Heidegger Circle 2003 Proceedings

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CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Friday May 16
1:00l:l5 -2:30-
Welcome by Roseann Runte, President of Old Dominion University

Chair: Graeme Nicholson (University of Toronto) Paper: The Prevalenee of Truth, by Daniel Dahlstrom (Boston University) Commentary: Charles Guignon (University ofSouth Florida)
2145-42001
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Chair: Will McNeill (Depaul University) Paper: Evoking the Momentous Site: Time-Space in the Contributions to Ph'losophy, by Richard Polt (Xavier
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University) Commentary: Allen Scuit (Drake University)

4:l5 - 5:45 -
Book Panel on John McCumber`s Melaphysics and Oppresrion: Heidegger 's Challenge to Western Philosophy _ Chair: James Risser (Seattle University) Speakers: Gary Shapiro (University of Richmond)and Bmce Wilshire (Rutgers University) Respondent: John lvlcCumber (UCLA)
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Business Meeting Reception at Hotel
Saturday May 17
9:00 - 10:15
_ Chair: Brian Schroeder (Rochester Institute of Technology) Paper: Transcendental Synthesis, Imagination, Inte-twining, by David Crowneld (University of Northem Iowa) __ Commentary: Robert Seharff (University of New Hampshire)
10:30-11:45I
Chair: Edward Papa (Sacred Heart University) Paper: "Heidegger Against the Editors: Nietzsche, Science, and the Beitrge as Will to Power, by Babette Babich _ (Fordham University) Commentary: Christa Davis Acampora (Hunter College) Lunch Break Panel: Heidegger and Practical Philosophy . ' Chair: Frank Schalow (University of New Orleans) and Froman Wayne (George Speakers: David Pettigrew (Southern Connectiout State University), Franois Raffoul (LSU), Mason University) Commentary: Anne O'Byrne(1-Iofstra University)
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2:00 -3:45 l2:00-2:00

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Chair: Silvia Benso (Siena College) Paper: On Hlderlins Andenkenzl-Ieidegger, Gadamer,Heinrich-A Deeision?" by Bemard Freyclberg (Slippery Rock University) Commentary: Veronique Fti (Penn State University)
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Chair: John Vielkind (Marshall University) _ ' Paper: Was heisst das-politisch zuse'n?' Between Two War Generations: The Gulf Uniting Heidegger and Arendt, by Ted Kisiel (Univ. ofNo1hem Illinois) Commentary: Alan Rosenberg and Alan Milchman (Queens College)
Reception and Banquet at Town Point Club.
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Sunday May 18
9:00 - l0:l5
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Chair: Martin Weatherston (East Stroudsburg University) Paper: Zetetic and Echonie Philosophy: A Platonic Rejoinder to I-leideggerian Postmodemism," by Gregory Fried (Califomia StateUniv., Los Angeles) Commentary: Walter Brogan (Villanova University)
Chair: Rex Gilliland (Dartmouth College) Paper: The Grammar of Being and the Being of Grammar, by Dennis Skoez (Independent Scholar) Commentary: Wanda Tones Gregory (Simmons College)
10:30-11:45
12:00- 1:15
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Chair: Phillip Stambovsky (independent Scholar) Paper: Time and the Work of Art: Reconsidering I-leideggefs Auseinandersetzung With Nietzsehe, by Tracy Colony _ (European College of Liberal Arts) Commentary: John Rose (Goucher College)
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Der eigentlichste und weiteste _ Spnmg ist der des Denkensf One of the great ironies of 'Heideggers philosophy is the enormous condence that he has in theoretical thinking. It is ironic - someone would say even fatally ironic - because he is convinced in the capacity of this thinking to demonstrate the primacy of being over thinking, at least insofar asthe thinking is of the sort that would render being an object of theory. In Being and Time, for example, he attempts to demonstrate, by means of an analysis of our way of being, that the emotional states that we nd ourselves in and the projects that we undertake constitute and disclose what it means for us to be and do so in a way that is beyond the reach of our theories about ourselves as natural phenomena. So, too, he argues that the_ time of our lives -the time that ultimately makes senseof our way of being - not only is not to be confused with scientic theories of time and- time-management but rst enables them. _ The demonstration that theories about human bengs and time as things on hand in nature are not false, but incomplete is itself an example of theoretical thinkingas are the respective analyses of existence and temporality. However, what distinguishes such theorizing in Heideggefsimind is his dual condence both in the ability of thinking to adhere to criteria that do not lie outside the phenomena in question and in the transforming efcacy of the successful exercise of that ability. The rst of these suppositions is, to be sure,'often a rhetorical ploy in I-leideggc-:rs hands, but he also supports it with the transcendental and, one might add, realist consideration that any possible consideration of the truth of things presupposes the selfdisclosiveness 'of their being. Existence, Heidegger's term in Being and Time for our way of being, is the site of this disclosure and he dubs being's disclosure of itself in and to existence the most original truth.2 As this last reference to truth suggests, Heidegger's condence in thinking is also a condence in truth prevailing. Not coincidentally, in the course of his subsequent career but especially throughout the complicated, stormy decade of the l930s he insists repeatedly the prevalence of truth." Indeed, so important is the question of truth for him that, in a retrospective at the end of the decade, he himself lists no less than nine' studies of his devoted to the question since l930.3 To be sure, what Heidegger understands by the prevalence of truth is neither' simply a Victory of candor over deceit and illusion nor the relentless march of science and research. That the truth prevails does not mean for him that every mysteiy in nature will be unlocked. Indeed, what he understands by the prevalence of truth is the very opposite of the rabid acctunulation and computability of an ever-increasing cache of true assertions about states of affairs and facts of the world. Instead, again ironically, the prevalence of truth, as Heidegger conceives it, ldemands nothing less than the concealment of being. This last claim is nothing if not paradoxical, running counter, as it cloes, to our customay beliefs about truth, not least our belief that the truth, as opposed to falsehoocl and deception, is the presentation or representation of things precisely as they present themselves." By some accounts, Heidegger himself late in life saw the error of his ways in challenging such customary beliefs and is even said to have recanted his earlier claims about the prevalence of truth. One aim of my remarks today is to offer an interpretation of Heidegger's account of the prevalence of truth that rernoves some of the air of paradox attending it. Without doubt, I-Ieidegger's rhetoric exposes his thinking to charges of obscurantism and verbal mysticism, but he also has, I hope to demonstrate, sound and straightforward reasons for questioning customary beliefs about
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The Prevalence of Truth By Daniel O. Dahlstrom

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The Prevalence of Truth/l)ahlstrom
tuth and for giving an account of truth that is paradoxical only if those beliefs are mistaken for the last word on truth. Since Heidegger is something of a moving target (remember that there are rine separate studies of truth between 1930 and 1938), I shall take his Contributions to _ between 1936 and as Philosophy, composed 1938, my primary source, making occasional references to Being and Time to point out lines' of continuity and imovation. In a concluding_ segment, I also take up reservations expressed by Heidegger in the 1964 lecture The End of Philosophy and the Task of _Truth. My remarks are divided into three sections. For all their intuitive muscle, our customary beliefs about truth give rise to certain perplexities and some traditional philosophical strategies for resolving those perplexities. By way of contrasting one such strategy, much in favor of late, with Heidegger.s approach to truth, the rst section focuses on his construal of truth's relation to being and the distinction that he maintains between ontic and ontological truths. In this regardl also recount very briey Heidegger`s historical explanation for the relative neglect of the distinction. The topic of the second section is the turn that Heidegger attempts to make in the consideration 'of truth, a turn that pivots on his reconstrual of essence as prevalence. Finally, I consider the contention that Heidegger, at the end of his career, retracted his theory of truth. _ I _ If think that someone might be lying to us, we are typically doubtl that what they areasserting or proposing is true. So it seems natural to regard truth in some sense as a property of an assertion or proposition. What is remarkable about this property is the fact that it extends to propositions on all sorts of subject matters, but obviously not to every proposition. We can say things that are true and things that are not true. But these considerations then invite the question of what it is that the true propositions share with one another, but not with false propositions. One answer, often traced back to Aristotlef is the so-called 'correspondence theory of truth": the notion that a true proposition is one that faithfully pictures or in some sense corresponds to the facts. But the answer, for all its intuitive plausibility, stumbles under scrutiny - which is not to say that it falls - when the focus shifts to the components of the theory. In other words, what counts as a proposition, as a fact, as correspondence? To many, theiproblems presented by these questions have seemed so insurmountable that have they proposed altemative denitions of truth (e. g., a propositions coherence with another or its usefulness).5 Still others, skeptical of making any headway where there is no friction, have decided that the traditional .question of truth is a bit of confusion spun off from a redundancy, that talk of truth in general is a lot of hot air calling for serious deating if the question_is to retain any sense at all. These deationists, as they call themselves today, insist that, aside from force, nothing is added to the substantive content of a proposition by saying that it is rhetcrical true.
