Seiende unter sich je als solches offenbar wird, sondern inmitten des Seienden an es als ein solches ausgeliefert und sich selbst als einem Seienden berantwortet zu sein, dieser Vorzug, zu existieren, birgt die Not, des Seinsverstndnisses zu bedrfen, in sich.
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some way, else we will enter the risk of an infinite regress, i.e., a series of horizons one behind the other. His solution to the problem is threefold: (1) He proposes that Zeitlichkeit itself enables all projection. Because of this unique property, time alone does not require a further horizon to be understood, but is itself the condition of all horizonally structured understanding.35 (2) Zeitlichkeit does not just enable projection, but is itself to exist ecstatically or projectively (entwerfend). This projection, however, is more basal than any form of Weltentwurf or conscious Selbstentwurf in the sense of creating or interpreting oneself. It denotes an utterly singular and ontologically constitutive form of projection that arises from the nature of temporal existence itself and is the support for all understanding.36 (3) It follows from this that Zeitlichkeit must always already be disclosed to us in some way, even prior to all explicit ontology.37 In other words, we not only possess Zeitlichkeit as a mode of being and Zeitlichkeit as condition of possibility of understanding but, equally originally, also an understanding of Zeitlichkeit. This last statement is crucial, for it is the condition under which a return from time as the horizon of intelligibility of being to factical existence becomes possible. Only if what we arrive at in explicit projection is nothing other than something we have always already known, indeed, something we are, can the transcendental character of the inquiry be squared with its hermeneutic character. The
35

Die Zeitlichkeit ist selbst die Grundbedingung der Mglichkeit alles in der Transzendenz grndenden Verstehens, dessen Wesensstruktur im Entwerfen liegt (GP 436).
36

Die Zeitlichkeit ist in sich der ursprngliche Selbstentwurf schlechthin, so da, wo immer und wann immer Verstehen ist, dieses Verstehen nur mglich ist im Selbstentwurf der Zeitlichkeit (GP 437).
37

Wenn die Zeitlichkeit der Selbstentwurf schlechthin ist als die Bedingung der Mglichkeit alles Entwerfens, so liegt darin, da die Zeitlichkeit in irgendeinem Sinne in jedem faktischen Entwerfen schon mitenthllt ist.(GP 437)
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return proves unnecessary, for the step beyond does not carry us beyond being, but back to where we always already wereback to ourselves. Hence, the risk of an infinite regress is obviated.38 6. The End of Entwurf: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics From Entwurf as the fundamental character of all understanding to Entwurf as the essence of time, we now come to Entwurf as an index of finitude itself. This occurs in the text KPM.39 I will ignore the complex issues pertaining to Heideggers reception of Kant,40 to focus on the major change in his concept of Entwurf in this text:

38

As Heidegger puts it, Weil die ekstatisch-horizontale Einheit der Zeitlichkeit in sich der Entwurf schlechthin ist, als ekstatische das Entwerfen auf berhaupt ermglicht und mit dem zur Ekstase gehrigen Horizont die Bedingung der Mglichkeit eines Woraufhin, Wozuhinaus berhaupt darstellt, kann gar nicht mehr gefragt werden, woraufhin die Schemata ihrerseits entworfen seien, und so in infinitum. Die frher erwhnte Folge der einander gleichsam vorgeschalteten Entwrfe: Verstehen von Seiendem, Entwurf auf Sein, Vertehen von Sein, Entwurf auf die Zeit, hat ihr Ende am Horizont der ekstatischen Einheit der Zeitlichkeit. Ursprnglicher knnen wir dies hier nicht begrnden, wir mten dabei auf das Problem der Endlichkeit der Zeit eingehen. An diesem Horizont hat jede Ekstase der Zeit, d.h. die Zeitlichkeit selbst ihr Ende. Aber dieses Ende ist nichts anderes als der Anfang und Ausgang fr die Mglichkeit alles Entwerfens. (GP 437)
39

If we plot the use of Entwurf in these four texts (GP 1919, SZ, GP, KPM), we find there is a gradual increase in Heideggers use of the term, followed by an ebb. The largest number of references can be found in SZ, but Heidegger is also quite long-winded and repetitive in this text. The actual number of discussions of Entwurf itself, i.e., passages where he introduces the concept as opposed to passages where he uses it as something demonstrated, is quite small or, at the very least, comparable to the number in GP. These two texts together constitute the apex of Heideggers use of the term. In KPM, in contrast, a decline has already set in. Heidegger uses the term mainly to refer to the Kantian project of a foundation of metaphysics. It is only in the concluding sections that he recurs to his own understanding of the term, i.e., as something related to human understanding.
40

See, however, Charles M. Sherovers excellent Heidegger, Kant and Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971) as well as Frank Schalows The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue: Action, Thought and Responsibility (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).
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(1) Heidegger now tries to frame his project of fundamental ontology in Kantian terms, albeit with the following qualification. Whereas Kant merely undertook a reflexive turn to time as a form of intuition in human understanding, thus characterizing human finitude in terms of its incapacity to know the thing itself outside of its own forms and categories,41 Heidegger claims that his project undertakes a step back to the finitude of man in order that temporality may become visible as a transcendental primordial structure.42 (2) This step back does not occur in the form of a Kantian turn around (Wende), but, in fact, lies in accompanying human existence in the step beyond it undertakes in every projection. In so doing, what is disclosed is that in every act of (projective) understanding is implicit human finitude as the transcendentalimmanent condition of possibility of understanding. (3) Heidegger therefore naturalizes the tendency to metaphysics. Contrary to Kants view, which sees it as an illegitimate attempt by reason to go beyond the bounds set it, Heidegger argues that it is a natural disposition of humans. As long as they exist, humans must project being and the meaning of being.43 (4) Kants foundation of metaphysics as the first resolute inquiry into the inner possibility of the manifestation of the being of beings had to encounter
41

In other wordsand Heidegger makes this explicitthe finitude of man lies, for Kant, in the fact that he only possesses sensible intuition and not intellectual intuition.
42

Aus der philosophischen Erinnerung aus den verborgenen Entwurf des Seins auf die Zeit als das innerste Geschehen im Seinsverstndnis der antiken und nachkommenden Metaphysik erwchst einer Wiederholung der Grundfrage der Metaphysik die Aufgabe, den von dieser Problematik geforderten Rckgang in die Endlichkeit im Menschen so durchzufhren, da im Da-sein als solchem die Zeitlichkeit als transzendentale Urstruktur sichtbar wird. (KPM 241-242)
43

Metaphysik ist nichts, was von Menschen nur geschaffen wird in Systemen und Lehren, sondern das Seinsverstndnis, sein Entwurf und seine Verwerfung, geschieht im Dasein als solchem. (KPM 242)
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time as the basic determination of finite transcendence, since the ontological understanding in human existence, so to speak, projects being out of itself onto time. But it is not because time functions as a form of intuition and is also grasped as such at outset of the Critique of Pure Reason, but because ontological understanding [itself] due to the finitude of the existence in man must project itself upon time (emphasis mine) that time takes on a central metaphysical function in Kants Critique of Pure Reason.44 In other words, it is not because human understanding (Erkenntnis) is subject to the determination of the forms of intuition (above all, of time) that it is finite, but because human existence is finite that time takes on the central function it does in the explication of being (whether as the implicit projection that is the Grundakt of all metaphysics or as the explicit analysis that is the Kantian Grundlegung of metaphysics). In other words, it is not time that conditions finitude, but finitude that conditions time. This reversal must be taken seriously, because it is the upshot of Heideggers entire engagement with Kant in this book: the Kantian project, even though critical, leaves upon the possibility of an infinite intellect. This would be precisely the intellect not subject to the conditions of the forms of intuition, i.e., one possessing intellectual intuition rather than sensible intuition.45 But in making finitude conditional upon some other condition, rather than making it
44

Kants Grundlegung der Metaphysik mute, als erstmaliges entschlossenes Fragen nach der inneren Mglichkeit der Offenbarkeit des Seins von Seiendem, auf die Zeit als Grundbestimmung der endlichen Transzendenz stoen, wenn anders das Seinsverstndnis im Dasein gleichsam von selbst das Sein auf die Zeit entwirft. Nicht weil die Zeit als Form der Anschauung fungiert und eingangs in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft als solche ausgelegt wird, sondern deshalb, weil das Seinsverstndnis aus dem Grunde der Endlichkeit des Daseins im Menschen sich auf die Zeit entwerfen mu, gewinnt die Zeit in der wesenhaften Einheit mit der transzendentalen Einbildungskraft die zentrale metaphysische Funktion in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (KPM 243)
45

As Heidegger emphasizes, according to Kants conception [Danach] sensation [Sinnlichkeit] is synonymous with finite intuition. Finitude consists in the reception of what offers itself [to intuition] (KPM 147).
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the conditio sine qua non for any kind of meaningful discourse, Kant, according to Heidegger, leaves open the possibility of a nonfinite being (i.e., God). He does not close off infinite existence as an incoherent concept. Kants project, according to Heidegger, is therefore still entangled within metaphysics, if metaphysics is understood as the step beyond human existence through a negation of its finite properties.46 Against the Kantian conception, Heidegger undertakes to show that human finitude cannot be understood along the path of a via negativa proceeding from an infinite existence. Rather, finitude turns out to be so basal that any thought of an infinite being (whether as God or as the Kantian intuitus originarius47) turns out to be a incoherent concept. With this move, human

46

Heideggers critique of Kant runs as follows: Das Wesen der endlichen menschlichen Erkenntnis wird durch eine Abhebung derselben gegen die Idee der unendlichen gttlichen Erkenntnis, des intuitus originarius erlutert. Die gttliche Erkenntnis ist jedoch, nicht als gttliche, sondern als Erkenntnis berhaupt, Anschauung. Der Unterschied zwischen unendlicher und endlicher Anschauung besteht nun darin, da jene in ihrem unmittelbaren Vorstellen des Einzelnen, d.h. des einmaligen einzigen Seienden im ganzen, dieses Seiende allererst in Sein bringt, ihm zu seinem Enstehen (origo) verhilft. Das absolute Anschauen wre nicht absolut, wenn es auf ein schon vorhandenes Seiendes angewiesen wre, in Anmessung an welches das Anschaubare erst zugnglich wre. Gttliches Erkennen ist dasjenige Vorstellen, das im Anschauen das anschaubare Seiende als solches allererst schafft. Weil es nun aber das Seiende, es im vorhinein schlechthin durchschauend, unmittelbar im ganzen anschaut, bedarf es nicht des Denkens. Denken als solches ist demnach schon das Siegel der Endlichkeit (KPM 24, emphasis mine).
47

Heidegger thus implicitly accuses Kant of still belonging within the an ancient (Greek) tradition of privileging noein (pure intuition) over legein (human discourse or understanding). The latter, in contrast to the former, is constituted by the fact that it exists and unfolds in time; it is, as Heidegger emphasizes, a dia-noein. Insofar as Parmenides is, for Heidegger, the inaugural figure of this tradition, Kant, in granting an intuitus orginarius, still follows in the footsteps of Parmenides. In contrast, Heidegger explicitly sees his project as the overturning of the priority of noein over legein; see SZ 147: Dadurch, da gezeigt wird, wie alle Sicht primr im Verstehen grndet die Umsicht des Besorgens ist das Verstehen als Verstndigkeit , ist dem puren Anschauen sein Vorrang genommen, der noetisch dem traditionellen ontologischen Vorrang des Vorhandenen entspricht.
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finitude and factical existence are anchored within the philosophical-ontological project and restored to their dignity.48 I have earlier shown how Verstehen plays a specific role in this project. By enabling a move from existences everyday understanding (its Verstndigkeit) to the condition of all understanding (Verstehbarkeit, where the bar suffix must be taken seriously as implying what all can be understood), Heideggers concept of Verstehen lets him fulfill his promise of showing how human finitude is implicit not only in what we do understand (this would correspond to the Kantian sensible intuition), but also in what we can understand (this would correspond to the Kantian intellectual intution, which thus gets crossed out as a viable mode of understanding). Verstehen, however, for Heidegger, essentially takes the form of projection so that to show how human finitude is implicit in all understanding, we must show how it is implicit in the very act of projection.49 Whereas for Kant, thinking is the seal of finitude, because it unfolds in time (i.e., it is temporal), Heidegger wishes to show that only temporal thinking (in the specific form of projection rather than explicit discursive thinking) can be the source of intelligibility. Thinking thus remains the seal of finitude, but finitude itself becomes the index of an understanding of being; it thus becomes, as Heidegger explicitly states towards the end of KPM, the distinction of existence and not a flaw or drawback (meanings implicit in the expression seal).50

48

For the Lutheran roots of this preoccupation as also of Heideggers philosophical project as a whole, see Vishwa Adluri, Heidegger, Luther, and Aristotle: A Theological Deconstruction of Metaphysics, Epoch 18.1 (2013).
49

This constitutes the broader project of the three books from SZ to KPM and it is finally brought to completion in the last named book.
50

The crucial passage where Heidegger summarizes the results of the investigation of the book reads as follows: Die existenziale Analytik der Alltglichkeit will nicht beschreiben, wie wir mit Messer und Gabel umgehen. Sie soll zeigen, da und wie allem Umgang mit dem
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With the essential transcendence of human existence, a transcendence it always already brings along with itself, occurs the projection of the being of beings in general, such that being for the first time manifests itself. However concealed and inexplicit this understanding of being, its reality cannot be denied nor the fact that, even qua concealed and inexplicit, it is the condition for all explicit ontology. It is from this fact of ontological understanding in human existence that is given with the advent of man that all inquiry into being (even the Kantian) can get underway. Prior to this, there did not exist even the relationship of a subject to an object; rather, In-der-Welt-sein itself enables such a relationship inasmuch as, in (the act of) transcending itself, human existence brings about the projection of the being of beings. The crucial point, as Heidegger emphasizes, is not to trace Verstehen down to the innermost constitution of transcendence, but to note its essential unity with finding oneself (my translation of Befindlichkeit) and with thrownness.51 Existence,
Seienden, fr den es gerade so aussieht, als gbe es eben nur Seiendes, schon die Transzendenz des Daseinsdes In-der-Welt-seinzugrunde liegt. Mit ihr geschieht der obzwar verborgene und zumeist unbestimmte Entwurf des Seins des Seienden berhaupt, so zwar, da sich dieses zunchst und zumeist ungegliedert und doch im ganzen verstndlich offenbart. Das In-der-Welt-sein ist aber nicht erst die Beziehung zwischen Subjekt und Objekt, sondern das, was eine solche Beziehung zuvor schon ermglicht, sofern die Transzendenz den Entwurf des Seins von Seiendem vollzieht. Dieses Entwerfen (Verstehen) wird nun in der existenzialen Analytik zunchst nur in dem Umkreis sichtbar gemacht, den ihr Einsatz erffnet. Es gilt nicht so sehr, das Verstehen sogleich bis in die innerste Verfassung der Transzendenz zu verfolgen, als vielmehr, seine wesenhafte Einheit mit der Befindlichkeit und Geworfenheit des Daseins aufzuhellen. Aller Entwurfund demzufolge auch alles schpferische Handeln des Menschenist geworfener, d.h. durch die ihrer selbst nicht mchtige Angewiesenheit des Daseins auf das schon Seiende im ganzen bestimmt. Die Geworfenheit aber beschrnkt sich nicht auf das verborgene Geschehen des Zum-Daseinkommens, sondern sie durchherrscht gerade das Dasein als ein solches. Das drckt sich in dem Geschehen aus, das als Verfallen herausgestellt wird. Dieses meint nicht die allenfalls negativ und kulturkritisch abschtzbaren Vorkommnisse im Menschenleben, sondern einen mit dem geworfenen Entwurf einigen Charakter der innersten transzendentalen Endlichkeit des Daseins (KPM 235-236).
51

Both these are important, because they negate the possibility of an intellectual intuition

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further, is thrown not only in the sense that an individual does not determine his advent into existence, but also in the sense that it rules his existence through and through. And, therefore, even in his acts of projection, man remains subject to finitude, such that far from transcendental being opposed to finite Heidegger can now use the two words in apposition, as he does when he speaks of a transcendental finitude52 (transzendentalen Endlichkeit) in human existence.53 7. Conclusion: After-the-Fact Gelassenheit Transcendence is finite, because it occurs on the ground of temporal existence; finitude is transcendental because in its very essence it entails a step beyond itself to a worldthis can be described as the central insight of Heideggers philosophy. It is an insight Heidegger has been remarkably true to since the beginning of his career. Yet, in order to defend this insight philosophically, he had to undertake an extraordinarily complex and sophisticated philosophical project. I have traced this project as he carries it out up to 1930 in KPM, the
possessing Verstehen: Befindlichkeit because it implies affectivity (the standard translation is disposition or state-of-mind) and hence relates to the Greek pathein but the gods are explicitly stated (by Aristotle) to be apathe; Geworfenheit because it implies not being master of oneself and hence, in an even more obvious way, finitude. Note also the repeated use of words such as angewiesen and ausgeliefert in KPM in the context of the explanation of existences capacity to understand being to underscore the indissociable bond between understanding and finitude.
52

See also the remark, In der Transzendenz bekundet das Dasein sich selbst als des Seinsverstndnisses bedrftig. Durch diese transzendentale Bedrftigkeit ist im Grunde dafr gesorgt, da berhaupt so etwas wie Da-sein sein kann. Sie [i.e., die Transzendenz or die transzendentale Bedrftigkeit] ist die innerste, das Dasein tragende Endlichkeit (KPM 236, my emphasis).
53

Heideggers attempt to ground transcendence in human existence fails on logical and epistemological grounds. It also has ethical drawbacks, explored since Levinas in terms of the problem of openness to the other. A more original and philosophically rigorous solution to the problem is to conceive of the return from transcendence as erotically motivated and mediated via the singular, as Vishwa Adluri does in Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence (London: Continuum, 2011).
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book with which he closes this first phase of his philosophical career, and I have shown how the concept of Entwurf plays a central role in that project. Entwurf, to restate my conclusions, is: (1) a methodological concept, (2) the way Heidegger intends to work out or to solve the problem of fundamental ontology he has set up, (3) a precondition of all understanding, and (4) possible only on the ground of finitude, so that (5) all understanding now, in turn, turns out to be possible only on the ground of finitude. For reasons I cannot get into here, however, this project collapses after 1930, at the moment when it would seem Heidegger had finally attained his goal. In place of Entwurf, Gelassenheit enters the scene. Indeed, we could make the case stronger and say: Gelassenheit can only enter the scene with and because of the breakdown of Entwurf. What causes the breakdown of Entwurf as a viable concept for exploring human finitude and how this breakdown engenders a turn to Gelasenheit, however, are questions that must await a future paper.

272

Bibliography Adluri, Vishwa. Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence. London: Continuum, 2011. . Heidegger, Luther, and Aristotle: A Theological Deconstruction of Metaphysics. Epoch 18.1 (2013). Bagchee, Joydeep. Return to Transcendence: The Project of Being and Time and the Problem of Human Finitude. PhD Dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2009. Beierwaltes, Werner. Plotin, ber die Ewigkeit. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Gethmann, Carl Friedrich. Verstehen und Auslegung. Das Methodenproblem in der Philosophie Martin Heideggers. Bonn: Bouvier, 1974. Heidegger, Martin. Anmerkungen zu Karl Jaspers Psychologie der Weltanschauungen. In Wegmarken. Edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004. (GA 9; the Jaspers Rezension) . Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie. Edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005. (GA 24, cited as GP) . Einfhrung in die phnomenologische Forschung. Edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2006. (GA 17) . Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Edited by Petra Jaeger. 3rd rev. ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994. (GA 20)

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. Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie (1919/20). Edited by Hans-Helmuth Gander. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1993. (GA 58, cited as GP 1919) . Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. 6th ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998. (GA 3) . Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit. Edited by Walter Biemel. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995. (GA 21) . Phnomenologische Interpretationen ausgewhlter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik. Edited by Gnther Neumann. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005. (GA 62) . Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einfhrung in die Phnomenologische Forschung. Edited by Walter Brcker and Kte BrckerOltmanns. 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994. (GA 61) . Sein und Zeit, 11th ed. Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967. (GA 2, cited as SZ) . The Doctrine of Categories and Meaning of Duns Scotus. Translated by Joydeep Bagchee. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming. Schalow, Frank. The Renewal of the Heidegger-Kant Dialogue: Action, Thought and Responsibility. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. Sherover, Charles M. Heidegger, Kant and Time. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971. van Buren, John. Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther. In Reading Heidegger from the Start, edited by Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren, 159-174. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.

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On the Beginnings of Thought: The Historicity of Thought in Martin Heidegger Arun Iyer, (Seattle University) In the 1930s, Heidegger conceives of thought as a response to what he calls the history of be-ing (Seynsgeschichte). He argues that we are at end of the first beginning on our way to another beginning of thought in this history of being. He thus comes to understand thought as something fundamentally historical (geschichtlich). How is thought historical? What does it mean for thought to begin, end and begin differently? In the following paper I would like to answer these questions by focusing on the manner in which Heidegger rethinks the very essence of thought as an event (Ereignis). Thought, as a result, can no longer be seen as just a subjective act understood transcendentally or psychologically. To accomplish this task I will be piecing together Heideggers discussions on the historicity of thought from several of his lectures and private notes in the 1930s: Grundfragen der Philosophie (GA 45), Beitrge zur Philosophie (GA 65), ber den Anfang (GA 70), Das Ereignis (GA 71), Hlderlins Hymen Germanien und der Rhein (GA 39) as well as the more recently published lectures under the title Der Anfang der Abendlndlischen Philosophie (GA 35). Beginning with his distinction between two senses of beginning, as an event (Anfang) and as a stage in a process (Beginn), I will explore how the need for thought arises in wonder (Erstaunen) in first beginning with the Greeks and how another need for thought will arise in terror (Erschrecken) in the other beginning. In the process I aim to provide a clear account of Heideggers highly original way of conceiving the historicity of thought and uncover some of its radical implications.
275

On the Two Senses of Beginning In his lectures of 34/35 Hlderlins Hymnen Germanien und der Rhein Heidegger distinguishes between beginning (Beginn) and beginning (Anfang). Beginning (Beginn) is always replaced by the end. It is left behind and disappears in the course of what ensues. However, beginning (Anfang) abides and is always present, even more present at the very end. In fact beginning (Anfang) can never be understood as simply one stage in a process conceived as a nexus of causes and effects. Beginning (Anfang) is never the result of human action. Human beings can only begin (beginnen) but they can never begin (anfangen). Beginning (Anfang) can never be attributed to specific beings. Heidegger, for instance, distinguishes the beginning (Anfang) of the First World War which happened centuries before in the spiritual-political history of the west and its beginning (Beginn) in the skirmishes at the border posts.1 What one needs to gather from this example is that beginning (Anfang) cannot be attributed to a specific this or that. It cannot be subsumed under the categories of cause and effect as it belongs to the domain of what can be called the unforeseen or the it just happened. In ber den Anfang, Heidegger reiterates the distinction between the two senses of beginning making it clear that beginning (Anfang) cannot be understood historiographically under the principle: All being is becoming. He explains the beginning (Anfang) as that event (Ereignis) in which an openness is cleared up (Lichtung der Offenheit) and a concealing happens at the same time. In this space of clearing-concealing beings are gathered up and come to arise as beings. Beginning (Anfang) is thus unique and there are no rules or laws that determine it. Beginning (Anfang) can thus not be explained because explanations
1

GA 39, 1 (All numbers indicate section numbers unless explicitly indicated otherwise.)

