Abstract
This essay traces the movement of Heidegger’s thinking first from Contributions to Philosophy to The Event and then in the latter volume itself as a downgoing (Untergang) movement Heidegger performs through language, i.e. in how he thinks and speaks. The essay highlights a shift in attunement and in the relation to history that occurs in The Event, which is a shift from a resistance to the epoch of machination to letting it pass by as thinking ventures into the most concealed dimension of the event and attempts an “imageless saying.” The last part of the essay focuses on the issue of language in The Event, both in relation to how Heidegger thinks language and in view of the performative aspects of Heidegger’s writing.
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Notes
Martin Heidegger, “Brief über den Humanismus”, in Wegmarken, GA 9:313. The quotation stems from the translation of the essay by Frank A. Capuzzi. The marginal note cannot be found in Martin Heidegger Basic Writings (that also has Capuzzi’s translation) but in an online version of the essay: http://archive.org/details/HeideggerLetterOnhumanism1949.
I am using the new translation of Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis): Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012). Quotations will be followed first by the page number in the German edition (for example GA65:7) and then by the English edition (for example C:7). The same applies to The Event (E).
Martin Heidegger, The Event, trans. by Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013).
Bret Davis traces this movement, including Heidegger’s entire career, as one in which Heidegger progressively let’s go of the will. See Bret Davis, Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit (Evanston Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2007).
Given that Heidegger understands his attempts to speak of (in the sense of “out of” or “appropriated by”) the event as precisely leaving behind subjectively based thinking, it would be inappropriate to call his poietic writings “private” just as it would be inappropriate to speak of them as works or treatises. Many Heidegger scholars still see Heidegger’s non-public writings as less important than the public ones. It is interesting to see how this often goes along with an interpretation of being as presence or as the rising into presence of beings, which makes sense if we consider that in his public writings Heidegger spoke more the language of metaphysics. See for instance Richard Capobianco (in Engaging Heidegger, Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 43. He also suggests one translate Wesen/Wesung as presencing (p. 38). Such emphasis on presence fails to address the importance of concealment for Heidegger, especially when he thinks the movement of inception.
The poietic writings differ from the “Black Notebooks” (recently appeared in GA 94-96) in that the former are a more sustained effort to think and conceptualize the event. The Black Notebooks contain “looser” reflections and criticisms addressing Heidegger’s own time.
Section 1.
See section 61 of Contributions.
See Introduction to Metaphysics (GA40).
There occurs, here, a shift in the meaning of Da-sein with respect to Being and Time. In his path of thinking toward the 40s, Heidegger places less and less emphasis on the human, although the happening of Da-sein (there-being or being-there) always requires humans.
Beyng translates Seyn, written with a “y” which indicates that being is thought in terms of the historicality of being.
I am thinking here of the term Ausstehen—literally “standing out” in a transitive sense—a word that appears quite often in Contributions.
See for instance section 177 of Contributions: “Da-sein: withstanding the openness of self-concealing.” (GA65:301; C:238) Section 10 is quite similar: “Da-sein is humanly endured and sustained in the steadfastness that withstands the “there” and belongs to the event.” (GA65:31; C:26)
In Mindfulness (Besinnung) Parvis and Kalary translate Loslassung as “unleashing.” (Martin Heidegger, Mindfulness, trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, Continuum, 2006).
“What does machination mean? That which is released to its own fettering. [Das in die eigene Fesselung Losgelassene.]” (GA65:132; C104) In Besinnung Heidegger writes that machination “forces the complete unleashing [Loslassung] into the self-overpowering of power of all forces capable of power and transformative of power.” (Section 9, GA66:17f) see also Besinnung/Mindfulness, section 12.
In section 13, for instance, Heidegger writes how “the great stillness must first come over the world for the earth. This stillness arises only out of keeping silent. And this bringing into silence grows only out of restraint.” (GA65:34; C:29)
See also sections 116 and 117 of The Event. (GA71:84f; E:71) Heidegger develops his interpretation of the last stage of metaphysics in relation to Nietzsche by thinking how Nietzsche’s will to power announces the movement of the will to will in which machinationally disclosed beings circulate groundlessly in an endless movement of production.
Heidegger reflects on this issue in section 283 of The Event.
Although I do myself translate Anfang as “beginning” in the context of Heidegger speaking of the first and the other beginning (since this has become customary in Heidegger literature in English), it makes more sense to translate Anfang as in-ception, since the Latin root meaning of inception has (just like An-fang) the word “to catch” in it, which is of relevance for Heidegger’s thinking of the event in terms of Anfang.
The points of critique 3–7 are the following:
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3.
[…] even the ‘inception’ is still grasped as something carried out by thinkers and not in its essential unity with the event.
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4.
By the same token, the event still does not receive the purely inceptual essence of the abyss in which are prepared the arrival of beings and the decision regarding divinity and humanity. […]
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5.
Da-sein is indeed thought essentially out of the event, but nevertheless too unilaterally in relation to the human being.
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6.
The human being is still not thought historically enough. (GA71:4f; E:xxiv)
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3.
For a fuller discussion of the transition between Being and Time and Contributions see Daniela Vallega-Neu, Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy.’ An Introduction. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
See section 122 of Contributions.
Wortschatz literally means “treasure of words”.