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Wholesale deationism is obviously a threat to any theory, philosophical or otherwise, that trades on questions of truth in a robust sense. This threat applies not only to metaphysical objectivists, but also paradoxically to those who labor to insulate a sphere from matters of truth. _ Thus, ethical expressivists who deny the existence of ethcal facts or scientic instrumentalists who propose that acceptance of a scientic theory is not to be confused with afrming its truth appear hard pressed to countenance a Wholesale deationary .account of truth. They seem forced, if not to make common cause with metaphysicians of truth, at least to countenance a less deationary conception of truth. There is also arnple reason to think that an adequate theory of meaning presupposes something more than a minimalist account of truth.7
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The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom
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These sorts of ruminations, iterated of late by a group of Critics of a deationist conception of truth assembled by Simon Blackbum and Keith Simmons, indicate that philosophical consideration of truth is far from a thing of the -past. These contemporary considerations -often reveal a discontent with consigning truth to a conventional way of speaking as though the truth of things were a matter of mankind's or science-kind's collective _ stipulation. What is interesting about this recent development is the fact that similar misgivings about truth as correspondence led Heidegger in an opposite direction, only to despair in theend himself, as we shall later see, about the propriety of his talk of truth. In other words, just as some deationists nd themselves i_n need of a less deated conception of truth, so Heidegger worried that he had overinated the conception of truth. It is important, of course, not to overdo this comparison. Contemporary analysts typically construe being' as an abstract Luiversal, applying to everything, while what istrue has a more restricted scope, excluding what is false and, at least on some interpretations, what is indetermirate. In addition, their analyses focus on questions of the use or attribution of the term true.' For example, is the adj ective true' appropriately attributed to propositions, to declarative sentences -in the indicative mood, or to statements and assertions in the sense of speech-episodes as opposed to beliefs and sentences? In other words, what are the proper bearers of truth and what- does it mean tosay that they bear or convey the truth?9 By contrast, Heidegger neither construes being asan abstract universal nor treats truth as a subset of it. To be sure, he concedes that it is not an object or something merely and, present O hence, it remains inaccessible to mere presentation, representation, or imagination. It is also not to be confused with a supreme being who causes and in that sense encompasses everything else. But he insists, neve_rthe1ess, on the inexhaustibility, incomparability, and strangeness of being, on its simplicity, singularity, and solitariness as the historical, self-appropriating event that takes place between God and human beings. As this event, being also contains within itself division, confrontation, and conict among entities, atonce displacing and withdrawing from them In all these ways, being is said not to be but to prevail and this prevalence of being is its truth. As Heidegger puts it, this truth of being is not at all something different from being but instead its ownmost prevailing. ..."14 Thus, far from construing truth as a subset of being as an abstract universal, he maintains an intirnacy of truth and being,I5 such that truth is Elnnigkeit] and the truth of He originally being.' essentially presents his rationale for this metonymy in _ the form of a rhetorical question: ls the truth of being to bedetermined prior to being, without regard for it or afterwards, rst in a retrospective on being, or none of these two alternatives, but instead in one with being, because belonging to its prevailing'? This talk of the truth of being points to another aspect of Heidegger's account of truth that distinguishes it from contemporary accounts, such as those mentioned at the outset. In keeping with the ontological difference between being and beings, he insists on the difference between' the truth of being and truths about entities. Taking some liberties with Heidegger's terminology, I dub the former ontological' and the latter *ontc* truths. "Ontic truths include (1) the ways in which an entity shows or presents itself, (2) the apophantic judgments that refer to it in such a way that it can show itself as it is, and even (3) the reexive or thematic detennination that such a purported judgement, on second or more looks, is true or false. As for the rst sort of ontc truth, no entity presents itself or is present completely in Heidegger's framework (hence, again, the nonidealist side of his thinking). its unhiddenness is always of a piece with a hiddenness. So, too, an entity may present itself in different ways to different individuals; it is one thing to someone who uses it, another to someone who merely looks at it, yet another thing to someone
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who makes it or sells it or puts it into relation to other things. Thus, there are several different ontic truths in this rst sense, i.e., several different ways in which an entity may present itself. This sort of ontic truth is typically fused with the second, namely, the more or less prereective statements about an entity that also direct our attention, by way of predication, to this or that aspect of it. A chair, for example, presents itself to me in this orthat respect by virtue of my take on it, not only by way of observation, use, construction, etc., but also by way of assertions that allow the chair topresent itself as it is in this or that respect, e.g., The chair is in front of me or There's a place for me. It is, of course, quite another matter to reect and ask whether we can be sure that it is a chair, that it presents itself as supposed, or that those assertions about it are true or false. As can be gathered from these examples, thisthird category of ontic truth is the proper domain for questions of the correctness of assertions or representations and their correspondence to experience. But in order to determine the truth, i.e., the correctness or correspondence of said assertions or representations, we must appeal in the end to the self-showing, however tenuous, of entities or nd ourselves on the slippery slope of an indenite regress. There must be a showing that is not a saying or at least_not merely a saying, . as Augustine demonstrated so eloquently.19 In contrast to these ontic truths, i.e., the different possible sorts of truths about entities, ontological truth refers to the truth about being itself, something that, according to Heidegger, has been taken for granted as self-evident and beyond question. But it is precisely this selfevidential character that he nds suspect. Accordingly he explicitly distinguishes questions about the truth of a judgment or statement about an entity and its properties, e.g., the chair and its place, from the question of the truth of being. The truth of being is its discloseclness or, as Heidegger also refers to it throughout his career, despite signicant permutations: the clearing. Already in Being and Time, asa means of elucidating what he means by the discloseclness that is the root meaning of being-here (Da.-sein), Heidegger refers to the here in being-here as a clearing. He glosses the expression for clearing as a metaphor of light or illumination, even employing Descartes' expression lumen naturale in the process. In Being and Time Heidegger thus plays on the fact that the word for clearing, i.e., Lichtung, contains the word for light (Licht). Later, probably in view of his criticism of P1ato's use of the metaphor of light, he replaces this etymological emphasis with a stress on the ordinary use of the term to signify a timely place, typically a fortuitously open area surrounded by forest. The clearing is subsequently characterized as a "clearing of being itself."2 Clearing then serves as a metaphor for the place or, more precisely, the time-space of being's self-disclosure and seconcealment. What truth itself is, Heidegger tells us in the Contributions to Philosophy, camiot be adequately said without grasping time-space and time-space is, he adds, the abyss-like grounding of the 'here', (i.e.', the Da in Da-sein).2l The contrasts drawn in the past few pages between ontic and- ontological truths should not obscure their intimate relation and certain aspects common to both. In the rst place, an entitys_ being is precisely its self-display, the nal court of appeal for corsiclerations of _ eorrespondence and certainty. If it is true that the chairis in ont of me, then it must present itself as such (an ontic truth) but in order for it to present itself as such, it must rst present itself (an ontological truth). This presence of the entity in the sense of its self-presentation thus constitutes a signicant part of the truth of being with respect to it.22 In the second place, as in the case of ontic truth, it would be presumptuous to suppose that the truth about the entity is exhausted by the presence of this or that aspect. So, too, being's presence does not exhaust being. Heidegger emphasizes that the "truth of being" is the clearing