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for Heidegger concern only beings and not be-ing (Seyn). In fact knowledge of the beginning (Anfang) involves a recoiling from explanations in term of laws and rules. In the beginning (Anfang) beings are yet to arise as beings. Heidegger indeed identifies being (Seyn) with beginning (Anfang) as event (Ereignis). The beginning (Anfang) of thought is the thoughtful engagement with the beginning (Anfang). It is indeed the thought that begins (anfngliches Denken).2 To think the beginning is to think inceptually. Inceptual thinking does not involve giving explanations. Rather such thinking involves an interpretation of be-ing (Auslegung des Seyns) 3 and is always specific to every beginning (Anfang).
2

There are three terms that Heidegger uses in reference to thinking in the Beitrge: seynsgeschichtliches Denken, anfngliches Denken and Erdenken der Wesung des Seyns or Erdenken des Seyns. It is important that we are clear about the relationship between the three. These are not three different kinds of thinking but different ways of describing the same phenomenon in broader and narrower ways. The first term is translated into English as be-ing-historical thinking or Beyng-historical thinking. The translation does not however the render the sense of the original German. The adjective seynsgeschichtlich is based on the noun Seynsgeschichte, the history of be-ing. So a better way of making the history of being an adjective of thinking is to use phrases such as thinking from the standpoint of the history of be-ing or thinking that focuses on the history of being or thinking within the history of be-ing. The adjective be-ing historical in the translation be-ing-historical thinking seems to lose that association to the history of be-ing which is so strong in the original. Heidegger contrasts the thinking with the history of being (seynsgeschichtliches Denken) with metaphysical thinking which is what he believes has come to dominate philosophy since the early Greeks. Within this broader conception of a thinking within the history of being (seynsgeschichtliches Denken) we have inceptual thinking (anfngliches Denken) which is a thinking that makes another beginning breaking with the first beginning made in early Greece. This claim is also defended by Allejandro Vallega in his article Beyng-Historical Thinking in Contributions to Philosophy, in Companion to Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy, ed. Charles Scott et. al. (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001) 48-65 on the conception of thinking within the history of being. In this regard see also Richard Polt, The Emergency of Being: On Heideggers Contributions to Philosophy (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2006) 107-115. Heidegger describes such an inceptual thinking as an enthinking of the truth of be-ing. As Heidegger says: Das anfngliche Denken ist das Er-denken der Wahrheit des Seyns und so die Ergrndung des Grundes. (GA 65, 22) For another account of inceptual thinking see also Ibid. 115-128. Polt translates anfngliches Denken as inceptive thinking.
3

GA 70, 129
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Heidegger identifies two beginnings (Anfnge) of thought and the thought associated with the two beginnings is not the same. Inceptual Thinking Inceptual thinking is not a re-presentation of something.4 Heidegger explains that representational thinking already presupposes a prior understanding of how things are, namely, that a distinction can be drawn between universals and particulars. Particulars can thus be represented only by categorizing them under universals. This creative distinction between universals and particulars was first made by Plato and Aristotle, although we have forgotten this creative, inceptual aspect of their thought. Inceptual thinking is not systematic. It lies outside the bounds of any system although it can give rise to systematic thinking. Just because it lies outside the bounds of any system, it is not chaotic and disordered.5 This inceptual thinking, Heidegger assures us, has a rigour of another kind.6 As opposed to systematic thinking which is based on the correctness of derivation and of fitting into an established and calculable order7, inceptual thinking has to establish an arrangement (Fgung) in the first place. So while systematic thinking has to passively represent what is given with certainty, inceptual thinking has to actively join together an arrangement. This joining together is not an arbitrary or willful human act. It is, on the contrary, necessitated by the call of Be-ing itself. The rigour of inceptual thinking lies in hearing this call and
4

GA 65, 27 GA 65, 28 Ibid. Ibid.

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being sensitive to the necessity of responding to it. Rigour in thinking has always been measured by the extent to which thinking is able to recognize the constraints imposed upon it by beings. To be rigourous is to be able to account for the way things are so that our thoughts correspond to the way things really are. Scientific thinking, for example, is said to be rigourous because it strives to account for the way things are. By contrast, inceptual thinking is not sensitive to beings. Therefore, it would be a false measure of its rigour to ascertaining the extent to which it is able to account for the nature of beings and the way they are. The constraints on inceptual thinking, Heidegger argues, come from be-ing, not beings. Because it is sensitive to the way be-ing unfolds, inceptual thinking is constrained by the creative impetus that it receives from the concrete possibilities for determining beings that suddenly become available to it on the basis of which it may then come up with ways to grasp beings as so and so. This creative impetus is experienced as an urgency or a distress (Not). Far from being a willful ad hoc act that can be done as and when one pleases, the creative impetus of inceptual thinking is necessitated. It is this necessity that is experienced as an urgency or distress (Not). While beings manifest themselves as presence by being present, be-ing (Seyn) for Heidegger manifests itself only as an urgency or a distress (Not). This helps to account for the difference in the way we have to understand rigour in the case of ordinary conceptual thinking and the non-ordinary inceptual thinking. Inceptual thinking is not a product of a capricious willing and it cannot occur in a vacuum.8 It is always attuned and can occur only within a grounding
8

In fact it is to be understood less as an act and more as an event in and through which history is founded. This is because we cannot attribute inceptual thinking to a metaphysical subject such as an ego-cogito or a human being. It is only in and through such thinking that the subject and object gain their essence in the first place and the human being gains its humanness. In the Beitrge the subject of inceptual thinking, Da-sein, is pre-anthropological.
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attunement. Only through a grounding attunement can inceptual thinking happen. To speak with Heidegger: All essential thinking requires that its thoughts and sentences be mined, like ore, every time anew out of a grounding attunement. If the grounding attunement stays away then everything is a forced rattling of concepts and empty words.9 In the same Hlderlin lectures that we briefly referred to above Heidegger presents four essential features of grounding attunement which can be paraphrased as follows:10 1. Grounding attunement is not a mere feeling. It is not merely an effect of our mental or spiritual existence. 2. One cannot comprehend the essence of grounding attunement on the basis of the theories of human nature. Rather when one comprehends the essence of grounding attunement it transforms our current ideas of human nature in a very decisive way allowing us realize the radical dynamism that underlies the human essence. 3. It is only on the basis of a grounding attunement and the subjects subsequent forgetting of it that it can arrive at the first most basic representation of its object. It is in and through the grounding attunement that a world is opened up. It is only with the opening-up of such a world that it becomes possible for the subject to distinguish itself from the object and enter into different kinds of relationship with the object. It is only when this world opening has taken place that the

GA 65, 6 See GA 39, 11

10

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subject-object distinction can emerge in the first place. Rather than simply start with the dualism between subject and object and then show how the rift between the two can be bridged, Heideggers account of the grounding attunement is an attempt to show how this distinction emerges in the first place. Far from being something subjective pertaining to the inner life of the human being, grounding attunement is what transposes the human being into a relationship with beings. No subject-object relationship is possible without grounding attunement. A grounding attunement can fade away giving rise to a new grounding attunement or mis-attunement. Such a change in grounding attunement also means a change in the very relationship between the subject and object and, significantly for Heidegger, implies a change in the very essence of the subject and object. 4. Heideggers notion of grounding attunement does not imply solipsism in any obvious way. Grounding attunement not only transposes the Da-sein of the human being into a relationship with other non-human beings but also with other human beings. In fact Da-sein of the human being emerges always already as a relationship of co-operation and opposition to other human beings. It is only through an understanding of this relationship between thinking and attunement that we may gain some insight into how thought begins, ends and could begin again. The Need for the First Beginning of Thought This need that gave rise to the first beginning of thought in Greece is not to be understood as a lack or a misery. The need is not something that arises from the psychological space of human griefs and afflictions. 11 The negative

11

GA 45, 35 translated into English as Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected Problems of Logic, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andr Schuwer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994). This English translation will be referred to henceforth as BQP
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that is contained in the need is not to be understood as a nullification of something already positive. Heidegger here wants to isolate a more original negative that is not secondary to the positive but which is independent of the positive and the very dichotomy between positive and negative.12 How then do we understand this need? This need arises from a distress (Not) of not knowing the way in or the way out (Nicht-aus-und-ein Wissen)13 of a space that first opens through that very knowing. Heidegger describes this space as a time-space (Zeit-Raum) a between (Zwischen) where it has not yet been decided what being is or what non-being is. (Ibid) However, this is not a space of complete chaos where beings are confused with non-beings and everything melds into everything else. He calls this space a kind of be-ing (Art des Seyns).14 This distress that gives rise to this need explodes beings and is the throwing asunder (Auseinanderwerfen) of what will henceforth be determined as a being in its beingness in opposition to what is not a being (Unseiende).15 It is, Heidegger, concludes, not something indeterminate and vague. Rather it is what provides to thinking its essential space (Wesensraum).16 Heidegger describes this thinking of the beginning (anfngliches Denken) as that which lets beings

12

It never enters the field of view of calculating reason that a no and a not may arise out of a surplus or abundance, may be the highest gift, and as this not and no may infinitely, i.e., essentially surpass every ordinary yes...Therefore it is difficult for us, whenever we encounter something apparently negative, not only to see in it the positive but also to conceive something more original, transcending that distinction. (Ibid.)
13

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., translation mine Ibid.

14

15

16

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emerge in the decisiveness of their be-ing (Seyn) and to let them stand out before oneself, to perceive them as such and thereby to name them in their beingness for the first time.17 As we have already pointed out, this distress should not be treated as a psychological property of the human being or an experience on its part. Rather man himself first arises out of this distress, which is more essential than he himself, for he is first determined by it. 18 So not just the being of non-human beings but even the even the being of the human being is determined in the space opened by this distress. How does this distress (Not) characterized as a not knowing the way in or out, necessitate (ntigen) inceptual thinking? It does so by displacing us into the between (Zwischen), that space where beings as a whole are to be determined in their beingness. How does this displacement happen? It happens through becoming attuned to a grounding attunement (Grundstimmung). The grounding attunement that necessitated the first beginning of thought is wonder (Erstaunen).19 In wonder (thaumazein) understood as a fundamental attunement, what is the most usual is transformed into the most unusual. In wonder, what is most
17

Ibid. Ibid.

18

19

Heidegger distinguishes wonder (Erstaunen) from amazement (Sichwundern), marveling (Vewundern), admiration (Bewundern), astonishment (Staunen) and awe (Bestaunen), which all inhabit the same conventional space of the meaning of wonder. Marveling, amazement, admiration, astonishment and awe the conventional ways of understanding wonder are directed towards an explicit object which stands out from what is usual and is always in contrast to the usual. There may be subtle differences between the objects of these modes of attunement but in essence they are the same. In all of them there is already an implicit understanding of what constitutes the usual and this understanding governs ones response to the unusual. In fact the unusual is only a modification of and its mode of being is entirely dependent upon the usual.
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usual of all and in all, i.e., everything, becomes the most unusual.20 The usual in suddenly becoming unusual also stands before us as the usual giving us for the first time a sense of what it is to be usual. In wonder we are caught in between the usual and the unusual with no way in and no way out. But this distress is not a condition of helplessness. Rather it is what first opens up this space of the between that necessitates thinking. Wonder as a fundamental attunement is not directed towards a specific being but towards beings as a whole. It transforms beings as a whole exposing them as the unusual and the usual at the same time. It is precisely because it is directed towards the whole as the whole that it is a fundamental attunement. 21 To wonder is to be displaced into that space where we are confronted with beings as a whole, which suddenly become worthy of questioning.22 It is in the thoughtful questioning23 necessitated by this displacement that the questioners essence and the essence of beings as unconcealedness (aletheia) is first decided. We must be absolutely clear that this is not decision made by some human being
20

GA 45, 38 Ibid.

21

22

In this 1932 summer lectures titled Der Anfang der Abendlndischen Philosophie: Auslegung des Anaximander und Parmenides (GA 35) Heidegger identifies the question as one of the distinguishing marks the beginning (Anfang). The writings of the early Greek thinkers Anaximander and Parmenides must be seen as answers to a question the question of being (Seinsfrage). Heidegger calls this the most original, the first and the last question. Indeed Heidegger calls the question of being the question of the destiny of the human being. (GA 35, 10) It would be instructive to compare this question-answer dynamic that characterizes the beginning in this text to the call-response dynamic, which Heidegger elaborates in Was Heisst Denken to characterize the beginning of thought in Parmenides.
23

This thought that questions the very being of beings is not to be contrasted with action. The thought that Heidegger describes is neither conceptual nor abstract. Indeed, for Heidegger it is best characterized as suffering (Leiden). But it is a kind of suffering that is beyond the dichotomy of the active and the passive. Invoking Hlderlin, Heidegger describes this suffering of thought as a hearing, looking, perception and letting oneself be transformed. (GA 45, 38)
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or group of human beings. This decision cannot be attributed to any such subject. It is not an act but an event. This is the event in which beings become beings and all interactions with beings become possible. With this first beginning of thought we have the beginning of history. 24 The first beginning of thought necessitated by the fundamental attunement of wonder produces the dichotomy between beings (phusis) and the human being. The need of the first beginning is fulfilled by the Greeks in the preservation of this dichotomy in and through the fundamental comportment (Grundhaltung) of techne. Heidegger warns against the identification of techne and technology. Techne, for Heidegger, means nothing else than cognition (Erkennen). Indeed it is the specific mode of cognition and the specific configuration of knowledge that emerges out of the first beginning.25 The End of the First Beginning Now techne the fundamental comportment that fulfills the need of the first beginning and preserves wonder also harbours the possibility of its disturbance and eventual destruction. While techne helps to initially preserve the essence of beings as unconcealedness it eventually develops its own logic, as it were, becomes mis-attuned and fails to respond to the original need that gave rise to the first beginning. This is what happens when through techne unconcealment (aletheia) is transformed into correctness (homoiosis). With this
24

Reiterating what he said about beginning in the 34/35 Hlderlin lectures as well as ber den Anfang, Heidegger says of the fundamental attunement that necessitates the first beginning of thought that is not something that can be invoked at will. Its cause cannot be traced back to some specific being. That is because it is only in and through such a fundamental attunement that beings become beings and the human being becomes the human being in the first place. Hence one cannot provide an explanation of this beginning. One can only sincerely describe the incomprehensibility and the inscrutability of the beginning.
25

Ibid.
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transformation wonder is destroyed and replaced by avidity of learning and calculation.26 With the destruction of the fundamental attunement the original need for the beginning of thought is lost. Heidegger claims that the destruction of the fundamental attunement is part of the very essence of beginning. The beginning itself contains in itself the unavoidable necessity that, in unfolding, it must surrender its originality.27 Indeed this is the mark of its greatness. The historicity of thought reveals to us its peculiar inertia and the seemingly inevitable trajectory from thought to non-thought. The end of the first beginning is reached when truth becomes something simply unworthy of question just like it was at the first beginning but in a completely different way. In the first beginning truth remained unquestioned because the early Greek thinkers were compelled by the highest need of questioning the being of beings. However at the end of the first beginning the question of truth is not asked because of the highest indifference to the being of beings. The creative event of the beginning of history when beings emerged as beings and the distinction between beings and non-beings was decided has been completely forgotten. The creativity that underlies any event of interpreting beings as beings no longer plays any role in understanding the being of beings. At the end of the first beginning beings have become absolutely obvious and the fluidity that characterizes their essence is no longer a matter of consideration. They simply become objects of technological manipulation (Machenschaft) and lived experience (Erlebnis). Being is completely forgotten. Heidegger states in Grundfragen der Philosophie that the forgottenness of being comes to dominate as if

26

Ibid. Ibid.

27

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being has abandoned beings. In this text at least it seems that abandonment of being28 is simply an intensification of the forgottenness of being.29 Heidegger however admits that end is an ambiguous term. End does not mean the simple cessation of the first beginning, a point of stasis, an end-point, a dead-end where the first beginning has exhausted itself. It also means for Heidegger the possibility of a transition to something completely different. This is how he reads Nietzsches philosophy whose greatness and alienating power lies in its being the closure of the possibilities of the first beginning but also a transition to something completely other that we have not begun to realize.30 But end also refers at the same time to the confusion of the basic positions, value concepts, and propositions in the usual interpretation of

28

In the Beitrge we get a very detailed account of this abandonment of being. Here Heidegger describes how the beingness of beings consequently comes to be understood in terms of those characteristics which apply to all beings and thus are most common and general. Being itself as the being of beings is now understood as the most general or the most universal determination of beings. (GA 65, 51) According to Heidegger, this is what representation focuses on and thus, by grasping this most common characteristic, representation can take over thinking or usurp thinking. Beings thus come to be interpreted as what is representable to the extent that only what is representable is taken to exist. Representability thus becomes the sole criterion the most dominant interpretation of what it means to be. This is precisely what Heidegger characterizes as machination, which amounts to a reduction of beings to what is accessible to intention and calculation and what is advanceable through production and execution. (Ibid.) The reduction of beings to representation also goes hand in hand with the dominance of lived experience as the only real way of experiencing beings. lived experience means making what is mysterious, i.e., what is stimulating, provocative, stunning and enchanting public and accessible to everyone. (Ibid.) Thus, with machination and lived experience we see that what is essential to being, this uniqueness of the event of its coming to be, of its being posited as a being, namely, be-ing, is completely covered over and no longer governs our understanding of being. Heidegger describes Abandonment of be-ing as a dis-essencing [Ver-wesung] of be-ing (GA 65, 55, translation modified) where beings continue to be what is present; and what actually is constantly present and in this way conditions everything, is the un-conditioned, the ab-solute, ens entium, Deus, etc. (Ibid.)
29

GA 45, 40 GA 45, 31
287

30

beings.31 By this he presumably means that the basic concepts, values and propositions of western philosophy are no longer sensitive to the beginning of thought. These concepts function as if there was no beginning or end or another beginning at all to thought, as if there were no inceptual thinking at all, as if thought was just a way of manipulating beings (Machenschaft) and an inner subjective experience (Erlebnis) and nothing more. The question that arises here is whether the end is also supposed to be a historiographical depiction of a certain age. By end does Heidegger mean our contemporary time stretching from the late half of the 19th century to the present? When Heidegger talks of Nietzsche, Hlderlin and modern technology he does seem to give that impression. Does the historiographical distance from the first beginning determine whether or not we are the end of the first beginning of thought? If Heidegger locates the beginning of thought historiographically in ancient Greece then there should be nothing strange in locating the end in the contemporary west of Nietzsche, Hlderlin and modern technology. But Heidegger seems to deny this in the 1932 summer semester lectures collected and published as GA 35.32 In these lectures Heidegger says that the early Greek thinkers provide us with the oldest testimony of western philosophy and consequently its beginning, so far we are aware of it.33 Heidegger then simply dismisses the objection that the oldest testimony of philosophy that we have in our midst may not necessarily pertain to the first historiographical beginning by stating: The oldest testimony can very well be younger than the real beginning; the later could even perhaps be simply unobserved. This is a question that
31

Ibid. See footnote 22 for the title of this volume GA 35, 10, translation mine

32

33

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surely only seems to be of great significance.34 Indeed here Heidegger is clearly content to not locate the beginning historiographically in Greece. He clearly seems to saying that early Greek thinkers thought inceptually even though they were not the real historiographical beginning of Western thought. Indeed Heidegger seems to clearly dissociate a historical beginning from a historiographical beginning. Heidegger makes a similar point in this text about the end of the beginning implying that our historical distance of 2500 years from the so-called beginning has nothing to do with our being at the end of the first beginning. As Heidegger says: ...It may be the case that we remain just as far from this beginning as we are today even if the beginning were to happen a decade or even a year before...We must reckon with the possibility that it is not the beginning that is old as something primitive but rather we have become so old that we can simply no longer understand a beginning rather we cannot understand it precisely when we call ourselves advanced and contemporary.35 If our relationship to the beginning is characterized as the end, this relationship has really nothing to do with the historiographical distance between the beginning and our time. In fact we could be as close to the beginning as possible and yet be at the end of the first beginning. The end designates the historical character of thought and not the historiographical distance of the thinker from the beginning. It is in this sense that Nietzsches philosophy is an end because

34

Ibid. GA 35, 8, translation mine

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35

Nietzsches thought has the historical character of an end and a transition to another kind of thinking. Nevertheless, Heidegger does give the impression in many instances of conflating the historical and historiographical. The Possibility of another Beginning of Thought How then can thought begin differently? How is it possible to make a transition from the end of the first beginning to the other beginning of thought? What would necessitate another beginning of thought? Heideggers answer is quite provocative. While it was the grounding attunement of wonder (Erstaunen) that necessitated the first beginning of thought, Heidegger calls the grounding attunement that will necessitate another beginning of thought das Erschrecken. It is a word translated very differently by different translators. It is translated by Emad and Maly as startled dismay, by Rojcewicz and Schuwer as terror and Rojcewicz and Vallega-Neu translate it as shock. I will be following Rojcewicz and Schuwer in translating das Erschrecken as terror. The forthcoming discussion should validate my choice of translation. The first objection to terror as a fundamental attunement is its obvious incompatibility with thinking.36 Indeed one can see thought occupying the same space as wonder but can it cohabit with terror? Isnt terror the singular abortion of all thought? Isnt terror by definition the very absence of thought? Here we have to point out that Heidegger in GA 71 associates thinking with pain (Schmerz). The becoming-questionable of being (Seyn) in thinking is something painful. This pain is the forbearance (Langmut), which stands out and simultaneously encompasses the terror of what threatens (Schrecken des Drohenden)

36

I thank Laszlo Tengelyi for pointing this out to me.