The notion of Sagen, saying, is central for Heidegger since it is in the saying of the word that what the word says occurs. The notion “expression” suggests that is something there that then is expressed; this is why Heidegger never would use the German word for expression (audrücken) to refer to the saying of the event.
I am altering the translation of Anfang as beginning to “inception” every time Heidegger does not explicitly speak of the first beginning or other beginning.
The middle voice is a verb form present in Ancient Greek but not in modern European languages. It is a verbal form designating neither activity nor passivity but the “self-unfolding” of an event.
Translation altered.
I believe that here Rojcewicz translation is misleading. Some translators of Heidegger have used “expropriation” to translate Ent-eignis, dis-propriation, which is a withholding. Ver-eignung has a “positive” sense of preserving, bringing into what is proper (in the sense of own).
Here again, Rojcewicz’s translation is misleading. Arrogation has more the sense of seizing or taking to oneself, which is in some sense contrary to the movement Zu-eignung describes.
Eigentlichkeit (properness) this is the same word that often is translated as “authenticity” in Being and Time.
I am translating more literally than Rojecewicz the expression “bei sich”. Rojcewicz translates “present to themselves.” Since proper being has all to do with a relation to death and thus concealment, I would avoid speaking of “presence” in this context.
From now on I will mark with an asterisk* words I translate differently from Rojcewicz.
It would be interesting to pursue how Heidegger’s thinking occurs with respect to the one (truth of beyng) and the many (words, beings that shelter this truth). “The word of inceptual thinking possesses the plurivocity [Mehrdeutigkeit] of the beginning, a plurivocity that neither rests on negligence nor is it tailored for dialectics. The plurivocity lets the word essentially occur and thereby disposes into the unrest of thinking.” (GA 71:294; E:255)
See section 185 (GA71:171). See as well section 314: “The word [Wort] is the origin of language.
Language is the faculty of ‘words’ [Wörter] (saying out) [Aus-sagen].
What is the word? The soundless voice of beyng.
What is called voice [Stimme] here? Not ‘sound’ but, instead, disposing [Stimmen], i.e. to let experience. How so?
Disposing toward the experience of the inception* (the inception* itself cannot be experienced).
Disposing through determining [Be-stimmen].
Determining through thinking of the voice of the word of the inception*.
Thinking—through the imageless saying of the inception.” (GA71:283; E:246).
See Heidegger’s self-critique of the first projection of the saying (Sage)—he must be referring here to Contributions—at the end of section 336.
In Contributions Heidegger calls the thinking of the other beginning Er-denken because what is thought is not already there before thinking responds to the appropriating call of beyng. The er- in Erdenken marks a movement of thinking that is inchoative, traversing, and disclosive (of the clearing of truth).
Note that Heidegger writes erstanfängliche Erinnerung and not Erinnerung des ersten Anfangs. What he refers to is not a thinking about the first beginning but the movement of inception that occurs as an arising; in the first beginning this arising leads to metaphysics and its demise. Indeed The Event performs (see Part One of The Event which is titled “The First Beginning”) a more inceptive rethinking of the arising of the first beginning.
Section 316 titled “The clarification of what is to be done.”
It is a little further in this section that Heidegger will meditate on the directive to avoid detours into “saying no” in the saying of inception.
For the notion of the beingless, see sections 176 (GA71:132f; E:112); 185 (GA71:171; E:146); 205 (GA71:197; E:168) Heidegger introduces the notions of the “nothingless” and the “beingsless” already in Über den Anfang (GA70). See sections 68 and 98.
The abandonment of beings by beyng does, however, have its source in dispropriation.
I believe though that one can rethink the body or bodily being in light of Heidegger’s notion of attunement. This thought has brought me to write The Bodily Dimension in Thinking (SUNY Press, 2005). See especially chapter four on Heidegger, in which I develop the notion of bodily being in Heidegger’s thinking.
See the beginning of section 370.
See for instance section 373.
Rojcewiz translates inständig (which literally means standing in but also has a sense of constancy) with “steadfast”; given that Heidegger is moving toward a thinking in releasement one may as well take recourse to Bret Davis’ translation of inständig as “indwelling”. In section 278, Heidegger calls the concepts that arise in this indwelling in the counter-turning event of inception “Inständigkeiten im Offenen der Lichtung des Syens”, i.e. “instances of steadfastness [or indwelling] in the open domain of the clearing of beyng.” (GA71:254; E:219)
Austragen, carrying out, is now a major concept for Heidegger that replaces the notion of Ausstehen, withstanding, in Contributions.
In “The Poetic of Language: Readings of Heidegger’s On the Way to Language, Marcia Cavalcante Schuback shows how Heidegger’s language enacts a thought from within experience by emphasizing rhythm and interruption in the way he speaks. (Marcia Cavalcante Schuback, The Poetic of Language: Readings of Heidegger’s On the Way to Language, in: Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation, edited by Dan Zahavi/Sara Heinämaa/Hans Ruin, Dordrecht/Boston/London 2003, pp. 195–216.)
GA71:218; E:187.
See The Event, sections 171, 172. See also Über den Anfang (GA70), section 97 where Heidegger describes the arising of beings into being in a more detailed way.
Rojcewicz translates Wonne as bliss.
See sections 94, 257.
Sections 320ff.