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just *as much for its self-concealing as for its concealing. Or, as he puts it in one of the constant refrains of the Contributions to Philosophy, the prevalence oftruth is the clearingfor the seh""23 corcealing. Moreover, in contrast to the dismissal of concealment, alive since Plato, and, the indeed, relentless attempt to do away with it, this clearing for being's self-concealing is, he cautions, not to be confused with its cancellation or illumination and transformation into _ something no 'longer hidden or concealed. The prevalence of truth is far more "_a clearing concealing."24 _ But what does Heidegger precisely mean by characterizing the prevalence of truth as the clearing for beingfs self-coneealing? One way to appreciate this characterization is, I suggest, to understand it as a Variation on-Heidegger's singular insight, the insight that already permeated his existential analyses in Being and Time, i.e., the recognition that the particular presence or even every presence of an entity (including, in some cases, its presence to itself) never' exhausts what it means for an entity to be. Its being is always a matter of a timing and spacing, itself a weave of presence and absence. To be sure, when an entity shows itself to be a chair or be in front of me, there are hidden aspects as well; But whereas an entity can be hidden from us because of a perspective or attitude that we can change, the hiddenness of being cannot be removed by a willful change ofperspective or attitude. Herein lies the reasoning behind Heidegger's clurnsy observation that-Dasein is at once in the truth and the mtruth, an observation that he laments was misunderstood precisely because un-truth was conceived as falsehood rather than concealments Herein, too, lies one of the motives behind his insistence that truth, as the grounding of being, is tantamount to an abyss, anAb-grund, by which Heidegger aims to convey that the prevalence of truth, the truth of being, is to be understood as a certain departure or at a certain remove from anything like a ground (or sufcient reason: Grund).26 In what can be read as a preview of his remarks in 1964 (see below), Heidegger observes that truth as the clearing is essentially different from aletheia, at least insofar as the latter stands for the unhidden and thus indicates that the hidden is something to be set aside. There is a third point of comparison between ontic and ontological tnths that warrants consideration. Just as ontic truths turn not only on the way that something presents itself but also on the way it istaken up by someone, so being discloses itself, to be sure, not to someone insofar as she simply observes or uses the entity but to someone insofar as she is here and, thus, in the use or observation, projects an mderstanding of what it means for this or that entity to be. Truth is something that being "comes to" but "only on the basis of being-here [Da-sein]" and, ndeed, on the basis of a proj ection of being's truth Thus, in He_iclegger's account of truth in the 1930s, as in Being and Time, being-here is a necessary component. This aspect of Heidegger's theory of truth might, in a different key, be construed as quasi-idealist. The qualifcation 'quasi' is important since truth entails being-here, but not insofar as, being-here, you or I are said to know by way of perceiving or having ideas. Moreover, being-here is not the same as being human, being an object, or being a subject. It is not something that we simply nd on hand in human beings; it is also not characteristic of entities by vrtue of their being on hand and _ encountered or by vrtue of allowing other entities to be encountered as obj ects.28 The here is an openness between and towards earth and world or, better, the site of the strife bet-ween them, concealing and clearing at once and as such.29 Heidegger accordingly maintains that Dasein is a happening, "never for itself but belonging to the unfolding of the strife of earth and world, of the insistency of the appropriating event [being]."3' Heidegger has biographical reasons for insisting on this point, namely, a desire to distance his characterization of being-here from a transcendental subj ect. Nevertheless, a
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transcendental characterization continues to echo in his construal of being-here as the very truth of being and the ground _or gro.mding of the truth of being.3 1 These formulations in the Contributions to Philosophy bear an mmistakeable resemblance _to the transcendental characterization of being-here, presented in Being and Time. There, too, truth required beinghere but without being its production; there, too, Heidegger took pains' to distinguish being-here as the clearing and, in that sense, the original site of truth from being human. _ Not surprisingly, Heidegger himself acknowledges this transcendental dimension- of his earlier path but maintains that it was only provisional, to be displaced by understanding beinghere, i.e., the projecting-thrown grounding,.' as the original, appropriating event of being Accordingly, differences from the account in Being and Time are -also patent. If Heidegger in Being and Time does not take the happening of Dasein for granted, his analysis can suggest that it is something that transpires in and of itself. In the Contributions to Philosophy being-here is
not something taken for granted as already accomplished; instead, Heidegger
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stresses that it is the ground of future htunan beings, albeit as something that human beings themselves have to create, transforming every relationship to entities in the process. Although one might read this construal of the relation of being-here to being human in Being and Time, it is by no means an obvious reading of the text. Something similar holds for the emphasis in Contributions io _ Philosophy on the fact that being-here, precisely as the prevalence of the clearing for being, belongs to being.. To be-here is to be exposed to the truth of being. Being-here is the prevalence of that clearing or openness of the entity Within the whole [of things] that is the truth of being itself but only because it opens up the self-concealing that is beings manner of prevaling.35 Er-eignis, which I clumsily translate appropriating event, is Heidegger's term for the way that being's self-concealing prevails. Being-here grotmds the truth of being, but precisely as a grounding necessitated by the basic experence of being as appropriating event.36 These ruminations provide Heidegger with yet another way to characterize being-here: In a less generous Being-here is the constancy of the prevalence of the truth of being.37 8 He wants to retain the moment, we might say that Heidegger wants to have it both ways. sense in which, as already emphasized in Being and Time, 'being-here' does not signify some circumscribable place but instead that clearing or lumen naturale in which entites can present themselves for what they are. They are able to show themselves as beings by virtue of a prethematic (pre-theoretical and pre-practical) understanding proj ection of being that is existentially constitutive of being-here and that the metaphor of a cIearing is meant to capture. But, as Heidegger emphasizes in the Contributions to Philosophy, this clearing is a clearing of the clearing is itself being itself, the clearing for the self-concealing that being is.39 As such, 4 unfolds. lt belongs to being something that transpires as part of being, something that being precisely as the original event in which being comes into its own (yet another play on Er-eignis). Or, 'as Heidegger also puts it, again deliberately hearkening back to a dimension already broached, if not in so many words, in Being and Time, the one proj ecting, being-here, is itself thrown, appropriated by being.4l Before I end this comparison of Heidegger's 19303 discussion of the relation of beinghere to the truth of being with that given in Being and Time, one more common note Warrants mention. I am thinking of what in the popular mind is the existential aspect of Heidegger's account of truth in Being and Time. Working with the familiar Contrast between inauthentic and authentic existence, Heidegger describes the resoluteness of listening to conscience's call to genuine being as the most original, because genuine truth of being-here.42 Note that the form of speaking involved is a call and that it is a call in some sense to the most original truth or
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disclosure that is equivalent to being~here authentically. Here we see the existential scope and depth of Heideggers condence in thinking, mentioned at the outset. The signicance of the_ call of conscience is ontological but it is also a truth that supposedly can transform the fundamental ontologist who heeds it. Similar considerations persist in Heidegger's later discussion of the constellation of truth, and being, being-here. Thus, in Contributions to Philosophy, hewrites that what is at stake in the question of truth- is not a mere alteration of the concept. ..[and] not a more original insight into the essence but instead the leap into the prevailing of truth. ..[and] accordingly a transformation of being-.human in the sense of a dis-placement of the human's place anong entities. .. and therefore rst a more original appreciation and empowerment of being itself as appropriating e'vent.43 There is, of course, a great deal more that needs to be said and questioned about this transfonnative character of the truth of being in relation to being-here (not least the direness of needlessness [Not der Notlosigkeit] that, Heidegger contends, motivates the leap). But perhaps the passage cited sufces to demonstrate. that the existential truth elaborated in Being and Time remains intact in Heidegger's account in the 19303, even as he labors to distinguish his historical thinking about being from transcendental phenomenology. Allow me to summarize the points that I have been trying to make up to this point. In contrast to contemporary approaches to being and *truth* as abstract universals and 'true' as a property of propositions and the like, Heidegger understands truth as the vey prevalence of being, the clearing for its historical unfolding that involves both its unconcealment and concealment. Heidegger accordingly distinguishes the truth about being from truths about entities, a distinction that, as noted, also indicates both a dependence of the latter upon the former and certain parallels between them. Thus, an entity has to present itself before it can be said to present itself as F or G and in both cases, the presenting itself not only is never exhaustive of it but also always calls for someone to _whom it can present itself. Someone with understanding of being has to be here for something to present