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and the bliss of what is inviting (Wonne des Lockenden).37 As we saw earlier in the first beginning of thought wonder turned what was most familiar into what was utterly unfamiliar. The unfamiliar could easily threaten and terrify. But wonder also makes it possible for beings to emerge as beings for the very first time. These are the beings that we interact with, take recourse to and find comfort in the bliss of what is inviting. Thinking, which for Heidegger involves not a questioning of a this or that but rather a questioning of beings as whole, a refusal to take recourse to what is familiar and known, a standing in the in-between where nothing is fixed and settled, is a painful experience and could very well be something terrifying. In fact in GA 45 Heidegger does not exclude terror from wonder in the same way as he does not exclude wonder from terror. He also dissociates Erschrecken from aversion (Unlust), grief (Betrbnis) and despair (Verzweiflung). This itself suggests that terror is a more apt translation for that word. Startled dismay and shock do not of necessity evoke aversion, grief and despair. One could be shocked to win or shocked by an unexpected piece of good news. Dismay, even startled dismay is not strong enough to evoke aversion and despair.38 How do we understand terror then as a fundamental attunement? In the Beitrge, we learn that terror is what thrusts us out of our cozy dealings with

37

GA 71, 257, translation mine

38

It would be a very extrinsic conception of these various grounding attunements if we would see in wonder only inflamed desire and jubiliation and seek terror (Erschrecken) in the nebulous realm of aversion (Unlust), grief (Betrbnis) and despair (Verzweiflung). Just as wonder bears in itself its own sort of terror, so does terror involve its own mode of selfcomposure (Sichfassen), calm-steadfastness (Standhalten), and a new wonder (Stauen). (GA 45, p. 197; BQP, p. 169, translation modified) Heidegger reiterates this in the Beitrge when he says how terror far from entailing an abject surrender or subjugation in despair involves its own kind of willing which he specifies as reservedness (die Verhaltenheit). (GA 65, 5)
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everyday beings and exposes us to the radical openness that underlies all beings, estranging us from their everyday appearance.39 Here Heidegger speaks of how terror returns us to oppressiveness [Andrang] of that which hides itself, 40 which is of course be-ing (Seyn) and transforms what is familiar up until now as something strange and confining.41 We can here see an apt contrast with wonder which transforms the usual into the unusual; terror transforms the familiar and the comforting into what is strange and suffocating.42 What is the need that terror necessitates? Heidegger says that this need is experienced paradoxically as a lack of need. When beings have been reduced to objects of manipulation and lived experience then there is no overarching need as every need seems to be capable of satisfaction. In this situation we become completely indifferent to the relationship between being and be-ing. The lack of

39

What is most familiar and most unknown is the abandonment of being. Terror lets man return to face that a being is, whereas before a being was for him just a being. Terror lets man return to face that a being is and that this be-ing has abandoned all beings and all that appeared to be beings and has withdrawn from them. (Ibid., translation modified)
40

Ibid. Ibid.

41

42

Again similar to wonder which is not directed towards this or that object, terror too is not directed towards a specific object. Terror, as fundamental attunement, is directed towards beings as a whole, towards the groundlessness of beings. (GA 45, p. 198; BQP, p. 170) In amazement and marveling one becomes habituated towards experiencing oddities and unusual objects, which are supposed to stand out against the usual. One comes to expect and demand such experiences. But in all these cases one is never forced to challenge ones preunderstanding of what is usual and what is unusual because one never confronts beings as a whole as something unusual. Similarly in the case of terror one is terrified by objects and phenomena that pose a threat to property, life and ones mode of existence and such phenomena and objects can become a regular part of ones existence but one is never confronted with beings as a whole as something threatening or terrifying. Terror is always an exception to a normal state of affairs, whose normality is never questioned. When one is threatened or terrified by the groundlessness of beings as a whole then the whole state of affairs in which one constantly partakes is now called into question.
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need is the fact that it makes no difference to us if the status quo intensifies with the absolute dominance of technological manipulation (Machenschaft) and lived experience or the terror that renders the status quo questionable intensifies and obstructs all our regular dealings with beings forcing us back to the be-ing of beings. We no longer experience the need to make any decision.43 That is to say we are no longer aware that these beings became beings in an event that gave rise to history as we know it. Just as beings can became beings they can also un-become and get reduced to mere objects of technological manipulation and lived experience. We tend to forget that beings are more than just such objects. When this more no longer animates objects, beings simply become what they are. This absence of the more in beings is what Heidegger designates as the abandonment of being. 44 What must be experienced then is the absence of this more and this for Heidegger means that we experience that there is no need at all, that every need is always already satisfied. The highest need that necessitates the other beginning takes the form of a supreme lack of need.

43

The abandonment of beings by Being is therefore experienced as giving rise to need as soon as the belonging of Being to beings shines forth and the mere fussing with beings becomes objectionable. But then, it would appear that the need is already overcome, or at least the first step to overcome it has been taken. No. The need has then merely developed to a degree of acuteness that renders a decision, indeed the decision, inevitable: either, despite the shining forth of the belonging of Being to beings, the question of Being is dismissed and instead the fussing with beings is enhanced to gigantic proportions, or that terror we spoke of gains power and space and from then on no longer allows the belonging of Beings to beings to be forgotten and takes as questionable all mere fussing over beings. The lack of need is precisely indifference over this decision. (GA 45, p 207; BQP, p. 176)
44

See GA 45, 201; BQP, p.172. This crucial ontological implications of beings becoming beings and the excess and deficit of being is masterfully brought to light for the very first time by Pol Vandevelde in his Heidegger and the Romantics: The Literary Invention of Meaning (New York, London: Routledge, 2012). See especially Chapter 4.
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Conclusion: For Heidegger, to think is to respond or become attuned to a grounding attunement. Thinking is thus not something detached or dispassionate. It is very tempting to infer from Aristotles remarks in Book I of the Metaphysics about the relationship between doing metaphysics and living a life of relative leisure not immersed in daily labour that thinking requires a disengagement from contingent, immanent everyday historical reality pertaining to ones time and place, so to speak, to engage with a transcendent reality that is universal and eternal. But Heidegger rejects such a cheap and self-congratulatory dichotomy between the immanent historical and the transcendent eternal. Indeed what Heidegger is telling us it seems is that thinking is on the contrary always engaged with that historical everyday reality as a whole. Being forced to engage in daily labour or simply occupying oneself with tasks just for the sake of it might actually be a disengagement from the historical reality or the whole that compels or occupies us. To think is to be attuned to that historical reality, which reality Heidegger characterizes as be-ing (Seyn). The historicity of thought, as Heidegger sketches it, is not dialectical. It cannot be explained as a progressive realization of or a progressive decline from some abstract, eternal idea that lies outside of the confines of history. The historicity of thought is punctuated by events which cannot be explained but only sincerely described. In these events we have the radical emergence of concrete possibilities for the interpretation of the beings as beings, the exhaustion and a transition towards new possibilities. Heideggers history of thought is indeed a history of ruptures and not a smooth dialectical continuity. It is instructive to inquire into the nature of human action that is based on a thoughtful response to the history of be-ing. Heidegger does speak of the transition from one beginning to the other as involving a decision. But we
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should not be hasty to impute any kind of decisionism to Heideggers thinking. There is no one who makes the decision and it is not an act of willful accomplishment. The decision (Entscheidung) that happens in inceptual thinking is not an act but an event that cannot be attributed to a this or a that. At the same time neither quietism nor messianism is entailed here. Heidegger never speaks of an explicit renunciation of action but always speaks of a preparation for or a being-open to the transition, which he also describes as reservedness and even renunciation.45 On the other hand, the preparation is not a waiting for a messiah who will save us from the ordeal and terror of everyday existence. In the case of the other beginning it is a preparing to be terrified by the everyday lack of any radical possibilities for interacting with beings which includes the human being. Explicit human action that is mindful of the history of be-ing always takes the form of a reflective preparation.46 Indeed if one is in search of a politics in Heidegger this would be the best place to start.

45

...the preparedness for the refusal [by be-ing] can consist only in renunciation [Verzicht]. The renunciation in this case is still not a mere not-wanting-to-have or leaving-on-the-side but rather takes place as the highest form of possession whose highness gets decided [Entschiedenheit findet] in the carefree openness for the zeal of the gifting of the refusal, a gifting that cannot be thought exhaustively. (GA 65, 6, translation modified). See also GA 45, 40, GA 71, 41
46

We today see many sophisticated criticisms of the present way of doing things, criticisms of capitalism, of technology etc. etc. But these criticisms do not initiate a change in our ways of dealing with things. In fact they only seem to reinforce the status quo and seem to shield us from experiencing the urgency of change. In fact the criticism seems to be just a way of coping with the status-quo and letting it tarry along. To simply think that a criticism of the present state of affairs, however theoretically cogent, will motivate radical change is for Heidegger to be deluded about how change can truly happen. For Heidegger, one needs to do more than just engage in theoretical critiques of the status quo in order to radically experience the urgency of a change whereby the status-quo becomes unbearable and impossible to cope with. It is this more that Heidegger seems to outline by what I call reflective preparation.
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Heideggers Early Saying of Being as Physis (as Aletheia) Richard Capobianco (Stonehill College)
Then physis shows itself as the inceptionprevailing over everythingof the human being. Heidegger, On the Islands of the Aegean, 19671 Being as physis. Being: physis: the same. I have highlighted this central position of Heideggers lifetime of thinking in the previous chapters.2 Yet it is important to state again, this time reaching back to his early work, and especially the work of the 1930s. In fact, this task has become quite necessary because of the recent trend in Heidegger studies to overstate the importance of Heideggers private, experimental reflections in Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (193638) and thereby to overlookor push into the deep backgroundthe principal theme of Being as physis (as aletheia) that he worked out so carefully and compellingly in the early writings, culminating in the 1935 lecture course Introduction to Metaphysics. I would not deny the unique resonance of Beitrge, but it is a wildly uneven text, an outpouring of intense (often personal) reflections, judgments, and formulations, which Heidegger himself never considered acceptable for publication during his own lifetime. Beitrge is not, as some have taken it up, an Ur-text that give us access to an Ur-Heidegger, and the time has come to return our attention to Heideggers truly major philosophical work of the 1930s, Introduction to Metaphysics (IM).3

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I. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1929-30) Heideggers engagement in IM with the Greek understanding of physis emerged from previous reflections; for the present, I would like to highlight his remarks on physis in two earlier statements leading up to IM: the lecture course of 1929-30, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World Finitude, Solitude (GA 29/30; hereafter FCM);4 and the summer 1932 lecture course, only recently published in the Gesamtausgabe (GA 33), titled The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (hereafter BWP).5 In FCM, in his effort to lay bare the originary meaning of metaphysics, Heidegger turns to a discussion of the Greek understanding of physis. In just a few paragraphs, he lays out a characterization of physis that informs and defines all of his later meditations on the matter. He observes that the word nature, which is the customary translation of physis, is derived from the Latin naturanasci, that is, to be born, to arise, to grow (25:38). He admits that this is also the fundamental meaning of the Greek words physis and phuein. The middle and later Heidegger is already in evidence as he elaborates this point in FCM in a poetic manner: We here take growth and growing, however, in the quite elementary and broad sense in which it irrupts in the primal experience of the human being: growth not only of plants and animals, their arising and passing away taken merely as an isolated process, but growth as this occurring in the midst of, and permeated by, the changing of the seasons, in the midst of the alternation of day and night, in the midst of the wandering of the stars, of storms and weather and the raging of the elements. Growing is all this taken together as one.

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Growing, in the most fundamental sense, permeates all natural phenomena. Nevertheless, to be more precise and closer to the originally intended sense of physis, he expresses a preference for the translation the selfforming prevailing (Walten) of beings as a whole.6 Thus, nature is not to be understood in the narrow way that it is understood in the natural sciences today, yet he adds that it is also not to be construed in Goethes sense or in any other broad, pre-scientific sense. In what sense, then? That is precisely the matter that Heidegger attempted to clarify and say again and again in the full course of his lifetime of thinking. In this text, we find his early effort to bring to language the distinctiveness of physis: Rather this physis, this prevailing of beings as a whole, is experienced by the human being just as immediately and entwined with things in himself and in those who are like him, those who are with him in this way. The events which the human being experiences in himself: procreation, birth, childhood, maturing, aging, death, are not events in the narrow, present-day sense of a specifically biological process of nature. Rather, they belong to the general prevailing of beings, which comprehends within itself human fate and history (26:39). He is seeking a characterization that will be adequate to the Urphenomenon of physis as he understood the ancient Greeks to have experienced it. It is evident, I think, that he is not yet in full command of his language, but in his observation that follows, we find that he is alreadyin 1929-30perfectly clear that physis must be considered the measure, not the human being: Physis means this whole prevailing that prevails through the human being himself, a prevailing that he does not have the power over, but which precisely prevails through and around himhim, the human
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being, who has always already spoken out about this. Whatever he understandshowever enigmatic and obscure it may be to him in its detailshe understands it; it nears him, sustains and overwhelms him as that which is (26:39). The significance of this passage must not be missed. Heidegger states a position that he will insist upon in one way or another for the remainder of his life: in the indissoluble relation between the human being and physis (Being), the structural priority or antecedence belongs to physis (Being). From out of physis all things emerge, including human beings and even in a certain way the divine beings. Later in the same discussion, he attempts to separate out the two meanings of physis (30:45) that were bound together in the Greek word from the beginning, and this is an effort that he repeated many times in his later writings. On the one hand, physis indicated for the Greeks whatever prevails, that is, what is manifest (beings) for immediate experience, such as the vault of the heavens, the stars, the ocean, the earth. Nevertheless, he observes, physis came to refer more specifically to a region of beings, namely, natural beings, the phusei onta, in distinction from another region of beings governed by techne or human skill, invention, and production. Even so, the Greeks sustained a deep appreciation for both physis and techne in comparison to our modern and present day understanding. For Heraclitus and for the Greeks generally, physis, even in the narrower sense, was exalted as the ever-flaming fire (31:47). On the other hand, according to Heidegger, we can discern a second meaning of the ancient Greek word physis. The second meaning points beyond what prevails to the prevailing of whatever prevails, prevailing as such (Walten als solches). With this formulation, we immediately recognize Heideggers theme of the ontological difference, that is, the fundamental and
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primordial difference between beings (what prevails) and Being itself (the prevailing as such). He does not use this particular language in this context, but the matter for thinking is the same. Even so, in this part of the lecture course he is more concerned to sketch out the particular historical Western philosophical development of this second meaning of physis. In other words, from the very beginning among the Greeks, physis referred not only to what prevails in manifestation but also to the prevailing or manifesting itself. But how was this prevailing as such addressed philosophically? This line of inquiry leads him to a discussion of how in Aristotle the prevailing of what prevails became that which makes beings beings, namely, ousia (perduring presence; the being-ness of beings) (33:50). In this way, Aristotle took a decisive step toward the development of the meta-physics of substance and essence that subsequently dominated Western philosophical thinking, and Heidegger proceeds in the lecture course to discuss the development of this fundamental concern of metaphysics in the work of later thinkers. Yet our focus here is on his striking remarks on physis, and particularly on his effort to inquire afresh into that equiprimordial second meaning of the ancient word physisthe prevailing of what prevailswhich we recognize as his fundamental question (Grundfrage) into the Being of beings (in their beingness). One additional note is needed in advance of a discussion of IM. Already in 1929-30, he sketched out the position, so central in IM, that the ancient Greek words physis and aletheia must be thought together as naming the same fundamental matter: Yet this word for truth [aletheia] in antiquity is as old as philosophy itself. It does not need to be and cannot be more ancient, nor indeed more recent, because the understanding of truth that is spoken out in this primal philosophical word first emerges with philosophizing.
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The seemingly late emergence of the word is no objection to its fundamental meaning, but the reverse: its innermost belonging together with the fundamental experience of physis as such (30:45, my italics). To this, Heidegger immediately adds: Let us keep in mind this primal meaning of truth (the revealedness of prevailing beings, physis), and let us now. The first part of this sentence might be easily overlooked, but it must not because it is crucial and highly instructive. He is elucidating aletheia (this primal meaning of truth) in terms of physis (the revealedness of prevailing being). In other words, aletheia : physis : the same. This very point he will bring to full development in IM. II. The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides (1932) The text of this lecture course from the summer semester of 1932, only recently published in the Gesamtasusgabe (2012), offers a preview of Heideggers later, more well-known elucidations of Anaximander and Parmenides. His reading of Parmenides poem anticipates his more extensive reading just a few years later in the IM lecture course (1935). After IM, he returned to both these ancient thinkers, and to Heraclitus, in his series of brilliant lecture courses in the early 1940s (GA 54, 55, and 78), and, of course, he never ceased to return to them in his later work. Our focus is on physis, and this brings us to a few passages in the early part of his elucidation of Anaximanders fragment. Heidegger inquires into how chronos, time, is employed in the fragment, and to do so he turns to a line from Sophocles play Ajax. In lines 646-7, Ajax says, hapanth ho makros kanarithmetos chronos phuei t adela kai phanenta kryptetai (18). (In English translation: Long immeasurable time brings all things to light from darkness and then covers them
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after they have been revealed.)7 Sophocles words chronos phuei in this line are especially important to Heidegger, but he begins with a reading of the whole line that mighty, immeasurable time lets everything both appear and disappear (19). Time has everything in its power, he observes; thus time stands in the strictest relation with everything that appears, but we must hold in view that disappearing also belongs to appearingif we are able to understand appearing in the proper and fullest sense. Consequently, appearing (Erscheinen) in this entirely broad sense is what belongs to beings as beings. For both Sophocles and Anaximander, according to Heidegger, appearing in this broadest and richest sense characterizes the Being of beings, their Beingand it is this Being of beings with which time stands in relation (19). Time brings to appearing all that is manifest and all that returns to darkness, and for that reason, because of this knowing, Sophocles spoke of the intimate relation between chronos and phuei. Heidegger therefore rewrites the sequence of words in Sophocles line as chronosphuei in order to highlight and emphasize the innermost connection between the two words, and he adds, Phuein means to let growphysis [means] growthwhat is natural and growingnature (19). In this manner, then, he brings the originary understanding of Being into relation with timeand with physis. Although his description of physis is not as elaborate as in FCM, he nonetheless takes a step further in this lecture course by seeking to show that ZeitSeinPhysis were thought together by the ancient Greek thinkers. In the section Being and Time as Physis, he restates the caveat that he had made in the earlier lecture course that by physis the Greeks were not speaking about nature in the narrow sense employed by todays researchers into nature (19). Rather, for the Greeks, nature names the warp and woof (Weben und Walten) of beingstheir Being, and their Being is physisphuein. The Being of beingsphysisis characterized by appearing, but, again, only
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in the fullest sense of what appears and what disappears. Only by keeping this in view, he insists, can we understand and appreciate what the Greeks said about physis and phuein: Growing, arising fromprecisely from the Earth and thereby emerging, unfolding itself, laying out openly, showing itselfappearing (20). III. Introduction to Metaphysics (1935) Heideggers early saying of Being as physis (as aletheia) culminates in his lecture course at the University of Freiburg during the summer semester of 1935. The text of this lecture course was not published until 1953, and as Fried and Polt have pointed out, it is apparent that Heidegger himself held this statement on Being in the highest regard.8 In my view, IM is his masterwork of the 1930s, and it is unfortunate that the major themes of this text have been so neglected in the recent Heidegger scholarship as a consequence of the peculiar fascination with the cryptic musings and language of Beitrge (1936-38). In any case, I think that it is time that we return this textand the Seinsfrageto the forefront of study and commentary. IM is arguably Heideggers clearest and most compelling statement on the matter of Being that he ever composed; our focus here, though, is limited to the matter of Being as physis (as aletheia). He raises the issue of the Greek understanding of physis early on in the lecture course and asks, Now what does the word physis say? His answer is fully in keeping with what he had said in FCM and BWP: [Physis] says what emerges from itself (for example, the emergence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearancein short, the emerging-abiding-prevailing (das aufgehend-verweilende Walten (15:16).