itself, just as a biologist is required for something to present itself as a virus. But that understanding of being is also a realization that being conceals itself and cannot be unlocked by a change of perspective like a virus' DNA. If one were to grant Heidegger the distinction between ontic and ontological truths along the lines just reviewed, why is it all but missing from most traditional approaches to truth? Why is it taken as canonical that truth be understood as the property of a proposition and, typcally, as its correct correspondence with reality? Heidegger takes these questions seriously, _ that he must show not how the of truth as only correctness acknowledging repeatedly conception takes such hold of our imaginations that it appears to be the entire story, but also how it presupposes truth as the clearing-. Heidegger answers the rst question through a reading of the history of Western philosophy's treatmentof truth. In the story. that he tells, Plato's allegory of the cave plays a pivotal role, setting the stage for subsequent developments by focusing singlemindedly on how entities are brought to light, Lmcovered, and disclosed. In the process Plato fails, Heidegger charges, to probe either the unhiddenness itself or the hiddenness that it _ of aletheia is mercurial but it is in this use connection that he presupposes. Heideggefs emphasizes approvingly the privative character of its prex. That privative character suggests to Heidegger that the word trades on a hiddenness or eoncealing that is overlooked or forgotten in typical treatments of truth in the Wake of Plato. Moreover, along with this neglect of the unhiddenness itself and its corresponding hiddenness comes an inevitable, but, nonetheless, disproportionate conception Ofthe human subject's role in matters oftruth. Plato's construal of
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an entity's visibility as its presence and thus its accessibility and opemess to the soul is, Heidegger submits, the rst step to yoking truth to correctness, be it the correctness of a relation between res and intellectus, obj ect' and subject, or a state of affairs and an assertion.46 In his historical gloss on the history of truth, Heidegger emphasizes how, in accordance with the dominance enjoyed by the conception of truth as correctness, some philosophers nd themselves - and thus construe human beings primarily - as subjects confronting objects. As he gputs' it, Correctness brings the psyche to priority and afterwards the subject-obj ect-relation.4 Because correctness seems to be something that "remains back in the soul" as a process and act of the soul (and, indeed, does in such a way that the soul as an ego forms the opposite to the object), the very presence of the entity that is represented, and the opening in terms of which it presents itself, in short, the event of being, are overlooked. Correctness as an interpretation of the open' becomes the ground of the subject-object-relation.49 Not surprisingly, Heidegger cautions that wherever truth as correctness takes the lead in determining the idea of truth, all paths to its' origin are buried or blocked. _ Yet what about the other question mentioned above, namely, the question of how truth as correctness presupposes the truth as the cleaing? Correctness applies to thinking, understood as a way of presenting or representing something in general. This presenting is a way of beinghere, a manner ofmoving away from itself and towards something, a movement that presupposes or, better occurs within and as part of a certain "opening." This opening is the clearing for being's self-disclosure and concealment, its thrown projection, making possible our being-here amidst things and together with others. What isunhidden can only make itself present because the opening "prevails."5 In this way, Heidegger makes his case that the clearing, as the truth of being, is presupposed but overlooked by the conception of truth as correctness. However, it is important not to construe this prevailing of truth as itself a kind of hyperpresence. If it were, it would be a tting synonym for what Quine dubbed eternal sentences, in which tenses are dropped and references xed. These eternal sentences (Qune's truth vehicles) are sentences of a rmer sort, not subject to such vacillations as the vagueness and ambiguity of terms, the differences in languages, or the occasionalness oftheir truth. In this case truth remains a property of sentences and what makes a sentence true is, as Quine puts it, the world's being as the sentence says.5 But the historical character of being is notmerely something present or on hand and thus potentially available to a prospective Observer, thinker, or the like with the appropriate conceptual tools. Bivalence in this sense cuts not too sharply but too coarsely. For truth as a disclosure of things, the root of the theory of truth as correct correspondence, presupposes a closure. Nor is the presuppositiona purely abstract conceptual presupposition (as, for example, concepts of cause and effect presuppose one another). Instead, disclosure presupposes closure precisely because the disclosure is a process in which something comes into the clear from and towards absences that are no less a part of its being than its presence. (Note that there are several different possibilities here, e.g., a too1's presence in absence, a sunrise, a life, a regular recurrence in natme, etc.). In contrast tothe correctness of a representation or assertion about an entity or even the presence ofthe entity that is thus represented or asseted, the truth of being is the clearing in which being both reveals and conceals itself. II In the late l930s Heidegger writ_es that the truth of being is the being of truth and only being is.52 The sentence echoes a familiar inversion, rst announcedjn the address On the Essence of Truth ten years earlier and repeatedly invoked throughout the rest of the decade, namely, that
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the answer to the question ofthe essence of truth is to be found in the proposition: the essence oftruth is the truth ofessence. *'53 When Heidegger writes that the question of the essence of truth springs from the question of the truth of the essence, he is exploiting the traditionally metaphysical trappings of the question. For this reason, the transposition of the terms of subject and predicate mayappear at rst as a mere call for deeper scrutiny of the term 'essence' - but it is far more than that." Heidegger is calling for a tum in our relation to being, indeed, he even speaks of a leap into its truth, that demands a rethinking of 'essence.'54 Once again, he displays a remarkable condence in the transforming potential of thinking. According to Heidegger, 'essence' traditionally stood for the beingness of beings, something that lies beyond them (if not also being) and subordinates them in the sense of making them what they are. Though these critical remarks are reminiscent of the argument against essentialzing existence put forward by Gilson in Being and Some Philosophers, Heidegger puts these criticisms to a different use. His objection is that this conception of essence demeans it.56 This talk of demeaning (literallyz "putting down": herabsetzen) is peculiar, but perhaps less so if we recall that Wesen in German not only is part of the past participle of Sein, namely, gewesen, but also a root for the word signifying decaying or rotting, namely, verwesen, as well as terms signifying presence and absence, namely, anwesend/abwesend. Drawing on this family of uses and his construal of being as an historical event, Heidegger conceives essence or Wesen as the happening of the truth of being. Far from lying over and above being, it is supposed to bring to words what is most intimate to it, namely, the historical event of being (gentivus appos`tvus).58 While continuing to employ Wesen mostly in this reconstrued sense of an unfoldingprevalence, he also employs it asa verb, as we shall see momentarily,;and occasionally contrasts its traditional meaning with the variation Wesung that I accordingly translate prevailing. Thus, in an apparent play on a version of the essence/existence distinction, he writes: "Essence [Wesen in the traditional sense] is only presented or re-presented, idea. But prevailing [Wesung] is not only the coupling of being-what and being-how and thus a richer representation, but instead the more original unity of both of them. The prevailing does not belong to each entity, indeed, at bottom it belongs only to being and to what itself belongs to being, tnth."6 What, one might ask, is the point of these verbal gymnastics? Why does Heidegger insist as he himself puts it, the violence of this use of the term'?6l He probably holds on to the term on, 'Wesen,' though with a variation in its meaning, in order to be able to demonstrate how, thanks to the resources of language ("the house of being"), that meaning was not wholly absent from initial and traditional attempts to think the truth of being. As we have seen earlier, he adopts a similar strategy at times in his inconstant construal of aletheia. Just as the root lethe continues to operate, however tacitly, in aletheia, so the verbal uses of wesen animate the senses of Wesen. In the Contributions to Philosophy, he gives two other reasons for his unusual use of 'Wesen'.62 The rst reason is to avoid the usual "category mistake" of conating talk of being with talk of beings, something that Heidegger considers the typical failure of metaphysics and even a shortcoming of his earlier insistence on the ontological differencef In a sense it is tautological and introduces an absurd regress to say that being is. Whatever is said to be is said to be in view of being or, at least, some view of being. Heidegger accordingly insists that being itself ~ what he also calls at one point the prime being - never is but instead prevails [wesr].'64 As elaborated in the last section, this prevailing is precisely what Heidegger understands as the truth of being in contrast to truth as the correct representation of an entity or entities. So, too, he insists: truth never' is' but instead prevails; for it is the tr.th of being and being only' ""i;l.e prevails."
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The most important reason for I-Ieidegger's reconstrual of Wesen, however, is his attempt to think being-historically, to convey the uniqueness,'the inexhaustibility, the historicity of the happening of the truth of being. This original truth is not something simply on hand but instead must rst ground and be grounded in being-here. Moreover, not something more original than being, the grounding itself is time-space, a unity of timing and spacing.69 Not to be confused with the juxtaposition of concepts of computable times and spaces, 'this unity of timing and spacing is the here of being-here, precisely as the clearing for beings disclosure and concealment, providing the site for being-here to discem that it belongs to the historical event of being. Translating Wesen as prevalence' and Wesmg as prevailing' is admittedly risky, given Heideggefs adarnant and persistent refusal to engage in talk of values, let alone truth-values. Nevertheless, these translations have the advantage of capturing the validating character that Heidegger attaches to the tr.th of being. The truth of being, on his account, enjoys or, better, projects a valence in advance of all bivalence. This projected valence is, to be sure, not the valence of somethingon hand somehow or somewhere, but the historical pre-valence of what is _ always already coming to us. III In Heidegger's 1964 essay entitled The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, he repeats the central re'ain of his career of thinking by distinguishing tr.th in the sense of the certainty of knowing or the corespondence of cognition with entities from what he dubs metaphorically the clearing in which entities present themselves or, more prosaically, the unhiddenness that rst makes truth as correspondence or certainty possible. At the same time, however, Heidegger also seems to do an about-face on his oft-iterated contention that the unconcealment is itself to be construed as truth, indeed, truth in an original sense. Aletheà, unconcealment thought as the clearing of presence, is, he observes, not yet truth.7 Questions obviously remain about the relative importance of the clearing to truth in the sense of kdaequatio and cerritudo, but one thing, he maintains, is clear: The question of Aletheia, of the unconcealment as such, is not the question of truth. For this reason it was inappropriate and accordingly misleading to call aletheia in the sense of the clearing tr.th. 7' What is striking about these remarks rnade by Heidegger in his mid-70s is, as noted, the fact that he had been _ referring for some forty years to the clearing as a more original truth than truth as correspondence or correctness.72 But there is more. Not only does he explicitly repudiate his former practice, he also appears to retract his contentious claim that early Greeks understood alerheia as unconcealment until later Greeks, especially Plato, transformed it into the traditional notion of correct correspondence.73 A good deal has been made of these remarks. To many, they echo Tugendhafs criticism propounded two months earlier - that I-Ieideggefs conception of truth as the disclosedness of being fatally forfeits the traditionally critical conception of truth. On that traditional conception, as noted at the outset of my remarks, truth is a property, of something capable of corresponding to a state of affairs (e. g., the property of intellectus, a representation, an idea, a proposition, judgment, meaning, or the like). But truth can be the property of such truth-bearers precisely because they are also potential bearers of falsehood. The proposition p is true' only says something other than simply p' because 'p itself is bivalent, which is to say, it might be true or false. I-Iowever, by identifying truth with beings sheer disclosedness, 'Heidegger appears to bypass the function of a truth-bearer and, with it, the critical dinension of bivalence.
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One author who sees inHeidegger's 1964 remarks an admission of mistake in just this sense is Karl-Otto Apel. Commenting on the remarks cited above, Apel observes: At this point, Heidegger does nothing less than revoke that thesis which he had held with growing determination since Sein und Zeit: namely, that the more original and the only signicant concept of truth is the tmconcealment of beings on the ground of the disclosedness ofbeingthere, that is the opening ofBeing. *'74 Apel infers from' Heidegger's remarks that the reason behind his change of heart is the realization that the unconcealmerzt ofmeaning is, indeed, a condition of correctness - that is, it does not operate as the only necessary, but not a suicient 5 detemining standard." Apel's gloss is typical. Heidegger's radical, intemperateconception of truth as disclosure is tamed by reconstructing or, better, degrading it, rst, to a matter of meaning in Contrast to validation and, second, to a necessary but insufcient condition of Validation. In this last comiection, Apel notes the need for factual and countefactual validation and does so in a way that sheds further light on his assessment of the revisions entailed by Heidegger's remarks. Because progress in knowledge demands progress in factual correctness, Apel observes, such determined scope for the factualprogress cannot in fact be totally relative to a previously 6 historical openings, as Heidegger suggested." Thus, in Apel's view, before Heidegger made those exculpatory remarks in 1964_,:he not only confused meaning with truth, mistaking a necessary for a sufcient condition of Validation in the process; he_ also collapsed present and future progress into a replay or reprise .of the past. If Apel is right, Heidegger should have retracted his earlier analyses, given the fatal confusions and conations mentioned above. But he could also salvage his account of being's disclosure by disjoining it as the sphere of meaning from the domain of truth. Of course, the important point is not whether Heidegger did or did not retract his earlier analyses of truth but whether he should have, whether, in other words, what he elaborated under whatever rubric - is trenchant and useful. Whatever else Heidegger's 1964 remarks mean, there can be no doubt that they are concessions of some sort. At the very least, Heidegger is admitting that, as early as Homer, the term aletheia' stood for something like correct correspondence. Given this time-honored usage, it was, as he put it, inappropriate (nicht sachgem) and misleading for him to use the tern 'truth' to designate the way in which being Originally opens itself and beings up to us in some measure. He already makes this point in the Contributions to Philosophy when he obsevesz "Where correctness thus predetermines the 'idea' of truth, all paths to its origin are thrown out."77 Yet Apel's gloss on Heideggers 1964 remarks seems patently overreaching. In the concessions made by Heidegger there is no retraction of the import of the original disclostue of being and certainly no acknowledgement that it signies simply a factual manifestation of meanngs or that it has no more validating force -including epistemic force - than that of a necessary condition for bivalent propositions. Heidegger never confused beings measured self disclosurewith the pre-givenness of the meanngs of opinions-and beliefs nor did he ever construe this original truth in proto-pragmatist fashion as the epistemic stepchildrend of perceptions and/or public discourse. But if Heidegger does not retract his insistence on the originality and priority of being's self-'disclosur'e, what motivated him to speak - misleadingly, it turns outof being's clearing itself as truth? The question is a useful one, not only for reconstructing _I-Ieidegger's thinking but, above all, for understanding this most persistent theme of -his thinking. If he later has, as noted, second thoughts on so employing the term truth,' given its traditional baggage, we can
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gainrsome insight into his account of being's original self-disclostue by pondering why he felt so secure for so long in calling it the prevalence of truth." The short answer, I suggest, is to be found in his belief that all matters of valence o r ' value, including matters of bivalence and truth-values, are grounded in beings disclosure. If truth as correctness orcorrespondence is in some sense compelling, then what is compelling. about it must be grounded in the way that being discloses and, indeed, conceals itself and thus prevails. If this answer is correct, then Heiclegger's mistake in construing beings' original disclosure as the prevalence of truth was tactical and rhetorical, not substantive. His readers could not help but take the measure of valence, the prevalence of being's disclosure of itself, from bivalence (in keeping with the literal signicance of Heideggefs admission that the characterization of it as truth was not sachgem). But this tactical error rests not on a confusion of meaning with truth on his part, but on a well-founded condence that bei_ngs disclosure and concealment of itself prevails over truth as correspondence. This prevailing is not forfeited by his admission of the inappropriateness of using a tenn for it that already had a deeply-entrenched, derivative sense.
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Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy ofDonald Davidson, ed. Ernest Lepore (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) and The Structure and Content of Truth, Journal ofPhilosophy, 87 (1990): 279-328. The classical statement of a pragmatist theory oftruth is to be found in William James, Pragmatism and -The Meaning ofTruth (one volume) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978); see, too, Richard Rorty, Pragmatism, Davidson, and Tnth in Truth, ed. Simon Blackburn and Keith Simmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 323-3 50. 6 An early form of deationism is sometimes called the redundancy theory, as formulated in Gottlob Frege, ber Sinn und Bedeutung in Funktion, Begriff Bedeutung, ed. Gnther Patzig,_4'h, expanded edition (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), 40-65; F. P. Ramsey, Facts and Propositions, in Blackburn and Simmons, 106107; A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, l952( reprint of 2 edition, 1946), 87-90; P. F.