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To this he adds that physis as emergence can be experienced everywhere: for example, in celestial processes (the rising of the sun), in the surging of the sea, in the growth of plants, in the coming forth of animals and human beings from the womb. Yet we recall that in FCM, he had carefully distinguished the first meaning of physisthat which prevails (beings)from the second meaningprevailing as such (Being as such). In IM, he makes the same point in a less explicit way: But physis, the emerging prevailing [itself], is not equivalent to these processes [beings], which we still today count as part of nature. This emerging and standing-out-in-itself from itself may not be taken as just one process among others that we observe in beings (15:16). Once again, his eye is trained on the emerging prevailing (das aufgehende Walten) as such, just as it was in FCM. Physis names not only what prevails (beings in their individual and collective shining-forth) but also the prevailing itself of all that prevails. Yet what he states more clearly and more decisively in IM is that physis, as the prevailing of what prevails, is Being itself: Die physis ist das Sein selbst, kraft dessen das Seiende erst beobachtbar wird und bleibt. Physis is Being itself, by virtue of which beings first become and remain observable. (15:17) This one sentence, too often passed over without pause, represents the early Heideggers culminating and defining statement on the relation between physis and Being itself. There is no qualification and no ambiguity: Physis is Being itself. And as I have noted in the earlier chapters, this is a fundamental position that Heidegger maintained, in one way or another, for the remainder of his lifetime of thinking.
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Everythingincluding the godsemerge from out of physis; as he expresses this here: Thus physis originarily means both heaven and earth, both the stone and the plant, both the animal and the human, and human history as the work of humans and gods; and finally and first of all, it means the gods who themselves stand under this destiny (16:17). Furthermore, Physis is the emerging, abiding prevailing that includes both becoming as well as being[ness] in the narrower sense of fixed continuity. In other words, physis unfolds beings in such a way that both the movement (becoming) of beings and the abiding (being-ness) of beings can now be seen as but two aspects of the one, single temporal-spatial way or process that is Being itself/physis. Thus the ageold metaphysical distinction between becoming (potency) and being (act; actuality) is grounded by Heidegger in the onefold of Being itself/physis. Several other times in the course of IM he makes mention of physis, but the most crucial remarks come in 38 and 39. In these passages, his early thinking on Being-Physis-Aletheia is brought into sharpest focus and fullest expression. He begins by observing once again that we know that Being opens itself to the Greeks as physis (106:108). The roots phu- and pha-, he continues, name the same thing. Phuein, the emerging that reposes in itself, is phainesthai, lighting-up, self-showing, appearing. The poetry of Pindar (Olympian Ode IX) provides further evidence, according to Heidegger, that phua, the root word of physis, means standing-forth as one truly is. He concludes, then, by affirming that Being means appearing. This does not mean that appearing is something subsequent to Being, something which from time to time meets up with Being. Being essences as appearing (Sein west als Erscheinen) (107/108, his italics). We arrive then at another of the most importantand underappreciatedpassages in IM. The header of 39 gives us in advance the core of the matter for thought: The unique relation in essence between physis
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and aletheiatruth as belonging to the essence of Being. After a few introductory remarks, Heidegger comes to the point: Sein west als physis./Being essences as physis (107:109). And he proceeds to unfold his position: The emerging prevailing is an appearing. As such, it makes manifest. This already implies that Being, appearing, is a letting-step forth from concealment. Insofar as a being as such is, it places itself into and stands in unconcealment, aletheia. Again, what he states here is in perfect harmony with his statements in the two earlier lecture courses that we have discussedbut in IM, Heidegger sees with the utmost clarity the connection in essence of Being-Physis-Aletheia. Thus his early thinking on this matter culminates with these remarkable lines (which I have numbered for further discussion): (1) For the Greek essence of truth is possible only as one with the Greek essence of Being as physis. (2) On the ground of the unique relation in essence between physis and aletheia, the Greeks can say: beings as beings are true. (3) The true as such is being (seiend). (4) This says: what shows itself in its prevailing stands in the unconcealed. (5) The unconcealed as such comes to a stand in showing itself. (6) Truth, as un-concealment, is not an addition to Being. (7) Truth belongs to the essence of Being. (107/109-10, his italics). Let us consider each sentence in turn. (1) For the Greek essence of truth is possible only as one (in eins) with the Greek essence of Being as physis. Fried and Polts translation of IM is careful and elegant, but they do not capture the full significance of this line. The phrase in eins is not simply together with, as they have it, but as one or in oneness. Heidegger is making a stronger claim than their translation conveys; that is, he is maintaining that the Greek essence
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of truth is one with the Greek essence of Being as physis. (2) On the ground of the unique relation in essence (einzigartigen Wesenszusammenhangs) between physis and aletheia, the Greeks can say: beings as beings are true. Here, too, previous translations have blunted the significance of Heideggers words. Manheim translates the key word Wesenszusammenhang as essential relationship, and Fried and Polt, in similar fashion, offer essential relation. These translations do not quite convey Heideggers subtle emphasis on Wesen. The word says that there is a unique relation in essence between physis and aletheia. His emphasis is not that there is an important relation between the two, but rather that physis and aletheia are related in essenceindeed, they are one and the same in essence and uniquely so. By understanding this, then and only then, according to his line of thinking, may we understand how the Greeks could say that beings as beings are true; in other words, the appearing, the self-manifestation, of beings that defines the essencing of physis also defines the essencing of aletheia. Appearing or prevailing itself is the truth of beings. (3) The true as such is being (seiend). He reinforces the point of the previous sentence by stating more explicitly that the true as such is in being. What he appears to be insisting upon (as I have discussed at length in another study) is that the true is first of all (structurally, not temporally) in being and not in the intellect (thought, judgment).9 (4) This says: what shows itself in its prevailing stands in the unconcealed. This line restates the oneness in essence of physis (what shows itself in its prevailing) and aletheia (the unconcealed). (5) The unconcealed as such comes to a stand in showing itself. This is the same point as the previous sentence only with the terms reversed. (6) Truth, as un-concealment, is not an addition to Being. As with sentence (3), the full significance of this line can be appreciated only in view of the traditional philosophical understanding of truth as an addition to Being supplied by
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thought, or more specifically, by the judgment. Hence, he is countering this traditional position by maintaining that truth (aletheia) is not, in the first place, an intellective addition to Being; rather, truth is the same as Being. That is, aletheia is convertible with Being insofar as both aletheia and Being name unconcealment, manifestness, in all its dimensions. (7) And this is brought home decisively by Heidegger in his concluding italicized sentence: Truth belongs to the essence [essencing] of Being. The originality and radicality of Heideggers fundamental position that Being is physis is aletheia is what I have been emphasizing for some time, yet this position is apparently still sufficiently alien to philosophical thinking that even among some contemporary Heidegger scholars, the effort persists to return the principal locus of truth to the domain of the human being (Dasein). Yet Heideggers own words say otherwiseand decisively so. From the late 1920s onward, he became ever more clear and insistent that the primary locus of truth is Being as physis. The aletheic character of Being as physis is Heideggers distinctive philosophical claim, and IM is one of his most important statements on the matter. A few years after IM, in the brilliant but dense 1943 summer semester lecture course on Heraclitus (GA 55), the middle Heidegger unfolded this same theme once again with somewhat different highlights, and I will take a closer look at that lecture course in the next chapter. In any case, the point is that his sayingearly, middle, and lateof this core matter is clear; the task for us remains to take to heart what he has said. Concluding Reflection Being as physis as aletheia. The unfoldingthe truthingof all beings and things. From a perch in Charlestown, Massachusetts, overlooking Boston harbor on a rainy late afternoon in early October, one sees the dark water and
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the stormy sky above. In the small marina sit quietly white and cream-colored boats, some with blue-tarped tops. Many have names; one is Tidings of Joy. Occasionally, a boat with a few people onboard motors its way out into the harbor, or one returns. Farther from the marina, in the open of the harbor, a tanker cuts its way through the water accompanied by scurrying tugs. On the far shore, buildings and houses, towers and steeples, are crowded together, and above them planes rise diagonally into the sky. Over to the left, an old bridge, a web of steel painted a rustic green, delivers cars to and fro; white lights beaming in one direction, red lights flickering in the other. One, two, three soggy flags wave in the wind, and gulls, catching the same wind, swoop here and there, their wings stretched out against the low-hanging clouds. Below is the splintered wooden pier guarded at the far end by stout black posts draped with garlands of heavy iron chain. There are the rough-hewn stone blocks piled one on top of the other bearing the weight of the marina house and scattered mounds of small blackened rocks along the shore line at low tide. Stubby, unkempt bushes, a line of trees, and several rows of autumns flowers make the transition from water to land, to a gravel path that ropes around the waters edge and to a small yellow-lined parking lot filled with cars of different colors. Along the path, there are a few walkers and joggers and bike riders. The little parking lot opens to a street busy with people, cars, busses, and rolling trolleys moving about, and a row of low red-brick buildings stand elegantly along the length of the street. Behind and above these buildings are shingled houses and more red-brick buildings, and behind them more still, until the hill reaches the summit. All is presentcity and nature gathered together. The fourfold gathered. Everything unfoldedeverything unfolding. A homecoming of all beings and things.

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Glimpsed here is what Heidegger glimpsed from the very beginning of his lifetime of thinking: the emerging of all beings and things in the ensemble; their holding and lingering and whiling in appearance, carried along by a great giving stream, a stream not hidden exactly, but difficult to see. This great giving flow, this temporal-spatial letting of all things, is Beingbut also physis, aletheia. And in our relation to physis it is no doubt important to keep in view that it is we mortals who bring into language what emerges and lingers and passes away. There is no overlooking ourselves as the shepherd of Being/physis, the guardian of Being/physis, we who have the word and with the word cor-respond to physis. Yet in Heideggers distinctive vision and version of phenomenology, we are always called to recall that it is an Entsprechung, a cor-respondence. Physis first addresses us, and ever so. Physis calls forth from us language and saying and meaning. Physis opens us so that we may open up a world of meaning. The core matter for Heideggerand for those inclined to his thinkingis that physis is the measure, not Dasein. But this by no means diminishes the human being, not at all. It is simply to recognize the limit of our marvelous logos, our comprehensibility (Verstehbarkeit), our taking-as, our meaning-making. Manifestation structurally precedes and exceeds any kind and any level of meaning. There is a depth to manifestation that is never exhausted by sense or meaning, a depth that Heidegger so often spoke of as the lethe of aletheia or the kryptesthai of Heraclitus saying physis kryptesthai philei, nature loves to hide. Or as expressed in the verse lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins: And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.10 And by Walt Whitman: Ample are time and spaceample the fields of Nature.11
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We take in all that we are ableyet we realize that there is more, always more, to manifestation; a richness of showing, a reserve of appearing, that can never be fully tapped. Physis endlessly arising, and we endlessly astonished.

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Endnotes 1. GA 75, p. 260. 2. See chs. 2 and 3. 3. GA 40. Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). Page references are given as (English translation : slightly modified. 4. GA 29/30. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995). Page references are given as (English translation : GA volume). 5. GA 35. Translations are my own (no available English translation). Page references are to the GA volume only. 6. McNeill and Walker translate Heideggers key term Walten as prevailing, and I prefer this translation as well. In IM, Fried and Polt opt for sway in translating Walten, but I use prevailing throughout. 7. Ajax in Sophocles I, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 90-91 (translation modified). 8. See Fried and Polt, vii-viii. 9. See ch. 1. 10. From Gerard Manley Hopkins Gods Grandeur. 11. From Walt Whitmans Continuities. GA volume). Some translations are

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The Transcendence of Immanence: Art as Phenomenology in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Nancy Rebecca Longtin Hansen (Emory University)
In his 1973 Seminar in Zhringen, Heidegger describes his thought as phenomenology in the primordial sense.1 Considering the transformations of his thought since his early engagement with Husserl, Heideggers identification with phenomenology is provocative. Heidegger, however, qualifies this claim by stating that phenomenology is a path, not a method, which indicates a broader relationone of shared concerns and questions, rather than terminology and practices: In philosophy, there are only paths; in the sciences, on the contrary, there are only methods, that is, modes of procedure (Z 80). In casting his philosophy in this way, Heidegger describes phenomenology as a path that leads away to come before. . . and it lets that before which it is led show itself. This phenomenology is a phenomenology of the inapparent (Z 80). This idea of phenomenology as letting that which comes before (the primordial origin) show itself reflects Heideggers discussion of art. In Heideggers lectures on art and poetry, he presents art as a way of approaching the thing without grasping it, which opens us to a more originary mode of beingin-the-world. Moreover, Heidegger poses art as a way to overcome representational thought, which characterizes the Cartesian ego as an intellectual entity set apart from the sensible world. Art allows for complexity and ambiguityit conceals even as it revealswhich allows the thing itself to

Martin Heidegger, Seminar in Zhringen (1973) in Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Franois Raffoul, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 64-84. Henceforth cited as Z followed by page number.
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come to the fore.2 As Klee tells us, Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.3 In allowing the thing to shine forth, art appears to fulfill Husserls demand that philosophy go back to the things themselves!4 In what follows, I will investigate Heideggers path of phenomenology in terms of his turn to art by asking: how does art enact a return to the things themselves? To answer this question, I will consider not only Heideggers turn to art but also the centrality of art in Merleau-Ponty and Nancy.5 In comparing these thinkers,
2

See Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche. Volume I: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). For Heidegger aesthetic disinterest allows the essential relation to the object itself comes into play (NI 110). When we regard an object without interest and without determinate concepts, we create a new relation to that object. As Heidegger describes, for the first time the object comes to the fore as pure object and that such coming forward into appearance is the beautiful. The word beautiful means appearing in the radiance of such coming to the fore (NI 110).
3

Paul Klee, Creative Credo, in Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkely: University of California Press, 1968), 182-186. Originally published in Schpferische Konfession, ed. Kasimir Edschmid (Berlin: Erich Reiss, 1920). English translation by Norbert Guterman from The Inward Vision: Watercolors, Drawings and Writings by Paul Klee (New York: Abrams, 1959, 5-10.
4

Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982), Intro. 2, 252.
5

James Edie claims that Merleau-Pontys phenomenology should not be read in terms of Heidegger: what radically separates Merleau-Pontys existential analysis from Heideggers is precisely his thesis of the primacy of perception, and his acceptance of the perceived world as the primary reality, as giving us the first and truest sense of real. For Heidegger, on the contrary, it is not this world but the Being of beings which is the primary reality, and any analysis of human experience, perceptual or otherwise, is only a means to pose the more fundamental question of this Being (xviii). James M. Edie, Introduction to The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics, (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1964). The same point is made by Eric Matthews, Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty (Acumen, 2002), 56. My paper assumes that this strict contrast between Merleau-Pontys notion of perception and Heideggers notion of Being overlooks the ways in which these thinkers are engaged in similar questions with related concerns. It should be noted that Heideggers thought shifts from the question of being and Dasein to the thing in his turn to art. Moreover, Merleau-Pontys notion of perception has ontological significance. Reading these thinkers together in terms of art highlights what they hold in common.
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I will argue that understanding phenomenology in terms of artor to be more specific, understanding art as phenomenologyfulfills and radicalizes the path that Husserl began. I. The Problem for Phenomenology: Overcoming the Objectification of Phenomena When Merleau-Ponty explicates Husserls phenomenological method in Phenomenology of Perception, he underlines the fact that the return to phenomena is not a recovery of what already was, but rather the act of bringing phenomena to sight for our investigation. It is a return in the sense that it invokes our preconceptual experience. As Merleau-Ponty explains, the eidetic reduction is the determination to bring the world to light as it is before any falling back on ourselves has occurred, it is the ambition to make reflection emulate the unreflective life of consciousness.6 This paradoxical demandthat reflection present what is unreflective or prior to reflectionmeans that phenomenology has a fundamentally different task than simply unearthing the source of experience or providing an explanation of its causes. Recovering experience of the world is not a task that can complete itself by capturing phenomena through concepts, as there is no thought which embraces all our thought (PoP vx). Instead of a complete method that totalizes and reifies the world as its object, phenomenology must perpetually renew its vision of the world. Accordingly, the philosopher, as the unpublished works [of Husserl] declare, is a perpetual beginner (PoP xv). To this end, Merleau-Ponty constantly invokes art in relation to this perpetual task of renewing our vision. The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the
6

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) xvii. Henceforth cited in the text as PoP followed by page number.
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laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being (PoP xxii-xxiii). Art, and particularly painting, allows Merleau-Ponty to describe the infinite task of recovering phenomena. In this section, I will describe how art allows the return to things themselves by overcoming problematic approaches to phenomenain particular, scientific method. Merleau-Pontys Eye and Mind begins with his account of how the scientific attempt at objectification fails to capture phenomena: Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. Operating within its own realm, it makes its constructs of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. It is, and always has been, that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an objectin-generalas though it meant nothing to us and yet was destined for our ingenious schemes.7 With science, the world is treated as a collection of opaque objects that can be reduced to a set of data. To think of the world as data is to think operationally i.e. to test out, to operate, to transformthe only restriction being that this activity is regulated by an experimental control that admits only the most worked-up phenomena, more likely produced by the apparatus than recorded by it (EM 121-122). That is to say, scientific method constructs its object in

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind in Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, trans. Michael B. Smith, ed. Galen A. Johnson (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1993), 121 149. 121. Henceforth cited in the text as EM followed by page number.
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terms of its instruments and their operations, which reduces everything to the organization of data.8 For Merleau-Ponty, Descartes Dioptrics presents a perfect example of the attempt and failure at giving an objective construction of perceptual experience. Descartes scientific approach to optics gives a mathematical model of vision, which is completely distinct from presenting vision as it is experienced: Here there is no concern to cling to vision. The problem is to know how it happens, but only enough to invent, whenever the need arises, certain artificial organs which correct it (EM 130). Instead of giving an account of visual perception as it is experienced, Descartes idealizes our vision by giving it geometrical form i.e., linear perspective and plane projection. Descartes follows the ambitions of the theoreticians who wanted to forget what they disdainfully called perspectiva naturalis, or communis, in favor of a perspectiva artificialis capable in principle of founding an exact construction (EM 135). In perfecting the geometry of how objects are seen, these scientific thinkers hoped to establish the ideal vantage point, the absolute perspective, from which objects could be seen in perfect clarity with absolute determination. It is an attempt to rediscover the true form of things (EM 135). Yet in the process of idealizing vision, science takes away our experience of it. Optics is not personal or subjective visual experience, but rather a network of relations between objects such as would be seen by a third party, witnessing my vision, or by a geometer looking over it and reconstructing
8

Heidegger describes the same quality of scientific thought in his discussion of time and space in Hlderlins Hymn The Ister, trans. William McNeill and Julia Davis, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996). In volume 53 of Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1984. Henceforth cited as DI followed by page number of English translation. The order imposed by calculations and formulas continues to be reconfirmed within its own realm through whatever has been ordered, and because it is becoming increasingly confirmed through the amassing of successful results, the fundamental traits of this ordering, and it itself above all, must appear as something that requires no further confirmation (DI 41).
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it from outside (EM 138). In this sense, optics is necessarily artificial and fails to capture the experience of vision. In another sense, this ideal construction of vision also prevents us from arriving at knowledge of objects. As Descartes optics is from the ideal vantagepoint of the geometer, which is given as a third-person construction, vision can draw its objects mathematically from this absolute perspective. The idea that the world can be deduced mathematically from the absolute (God) is present within Descartes Meditations as well as the Optics. Merleau-Ponty uses this deductive method to show that Cartesian optics is constructed from the isolated reason of the thinker, and thus relies upon the mind, not the world. A Cartesian can believe that the existing world is not visible, that the only light is of the mind, and that all vision takes place in God (EM 146). Descartes idealization of visual experience leads to an artificial perspective that separates rather than joins us to the world. We remove both subjective experience and objects of experience from visual perception in order to replace both subject and object with mathematical points. The objective model of vision abstracts from the subject, the object, and more importantly their relation. Merleau-Ponty attributes this failure of science to capture either the subject or the object of experience to more than its artificiality. Science mistakenly treats sensation as though it can be divided into discrete units, which is a method of simplification that strips our perceptual experience of its complexity in order to offer[ ] us objects purged of all ambiguity, pure and absolute (PoP 13). By dividing each object of experience into clear and distinct qualities that can be determined separately in advance, science attempts to account for each aspect of the object. This very process of dividing and determining qualities of an object, however, is artificial and abstracts from how we actually experience that object. The methodological separation of sensations
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imposes structures upon perception. We do not experience sensations. An isolated datum of perception is inconceivable because careful observation of phenomenon shows us that the apprehension of a quality, just as that of size, is bound up with the whole perceptual context (PoP 4, 9). There are no separate sensations to be perceived: The perceptual something is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a field (PoP 4). Heidegger directs us to this aspect of sensation in The Origin of the Work of Art when he explains that the thing cannot simply be the manifold of sensations: We never really perceive a throng of sensations, e.g. tones and noises, in the appearance of thingsas this thing-concept alleges; rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensation or even mere sounds.9 Heidegger draws our attention to the fact that isolating a single sensation would require abstraction: In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e. listen abstractly (PLT 25-26). In analyzing qualities apart from one another, science abstracts from the perceptual thing and does not perceive it. Heidegger describes this as an assault on being: an inordinate attempt to bring [the thing] into the greatest proximity to us. But a thing never reaches that position as long as we assign as its thingly feature what

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art in Poetry Language Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Perennial Classic, 2001), 25. Henceforth cited as PLT followed by page number.
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is perceived by the senses the thing vanishes (PLT 26). Whereas Heidegger avoids the language of sensation and perception in his description of the thing and the work of art to avoid these abstract constructions, Merleau-Ponty redefines sensation in terms of art. In contrast to the artificial constructions of science, Merleau-Ponty asserts that art, especially painting, draws upon this fabric of brute meaning which operationalism would prefer to ignore (EM 123). In order to understand how art restores to us the brute meaning of our perceptual experience, we must explore how art accesses and expresses our experience without subordination or reduction. The fact that Merleau-Pontys phenomenological method utilizes art so frequentlyand even becomes more concentrated on the role of art as his thought developsmay seem contradictory at first. What is art if it is not artificial, i.e. a way of putting what is sensed into new constructions? Why is the artist free to transform experience in a positive sense, while the scientists efforts are maligned for being untrue to experience? To give a preliminary answer: the artists transformation of experience differs from the artificiality of Cartesian science because the artist does not reduce experience. The artist preserves the ambiguity of what is perceived in ordinary experience. The painter draws attention to what it feels like to experience sensation through the use of lines, depth, color, intensity, and movement. Art allows us to experience perception in all its richness. Even though art cannot replicate experience as it is and must construct in some sense, the constructions of great artists gesture towards the ambiguity of experience and do not claim to grasp the object completely. As phenomenology is a return to the complexity and ambiguity of experience10 that resists the determination of
10

We must recognize the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon. It is in this atmosphere that quality arises (PoP 7).
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science, art can help us in this task. The following section will consider how art breaks down the false constructions of science and reminds us of the felt, living experience of perception in all of its dynamic complexity. II. The Dynamic Relationality of the Senses in Art Czanne himself expressed his desire to develop a new optics through painting, which Merleau-Ponty recounts in Czannes Doubt.11 This optics differs from the geometrical or scientific optics developed by Descartes, because instead of idealizing space and the world from a mathematical perspective, Czanne wanted to put intelligence, ideas, sciences, perspective, and tradition back in touch with the world of nature which they were intended to comprehend. He wished, as he said, to confront the sciences with the nature from which they came (CD 64). To serve this purpose Czannes paintings resist the absolutizing or homogenization of space and instead utilize our living perspective. For Merleau-Ponty, Czannes attempt to develop a new optics through painting captures our perception of the world more faithfully than reductive, absolutizing, Cartesian optics: By remaining faithful to the phenomena in his investigations of perspective, Czanne discovered what recent psychologists have come to formulate: the lived perspective, that which we actually perceive, is not a geometrical or photographic one (CD 64). Czannes experimentation with perspective captures how we experience the world, which is not perfectly geometrical. In Czannes paintings the outlines between shapes are broken and imperfect, objects are stretched at the bottom, and images collect at different

11

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Czannes Doubt in Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, trans. Michael B. Smith, ed. Galen A. Johnson (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1993), 59-75. 63. Henceforth cited as CD followed by page number.
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angles.12 These alterations would seem distorted in comparison to academic painting, which utilizes linear perspective; however, as Merleau-Ponty indicates, such distortions are truer to our lived perspective. When lines of one object are broken by another object, the line no longer seems straight and continuous. [W]hen our eye runs over a large surface, the images it successively receives are taken from different points of view, and the whole surface is warped (CD 64). These distortions are not arbitrary or simply for artistic effect, but demonstrate Czannes great sensitivity to the complexity of perception.13 For Merleau-Ponty, Czannes painting evokes our pre-reflective experience in a way that traditional science cannot. Whereas science offers discrete sensory units or divides objects into separate impressions, Czannes painting relies upon the interweaving of all elements, which is evident within his use of color.14 With Czannes art there are not separate sensations. The colors, movement, shape, lines, and textures cannot be separated because it is their relations to each other that allow them to articulate an object. For example, Czanne traces several outlines of modulated colors that allow the shape to body-forth with the appearance of depth as an inexhaustible reality full of

12

Image 1: Czanne, Still Life with Basket of Apples. The edges of the table are distorted and do not form perfect lines.
13

Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the fact that Czanne was extremely attentive to how he captured experience through each brush stroke: Czanne sometimes pondered hours at a time before putting down a certain stroke, for, as Bernard said, each stroke must contain the air, the light, the object, the composition, the character, the outline, and the style. Expressing what exists is an endless task (CD 65-66). This passage likens Czanne to Husserl, who also considered phenomenology to be an endless task requiring constant reinvestigation. MerleauPontys depiction of Czannes method of painting emphasizes its similarity to phenomenological method.
14

Image 2: Czanne, The Lac de Annecy.

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reserves (CD 65). The effect of these colorful, modulating lines15 on our eye is the same as when we look at an object ordinarily: our eye must take in different aspects continuously without ever capturing all elements completely. Rebounding among these, ones glance captures a shape that emerges from among them all, just as it does in perception (CD 65). Czanne use of color suggests the object as it emerges in pre-conceptual experience, rather than a discrete object of pure presence. We do not experience color as a discrete piece of information that can be extricated from how it appears in terms of light, shape, density, texture, and distance. Rather, color is bound up with all these elements in a way that precedes reflection. As Heidegger expresses, Color shines and wants only to shine. When we analyze it in rational terms by measuring its wavelengths, it is gone. It shows itself only when it remains undisclosed and unexplained (PLT 45). Art evokes this pre-reflective state of sensation because it preserves the thingly and does not assault it: the sculptor uses stone just as the mason uses it, in his own way. But he does not use it up the painter also uses pigment, but in such a way that color is not used up but rather only now comes to shine forth (PLT 46). Art does approach the thing as useful or conceptual, which means it recognizes that the thing cannot be exhausted. Art lets the thing rest in itself. While the Origin of the Work of Art does not describe this disclosure of the thing in art in terms of perception and sensation, Heidegger wants to expand the notion of art as techn! to denote a mode of knowing which he claims means to have seen, in the widest sense of seeing, which means to apprehend what is present as such (PLT 57). This widest sense of seeing is a dynamic interrelation that is more originary and precedes the concept of subject and

15

Image 3: Czanne, Small Forest.