Maitin Heidegger, Beitrge zur Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989),. 237 2 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, twelfth edition (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1972), 226 (heraer 'SZ'). The existential analysis of Da~sein or being-here in Sein und Zeit tums on the disclosedness of certain manners of being, for_ example, working, relating to others, undergoing various emotons from fear to anxiety, projecting possibilities, being entangled in worldly pursuits and evaluations. Precisely because of being-heres disclosedness in these ways, Heidegger dubs it the most original phenomenon of truth (SZ 2201). _ 3 In 1938 Heidegger refers to nine texts where he addresses the question of truth: (1) his 1930 address, On the Essence of Truth, together with the interpretation of Plato's allegory ofthe cave in lectures of 1931/32; (2) his 1935 Freiburg address, On the Origin of the Work of Art;'(3) his 1936 Frankfurt address by the same title; (4) his 193 7/38 lectures On the Essence of '1`ruth; (5) his 1938 address, The Grourding of the Modem Picture of the World by means of Metaphysics; (6) his remarks in the second volume of the lectures on Nietzsche, focussing on Untimely Considerations, section 6: truth and correctness, lesson 1938/39; (7) his 1939 lectures onNietzsche (Will to Power, book three: The Will to Power as Know1edge); .(8) his 1936 Contributions to Philosophy, the section on grounding (according to von I-Ierrman, GA 65: 293-392); (9) his lectre onAristot1e's Physics, Beta l in the frst trimester of 1940. See Martin Heidegger, Besinnung, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 66 (Frankfrt am Main-: Klostermann, 1997), 107. To this list we can add: the. discussion in Besinnung itself (107-123, 259 [Die Irre], 313-318), the "Letter on Humanism and passages at the end of Hegel and the Greeks"; for the latter two works, see Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken, second, expanded edition (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1978), 311-360; 432-438. _ 4 101 see Al'ed The Semantic of Truth and the Foundations of Metaphysics 1b25-29; Tarski, Conception Semantics," in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. I-I. Feigl and W. Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century Cros, 1949), 53f. . 5 For classical defenses of a coherence theory of truth, see F. I-I. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1893) and Brand Blanshard, The Nature ofThought, vol. 2, 4' edition (New York: Humanities, 1964) (original edition: 1939); for more recent attempts, see Nicholas Rescher, The Coherence Theory ofTruth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973) and Donad Davidson, A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge" ir Truth and
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Strawson, Truth, Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, supp. Vol. 24 (1-950): 129-56. For accounts of the deationist approach, see Hartry Field, The Deationary Conception ofgTr.th" in Fact, Science and MoralityEssays- on A. J. Aye-'s Lan a e -Truth and Lo ic, ed. Graham MacDonald and Crispin Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 55-1 117; Paul Ho-wich, Truth, 2" ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). On whether Quine belongs to the deationists' circle, see Anil Gupta, A Critique of Deationism in Blackbum and Simmons, 285n_ Michael Dummett, Of What Kind of Thing is Truth a Property? in Blackburn and Simmons, 281. See the essays by Crispin Wright, Michael Dumrnett, and Ani! Gupta in Blackburn and Simmons. 9 Cf. Durnrnett, op. Cit, 264-281. In this connection, see the celebrated debate over truth a generation ago between Austin and Strawson, reproduced in Blackburn and Simmons, 151-199. . 10 Beitrage 235, 252, 256, 287. 11 _ B . 12 aiig!z 332, 252, 256. 13 260: "Das Seyn west; das Seiende ist." See, too, Beitrge 269, 286f_ Beitrge 1 Or, as he also puts it, its originating; see Beitrge 93; see ibid., 189, 383. Besinnung 349. _ 348. Beitrge 329, W Beitrge 305; the question of the prevalence oressence of truth is the prelininary question (Varage) to the basic of philosophy: how does being prevail? (wie west das Seyn?); cf. Beitrge 386. _ qsueston 1 Herein lies the problem of privileging one presentation over another. De magistro, Opera Omnia (Tomus Primus) in Patrologia Latina, ':1S.It,ur1e/iii Auggstin-Iipp]o?=:1n;sEicopi, e _ _ . g n e , o _ , o . . _. 20 Beitrage 298. 2' . Beitrage 372, 316. 22 In connection with Heidegger-'s account of tnth as disclosure it is necessary to recall that he distinguishes discovery from disclosure; in each case there a movement omprivationto actualization; but Heidegger dstngushes the dis-covery of an entity om its ds-closure, that s to say, ts emergence from absence into presence. For example, Madame Curie discovered an entity and, at the same time, a kind of entity, but this discovery presupposed the unconcealing of the plutonium. The sentence Madame Curie discovered plutonium in 1900 is tmc because Madame Curie discovered plutonium in lm. But this disquotational move with respect to truth is possible, as Tarski, Quine, and others insist, only because truth in this sense ('true' in this use) istransparent. If Heidegger's analysis stands, then truth in this respect is transparent only because there is a twofold sense of truth that is more primordial, namely, the emergence of the state of affairs from obscurity and the equiprimordiality of a certain closure, concealment, or simply un-truth. Here we have the basis for what Heidegger terms the errancy ' ' ' I that s nseparable from truth as dsclosure
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53%:-.l'_ Beitrage 29-af, 299, 303. Beitrage 305, 312, 29s. 3 see esp. Bemge 31'f, 322. -Beitrage 303, 304, 305. Beitrge 296, 297. 36
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Beitrge 294. Beitrge 311. 35 The here in being-here is related to truth as openness of the self-concealing; the being in being-here is the :_ projecting of the truth of being.). 299. Beitrage 293, 0 Beitrge 299.
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Beitrge 3_31:Schon aletheia 1u1d aletheia ist nicht dasselbe." Beitrage 3sof, 33-if. " Beitrage 3323 35, 33sff. 4' Beitrage ssf, 334, ass. _ 43 Beitrge 358. _ 4 357f. In this connection also Beitrge 316; see, too, ibid., 343, 344, 349f, 353-356; 230; Heidegger explains some of the motivation behind what is today called a deationist account of truth; cf. ibid., 358. This explanation is not so surprising since the seeds of that account are akeady sovim by Frege, with whom Heidegger was
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- Besinnung 112; Beitrge 95. 53 Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 26; Beitrge 288. 54 288: Auch in der sich die Kehre auf: Wesen der Wahrheit ud Wahrheit des Beitrge Wahrheitsfrage drngt Wesens." Ibid., 407: Was ist diese ursprngliche Kehre im Ereignis? Nur der Anfall des Seyns als Eregnung des Da bringt das Da-sein zu ihm selbst und so zum Vollzug (Bergung) der instndlich gegrndeten Wahrheit in das Seiende, das in der gelichteten Verbergung des Da seine Sttte ndet. Befmige 236ff. 5 Beitrage 233. 57 The noun Abwesen is obsolete, replaced today by Abwesenheit. 5* efrage 236. emeege 236-239; 2643 26of. 6 Beitrge 289. 6' Beitrge 286. _ 62 There is a fourth reason, namely, a means of criticizing the ontological distinction. In the Beitrge Heidegger usually equates Sein with Seiendheit in contrast to Seendes. Seyn then serves as a way of identifyingbeing that supposedly falls outside the ontological distinction or, at least, that distinction construed ontologically where a concept of being is mistaken for being. See Beitrge 229, 287. 63 . eifage 23612 291, 229f. 6" bm see 112. Beitrage 260, 342; eeo, ibid., S Beitrage 93, 331, 353. Beitrge 342; so, too, time and space are said to prevail; cf. ibid., 385. ' . Beireage 237. 68 see also ibid., 341: die entscheidende Frage". Beitrge 287, 299; Beitrage 333. 7 Martin Heidegger, Zur Suche des Denkens (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1976), 76.
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E_voking the Momentous Site: 'Time-Space in the Contributions 'to -Philosophy

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Richard Polt
1. Other than the present indicative
to describe what is present before us? Or to describe the timeless structures of all presentation? Or can philosophy investigate possibilities or _ the past, while still remaining philosophy? Can there be an essentially retrospective thinking, or narrative thinking, or prophetic thinking? There has, of course, already been a self-proclaimed philosopher of the future: Nietzsche. And today, Derrda and his imitators often experimenf with moods and tenses (the future perfect is one of their favorites). Between Nietzsche 'and Derrida lies Heidegger, at least in one of his incarnations: the post-phenomenological Heidegger of the 19305, who in the Beitrge echoes the tonalities of Nietzsche and makes an intense effort to overcome what Derrida calls the metaphysics of presence. Are the Contributions to Philosophy, then, an exception to the presentindicative horizon of normal philosophical discourse? The grammatical _ answer is largely no: Heidegger writes, for example, "Das Seyn west als das Ereignis"-which appears to be a statement of current fact. But he goes on to warn us that this is really "kein Satz-not a statement at all (260). As I read this book, despite most of its surface grammar, Heidegger is struggling to think and speak of the event of appropriation as a unique future happening. His goal is not to describe what is, but to prepare for the possible granting Of a sense of what is, has been, and may be. The text attempts to exceed presence and actuality for the sake of a broader and deeper encounter- with time and
our task
Why has philosophy almost always been written in the present tense and indicative mood? Could there be a subjunctive philosophy? Will there be a philosophy of the future? _ _ These are more than questions of grammar and rhetoric; they conqem our basic conceptions of our own activity and the theme of our thought. I5
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A crucial test of my reading is whether it can be 'applied to the 'theme of "time-space,'_' which Heidegger develops in some of the most puzzling and original sections of the Beitrge. In what mood are these sections to be read? Are they indicative descrptions of temporality as a quasi-present transcendental structure, or as an essence that is presented to us in something like categorial intuition? Or are they subjunctive-perhaps even optative of imperative-evocations of a possible happening? If so, then the Contributions' discussion of time-space will prove to be quite different from Being and Time's account of trnporality, which is essentially 'present-indicative. There Heidegger __traces ordinary time back to-
possibility.