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object. Along similar lines, Heideggers preface to his seminar in Zhringen describes perception in a more originary way such that perception and the perceivable are open to one another: For perception to be able to be encountered at all by the perceivable, it must hold itself open for..for what? For presencing [An-wesen]. Now for presencing to reign as such, it must be able to bring itself from itself into the open and the free dimension. Both perception as well as presencing require for their own possibilityand this means at the same time for their to one anothera free and open dimension, within which they encounter one another.16 In his 1968 seminar in Le Thor, Heidegger ties perception to the body as the lived-body that utterly characterizes perception. 17 Heidegger quickly draws our attention to the ambiguity of the body as the site of perception and its possible dangers. He states, the word body that just appeared could jeopardize everything. We need to grasp the difference between lived-body and body. For instance, when we step on a scale, we do not weigh our lived-body but merely the weight of our body. Or further, the limit of the lived-body is not the limit of the body. The limit of the body is the skin. The limit of the lived-body is more difficult to determine (Z 32). Andrew Mitchell describes Heideggers engagement with sculpture as shaping his sense of the lived-body. Mitchell explains, For an experience of the sculptural confrontation with space, the human body cannot be an inert mass (Krper), it must be a lively responsive

16

Heidegger, The Provenance of Thinking in Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Francois Raffoul, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 93. Heidegger later added this piece as a preface to his seminar in Zhringen. For a fuller account of Heideggers notion of the body and art see Andrew J. Mitchell, Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
17

Seminar in Le Thor (1968) in Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Francois Raffoul, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 10-34. 32
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body (Leib), sensitive to the qualifications of space that sculpture renders sensible.18 Merleau-Ponty similarly emphasizes the body as the site of perception as a more originary unity. For Merleau-Ponty, art draws us to recognize the unified and dynamic embodiment of sensation: Czanne does not try to use color to suggest the tactile sensations which would give shape and depth. These distinctions between touch and sight are unknown in primordial perception. It is only a result of a science of the human body that we finally learn to distinguish between our senses (CD 65). Czannes method of painting not only captures the dynamic relationality that unites sensations, it also bears witness to the unity of senses and lived body in experience. Jean-Luc Nancy19 gives a similar account of the painters perception of the original unity of the senses in Why Are There Several Arts and Not Just One? Nancys essay begins by recognizing that the arts are divided and yet their division is not according to the separate senses.20 The division of the senses is arbitrary according to Nancy, despite how the separation of the five senses has been accepted as a given (M 10). Instead of the traditional division of the five senses, which extends back to Aristotle, contemporary science could designate our sensations differently and divide the senses according to other criteria.

18

Andrew J. Mitchell, Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 40.
19

For a fuller account of Nancy as a phenomenological thinker, see Christopher Watkin, Phenomenology of Deconstruction? The Question of Ontology in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean-Luc Nancy, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univeristy, 2009). See also Ian Hacking, The Fragmentary Demand, (Stanford: Stanford University, 2006). Especially chapter 2 Space and chapter 3 Body.
20

Jean-Luc Nancy, Why are There Several Arts? in The Muses, trans. Peggy Kamuf, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1-39. Cited as M followed by page number.
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Nancy gives the following list of possible divisions of the senses: via mechanoreceptors (pressure, contact, vibration, stretching, etc.), thermoreceptors, photoreceptors, chemoreceptors, electroreceptors, or yet again according to different criteria, via exteroreceptors, proprioreceptors (action of the body on itself), interoreceptors (digestion, arterial pressure, urogenital sensations, etc.) (M 12). For Nancy, the arbitrary criteria by which we divide sensory experience gestures towards a deeper unity, a more originary synesthesia, that grounds sensation: one can only envision a different synesthesia in nature, another sensuous integration, a proper sense of art (or of the senses in art) (M 13). Art draws out this synesthesia because with art we can see the entanglement of sensations that unite to bring forward an object: in each local value it combines heterogeneous sensuous values without homogenizing them: this red is also a thickness, a fluidity, a figure, a movement, a flash of sound, a taste, or an odor (M 21). Here Nancy echoes Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Nancy acknowledges that art must create its own distinctions, divisions, and constructions, but art does not do so in an artificial manner: This plurality [of the arts] breaks down the living unity of perception or action, but it does so in a way opposite to the abstract breakdown into sensations (M 21). The relational correspondences of sensations in art relates to lived experience, not the idealization of perception in science. Art reminds us of the unity in our living perspective. For this reason, It is therefore the painters task to make one see a kind of original unity of the senses and to cause a multi-sensible Figure to appear visually (M 23).

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Despite Heideggers and Merleau-Pontys emphasis on art, Nancy is more explicit about the relation between art and phenomenology.21 For Nancy, art is not simply metaphor or practice of phenomenology; works of art are phenomenology. That is, works of art are prior to phenomenology and ground it within the world: The things of art are not a matter for a phenomenologyor else, they are themselves phenomenology, according to an altogether other logic of this -logybecause they are in advance of the phenomenon itself. They are of the patency of the world (M 33). Art then would provide the ground for phenomenologynot simply an area or topic of phenomenology. III. The Self-Touching of Art and the Worlding of Work: Art as Phenomenology How are works of art themselves phenomenology? How can Nancy make this radical claim that overturns the distinction between philosophy and art? For Nancy, art is phenomenology because it isolates or forces there the moment of the world as such, the being-world of the world, not as a milieu in which a subject moves, but as exteriority and exposition of a being-in-the world (M 18). For Nancy, art enacts this moment of the world as such because it presents us with how the

21

Art and thinking are clearly related in Heidegger, however, it is not clear whether he would consider art as phenomenology. Despite Merleau-Pontys clear comparison of painting and phenomenology, their relation is not explicit in his work. Stephen H. Watson provides a thorough consideration of whether or not painting is phenomenological in Merleau-Pontys philosophy, but comes to the conclusion that the privilege Merleau-Ponty sought in painting is an unstable one And philosophy, as has become evident, for Merleau-Ponty, still awaits its overcoming. See Stephen H. Watson, In the Shadow of Phenomenology: Writings after MerleauPonty, vol. 1, (London: Continuum, 2009), 102. Vronique Fti also makes a similar point: The ambiguity of Merleau-Pontys relationship to abstract painting reflects the deeper ambiguity concerning the issue of origin that marks his thought (166). See Vronique Fti, The Evidences of Painting: Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Abstraction in Merleau-Ponty: Difference, Materiality, Painting, ed. Vronique Fti (Amherst: Humanity Books, 1996), 137-166.
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world is present to us. Art is the presentation of presentation22 such that [a]rt does not deal with the world understood as simple exteriority, milieu, or nature. It deals with being-in-the-world in its very springing forth (M 18). Art is not the symbolic representation of a reality that is set apart from us as subjects, but the opening up of a world and the way in which we are in the world. In art we recognize the relations that make our being and the world inextricable from one another.23 This recognition through the presentation of presentationor the self-touching of touch however, turns on a contradiction between distance and intimacy. For touch to touch itself it must be superimposed on itself (M 19). It must be distanced from itself to approach itself or, as Nancy states, it must be distanced in itself. The presentation of presentation in art is dis-position (M 19). Art allows us to perceive perception because it distances us in a way that brings us nearer to its source. Nearness requires distance. This relation of distance and nearness echoes Heideggers discussion of the uncanny in his translation of Sophocles Antigone: Manifold is the uncanny [Unheimliche], yet nothing more uncanny looms or stirs beyond the human being. By uncanny, Heidegger means that what is closest and most intimate to us is also what is farthest and most foreign, what is most difficult to know. Ones own is what is most remote (DI 143). For Heidegger, the uncanny is not given at all in the sense of being present at hand The uncanny is in the manner of a coming forth (looming), and in such a way that in all its stirring it nonetheless abides within the inaccessibility of its essence (DI 74). In this

22

For a more thorough discussion of presentation and its significance in Nancy, see Alison Ross, The Aesthetic Paths of Philosophy: Presentation in Kant, Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
23

See Heidegger, Introduction to PhilosophyThinking and Poetizing, trans. Phillip Jacques Braunstein, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
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lecture on Hlderlins hymn The Ister, the play and strife of distance and nearness allows for poetic dwelling. For Heidegger, poetry allows dwelling because it can maintain this ambiguity and conflict of the uncanny.24 In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger describes art as uncanny in the sense that the work of art thrusts up the extraordinary in the ordinary (PLT 66). Heidegger also describes art as a destabilization of our comportment, or a displacement in which we are transported into the openness of beings: To submit to this displacement means: to transform our accustomed ties to world and to earth and henceforth to restrain all usual doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in order to stay within the truth that is happening in the work (PLT 64). Nancy also invokes the idea of art as displacement or dis-position. In The Muses, Nancy describes how art displaces the way in which we ordinarily sense and participate in the world, because it disengages the senses from signification and dis-locates common sense (M 22). Arts displacement of our senses frees it from the constraints of instrumental thought and calculative measures. The world is not set apart from us as something to be mastered or measured, but as something that moves us as we move within it. Art thus describes not only phenomenology as a mode of thought, but also as a way of being, an existence that is grounded in the immanent without reducing the immanent to sensory data: art is the transcendence of immanence as such, the transcendence of an immanence that does not go outside itself in transcending, which is not ex-static but ek-sistant Art exposes this Art is ex-position (M 34-35).

24

Merleau-Ponty seems to suggest an uncanny aspect to Czannes painting: Only one emotion is possible for this painter [Czanne]the feeling of strangenessand only one lyricismthat of the continual rebirth of existence (CD 68).
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Art is the destabilization of our normal relations and ways of thinking subject and object, sense and sensation, real and ideal, immanent and transcendentthat allows us to understand the more originary dynamism from which these relations emerge without trying to determine or fix them; and in this way, art allows us to reflect on the pre-reflective and to return to that which comes before. Art follows the path that Heidegger describes a path that leads away to come before. . . and it lets that before which it is led show itself it is a phenomenology of the inapparent (Z 80).

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The Ruination of the Artwork: Materiality, Repetition, Difference Alexandra Morrison (Michigan Technological University)
1. Introduction In Heideggers The Origin of the Work of Art the essence of art is unveiled as a happening, as an event.1 Thus, when Heidegger states in the essays addendum: [w]hat art may be is one of the questions to which the essay offers no answer this statement must be thought in light of the essential finitude of art. As a happening (Ereignis) art does not reflect an immortal essence, meaning or value and Heideggers essay attests to the truth of the artwork precisely because it admits to the impossibility of determining the essence of art. Heideggers essay can offer no answer because what art is can never be finally decided. The ideas that remain central throughout the essay, the concepts of earth, world, truth, and historical humanity are best highlighted in the single example of the ancient Greek temple at Paestum.2 Heidegger tells us that the temple, in its standing theregives to things their look and to humanity their outlook on themselves.3 If the example of the temple artwork is to reveal the way in which the artwork works, precisely by revealing to us who we are and what we value, why would Heidegger have chosen as an example a work whose world has clearly vanished? I will argue that it is not, as some have suggested,
1

Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art in Off The Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 1-56.
2

Though Heidegger makes reference to Paestum here Julian Young notes that there is no reason to think that Heidegger is confining his thoughts to the specific temple at Paestum. Cf. Julian Young, Heideggers Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 52. Central to this essay is a discusson concerning the sense of the local, the material, the singular in relation to a universal meaning of art.
3

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 21.

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that Heidegger is motivated by nostalgia for a Greek origin, since he repeatedly reminds us that the world of the ancient temple has disintegrated and that we cannot simply will this ancient world to somehow manifest itself again.4 Indeed, Heidegger emphasizes that, [t]he establishment of truth in the work is the bringing forth of a being of a kind which never was before and never will be again.5 The key here is Heideggers challenge to the metaphysical doctrine of truth as the adequation of a particular phenomenon to an unchanging, or eternal, idea. Rather than speak of truth in connection with unchanging ideas Heidegger speaks of truth as the unconcealment of a finite world. The artwork is a finite being that opens up a world precisely by inscribing itself within the horizon of that world. It is because he means to show that the artwork is a singular bearer of a finite truth, a being which never was before and never will be again that Heidegger invokes the temple as an example. That is to say, the temple is an exemplary work of art precisely because it is a ruin. Insofar as it is a work of art, a bearer of the truth of a world, the temple was exposed to the possibility of its own ruination from its very origin in the Greek world. The temple already attested to the finitude of its world. In order to reveal the richness of Heideggers thinking of the finitude of the artwork, I argue that we should think of ruination as belonging to the essence of the artwork. Furthermore, I will also argue that it is, in a particular way, the materiality of the artwork, manifesting its essential exposure to ruination that makes it a bearer of the happening of truth. It is the artworks constant risk of becoming a ruin, its vulnerability and

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 20. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 37.

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singularity that enables truth to manifest there. Ruination is then the finitude that enables art to be a bearer of truth as aletheia. The first issue that must be clarified with regard to Heideggers philosophical treatment of art is that it is a resolute refusal of the aesthetic interpretation of art. The aesthetic approach to the artwork in modern philosophy reduces the being of the artwork to its representation for a subject. For Heidegger, this subjectivizing interpretation of the meaning of the artwork displaces its meaning and value: beauty is, as the saying goes, in the eye of the beholder. The value of the representation is then sought for in the subjects aesthetic judgment. This judgment, which grants to the art object its meaning and value, is understood as the accomplishment of a synthesizing consciousness. According to this view the artwork is initially constituted as a neutral object (mere thing) to which an aesthetic value is added. Heidegger does not directly challenge this aesthetic understanding of art in The Origin of the Work of Art; rather he challenges its underlying assumptions. He has, by this time, in the mid-1930s, already shown throughout his works, not least in Being and Time, that the idea of lived-experience (Erlebnis) relies on a metaphysics that reduces the meaning of being to the presence of objects to consciousness. Furthermore, he has shown that modern subjectivism has its roots in a tradition extending all the way back to Platos notion of the idea or form as pure unchanging presence. Ideality, form, or substance (hypokeimenon), has always been understood as pure, unchanging presence and modern subjectivism, the idea of a priori forms or categories of subjective experience, simply prolongs that metaphysics. In order to liberate the artwork from aestheticism, an idealization that distorts the meaning of the artwork, Heidegger must return to his challenge of the ancient metaphysical determination of being as the eternal and unchanging presence of the idea. This
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shifts the initial focus slightly in his discussion of the artwork since the main notion that Heidegger needs to challenge is this seemingly self-evident idea that the artwork is a mere thing, a bare object, overlaid with aesthetic valuations. 2. The Concept of the Thing Since the concept of the thing has its history in the metaphysical tradition, Heidegger critically examines the meaning of the thing-concept beginning from the thingliness of the work of art. Early in The Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger notes that every work of art has a thingly character: The picture hangs on the wall like a hunting weapon or a hat. A paintingfor example van Goghs portrayal of a pair of peasant shoestravels from one exhibition to another. Works are shipped like.logs from the Black Forest. Every work has this thingly character.6 Heidegger traces the history of the various metaphysical determinations of the thing in Western thought. He begins with the ancient idea of thing as the unity of hypokeimenon and symbebkos that is then appropriated by Roman-Latin thought, which transforms these Greek notions into the notions of substance and accidents. The second interpretation of the thing understands it as the unity of a manifold of sensations. The third and final interpretation is the Aristotelian notion of the thing as formed matter. In the case of the first interpretation the thing is reduced to immediacy or pure presence by giving it a completely abstract determination that is, according to Heidegger, too far away from the body and our experience of things in the world.7 On the other hand, the notion

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 2-3. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 8.

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of the thing as simply what is received by the senses brings the thing too close to the body in the sense that the thing, according to this interpretation, is exhaustively reduced to individual subjective impressions. Heidegger argues that we need to discover an interpretation of the thing in which the thing is allowed to remain unmolested in its resting-within-itself.8 In order to discover a way of interpreting materiality in a manner that resists the sort of violence manifested in the three thing concepts, Heidegger considers the third and final determination of the thing, the one he repeatedly insists is both the most dominant and dangerous interpretation. This determination of the thing as matter and form is treated, in Heideggers essay, as the most fundamental interpretation of the thing partly because it is particularly relevant for understanding modern aesthetics. The distinction between matter and form is the conceptual scheme deployed in the greatest variety of ways by all art theory and aesthetics.9 We have already indicated this in noting the way in which aesthetic value is understood to be a formal property that overlays a mere thing. In this traditional metaphysical determination of the thing as matter plus form the first half of the opposition, matter or hyle, is interpreted as the nonessential and passive component. Even more than this though, is the fact that the non-essentiality and passivity of matter also stands in for destruction, change, unintelligibility, non-presence and even, particularly in the tradition of Christian Neo-Platonism, evil.10 The other term of the duality, eidos or form, is interpreted
8

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 8. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 9.

10

Cf. This form-matter dualism is taken up by Heidegger in this treatment of Aristotle and in his discussion in Platos Doctrine of Truth in Pathmarks ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 178. This dualism is also discussed in Derridas
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as the essential and active component. In this dichotomy form is thought of as eternal, intelligible, pure being that, as such, is unchanging, pure presence and positivity. This duality is highlighted in the discussion of van Goghs famous painting through which Heidegger lays out a genealogy of the matter-form interpretation in order to show how it has achieved a particular dominance.11He shows that the form pre-determines the selection of the matter when it comes to tools or useful things. We first select some impermeable matter to make our jug, or some soft leather for our shoes. As Heidegger puts it, [b]oth the design and the choice of material predetermined by that design and, therefore, the dominance of the matter-form structure are grounded in such serviceability.12 The fact is that human beings never encounter mere things in their everyday worldly engagement. It is only when the equipment is worn out or broken that its thingliness obtrudes.13 Otherwise, the thingliness of the tool is absorbed into its serviceability; its being ready-to-hand. The priority of form and intelligibility in our production and use of equipment encourages us to conceive of materiality, when separated from functionality, as mere matter, but only after the thing has become worn out, used up, broken or just simply unavailable. The unavailability of the thing when it appears as divorced from form and function
interpretation of Plato where form corresponds to what Derrida in his later works calls the unscathed. According to Derrida dispersal, repetition, spacing and materiality are components of writing and represent a threat to and are nevertheless necessary to a happening of truth. Jacques Derrida, Platos Pharmacy in Dissemination trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) 168-169. See also Jacques Derrida, Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of Religion at the Limits of Reason Alone in Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London: Routledge, 2002) 42-101.
11

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 13. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 10.

12

13

Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 102-107. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Zwlfte Auflage (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1972) 72-76.
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then encourages us to think of materiality as non-essential, passive, unintelligible, and absolute non-presence. Heideggers discussion of equipment in the context of Van Goghs painting of a pair of shoes shows us that the work is doing something absolutely irreducible to the functionality or purposiveness of the equipment. Indeed, as we have indicated, for as long as equipment is functioning as equipment its materiality and made-ness disappears. The peasant woman wears her shoes in the field. Only then do they become what they are. They are all the more genuinely so the less the peasant woman thinks of her shoes while she is working, or even looks at them, or is aware of them in any way at all. This is how the shoes actually serve.14 The equipmental being of the shoes then, is necessarily hidden while they are in use, as they must be in order for them to function seamlessly. Thus, in order to be able to see their serviceability, their equipmental being, their utility must be suspended. So it would seem then that the shoes as equipment are not things in the form-matter sense, because their materiality disappears in the context of use. This interpretation of the thingliness of the thing, as the non-essential or pure passivity gets reinforced through the serviceability of useful things that, by virtue of their being useful, seem to point to a form and order shaped by intelligible purposiveness. Heidegger notices that in Western metaphysics the temptation to think that the matter-form structure constitutes every being receives particular encouragement from the fact that, on the basis of religious biblical faith, the totality of beings is represented, in advance, as something created.15 This onto-theological interpretation of things, even though it is based

14

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 13-14. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 11.
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15

on an interpretation of faith by an alien philosophy, Heidegger argues, nevertheless remains in place once it has been established.16 And it is this ontotheological determination of the thing (and the concept of material and createdness in particular) that shape our aesthetic interpretation of the artwork. To grasp the meaning of the artwork then, we need to consider the power of art to suspend the usual modes of being. This will enable us to see the way in which the thing phenomenally exceeds the traditional determination of the thing while simultaneously preserving something of the thingly. Again, the task here is to re-think the materiality in the artwork by setting aside the traditional notion of the thing since all of the traditional determinations of the thing fail to grasp the essence of the thingly.17 3. Earth as the New Meaning of Materiality Heideggers discussion of van Goghs painting does not show us all that we need to see to follow his phenomenological explanation of the being of the artwork since we still do not grasp the character of the artworks own thingliness, which, as I have suggested, is connected to its materiality. It is in the context of the temple work that Heidegger introduces the notion of earth as the new meaning of materiality where materiality is re-thought apart from the duality of form and matter. How does the art of the temple function so that through it we are able to see its thingliness or materiality? To make this clear Heidegger again contrasts the temple work with the tool. In the production of a piece of equipment, Heidegger notes that the materiality of the equipment is exhausted or used up.

16

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 11. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 13.

17

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It disappears into usefulness.18 On the other hand, the materiality of the artwork is distinguished because it does not let the material disappear, rather, it allows it to come forth for the very first time (24). Thus, what distinguishes the materiality of the artwork is that it holds something in reserve. Let us pause her to consider that thought further. The artwork viscerally calls out to us to consider its materiality. Most of us can likely recall times when we moved closer to a painting in order to see the thickness of the layers of oil paint, or reached out to caress the cool, smooth marble of a statue. Even in the case of religious artworks, statues or icons that perhaps are not meant to be touched are nevertheless capable of being touched. In a certain sense their calling out to be touched makes any prohibition from touching them more profound. Artworks are inherently touchable because art cannot be reduced to its meaning or form. The artwork is a particular, unique happening, not an idea capable of being simply and unambiguously reproduced or repeated. Thus, the work of art makes the singularity of its materiality conspicuous the works materiality or thingliness is not some abstract underlying substratum or hypokeimenon, but something that those who stand before it can touch. The artwork shows us then, for the first time, the materiality that always already supports us in our everyday endeavors. The silence of the artworks materiality is not the silence of dumb substance just waiting to be imbued with meaning or intelligibility. The materiality of the temple work silently speaks in its being juxtaposed with the intelligibility of the world. The materiality and density of the stone is not encountered as something distinct from the ways in which it is used, the ways in which it supports a community of people. Thus, it is in relation not to form but to worldliness that the materiality of the work must be

18

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 24.