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Dasein's temporality as the existential structure that opens up the horizonal schemata" within which we encounter beings (SZ 69c).1 The present is only one such horizonal schema, so it could be argued that Heidegger has already exceeded the r_estrictions of presence. However, his way of describing temporality in Being und Time still moves within the present in a larger sense. Temporality is presented here as a present phenomenon-its schemata can become present to_the interpreting observer. Furthermore, temporality presents itself as permanently present, as more basic than any passing event. Temporality is a structure that is always already in effect. To be sure, it is a relatively dynamic structure: it reaches ecstatically towarcl future, past, and present; it temporalizes" itself (sich zeitigt) and thus happens in some sense (SZ 65). Furthermore, authentic temporality is a possibility rather than a constant. However, as a whole the account of temporality in Being und Time describes the fundamental features of eventfulness, instead of evoking an event; it seems to be on the hunt for essences rather than possibilities.2 In the decade after Being and Time, Heidegger tries to move from analyzing the structure of Dasein's understanding of being to speaking of the happening of being--"vom Seinsverstndnis zu Seinsgeschehnis (GA 40, 218).3 Is this move complete in the Beitrge? It is easy to read this text's statements on "time-space as more descriptions of invariant structures. For example: Die Zeit rumt ein, niemals berckend. Der Raum zeitigt ein, niemals entrckend (386). Whatever this may mean, it seems to have the neat symmetry that one expects from a description of a framework-not a happening. _ But can we emphasize the verbsin these phrases and interpret their present-indicatve grammar in a Way that points not to an eternal structure, but to a possible event? An initial hint is provided by one telling line on time-space that is more imperative than indicative-it ends with mu. "The abyssal ground is thus the intrinsically timing-spacing-countersweeping momentous site of the 'between' as which Da-sein must be grounded/'4 Must be grounded? Is this some a priori, transcenciental necessity? Or is it a situated, historical necessity that may someday become urgent? Here we
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1SZ" will refer to the later Niemeyer editions of Sein und Zeit. 2For example, ticipation makes Dasein authentically futural, and in such a way that the z-nticipation itself is possible orlyin so far as Dasein, as being [als seèndes], is always coming towards itself-that is to say, in so far ascit is futural in its Being in general": SZ 325 (Macquarrie and Robinson translation). The emphasis here is on Dasein's Sein berhaupt, not on the moment of authenticity. 3'Time' in Being und Time is the indication and suggestion of that which happens in the uniqueness of ap-propriation as the truth of the essential happening of be-ing (74). Parenthesized references are to GA 65, Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). - " Translations are mine. 4"Der Ab-grund ist so d-ie in sich zeitigendfumendgegenschwingende Augenblickssttte des 'Zwischen,' als welches das Dasein gegrndet sein mu (387).
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should remember one of Heidegger-'s slogans: necessity emerges from _ emergency.5 What I will try to show in this paper is that we can read the passages on time-space in the Contributions in something other than a present-inclicative mood and tense, as pointing to a possible future emergency, the event of appropriation.'After some discussion of appropriation in general, I will focus on time-space and provide a close reading of 242, the' Contributions' main exploraton of the theme.
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2. The coming event of appropriation

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future event?
Time-space is just one of a complex of problems that arise in the context of Ereignis. In order to set the stage for my interpretation of time space, then, I offer some indications of how I interpret'Ereignis itself. I take being (das Seyn) as the crucial moment in which the meaning of all that is, or the being ofbeings (das Sein des Seienden), is given to Dasein as an urgent problem If das Seyn west als das Ereignis, then this crucial happening has the character of an event of appropriation. I also believe Heidegger tends (though not without ambiguity) to use das Ereignis to mean a unique future event-not a universal structure. I want to take him at his word when he says that he is not generalizing, but evoking the unique (cf. 29); not seeking the a priori, but invoking the radically new (cf. 111); not describing human beings, but provoking us into embracingDasein as a possibility (cf. 194). _ Some interpretations of the Beitrge, however, seem to assume without argument that this book, like Being and Time, consists of presentindicative thinking about some universal, necessary features of the human condition? Let me do a little to set the arguments into motion, then. Is Ereignis an event at all? If so, is it a single event? And is it a single
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6"Die Wesung des Seyns ffnet sich nur in der Augenblicklichkeit des Vor-sprungs des Da-seins in das Ereignis _ . ._ Auch ihrt nie unmittelbar vom Sein des Seienden zum auf das Sein des Seienden schon auerhalb der Seyn e_in Weg, weil die Sicht des Daseins erfolgt (75). Aug/enblicklichkeit There are certainly exceptions. Daniela Vallega-Neu, for example, points Q1__fhaf Seyr is "a temporal occurrence, not "a permanent ontological structure": Poietic Saying/' in Charles Scott et al., Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy (Bloornngton: Indiana University Press, 2001), 68. Christian Mller emphasizes that time-space is a_1-appening": Der Todnls Wandlungsmitte: Zur Frage nach Entscheidung, Tool und letztem Gott in Heideggers Betr''gen zur Philosophie" (Berlin: Duncker 8: correct statements. As John I-Iumblot, 1999), 287. But one must do more than make Sallis observes, "everything will depend on proper-ly determining thetsense of happening": Grmuders of' the Abyss, in Scott et al., Companion to Heiclegger's Contributions to Philosophy, 185.
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5AJle Notwendigkeit wurzelt in einer Not (45). "Notwendigkeiten leuchten auf nur
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Among those who claim that Ereignis is not an event at all are the translators of the Contributions to Philosophy, who write, 'event' immediately evokes the metaphysical notions of the unprecedented and the precedent that are totally alien to Ereignis/'15 Perhaps Emad and Maly mean that an event ts into a linear chain of events, either as its beginning or as one link within it; Ereignis, however, lies apart from any timeline. This argument does not seem denitive to me. Heidegger does insist that Ereignis and be-ing (Seyn) are unique, einzig (66, 252, 371, 385, 460)-and what is truly unique cannot be assimilated into the customary sequence of run-of-the-mill events. However, the Contributions also favor the word einmalig, 'singular' or 'happening only once' (55, 385, 463). This suggests that the uniqueness of appropriation is a historical uniqueness, -a uniqueness that happens. Such a unique event could be unprecedented in its meaning or character, yet still be preceded and followed by other, lesser events. In several postwar essays, Heidegger himself emphatically distinguishes Ereignis from an "occurrence" (Vorkommnis) or "happening" (Geschehen or Geschehnis).9 The ordinary concept of event, he says, fails to think _"in terms of Appropriating as the extending and sending which opens and preserves" (aus .dem Eignen als dem lichtend verwahrenden Reichen und Schicken).1 Is this enough for us to conclude that appropriation is in some sense invariant-not an event that comes to pass but a permanent structure?'11 Not necessarily; Heidegger may simply be implying that the ordinary way of thinking about happening does not go deeply enough into happening itself. He also characterizes Ereignis by way of a series of verbs:
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3Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloonington: Indiana University Press, 1999), xx-xxi. 9Appropriaton cannot be represented either asian occurrence or [as] a happening [Geschehen]":.The Way to Lang1.iage, in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper 8: Row, 1971), 127. Cf. On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper 8: Row, 1'972), 20: "What the name 'event of Appropriation' names can no longer be represented by means of the current meaning of the word; for in that meaning 'event of Appropriation' is mderstood in the sense of occurrence and happening" ("Wir knnen das mit dem Namen 'das Ereignis' Gennante nicht mehr am Leitfaden der gelugen Wortbedeutung vorstellen; denn sie versteht 'Ereignis' irn Sinne von Vorkommnis und Geschehnis). Cf. also Identity ana' Djjference, trans. Ioan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 36: "The term eventyof appropriation here no longer means .what we would otherwise call a happening, an occurrence ("Das Wort Ereignis meint hier nicht mehr das, was w ir sonst irgendein . Geschehnis, ein Vorl<or_nrnnis nen-en). . 1On Time and Being, 20. 11Parvis Emad seems to maintain such a position when he writes, "In contrast to the death-bound 'and nite occurrence of projection, being's appropriating forth-throw is ewig, i.e., ongoing self-sustaining and is not eln`1inated by Dasein's passing": Heidegger I', 'Heidegger II', and Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)/' in Babette Babich, ed., Prom Phenornenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 144. But "the etemal" that, for-hirn, Heidegger says (das Ewige) is pfecisely not the ongong (das Fort~wiihrencie) but the imique, which may withdraw in a'moment (371; cf. 7, 55). On Heideggerian "eternity," see Mller, Der Tod als Wandluhgsmitte, 299-302.