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understood. An artwork works, at least partially, by embodying and so selectively reinforcing an historical communitys implicit sense of what is and what matters.19 The towering temple standing there solidly and massively in its place beside the Tyrrhenian Sea first revealed to the inhabitants of that community the violence of the approaching storm, the light of day, and the invisibility of the air above them. Standing there, the temple first gives to things their look, and to men their outlook on themselves.20 The point is that the world is not a totality of objects but rather a referential structural whole and it is only by way of mutual reference that things show up as meaningful for human beings. Heidegger is arguing that an artwork achieves this setting up of world in a way that only a work can. When an artwork ceases to function as a work it points to the disappearance of an entire context of significance, the ruined temple points to the withdrawal of an entire world.21 We will come back to this point since this is the sense of ruination that, as I have suggested, the artwork essentially risks from its very origin. Now we must again turn to the new ontological meaning of materiality as earth. We had to take this detour through Heideggers understanding of the setting up of a world precisely because the ontological sense of materiality can only be seen in relation to a worlds being founded or set-up. In setting up a

19

Iain D. Thomson, Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 43.
20

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 21.

21

Cf. Heidgger, Being and Time, 228-235. The power of the artwork to disrupt our usual way of taking things for granted is different from the interpretive suspension that Angst can achieve. In the case of Angst, its suspension of everyday meaning temporarily strips me of my relatedness to my entire world. In the case of the ruined work of art we see the disintegration of the world of a particular community but not the disintegration of the entire context of significance.
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world, the work sets forth the earth.22 It is within the artworks opening up of a context of significance, the setting up of a world in all its finitude, that human beings encounter the earth. Heidegger thinks the being of materiality -- earth in connection with the ancient idea of phusis, the coming forth and rising up in itself that lights up that on which man bases his dwelling.23 The steadfastness of the temple work lets us see the raging of the surf for the first time. There is something trustworthy and reliable in the materiality of the work, an earthiness that is at once inseparable from the world that the work opens and yet that is irreducible to that world. The artwork thus covertly points to its own thingliness or materiality. We encounter the earth in the work in an indefinite kind of way. As Heidegger points out it is this very self-refusal of the mere thing, this self-contained refusal to be pushed around [and used up, that] belongs precisely to the essential nature of the thing.24 The ontological sense of this materiality is brought out in Heideggers description of the temple as resting on rocky ground and that the ground or foundation of the artworks world, is dark and unstructured.25 The determinacy of the world lies in stark contrast to the indeterminacy of its earthy, material, foundation, so it seems right to say that thought meets its greatest resistance in trying to think the thingliness of the thing.26 Consequently, we are not surprised to find that early on Heidegger describes the sense of the self-

22

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 24. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 21. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 12. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 21. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 12.
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23

24

25

26

refusal of materiality as the disconcerting and uncommunicative element in the essence of the thing.27 When the materiality of the work is not reduced to dumb substance the sense of its self-refusal, its self-concealing, is brought to light. This is the moment of truth in the artwork, it allows the materiality of the world to show itself in its very concealment. Earth is the coming-forth concealing.28 4. The Createdness of the Work of Art In order to understand the way in which the artwork works we must also consider the phenomenological significance of the artists activity. Yet another way in which the work gains this unusual perspective on its materiality is through its createdness. The createdness of the work also brings to light another way in which the Greek temple is exemplary. It, more than the other works that Heidegger considers, obscures the specificity of its creator. Heidegger pointedly tells the reader that the innermost intention of the artist is to release the work into its standing-in-itself.29 That the artist only succeeds, is only truly great, when the work speaks for itself seems intuitively clear, for if the audience needs to be told that they ought to admire the artwork simply because a famous artist created it, then the work is, in an important sense, not working. The artist must allow the work to stand-in-itself in the sense of not fully determining the meaning of the artwork. If the artwork was interpreted simply as the expression of an artists consciousness it could not do the work of setting-up a world since the world must be revealed in the artwork both in its determinacy and its indeterminacy, that is, it must open itself into the tension or strife of earth and
27

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 12. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 24. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 19.

28

29

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world. The earth only shows itself in the work when it remains undisclosed and unexplained.30 This is the risk that the artist must take. While setting up a world she praises and consecrates what already is, and yet at the same time lets the work set-forth [Herstellung] something new, something indeterminate and yet to be decided.31 This is why Heidegger contends that the artist is inconsequential in relation to the work, but rather is, like a passageway which, in the creative process, destroys itself for the sake of the coming forth of the work.32 Thus, the creators hiddenness enables the materiality and singularity of the artwork to come through the work. Again, the salient feature is not that an esteemed artist made the art object, but rather that this work is rather than is not.33 Heidegger writes, The more essentially the work opens itself, the more luminous becomes the uniqueness of the fact that it is rather than is not.34 The temple is exemplary yet again because in its setting up of the world it allows the indeterminacy of the material to show itself precisely as indeterminate. This interplay between earth and world, between the irreducible remainder of materiality and the determinacy of a particular historical horizon is the happening of truth in the artwork.

30

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 25. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 23. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 19. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 39. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 40.
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31

32

33

34

5. The Finite Happening of Truth For Heidegger to claim that art is the happening of truth is clearly a rejection of the notion that truth is the correspondence or adequation of an appearance to an idea. Heidegger challenges the tradition by showing that an idea never emerges except in the happening, which is to say, that the idea itself is finite. The significance of the notion that the artwork is the happening of truth is then faithfully conveyed in the following line: The establishment of truth in the work is the bringing forth of a being of a kind which never was before and never will be again.35 Heideggers revealing of truth as aletheia, as unconcealment, through the example of the Greek temple does not suggest that he is proposing a nostalgic reenactment of an ancient idea.36 Heidegger asks, Does this require a revival of Greek philosophy?; He answers, Not at all. A revival, even were such an impossibility possible, would not help us.37 The fact is that the world of the work (of the temple at Paestum, or even Bamberg cathedral) has disintegrated.38 The worlds of the work-being that so long ago set these artworks into place are historical and insofar as the time of these worlds have passed they are no longer self-sufficient. These artworks no longer speak for themselves, we must visit them in tour groups, pour over historical pamphlets or wear headsets that spout historical facts at us, all with the aim to revive

35

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 37.

36

Cf. For an example of the charge that Heideggers use of the temple is nostalgic see Albert Borgmann, Focal Things and Practices in Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition. An Anthology, ed. Robert C. Scharff and Val Dusek (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 293-314.
37

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 28. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 20.

38

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these works for us for a brief time. Despite such efforts, these works stand there now recalcitrant as object-beings rather than works of art. And yet, even this does not go far enough. It is not just that these works of art are old and so belong to a particular historical moment. The impossibility of revival stems from the being of the artwork as absolutely singular, a being which never was before and never will be again. The once only character of truth as aletheia happens in the artwork precisely because it is a particular material being irreducible to an idea or universal. Any claims to truth that a historical community is able to make happen within the horizon of that particular world. Truth cannot be abstracted from that happening; it is always conditioned by the precarity of its event. We could therefore speak of the artworks precarious transcendence. Historical regimes of truth are not about the adequation of truth to a timeless idea, but rather truth must be as inscribing itself into the midst of the finite opening that it itself opens up. Which is to say that any truth, any idea, happens as an enactment. Through the artworks speaking of an implicit and already-underway sense of what is and what matters it both inscribes and simultaneously transforms that very sense of what is and what matters. The example of the temple enables us to see the finite character of truth as aletheia. The impossibility of the revival of the world of the artwork is tied to the idea that the incarnation of truth is only repeatable as new, as the creation of a new horizon. And this means that with each repetition, within each re-appropriation of meaning, within each interpretive decision, there is the risk of loss. With his thinking of the finitude of the truth of the artwork Heidegger is pointing to the impossibility of a pure truth that is absolutely repeatable insofar as it is grounded in the eternal. Thus, naming truth unconcealment does not mean that truth is an idea, a pure unconcealment that has rid itself of everything concealed but neither does
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it mean that everything is false, rather the artwork is able to enact the unconcealment of truth precisely because it does not, as a happening, rise above its historical contingency.39 The happening of truth is menaced by its own historical specificity and situatedness in a determinate this, here, now. Heidegger underscores the futility of attempts to secure artworks from their essential finitude. He reminds us that the Aegina sculptures, relocated to Munich, were not preserved by virtue of their being secured from the physical destruction of the elements, precisely because the ruination of the artwork is an essential characteristic of its happening rather than something that befalls it from the outside. If the artwork is a creation of a human community then the finitude of the artwork is ultimately traceable to the finitude of Dasein. The creator and the preservers, of the artwork find themselves in the being of the truth that presences there. The death that Dasein is, as finite, presences through the artwork, not just in the sense that the different perspectives necessarily occlude others, concealing them from view, but also in the very real sense of death, of the disappearance of a unique and utterly singular this, here, now.40 6. The Ruination of Art Calls for Preservers I began this essay by noticing that at the end of The Origin of the Work of Art Heidegger admits that his essay could not answer the question what is art? However, in the addendum Heidegger also asks us to return to the essay, with some directions for our questioning. He gives us two important hints, but
39

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 31.

40

Cf. The ontological sense of death, the finitude that Dasein is as existing, is not to be confused with biological death and yet, the sense of the former is in no way independent of the fact of the latter. The logic in The Origin of the Work of Art then echoes the logic of the death analysis in Being and Time. Heidegger, Being and Time, 279-311.
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these hints are also important ambiguities.41 The first ambiguity that Heidegger asks us to return to is the thought that truth is both the subject and object of art. The being of truth is the subject insofar as the truth of the interplay between concealment and unconcealment, between earth and world, sets itself into the artwork. This is of course the very ambiguity that we have just been discussing. The second ambiguity emerges out of the thought that truth happens in the world as an object precisely because it is Dasein who sets truth into the artwork. The ambiguity that Heidegger is concerned with here is then the ambiguity between creation and preservation. We have already spoken about the way in which the creator of the artwork does not simply copy an original. The work is not a depiction of something already there; it is not a representation of some thing. Art, insofar as it is a happening, does not have a relation to an absolute origin or an original. Even the cave paintings at Lascaux are not depictions of the world, but rather they were the setting up of a world; what it means for those cave dwellers to be human beings, what an animal essentially was for them, as food or perhaps as the presencing of a divinity. To say these are depictions of the cave dwellers world would be to completely misunderstand the works. And yet, the cave drawings are not merely free spontaneous creations divorced from their particular place and time. Indeed, if the artwork has no audience it has no world to set up. Thus, Heidegger insists that, [j]ust as a work cannot be without being created, just as it stands in essential need of creators, so what is created cannot come into being without preservers.42

41

Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 55. Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 40.
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42

This brings us to what we might call the difference between aletheic preservation and empty preservation. Aletheic preservation understands that artworks are not mere things that simply need to be preserved by keeping them safe from the elements, or by reproducing them in a mechanical fashion. The key to thinking this difference involves employing the logic that we have discussed above. If the artwork is not an eternal idea but rather the happening of an idea in a finite singularity, then the artworks ideality depends on repeatability but this, as we have already noticed, always involves a loss. A preserver who is not also a creator merely repeats the idea. And yet, in order to preserve the idea as a happening of truth, every repetition, every world-renewal, must reach into the future truth needs to be renewed. Any enactment, as historical, is not the same as the one that came before. Thus, preservation in the aletheic sense is keeping something alive, allowing it to continue existing as a happening, which means that aletheic preservation must necessarily risk that loss. Aletheic preservation relies on a kind of repetition that necessarily involves difference, while empty preservation is rather a repetition that attempts to make an idea present eternally without loss, without the possibility of ruination which is to say, an empty preservation merely replicates. Preservation, as a response to the event of the artwork, involves allowing ourselves to see the extra-ordinary way in which truth must be enacted; and each of those whom Heidegger calls preservers find themselves peculiarly responsible for this enactment, appropriated by the event of truth in the artwork. Thus, since the artwork only lives on insofar as it is born by, and renewed by, the responses of these preservers, the preservers are, in a sense, at the same time also creators. The finitude of the artwork is, as we have argued, its essential exposure to ruination. Truth or meaning shines forth only through contingent events, events marking the inauguration of worlds insofar as they call to be
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ceaselessly repeated and renewed. Clearly, the possibility of exhaustion and emptiness belongs to the artwork essentially. But the inverse side of this is that the artwork exists as a call to a community of creators and preservers to sustain it, and to let it live on in its precarious transcendence.

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Kant and Heidegger on Appearances and the In-itself Michael Blzy (University of Toronto)
Recent scholarship on Martin Heideggers Being and Time has brought attention to how the treatises analysis of Being-in-the-world can be used to undermine external world scepticism. The human Dasein, argues Heidegger, must be understood in terms of its worldly involvements: we come to be the beings we are by concretely living out our existence in a kind of activity space wherein we define our Being by actualizing or embodying particular worldly possibilities (BT 43.68). The everyday items we encounter in this arena of being-possible (such as cups, tables, or doors) could not be the kind of beings they are however, unless they are first disclosed and rendered accessible by the human beings mode of Being. This unique way of dwelling amongst beings (which Heidegger calls Being-in-the-world) is characterized by Daseins relating to beings via a horizon of intelligibility that illuminates entities and interprets them in their Being (BT 12.32). Understood in this way, the meaning of entities (and the many ways we can comport ourselves towards them) presupposes Daseins worldliness: entities can only appear on the basis of a socially constituted context of understanding that first uncovers entities and allows them to be in their Being-hood. Thinkers as diverse as Steven Mulhall, David Cerbone, and Charles Guignon have all used this analysis of Daseins situated-ness within a world to demonstrate the inherently confused nature of external world scepticism.1 Although differing in their approach to the sceptical problem, the
1

S. Mulhall. Inheritance and Originality, New York, 2001, p. 239; D. Cerbone, Proofs and Presuppositions: Heidegger, Searle, and the Reality of the External world, Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity, London, 2000, p. 266-8; C. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Indianapolis, 1983, p. 173-6.
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aforementioned Heidegger scholars agree on a single point: the external world sceptics line of questioning reveals itself as logically untenable, for the world is a condition of the possibility for formulating his sceptical doubts. Put otherwise, Daseins world, as the context of meaning that allow beings to be, cannot be interrogated in terms of the inter-worldly relations it enables us to take up with beings (such as having doubts about them), for this horizon is always already presupposed in any and all of Daseins meaningful encounters. The sceptical problem, to borrow a phrase from Guignon, undermines the conditions of its own intelligibility. 2 The following paper hopes to explore a complication that arises from adopting this stance: namely, if the world is ontologically grounded on our Being, if beings in general can only appear on the basis of our Being-in-the-world, then does it not follow that when Dasein ceases to exist, neither does the world? And what kind of objective reality is left to a world whose continued existence depends on the existence of the human beings inhabiting it? Heideggers response to this charge is to maintain that what depends on Daseins existence is our understanding of Being, not the entities of the world that our Being lights up. In order to truly make this rebuttal, however, it will have to be demonstrated how Heidegger appropriates a kind of Kantian position regarding the ontological constitution of entities; a position, it is argued, that does not reduce the existence of entities to our ontological determinations. To try and save Heidegger from the heresy of subjectivism we must first understand what it is for entities to exist in themselves and independently of us. This endeavour is not as straightforward as it seems however, for Being and Time is quite ambiguous on the subject of what could be called the ontological constitution of entities: should we understand by the term entity [Seiende], as Taylor Carmen does, something which appears as it is in itself, independently of
2

Ibid, p. 173-6.
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the conditions of its disclosure and which can be known independently of these conditions? 3 Or, as William Blattner argues, do such entities involve a kind of strong ontological determination that would render it impossible to separate an entitys what-being from the how of its uncovering? 4 And if this is the case, how does our knowledge stand in relation to such beings?5 To get a more precise understanding of this issue is vital, for it would appear that the best way to free Heidegger from the charge of solipsism would be to invoke the ontological difference. We could, along with Mulhall, correctly respond to the sceptic: If Dasein were to vanish, what would vanish from the world is not beings, but the capacity to understand beings in their Being, the capacity to uncover them as existing and as the entities they are. In such circumstances, it could not be asserted either that entities exist or that they do notthere could be no comprehension of them at all.6 Understood in this way, the defence would go, the charge of scepticism would be unwarranted, for although Daseins disappearance would result in the extinguishing of the clearing which uncovers independent, existing beings, this does not necessarily entail that what was previously illuminated would cease to remain. Indeed, a key respect by which we distinguish material objects from
3

T. Carmen, Heideggers Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in Being and Time, Cambridge, 2003, p.155-204.
4

W. Blattner, Heideggers Temporal Idealism, Cambridge, 1999.

This is how Han-Pile frames the issue in Early Heideggers Appropriation of Kant, A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford, 2007, p. 84.
6

S. Mulhall. Inheritance and Originality, New York, 2001, p. 239.

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such things as hallucinations or dreams is that they possess an otherness which is not conditional upon our acquaintance with them they were there before we encountered them and will continue to go on existing whether or not we are around to see them. The determined sceptic, forgetful of the distinction between Being and beings, is simply confused about what constitutes the reality of independent things: the pre-existing realm of material entities that our Being renders intelligible is perfectly capable of surviving our extinction. Although this will ultimately be Heideggers line of response, this readily available version would hardly impress the kind of sceptic unmoved by Heideggers analysis of Being-in-the-world. The hard-minded sceptic will want to know, as we formulated it earlier, to what extent the entities our Being makes manifest exist in themselves and independently of our disclosure of them. If Being is that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail (BT 6.25, my emphasis), then on what grounds can we say that they are distinct from our Being? Indeed, how could we ever clearly distinguish between the nature and actuality of beings and their materiality when our worldly understanding is inextricably tied up with the former? At stake is the very way we understand (at least, early Heideggers version of) the ontological difference: given that Being is always the Being of a being, how can Heidegger simultaneously claim that: Entities are, quite independently of the experience by which they are disclosed, the acquaintance in which they are discovered, and the grasping in which their nature is ascertained (BT 184.228)? As Beatrice Han-Pile convincingly argues, the key to sorting out these issues lies in carefully examining how the Heideggerian notion of entity relates to the philosophers understanding of both phenomenon [Phanomen] and phenomena [phainomena], and, moreover, how Heidegger not only interprets,
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but ultimately appropriates a kind of Kantian position regarding the transcendental stance. 7 In the Introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger broadly defines phenomenon as that which shows itself in itself, the manifest, rendering phenomena as the totality of what lies in the light of day or can be brought to light what the Greeks sometimes identified simply as ta onta (entities) (BT 28.51). What lies in the light of day can manifest themselves as what they are (everyday items, such as tables or cups), what seemingly looks like what they are but retrospectively are not (semblances, such as when a stick bends in water), or as what Heidegger designates as appearance [Erscheinung]. Appearance is a way for something to indicate its presence, but not in a direct manner. It is a not showing itself in the sense that it is an announcing itself through something that shows itself, such as when measles announce themselves through spots (BT 29.52). Here, the spots are not semblances in that they are phenomena in their own right (they show themselves as what they are), but considered in respect to what is indicated by them (the disease) they are understood as an appearance or symptom. Of significant import for the following paper, however, is an even more complex mode of disclosure for entities; one that is not to be confused with the ontic notion of appearance as symptom. When entities manifest themselves as what Heidegger calls mere appearance [blosse Erscheinung], that which does the announcing and is brought forth does, of course, show itself, and in such a way that as an emanation of what it announces, it keeps the very thing constantly veiled in itself On the other hand, this not showing which veils is not a semblance (BT 30.53). That is, appearances and mere appearances are both phenomena in that they show themselves in the ontic sense, but whereas
7

Han-Pile, B. Early Heideggers Appropriation of Kant, A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford, 2007, p. 82-101.
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appearances indicate what announces itself in such a way that its presence is made indirectly manifest through another being, what announces itself in the case of mere appearances remains structurally hidden. Heideggers inspiration for this notion, of course, comes from his reading of Kant for whom appearances are, in the first place, the objects of empirical intuitionBut what thus shows itself (the phenomenon in the genuine primordial sense) is at the same time an appearance as an emanation of something which hides itself in that appearance (BT 30.54). Although there is a temptation to equate what hides itself with what some Kantian interpreters conceive of as an unknowable thing-in-itself object which gives rise to the mere appearances we experience in the empirical realm, it must be noted from the outset that this can not possibly be the way Heidegger conceives of this Kantian notion. Although Heideggers poor choice of the term emanation to describe Kantian appearances in Being and Time may suggest that they are somehow illusory or fall short in comparison to the things that produce them, he clears up the issue at a latter point by saying: The general discussions of thing-in-itself and appearance should make it clear that appearances mean the objects of the things themselves. The term mere appearance does not refer to mere subjective products to which nothing actual corresponds. Appearance as appearance or object does not need at all still to correspond to something actual, because appearance itself is the actual.
8

Indeed, throughout his two courses on Kant, Heidegger continually drives home the point that the Kantian distinction between mere appearances and the thing8

M. Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant, Indiana, 1997, p. 69.

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in-itself is not to be understood as one between two-classes or kinds of objects, but two different ways of considering the world of appearances: as an object of empirical intuition and this same thing independent of its relation to human sensibility. That is, in anticipation of the two-aspect interpretation of transcendental idealism put forth by Henry Allison, Heidegger argues that the Kantian distinction does not entail a two-world dichotomy, but simply a way of engaging what is from two different stances or in two different respects in order to make sense of the totality of our experience. If Heidegger (following Kant) does not conceive of mere appearances in any pejorative sense, what then is his motivation for characterizing them as mere appearances? Moreover, if Heidegger does not understand a second thing-initself object as what hides itself in the phenomenon, what then is he exactly referring to? In his Kant lectures, Heidegger begins by tackling the first of these two questions: The term mere in the expression mere appearances does not negate the actuality of the thing. Rather it negates the absolute intuition of objects which produce them, which is not possible for finite beings. 9 That is, as opposed to a being with a finite, discursive intellect that needs both sensible data and the synthesizing activity of thought to achieve cognition, an intuitive intellect would belong to a being for whom the act of thinking and being presented with an object signifies one and the same event. For such a divine intelligence, objects would be given to intuition, although not to one that is sensible, which is to say, the same representation would perform the functions of both sensibility and understanding. For God entities would be infinitely known as they are [and not] as they appear.10 For beings such as ourselves that are

Ibid, p. 69. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, New York, 1998, B 306.

10

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dependent on a pre-existing world for the source of our cognition, however, if the world is to disclose at all, there must be a moment of alterity whereby something outside our cognitive apparatus impinges upon us and gives sensation the materials needed to constitute the being of these appearances. Thought of in this way, appearances can be viewed as mere appearances for, unlike the divine intellect that spontaneously creates things as they are in themselves, objects appear in a world for a finite being as they are in strict accordance with a priori conditions: [What] remains closed off to us is the thing itself insofar as it is thought as object of an absolute knowledge, i.e. as object of an intuition which does not first need the interaction with the thing and does not first let the thing be encountered, but rather lets the thing first of all become what it is through this intuition. 11 In other words, interrogating the world from the stance of mere appearances is not to diminish the reality of the world we occupy, but to refer to the transcendental framework that anticipates all entities and to which they must conform if they are to count as real entities for finite, rational beings. What makes Heideggers understanding of Kantian appearances intriguing, is that Heidegger gleams from Kants work a second ontological meaning for the notion of phenomenon which can be derived from his ordinary or ontic characterization of phenomenon as that which shows itself in itself, i.e. those entities which are accessible through empirical intuition in Kants sense (BT 31.54). With the right method:

11

M. Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant, Indiana, 1997, p. 68.

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[We] may then say that that which already shows itself in the appearance as prior to the phenomenon as ordinarily understood and as accompanying it in every case, can, even though it thus shows itself un-thematically, be brought thematically to show itself; and what thus shows itself in itself (the forms of intuition) will be the phenomena of phenomenology (BT 31. 54-55). This ontological framework is characterized as prior to all ontic phenomena, for it is structurally presupposed by entities (it already shows itself in the appearance) as the condition for the possibility of their being manifest. Unlike these entities themselves, however, such conditions do not show themselves directly, but conceal or hide in favour of what they reveal: What is it that must be called a phenomenon in a distinctive sense? something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all but at the same time is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and ground that which remains hidden in an egregious sense is not just this entity or that but rather the Being of entities (BT 35.59). In this sense, fundamental ontology is similar to Kants critical project to the extent that both Heidegger and Kant a) agree that to regard entities as mere appearances is to not diminish them in any way, but to make reference to the transcendental (or ontological) conditions that a finite creature needs to meaningfully encounter any being whatsoever, and b) both share the ambition of expounding the a priori character of these conditions in the hope of understanding what constitutes or determines entities.
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From what we have seen so far, Hubert Dreyfuss claim that Heidegger never concluded from the fact that our practices are necessary for access to theoretical entities that these entities must be defined in terms of our access practices 12 or Carmens assertion that although Heidegger maintains that cognition is founded on being-in, and that occurrent reality is interpretable for us only against the horizon of our own worldliness occurent entities themselves nevertheless do not depend on Daseins Being-in-the-world, 13 make Heidegger out to be more of a robust realist than his texts actually suggest. Although there is a kernel of truth (yet to be fully explored) in the bare notion that entities can be understood to exist independently of our making sense of them, Heideggers descriptions of the phenomena of his phenomenology seem to suggest, more in line with Blattner, that the nature of occurrent entities are in fact intrinsically or internally bound up with their mode of disclosure. As Blattner puts it, as that which implicitly shows itself in the appearance and as accompanying it in every case: [Being] determines entities by making up the critical standards to which entities must conform in order to be entities at all. Being is a framework of items (or aspects of what is) without which entities would not be entities Being determines by making up the standards for be-ing.14 In his attempt to save Heidegger from a kind of subjective idealism, Carmen, radicalizing Dreyfuss reading, attributes to Heidegger the view that not only is
12

H. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world, London, 1991, p. 253. T. Carmen, Heideggers Analytic, Cambridge, 2003, p. 134. W. Blattner, Heideggers Temporal Idealism, Cambridge, 1999, p. 5.
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13

14

there things-in- themselves, but, moreover, that we acquainted with them. As Han-Pile and Blattner are quick to point out, however, this is to overlook the Kantian thrust of Heideggers position: Heidegger is indeed an ontic realist in the Critical sense whereby we can know worldly entities as they are (beings are empirically real), but this is not to think we have infinite knowledge of them, i.e. that we have positive knowledge of them considered apart from our mode of access to them. As Heidegger makes plain: [The] existential analytic of everydayness should show that and how all association with beings, even where it appears as if there were just beings, already presupposes the transcendence of Dasein namely, Being-in-the-world. 15 Once again, there may be something to the thesis that we can maintain that there is something apart from any finite apparatus, but if Carmen believes that we can actually know anything substantive about this ground, he is no longer trafficking in fundamental ontology. If Blattner and Han-Pile are correct in thinking that our mode of existence determines beings in their Being-hood, then how can Heidegger maintain that there are entities independent of our access to them? Once again this issue forces us to confront the degree to which Heidegger is committed to a Kantian position, for discernable in Being and Time is a strategy for coherently arguing for the existence of such in itself entities which an avid reader will notice runs almost parallel to Kants attempt to demonstrate that for finite creatures there must be a transcendental ground of appearances. An opponent of Heideggers two-aspect reading of transcendental idealism might argue that such a deflationary account actually contradicts Kants
15

M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Indiana, 1990, p. 164-5.

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critical principles insofar as it maintains that the distinction between appearances and the thing-in-itself concerns one and the same entity. That is, the claim that the distinction is simply two different ways of approaching the same thing seems to overstep the strict boundaries Kant places on human knowledge by applying the concept of identity to the thing-in-itself. If this were the case, then Kant would have to admit that we do have some knowledge of the thing-initself: we know that it is at least, like the object of experience that corresponds to it, an entity. Anticipating such an objection, Kant gives a further account what the thought of the thing-in-itself entails by making a further distinction in the Critique between sensory and intellectual objects, or between phenomena and noumena. The concept of phenomena is co-extensive with appearances insofar as they are sensible entities thought according to the pure concepts of the understanding. The notion of noumena, however, and its close relation to the thing-in-itself is much more complex. Put generally, a noumenon is a purely intelligible object, which is to say, is an object received not by sensibility but given exclusively to a beings understanding. For a finite, discursive being the thought of noumena would be the empty concept of a thing thought of as not an object of sensible intuition: a something in general outside our sensibility or the entirely indeterminate concept of an intelligible entity.16 This negative sense of noumena, of course, can only ever converge with the concept of the thing-initself, for if this bare thought were to become anything more than an empty place holder that is, if any positive content was attributed to the notion it would become the concept of noumena in the positive sense, i.e. the illicit concept of the thing-in-itself. This determinate concept of an object of nonsensible (and hence for Kant, intellectual) intuition strictly belongs to a divine
16

I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, New York, 1998, B 307.

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intellect that, as seen earlier, creates objects as they infinitely are simply by their being thought. 17 With the negative notion of noumena in place, it is clear that the two-aspect view does not compromise Kants critical principles by attributing the feature of identity to the thing-in-itself. Although it is claimed that the same thing can be approached in two different respects as an appearance and as the thing-initself the phrase the same thing should not be taken to mean an object of experience and a corresponding thing-in-itself object (as if they refer to one and the same thing), for the human being can only form, if he is not to engage in transcendent metaphysics, a negative, limiting concept of the thing-in-itself which is completely agnostic about its constitution. The notion of sameness in the formulation is intended to indicate that the distinction is not between two kinds or classes of objects, not that both stances concern a determinate object. That is, the thing-in-itself is meant to refer to the same object we know as an appearance but under a non-empirical description, which is to say, is meant to refer to an aspect of appearance of which we can only negatively say that it is apart from the conditions under which we know it. Although Kant stresses the need for finite beings to think the thing-in-itself as a logical correlate of the unity of apperception in order to make sense of the totality of experience, a further complication arises when we ask how it is he can possibly know that such things actually exist?18 By positing the existence of such entities does not Kant fall prey to the enormously powerful illusion analyzed in the Dialectic that one can not only think, but also know objects beyond all experience? It seems that in order to ascribe validity to the claim that

17

Ibid, B 42-45, 307. Ibid, B 449.

18

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the thing-in-itself exists and, moreover, to ensure one was not philosophizing in the realm of fantasy, one would have to accomplish the impossible task of stepping outside the limits of the human perspective and confirming that in fact such things were in fact there. As Blattner points out, however, for finite creatures to consider appearances from what he calls the transcendental standpoint, which is to say, from the standpoint from which one asks after the nature of things independent of the conditions of sensibility, there must be external conditions in place. 19 For there to even be human cognition as such, it must be granted that something that which sensible and conceptual form applies to necessarily provides the ground of these appearances no matter how indeterminately this ground may be conceived. In other words, there must, if the world of appearance is to disclose at all, be a moment of alterity whereby something outside our cognitive apparatus impinges upon on us, and gives sensibility the materials needed to constitute the being of these appearances. To think of this sensation as an effect of our subjective mind would be to make it spontaneous throughout, i.e. confuse it with the very thing it is distinguished from: the God-like mind which brings objects into existence simply by their being thought. Understood in this way, the notion that the thing-in-itself exists (that is, as the ground of appearances) does not contain any positive knowledge claim about what that ground actually is, but simply conveys that, as beings possessing sensible as opposed to intellectual intuition, we are confronted by something transcendentally other and hence dependent on a pre-existing realm for the source of our cognition. Along a similar line of thought, Being and Time, like Kants Critique, also confronts the issue of what it would mean for entities to exist independently of
19

W. Blattner, Heideggers Temporal Idealism, Cambridge, 1999, p. 236, my emphasis.

363

us. Heidegger, having claimed that his account of Daseins Being as care has sufficiently marked out the horizon upon which an adequate analysis of Reality can be made possible, immediately adds that it is only in this connection [that] the character of the in-itself becomes ontologically intelligible (BT 209.252, my emphasis). This statement is clarified a bit latter when he states: Reality, as an ontological term, is one which we have related to entities within-the-world. If it serves to designate this kind of Being in general, then readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand function as modes of Reality. If, however, one lets this word have its traditional signification, then it stands for Being in the sense of the pure presence-at-hand of Things. But not all presence-at-hand is the presence-at-hand of Things that Reality is ontologically grounded in the Being of Dasein does not signify that only when Dasein exists and as long as Dasein exists, can the Real be as that which in itself it is (BT 211-2.254-5, my emphasis). By Things [res] here, Heidegger means present-at-hand beings considered ( la Descartes) strictly in terms of their spatial extension as the beings that actually and independently populate our empirical world and, hence, as a mode of Reality, presuppose the clearing of Dasein. The Real [Realitat], by distinction, refers to what is independently of such conditions (that is, it is what can survive Daseins extinction and so the ontological framework which usually accompanies its existence) and so concerns these entities in themselves insofar as they remain unstructured by Reality or the kind of ontological determination we perform. As Heidegger puts it: Being (not entities) is dependent upon the understanding of Being; that is to say, Reality (not the Real) is dependent upon care (BT 212.255).
364

In accord with the two-aspect view which Heidegger attributes to Kant, Heidegger goes on to depict the Real not as another entity causing Reality, but simply another aspect of what does show itself in itself, i.e. as the world (which he puts in quotations to distinguish it from worldhood) as it exists independently of our mode of Being: [The] world is disclosed essentially along with the Being of Dasein; with the disclosed-ness of the world, the world has in each case been discovered. Of course entities within-the-world in the sense of the Real as merely present-at-hand, are the very things that can remain concealed. But even the Real can be discovered only on the basis of a world which has already been disclosed. And only on this basis can anything Real still remain hidden (BT 203.247). To avoid confusion, however, it should be noted that although the in itself is never exposed from the Gods eye view; it would be wrong to think that it is something entirely absent or closed off. Stated boldly, the Real announces itself in the manifold modes of Reality, which is to say, announces itself as that something that our ontological conditions condition, if there is to be anything like Reality at all. In this sense, while every mode of Reality can be said to be conditional upon care, the Real can be thought of as the necessary dimension of our Being-in-theworld that must already be awaiting if our ontological apparatus is to reveal anything, i.e. refers to entities [Seiendes] in the robust sense that Mulhalls rebuffing of the charge of solipsism only assumed, but which Carmens analysis takes too far. Like the thing-in-itself that grounds the totality of appearances in Kant, that we devolve upon such a pre-existing realm whenever we disclose entities as worldly beings is made apparent by the astonishing fact that there is something to encounter in our world.
365

The horizon of the world does not provide an obstacle for Heidegger distinguishing between Daseins world and the Real (or to put it otherwise, Being and beings), for existing, independent entities turn out to be a necessary feature for any and all modes of our Reality. Indeed, Heidegger can coherently claim that the packaging of the Dasein-world relationship does not slide into solipsism via a worldly embedded-ness (that is, when Dasein vanishes what disappears is not entities, but our understanding of them), for the Real is essentially accessible as entities within the world and hence is needed to even make the distinction (BT 202.246, my emphasis). In an often quoted, yet rarely unpacked section he states: Of course, only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), is there Being. When Dasein does not exist, independence is not either, nor is the initself. In such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can be neither uncovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not. But now, as long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed can be said that in this case entities will still continue to be (BT 212.255) In response to the charge that Heideggers analysis of Being-in-the-world collapses into subjective idealism, we could confidently reply that although entities require ontological determination for their appearance, this does not entail in any way that such conditions, although anticipatory of what they disclose, are the sole determinates of objects. While it can be said then that the meaning of objects is dependent on Daseins mode of Being, that beings are the
366

fact that there is a material realm to be meaningfully discovered could never depend on the workings of our existence. Although the Being of real, independent objects is embodied in our understanding, the way we comport ourselves towards the world, and the questions (and answers) we deem appropriate to put to such beings, these factors do not diminish the Reality of the Real or the material realms alterity by reducing its existence to our ontological determinations.

367

Bibliography Allison, H. Kants Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and a Defence, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Blattner, W. Heideggers Temporal Idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ---------------Heideggers Kantian Idealism Revisited, Inquiry, issue 47, 321-337, 2004. Carmen, T. Heideggers Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in Being and Time, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Cerbone, D. Proofs and Presuppositions: Heidegger, Searle, and the Reality of the External world, Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity, London: MIT press, 2000. Descartes, R. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. -----------------The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Dreyfus, H. Being-in-the-World, London: MIT Press, 1991.

368

Gardner, S. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, London: Routledge Press, 1999. Guignon, C. Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Inc., 1983. Han-Pile, B. Heideggers Appropriation of Kant, A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Inc., 2007. Heidegger, M. Being and Time, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1962. ----------------- Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. ------------------The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1982. ------------------The History of the Concept of Time, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992 ------------------Phenomenological Interpretations of Kant, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997. Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Minar, E. Heideggers Response to Skepticism in Being and Time, Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford Press, 2001.

369

Mulhall, S. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, London: Routledge Press, 1996. ------------- Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Nadler, S. The Doctrine of Ideas, The Blackwell Guide to Descartes Meditations, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006. Olafson, F. Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Sacks, M. Objectivity and Insight, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Safranski, R. Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, London: HarperCollins Publishing Inc., 1998. Scheler, M. Reality and Resistance, Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker, Chicago: Precedent Publishing Inc., 1981. Sheehan, T. Dasein, A Companion to Heidegger, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2007. Steiner, G. Heidegger, London: Fontana Press, 1992. Wrathall, M. How to Read Heidegger, London: Granta Books, 2005.

370

THE TWO MOMENTS OF EXISTENCE: FROM CARE TO TEMPORALITY

Much of What Heidegger has to say about existence derives from Aristotles notion of of affairs which it has not movement, a things intrinsic suitability for and anticipation of a state for a redescription completely realized or at Which it has not yet fully arrived. This paper argues of care and temporality in terms of a two-pulse movement of aheadness and return. (For reasons that I have argued elsewhere, 1 shall translate Dasein as existence.)

maxim Higher than Heidegger indirectly expresses the centrality of movement in the in actuality stands possibilly In our own case the actuality of existence consists entirely

in the living possibility into possibilities. Our actuality resides in our being pulled open sense of being structurally drawn out ahead of ourselves.2 The itself that we are ahead of is the common-sense self- the they-self - Which just stands there, as it were, taking up geometric space and chronological time.3 Rather than accepting that as our true way of being, Heidegger insists that our actuality is our structural capacity to be and to do (Senknnen), right up to our
'

as

capacity to die.
But this possibility that We are is also a strict necessity. lt is not a power that we we cannot not be. occasionally exercise; rather, it is what we have to be (Zu-sein), What

Existent human being does not encounter itself as something just out there in the world. . . . As thrown it has been thrown into existence. It ex-sists as an entity that has to be as it is and as
it can be.4

'SZ 38/63
or drawn out see GA 8: 11/9. Here open is a metaphor pointing to non-closure i.e., that which is still possible - in contrast to closure understood as actuality without further possibility.
2On pul1ed

3SZ 193/238.

4SZ 276/321.

The essence of a human being (insofar as we can speak of an essence here at all) consists in its having to be constitutionally ahead oftsel as possibility, amidst possibilitiesf Such essential stretched-out-ness into possibilities is what Heidegger calls thrownness. And since being thrown ahead = being pulled open, the stretch into possibilities is thrown~open-ness. But with us, being thrown-open always and specically means living into meaning-giving possibilities. Existenee thus unfolds as the open region of meaningfulness.

In its most basic sense, opemiess -the possibility of the meaningful presence of things remains the one and only factum, the npyo at, of all Heidegger's work. He also called this
the question of the dis-closedness (truth) of being.

The question about the meaning of being, i.e., about the realm of projection, the open, wherein being-at-all (not just beings) is rst disclosed to an understanding - that is the question about the disclosedness of being.7

If the open or the clearing is the coreof Heideggefs thought, we may expect to nd it at the heart of Being and Time. In that work Heidegger treats such hermeneutical openness rst in terms of its structure and implications (SZ I.l) and then in tenns of temporality, which human beings can embrace in an act of resolve (SZ 1.2). The unpublished SZ I.3 was to show that, once we personally take over our existential opemess, it functions as the hermeneutical horizon for a transformed and transforming understanding of how meaningful presence is possible at all.8

***

SSZ42/67, and GA 2256, 11016 d.

GA 49: 56: die O`enheit, die Lichtung."

"GA49: 56: Die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein', d.h. nach dem Entwurfsbereich, dem Offenen, darin einem Verstehen *Sein* berhaupt (nicht erst ein Seiendes) sich enthllt, ist die Frage nach der 'Wahrheit des Sens.' Cf. GA 9: 201/154 and 377/286 for other formulations of this position.
Transfomed and transforming: Cf. GA 14: 69/6l: The answer to I-Ieidegger`s basic question mte . in einer Verwandlung des Denkens bestehen, nicht in einer Aussage ber einen Sachverhalt." Cf. GA 45: 214/181: eine Verwandlung des Menschseins selbst."

Heidegger describes the openness of existence in terms of a bivalent or two-pulse movement that can be illustrated by the following diagram:

THE OPEN thrown-aheadness

I'6tl.l'1

things

possibilities

The larger are, which moves from left to right, describes existence as possibility, stretched out beyond the actuality of the common-sense self and thrown ahead into the possibilities of itself, of others, and of things. This are also describes the area of the open i.e., the Da of Dasein or the ex- of existence. The smaller are, which moves from right to left, indicates what Heidegger calls the Zurckkommen or return of existence (insofar as it is ahead

in meaning-giving possibilities) to the things it encounters within the world so as to render them meaningfully present in terms of those possibilities.
The diagran as a whole presents what Heidegger described as the a priori movement that constitutes human being:

This being-ahead-of-oneself as a returnng [Sich-vorweg-sein als Zurckkommen] is, if I may

put it this way, a peculiar kind of movement that

existence itself constantly makes.9

9GA 21: 147/124.

In practical matters, for example:

in taking hold of a tool, we come back to the tool and grasp it from out of the work-world that has
always already been opened up.'

And in general: Factical existence, understanding itself and its world ecstatically in the unity of this openness, comes back from these horizons to the things encountered within them. Coming back to these things understandingly is the existential meaning of letting them be encountered in making them present.
The early Heidegger conceived of existence as intrinsically meta-physical (! et t (puoc)l2 insofar as we structurally trans-scend things by rst of all (1) living with their possible

meanings and then by (2) returning to things and rendering them present in terms of those meanings. Coming back to things with understanding means . . letting ourselves encounter

them by rendering them present.'3 Soon enough, however, Heidegger saw existence as metametaphysical. That is, we transcend things not only by already living in their possible meanings (= metaphyscs), but also 'and above all by being the thrown-open cleaing within which our metaphysical relation to things and their meaning occurs. Meta-metaphysical opemiess is what makes possible metaphysics (things as meaningfully present) in the rst place. Heidegger argues that meaning is not a property that attaches to things but rather is a essential characteristic - an existential - of existence alone. This entails that things get their
10

added.

SZ 352/404: kommt aus der je schon erschlossenen Werkwelt im Zugriff auf ein Zeug zurck." Bmphasis

"SZ 366/417. Bmphasis added. See ibid., 107.39-108/142; 296/344; 353/404; 359f. /411.

GA 9: 118 and l2lf. /93 and 96; GA 7: 111/420.

SZ 366/417: Das verstehende Zurckkommen auf. . . ist der existenziale Sinn des gegenwrtigenden Begegnenlassens von Seiendem.

meaning only when they are discovered with human existence, i.e., when they come to be understood."' We can be involved with things only because we are rst engaged with their meaning. In other words, the togethemess of the possibilities of people or things with the possibilities of our existence is what gives those people and things the meaings they have. Put schematically: In the practical realm, (1) our needs, serving as nal purposes, are the basis of (2) the task we require to be done, and thus are the nal reason for (3) things getting the meaning
they have.

HOW MEANING IS ASSIGNED

thrown-aheadness

retum

(3)

toolsef-wtaskel-_7) nal purpose

In our practical experience, things come in ensembles, and what holds things together in such wholes is their suitability for (Bewandtnis) and referral to (Verweisung) some purpose of our own (Worumwllen). Heidegger famously describes a concatenation of such referrals in the practical order: hammers are referred to nails, which are referred to fastening boards together, which is referred to making a house. The house is the task-to-be-done (the pyov), from which the hammer, nails, and boards derive their meanings. But that task in turn derives its meaning from some need of ours, drawn from among our possibilities - for example, the need for shelter. That need serves as the nal purpose (the rkog) whence both tools and task get their meaning in this (broadly speaking) teleological theory of meaning.
SZ l5l/193.

SZ 297/344. In the theoretical realm, (3) subjects get their meaning (2) from possible predicates, which their get meaning (1) from the world of possibilities that we familiar with. In that case, one takes something as something (subject as predicate) rather than asfor a practical task.

For Heidegger the basic and unsurpassable fact about existence is its engagement with

possibilities, described by the larger arc in the two diagrams above. Indeed, under a variety of terms, this phenomenon will remain the central fact of all Heideggers thinking, right to the very end. Heidegger's In-der- Welt-sein is literally - and misleadingly - rendered as being-in-theworld. But Heidegger shows that the essence of world, in his sense of the tern, is Bedeutsamkeit, meaningfulness.1 Hence the phrase In-der- Welt-sein, properly spelled out, actually means In-der-Bedeutsamkeit-sein. Moreover, Heidegger is clear that the being-in part
of the phrase refers to a familiarity with meaningfulness. The essence of existence is to be a structural, non-thematic understanding of sense. Therefore, I reinterpret being-in-the-world by the technical term engagement with meaning. (If one were to insist on retaining the word world ir this formulation, one could expand the phrase to say: engagement with the world of
meaning.)

***
No matter how far engagement with meaning may be parsed out and analyzed, it is a strictly original unity that cannot be resolved into anything more primal. To ask what we might

be prior to our engagement with meaning is to have already enacted an engagement with meaning simply by asking the question. Our very existence is such an engagement, and absent that, we would not be human, much less able to ask any questions at all. However, without breaking up its unied structure, engagement with meaning can be analyzed into its constitutive
moments, namely: meaning (SZ I.1 ch. 3); the

selfthat is engaged with meaning (SZ I.l ch. 4);

and the very engagement with meaning (SZ I.l ch. 5). Here I take up the third moment and its relation to what Heidegger calls care (Sorge), which I shall interpret as yo in its most basic sense.

Heidegger's bottom line is the sameness ofthe movement ofexistence and the generation ofmeaning. He identies the two comprehensive moments of that sameness as aheadness and

(1) we are always already ahead in possibilities (Sich-vorweg-im-schon-sein-in), and (2) we return to things to render them meaninglly present in terms of those possibilities (Sein bei as Gegenwrtigen). (Sein bei is translated as being alongside things by Macquarrie-Robinson and being together with things by Stambaugh, but neither of those phrases captures the sense of
retLu'n:

SZ 87/120; 334/384; 364/415.

rendering things meaninyully present.) The rst moment of already-aheadness makes possible the second moment of disclosive presence. If we overlook our already-thrown-aheadness, we risk becoming absorbed in things, fallen among them, to the neglect of the full range of the
meaning-process.
Heidegger in tum analyzes the rst of these moments - being already ahead in possibilities - into two sub-moments: (a) being ahead of oneself and (b) being already engaged with meaning." In the determination of existence, these two sub-moments forn an inseparable unity. One emphasizes existentiality: living as possibility. The other emphasizes facticity: thrownness into meaning.

CARE:

EXISTENCE I-IOLDS OPEN THE OPEN

rst moment:

already ahead in possibilities

(a) ahead of oneself in possibilities (b) already engaged with meaning

second moment: rendering things meaningfully present

(sich vorweg)

(schon in)

(Sein bei)

The two comprehensive moments of existences engagement with meaning - already aheadness and rendering things meaningfully present - come down to one thing alone: yo as the revelation and articulation of meaning. Heidegger names this phenomenon with the German term Rede, which, however, does not mean speech, talk, discourse in the sense of a string of sounds endowed with meaning - cpcov on!avnn, vox s'gnicativa'8 - nor does it mean language as a rule-governed system of communication. Rede/yog refers, rather, to the discursve structure

ofexistence itsel that is,

to the twofold movement whereby we transcend

(italieized in the original).

"Taken together, the two sub-moments are: Sich-voweg-im-schon-sein-in-einer-Welt SZ 192/236

"De Interpretatione 4, l6b26 and Thomas Aquinas, Expositio lbri Peyermeneias, Proemium 3.

things and retum to them as meaningful.' In fact, in SZ 67 Heidegger equates Rede/ityog with existence itself when he places discursivity and existence in apposition to each other: [die] Zeitlichkeit der Rede, das heit des Daseins berhaupt- the openness of kyog, that is, of

existence in general.2

LOGOS / SORGE

HOLDS OPEN THE OPEN

rst moment:

already ahead in possibilities

Mos

<

(a) ahead of oneself in possibilities

(sich vorweg)

M10;
(b) already engaged with meaning
second moment: rendering things meaningfully present
(schon in)

(Sein bei)

**=l=

Despite this, however, the received tradition of Heidegger scholarship erroneously holds to a triadic structure of engagement with meaning, made up of the moments of Bendlichkeit, Verstehen, and Rede, usually translated as state-of-mind (or attunement or disposition), understanding, and discourse. Apparently that tradition rst surfaced in Alphonse de Waehlens La Philosophie de Martin Heidegger (1942), a work that strongly inuenced a generation of
_

Louvainians in the 1950s and l960s. However, the doctrine rst came to North America via another channel, Werner Brocks A n Account of Being and Time, in Martin Heidegger, Existence and Being (1949). By 1961 it had settled in with Thomas Langan's The Meaning of

'Cf. GA 86: 24: loyo has to do nur mit

2SZ 349/401.

6c)'1eu.

Heidegger, and by 1963 it was conrmed by William Richardsons Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought and by Otto Pggelers Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. In the scholarship today it remains, with a few notable exceptions, the received truth and settled doctrine about the constitutive moments of existence as engagement with meaning. Schematically, the received tradition would hold to the following threefold stncture of existence:

THE RECEIVED TRADITION

rst moment:

already ahead in possibilities

Verstehen

(sich vorweg)

second moment:
already engaged with meaning

(schon in)

Bendlichkeit
third moment: discourse / yog Rede
(Sein bei)

This doctrine and the diagram are wrong on six important points. In the rst place, the received threefold structure of Bendlichkeit, Verstehen, and Rede is at odds with the full text of Being and Time.
T

a.

It is one thing to say that these three phenomena are equiprimordial, as Heidegger does," but quite another to say that they are three ex aequo components of opemess, as Heidegger does not.

b.

It is one thing to say that Bendlchkeit and Verstehen are dened and determined by ltyo, as Heidegger does,22 quite another to say that, alongside those two, Rede is the third structural component of the Da, as Heidegger does not. (This is a

the original.

SZ 161/203: Die Rede is mit Befmdlichkeit und Verstehen existenzial gleichursprnglich, italicized in "SZ 133/172: Bendlichkeit und Verstehen sind gleichursprnglich bestimmt durch die Rede.

10

complicated but nally resolvable matter: see Appendix.)

Secondly, the received doctrine turns totum into pars: it takes Rede/Xyo, which is the whole of existence, and reduces it to merely one component of that whole. But engagement with meaning is not merely one element of human being but rather constitutes its complete raison d 'tre, outside of which there is nothing. Third, the received doctrine, by wrongly reducing kyog to one moment within a supposedly triadic structure of human openness, suppresses the true second moment of that whole, namely, das verfallende Sein bei, our meaningful involvement with things, which always risks absorption in them. Fourth and as a corollary, the received doctrine misses fact that in the nal analysis there are not three' constitutive moments of the thrown-open clearing (Bendlichkeit, Verstehen, and

Rede), but only two, insofar as Bendlichkeit and Verstehen (like Geworfenheit and Entwurf) are only two aspects - two sub-moments - of the rst moment of the engagement with meaningfulness, namely tlnown-aheadness. Thus, when it comes to existences operness, already-aheadness (Sich-vorweg-im-schon-sein-in) is one moment, and rendeing things meaninglly present (Gegenwrtigung as Sein bei) is the other. There are not three moments in the structure of existence but only a two-pulse bivalence.
Fih, even the correct two moments of existence nally reduce to one simple structure of what is usually called being-in-the-world: yo; as the disclosive engagement with the

meaningfulness as such.
Sixth and nally, given this tripartite confusion in the structure of existence as engagement with meaning, the structure of care (Sorge) and temporality (Zeitlichket) will likewise be skewed. Rede will not t the supposed threefold structure of either of these two phenomena, as is obvious from even a supercial look at SZ 68 (The temporality of opemess

in general).

*it*

Not included here. It would push the essay over the word count.

ll

The exhortation Become what you already are comes not from Heidegger (or Pindar or Nietzsche) but from oneself, from ones own grotmdless existence as thrown into open-ended

possibility while remaining always on the verge of death. This call of ones existential (not moral) conscience is a summons directed to the crowd-self, absorbed as it is in the meaningful things of its concems and forgetful of the nite, mortal thrown-aheadness that lets one be present

to things at all. As Augustine might have put it, it is a call from abyss to abyss (Abyssus invocat abyssum). The abyss that does the calling is my ever homeless and mortal existence; and the abyss that is called to is that same me, but as lost in the depths of my thing-orientation and oblivious of the no-thingness of my own nature. It is a call to return to myself as I truly am. To understand and accept that call is to choose my aheadness and to resolutely be my mortal
thrown-openness. It is to run ahead (vorlauen) to where I always already am. Or in another formulation it is to anticipate my death by living mortally. Authentic existence is resolute anticipation (vorlaufende Ertschlossenhet).25 Heidegger argues that, if it we can choose resolute anticipation as our way of being, it is because our very existence is so structured as to make that possible. An important methodological presupposition is at work here. Heidegger's argument reects the medieval Scholastic axiom operari sequitur esse, that is, the way one acts follows from the way one is. In the present case, because we are structurally (existentially) stretched ahead into possibility, right up to the point of our death, we can personally (existentielly) take over our thrownness in its nite, mortal wholeness (bernahme der Geworfenhet). We have seen that our engagement
with meaning is stnctured as care, that is, as being already ahead in possibilities, and returning from there to make sense of things in terms of those possibilities. In other words, we are an existential movement that is ever tl1rown-ahead-and-returning-to-things or as Heidegger puts it,

2"Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum XLI, Migne, P.L.. IV, p 473., no. 13. Augustine is commenting on what we call Ps. 42:7. today
,

SZ 304/351.
2See, for example., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, 75, 3, respondeo, ad nem: similiter unumquodque habet esse et operationem. Or to reverse the direction, qualis modus essendi talis modus operandi: a thing's way of being detemines its way of acting. Cf. GA 4: 65.26-28 = 87.27-29 Jegliches . . .je nur das leistet, was es ist.
'

SZ 325/373.

12

stretched out (erstreckt) beyond ourselves while still remaining present to the things we
encounter.

In the tradition of Plotinus tdotaot co (life as stretched out),28 which Augustine echoes in his distentio est vita mea,2 Heidegger calls this kinetic stretched-out-ness of existence by the potentially misleading term temporality. The image operating here is not the linear chronological one of past-present-future but rather that of a stretched open expanse which, because open, is nite and bound up with possibilities. That is: This openness is contrasted with the closure upon itself of something that has actualized all its possibilities.
To exist, Heidegger says, might be more adequately translated as sustaining a realm of openness.3 What he means by temporality is in fact this ecstatic openness of existence.

In Being and Time I have tried to develop a new concept of time and temporality in the sense of ecstatic openness.3' (In his habilitation lecture of 1915 the image is not that of open vs. closed

but of simple vs. multiple. He cites Meister Eckhart: Time is what _. becomes multiple. Etemity remains simple.)32 For all these reasons we would do well to retire the word temporality, or to put it under erasure, when speaking of the ecstatic dis-closedness of existence

_.

Heidegger presents the core of ecstatic opemiess in a mere two pages of Being and Time that contain some of the most condensed passages in the book and arguably not the clearest. Nonetheless, we can unfold those concentrated paragraphs relatively easily if we keep in mind (1) the diagram of the movement (Bewegtheit) of existence as care, which we have been using, and (2) Heideggers principle that the way one can act follows from the way one is ontologically

stnctured. Even so, Heidegger's procedure of arriving at temporality, as the kinetic structure of existence, by way of authentic existence,seems needlessly complicated.

28

Plotinus, Enneaais III, 7, 11, 41: otac o'v !co xpvov aixe.

Confess'ons XI 29, 39. Cf. mihi visum est nihil esse aliud tempus quam distentionem; sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi Confessions XI 26, 33.
3Zollikoner Seminare, 274/218: aus-stehen eines Offenheitsbereichf' See the translators' note on the
English page.

GA 162 708/45.

GA 1: 415/61, epigraph.

13

In the opening chapters of Division Two of Being and Time Heidegger did two things: one, he demonstrated the fact that we can hear and accept the call of existental conscience by taking responsibility for our throvvnness (SZ I.2, chapter 2); and two, he showed what it is that we take over: the fact that at every moment, and not just as the chronological end of ones life, we are living at the point of death - our throwmess into mortality (SZ 1.2, chapter 1). Embracing our thrownness means anticipating our own death. Resolute anticipation occurs when we make our structure (thrownness into mortality) om' own (by a personal choice). Resolute anticipation is the same as authentic existence.
But what makes authentic appropriation of our existence possible? Answer: That very existence itself, our structural thrown-aheadness as ecstatic (and therefore mortal) openness. Under the rubric of care, existence was shown to have three moments (aheadness, alreadiness,

and presence-to) that actually reduce to two: (1) already-ahead-ness and (2) meaningful presence to things. And now, in 65 of Being and Time, Heidegger argues that ecstatic openness (a.k.a.

temporality) is structured by the very same three moments that reduce to two. This kinetic structure is existental and emphatically not a matter of chronology (past, present, and future). But before showing how resolute anticipation maps on to and is made possible by existence as ecstatic openness, we must rst clear up what the three-as-two moments of existence are.
The rst moment: To have to exist (Zusein) means ever having to become oneself in a open-ended but nite eld of possibilitiesz our perfection' [consists in] becoming what we can

be. But the onese1t that one has to become is itself possibility (our essence is to be
possible). Hence, to exist means to sustain (ausstehen) possibility to the very end, right up to the possibility of the impossibility of existence. We are ever-to-be-achieved (Richardson), i.e., ever becoming ourselves as possibility. This is the rst of the three moments of existence: becoming, in fact self-becoming, right up to the point where we become dead. Heidegger calls it coming-to-onself, auf sich zu-kommen, Zu-kun,3" which we should translate not with the chronological term future but with the existental term becoming.
The second moment: But if that is the case, then the what-we-are-becoming is what we

SZ l99'243: Die perfectio des Menschen, das Werden zu dem, was er. . _ sein kann."

SZ 325f./372f.

14

already are: thrown into possibility. This alr_eadiness (Heideggers Geweserheit) that we are ever overtaking in our self-becoming is not the by-gone past. It is not even the past that is as having been, the way, for example, you have been a Ph.D. ever since you received your doctorate - and still are (present perfect tense).35 Such is-as-having-been might come close to
naming our alreadiness only if it were read existentially (ontologically) rather than chronologically. Our alreadiness -the way we ontologically are - does not follow along

behind us and cannot be articulated with either the past tense or the present perfect tense. Rather, it lies ahead of us: geht ihm je schon vorweg.36 Itis our thrownness ahead to the point of death. We are ever becoming what we already are. Heidegger signals that his Gewesenheit is to be read in terms of essence (how one a wie es je schon war.37 He puts the priori is and must be) when he speaks of das Gewesen phrase in inverted commas to signal the obvious: that it is a quotation of Aristotles term for eivowis If rendered literally (and thus incorrectly) that phrase would come out as essence, t 'ci v the what-it-was-to-be such-and-such a thing. (The such-and-such a thing piece is usually put

as

is in the dative: e.g., r *c v cvpmop sivou: what it was to be human.) However, the v deceptive, and was is the wrong translation: it has nothing to do with the chronological past With help from Aristotle Heidegger insists it refers to what is prior in an ontological sense, always already operative beforehand, the ever earlier, in Latin, a priori .4 Our alreadiness
is our essence, that which we are of necessity: thrown into our mortality. These rst two moments of existence reduce to two. The structure of existence is to become (and sustain) itself as thrown into mortality: becoming what one already is. We have

Heidegger describes this is-as-having-been as [das] vormals Vorausgegangene und jetzt Zuckbleibende: that which went before yet now remains behind: GA 2, 500, note a.
~

SZ 20/41. Cf. GA 11: 58/48: Dies [= das Gewesene] durchwaltet anfnglich die berlieferung, west ihr

stets voraus.

__.

SZ 325/373.

For example, Metaphyscs VI 1, 1025b28-29.

is obviously different from one's [ontological] Gewesenhet. SZ 381/433: The Vergangenheit . _

SZ 114, note a: Vorgngig: in diesem ontologischen Sinne; das jeweils schon voraus Wesende; das lat. a priori. Frhere; jeweils

15

previously discussed and need not belabor the third moment of existence: returning from alreadyaheadness so as to be meaningfully present to whatever is encountered.
Heidegger denes the unity of the three moments of ecstatic existence in the difcult phrase gewesend-gegenwrtigende Zulcun. Both Macquarrie-Robinson and Stambaugh translate this as a future that makes present in the process of having been, thereby privileging chronological tenns (future, having been) and missing Heideggers Aristotelian interpretation of das Gewesen. The German phrase virtually dees translation, but the meaning is clear: existence

is a matter of becoming (Zu-kur) that which is always already operative, our thrown-openness (das Gewesen), such that we can render things meaningfully present (Gegenwrtigung).

ECSTATIC Ex1sT~:NcE (TEMPoRALTY)

becoming.

__

rendering things meaningfully present

_. .what-one-already-is

So far we have been sketching out what the ecstatic movement of openness is in its structure. But recall that the somewhat round-about point of Heideggers analysis here is to show that this ever-operative kinetic structure is what enables us to personally and resolutely become our throwmess unto death and be authentically present to the things we encounter. After what we
have spelled out above, we may conclude our discussion of ecstatic openness (temporality) by simply stating the thesis that Heidegger has demonstrated: Resolute anticipation - the apex of htunan existence -is made possible by, and redoubles, the ecstatic two-pulse structure of

existence.

SZ 326/374.

16
====

Heidegger's vision of the two-moment movement that denes human existence is the backbone of Being and Time (and arguably - although that surpasses the brief of the present essay - continues into his later view of the two moments ofEreignis: Brauch and Zugehrigkeit). The two-pulse movement of existence rewrites Aristotles notion of cvnoug (for Heidegger higher than actuality stands possibility) and underwrites Heidegger's Bedeutungslehre based on existence as a prior engagement with meaning-at-all (In-der- Welt-sein).42 It argues for the sameness of the generation (Zeitigung) of ecstatic openness (Zeitlichkeit) and the possibility of
the meaningful presence of people and things. It allows, in turn, for authentic temporality as an entry to the situation from out of thrownness into mortality. Once the erroneous three-

moment view of care and temporality is overcome, the stnctural parallels of care, temporality, and authenticity - and their tmity - at last become clear.

SZ 166/209: Die Bedeutungslehre ist in der Ontologe des Daseins verwurzelt."

Situation

SZ 326/374: Zuknftig auf sich zurckkommend, bringt sich die Entschlossenheit gegenwrtig in die

Appendix Conference Program for the 47th Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle 2013 Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT

THE 47 ANNUAL MEETING OF THE HEIDEGGER CIRCLE

th

Southern Connecticut State University, May 2-5, 2013 at the OMNI New Haven Hotel, 155 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 06510 Conveners: David Pettigrew and Rex Gilliland THURSDAY MAY 2, 2013 6:00 7:30 Welcoming Reception The Harbour Room Co-hosted by the Philosophy Department, Yale University FILM SCREENING: William J. Richardson, SJ: The Passion of Thought (US, 2012, 55 minutes) Producers: Paul Bruno (Framingham State University), Scott Campbell (Nazareth College), Ed McGushin (Stonehill College) Coffee and Bagels Welcoming Remarks HEIDEGGER AND PRACTICAL THOUGHT Heidegger and Aristotle: Action, Production, Ethos Julie Kuhlken, (Independent Scholar) Shattering Politics and War in Heideggers Letter on Humanism Babette Babich (Fordham University) Respondent: Dennis E. Skocz (Independent Scholar) Moderator: Jedidiah J. Mohring (Marquette University) 11:00 11:15 11:15- 12:30 Coffee Break HEIDEGGER AND LUTHER Heideggers Dasein and Luthers Christian: Revealing an Ontic Source of Freedom and Servitude Nik Byle (University of South Florida) Respondent: Cathy LeBlanc (Universit Catholique de Lille) Moderator: Natalie Nenadic (University of Kentucky) 12:30 2:00 12:30 - 1:45 Lunch A Conversation with Karsten Harries Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy (Yale University) John Davenport 19 Floor, OMNI Hotel*
th

7:30 9:00

FRIDAY MAY 3, 2013 8:30 9:00 9:00 9:15 9:15 11:00

*(Please RSVP limited seating)

2:00 - 3:45

THE FOURFOLD A Path to the Fourfold: Heidegger and the Non-metaphysical Doctrine of the Four Causes Brendan Mahoney (Binghamton University) Heideggers Fourfold: On the Relationality of Things Andrew J. Mitchell (Emory University) Respondent: James A. Snyder (Mercyhurst University) Moderator: Theodore Kisiel (Northern Illinois University)

3:45 -4:00 4:00 5:45

Coffee Break HEIDEGGER AND DELEUZE Heideggers Differential Concept of Truth in Beitrge James Bahoh (Duquesne University) Beyond Heideggers Differential Ontology: Deleuzian Com-plication Janae Sholtz (Alvernia University) Respondent: Douglas F. Peduti (Fairfield University) Moderator: Noreen Khawaja (Yale University)

6:00 6:45 6:45 SATURDAY MAY 4, 2013 8:30 9:00 9:00 10:15

Business Meeting Dinner

Coffee and Bagels THE ENIGMA OF SOLITUDE Uncanny Belonging: The Enigma of Solitude in Heideggers Work Will McNeill (DePaul University) Respondent: Krzysztof Ziarek (University at Buffalo) Moderator: Drew A. Hyland (Trinity College)

10:15 10:30 10:30 1:00

Coffee Break HEIDEGGER AND DERRIDA My Language Which Is Not My Own: Heidegger and Derridas Challenge to Linguistic Determinism Carolyn Culbertson (University of Maine Farmington) Waiting to Die?- On Derridas Reading of Heidegger in Aporias Hakhamanesh Zangeneh (California State University, Stanislaus) Towards a Critique of Walten: Heidegger, Derrida and Henological Difference Adam Knowles (New School for Social Research) Respondent: Pol Vandevelde (Marquette University) Moderator: Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Boston University)

1:00 2:30 2:30 4:00

Lunch FROM GEWISSENSRUF TO GELASSENHEIT Gewissensruf: A Summons to Martyrdom? G. Bart Kasowski (Collge Jean-de-Brbeuf) The End of Entwurf and the Beginning of Gelassenheit Joydeep Bagchee (Freie-Universitt, Berlin) Respondent: Richard Polt (Xavier University) Moderator: Scott M. Campbell (Nazareth College of Rochester)

4:00 4:15

Coffee Break

4:15 6:00

HEIDEGGER AND HISTORICITY On the Beginnings of Thought: The Historicity of Thought in Martin Heidegger Arun Iyer (Seattle University) Heideggers Early Saying of Being as Physis (as Aletheia) Richard Capobianco (Stonehill College) Respondent: Lawrence Hatab (Old Dominion University) Moderator: Nanda Golden (Stony Brook University)

7:00 SUNDAY MAY 5, 2013 8:30 9:00 9:00 10:45

Banquet at the Union League Caf

Coffee and Bagels HEIDEGGER AND ART The Transcendence of Immanence: Art as Phenomenology in Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Nancy Rebecca Longtin Hansen (Emory University) The Ruination of the Artwork: Materiality, Repetition, Difference Alexandra Morrison (Michigan Technological University) Respondent: Wayne Froman (George Mason University) Moderator: Bret W. Davis (Loyola University Maryland)

10:45 11:00 11:00 12:45

Coffee Break FROM CARE TO TEMPORALITY The Two Moments of Existence: From Care to Temporality Thomas Sheehan (Stanford University) Kant and Heidegger on Appearances and the In-itself Michael Blzy (University of Toronto) Respondent: Emilia Angelova (Trent University) Moderator: Chelsea C. Harry (Southern CT State University)

With support from the Department of Philosophy, the Office of the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the Faculty Development Office at Southern Connecticut State University.