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eignen, lichten, verwahren, reichen, schicken. Iram not sure I can think of a "sending" that does not happen. And we might simply ask why Heidegger would take 'up the word Ereignis if what he meant by it had nothing to do with its meaning in ordinary German (instead, he could have used something like Eigentum or das Eigene). Furthermore, unll-ce some of Heideggefspostwar essays, the Contributions freely use words such as 'happening' in close connection with Ereignis: "only the greatest happening [Geschehen], the innermost Ereignis, can still save us (57). Appropriatign involves Wesmg as "the happening of the truth of be-ing" (287). But what sort of happening is this? Of course we cannot simply subsume Ereignisunder an everyday concept of event-but are there promising analogues to Ereignis in some things we normally call events? _ Elsewhere I have argued that appropriation is analogous to a "reinterpreive event," an event in which one's interpretations of self and world are' transformed.12 A reinterpretive event heightens or resolves a tension that affects its protagonist's way of being someone in the world. Because such event affects the way in which beings as a whole are revealed, it is not just an entity, but' a critical juncture in the unfolding of the .appearing of entitie5_ Now imagine the ultimate reinterpretive, or rather interpretive event--the event that makes possible meaning itself, not just for an individual but for a community and for an age. Such an event would be the critical moment in which this shared Dasein and its own 'there' rst emerge. It would be the establishing of time and space themselves for this people and this age. And Heidegger himself tells us that das Ereignis is short for das Ereignis der Dagriindmg-the event in which the there is founded (183, 247), Such an event would concern the appearing of beings as beings. lt would elude the categories of traditional metaphysics, which describes beings in their being while neglecting the originary 'giving' or 'sending' of the being of _ beings. that One could still argue' appropriation 'happens' continually, as it were--it is a permanent xture, rather than a particular event. Howeve-, consider the connection between Ereignis and inception (Anfang). The greatest Ereignis is always the inception" (57). "The inception is be-ing itself- as Ereignis". (58). Lest we think that Heidegger is using the word Anfang in some nontemporal sense, he explicitly says that inceptions are not supratemporally eternal, but' greater than eternity; [they are] the shocks of time (17).13 . Could there be more than one event of appropriation, then? (One might assume that there at least two: the Greek "rst inception and
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12Richard Polt, The Event of Enthirking the Event/' in Scott, Companion ta Contributions to Philosophy, 93-4. 1 Heidfggens Heidegger speaks of the shocks" (Ste) not only of time, but also of appropriation (463) and be-ing (464). The word suggests th_e__1rpact of a deeply transforrnatlve event. For further discussion of the Anfang, !ee Richard Polt, "What is Conference at 'Villanova Incep tive Tl1inl<ing?" in the proceedings of the 1998 Heidegger . University.
unique and singular (385). (Here Wesen is Wesung-an essential happening, not an abstraction [287].) This passage seems to be saying that' although the rst incepton (physis) was unique, it did not attain Ereignis, which is reserved for the other inception. Statements such as this suggest that the other inception is not merely a new relation to or recognition of appropriation, but the rst and last happening of appropriation itself. The best translation of das Ereignis might then be "the appropriation-much as f'the Crucixion refers not to a generality, but to a particular, epoch-making event. _ If this is right, then has the event of appropriation already happened, is it happeningnow, or is it reserved for the future? The conjunction of a few sentences provides ashort but strong argument on this point. "Be-ing as ap-propriation is history" (494); "be-ing needs man in order to happen essentially (251); and "so far, man has never yet been historical [or historically]" (492). We are syllogistically drawn to the surprising conclusion that be-ing has never happened, at least not as
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Heidegger's "other inception.") Might Heidegger be describing the general pattern of such events? Or can there be only one genuine Ereignis? The answer is not clear to me, but some passages do suggest that appropriation is a single event. For instance, the "sig`nali-rg" (Erwinken) associated with the nal god is "the -inceptive Wesen of Ereignis, inceptive in the other inception. This Wesen of be'-ing [is] unique and singular [einzig und einmal_ig], and thus satises the innermost Wesen of be-ing; physis too [is]
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The future tense of the Beitrge is most explicit in its brief invocations of die Zu-knftigen (Part VI), although it runs implicitly throughout the text-which is itself addressed to "the few and the rare," that is, the future ones (11). What is the sense of this future tense? Has philosophy become prophecy? Is prophecy prediction? The future ones are not simply a group that will come upon the scene tomorrow. Some are here today (400). One is long dead: Hlderlin (401). To be futural, then, is not -to be chronologically later. The future ones are opposed to the "later ones, who have nothing more ahead of them and nothing more behind them" (96). These later ones" are epigones; they may race forward in an illusoryfprogress' that multiplies representations of beings, but they fail to participate in the nonreproducible happening of be-ing. The future ones, in contrast, reach forwardbecause they reach back: "Hlderlin is the most futural of all because his provenance is broadest, and in this. breadth he traverses what is greatest and transforms it (401). To be futural, then, is to engage with the sweep of our history and to grasp its uniqueness, thus opening the possibility of another unique history-the other inception. The future here is not a later point on our established tirneline, but a new domain of sense and
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For this reason, although Heidegger's discourse is prophetic, it is not simply forecasting. Prophecy at its root is not predicon but 'speaking out'} the Biblical prophets speak out to .the Israelites by bring-ing them back to their
responsibilities, challenging them to heed the word of God. This bringing~ back is not only a remembrance of commitments but also a revelation of the present and future inthe light of these commitments. The event of appropriation, then, is futural not only because it has not yet fully occurred, but also because it engages (will engage) the whole domain of our history, and in this way opens (will open) a new domain.
3. Time-space
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as the momentous site
Let me turn to time-space itself; the questions I have raised about the character of Ereignis demand this in anycase. For instance, Emad and Maly write, "as born out by sections 238-242 of the Contributions, 'event' cannot live up to the demands put on it by Ereignis because 'event' emerges from within 'time-space' and as such is itself enowned by Ereign`s.14 In other words, Ereignis is not an event, but the precondtion for the emergence of all events; as the basis of time-space, Ereignis rst allows events to become
time-space. Something here must be correct. Ereignis is ,not an entity, -but enables entities to manifest themselves as such. So Ereignis is not just an occurrence within the domain of beings, anoccurrence that itself is. Furthermore, time as time-space forms part of Ereignis-and it would be strange to try to think of time itself in terms of some event within time. Case closed? Maybe not. We might be able' to make a distinction between purely ontical events within time, and events that happen on the level of time and being themselves. Time itself may 'happen' or 'take place.'15 We can also approach the problem from another direction. Assuming that appropriation is not an event, and that it has priority over all events, then how can we think of this priority itself in a way that avoids metaphysics? Appropriation cannot be an essence or a universal, if-we take seriously I-Ieideg`ger's critique of the_Platonic idea in all its variations (e.g. 11O). Appropriation cannot be a condition of the possibility of experience, if we take _seriously his rejection of transcendental thinking (e.g. 122, 184). In short, if it is difcult to think of time-space as happening, it is at least as difcult to think of it as a non-event without resorting to some variant of traditional _ metaphysics.
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151-Ians Ruin writes, "The Ereignis does not signify an event in time; on the contrary, it is one of a series of fundamental concepts through which time itself is thematized": Enigmatic Origins: Tracing the Theme ofI-Iistoriciiy through Heideggers Works (Stocl<h0]m; Almqvist 8:' Wiksell, 1-994), 203. But "[t]o understand being historically [means] to understand it as that which happens in a passage of throw_nness and projection, of disappropria tion and appropriation, as an enigmatic origi.n"that thnl<1`ng can never master" (ibini., 205). So being as Ereignis "happens" even though -it is not a "process in
Contributions to Philosophy, xxi.
But let us return to the sections on time-space that the translators cite. Here Heidegger clearly does give time-space priority over the "elapsing of succession (371), over theusual representations of time and. space" (372), over the fact "that every historical occurrence is determined sometime and someplace '(377), and over "the ux of 'time' that ows by the present-athand (382). However, all this evidence is inconclusive. Is Heidegger claiming that time-space is deeper than any event? Or simply that it is deeper than the customary picture of events as occurrences that ow from not-yet-present to present to no-longer-present? If this is his claim, then there is still room to think oftime-space as 'happening' in a cleeper way.16 What would this mean? Das Seyn west als das Ereignis: appropriations the way-in which be-ing essentially happens. If be~ing happens, it must happen someplace and sometime. But this place and time are not just points on a map and numbers on a clock; they are the site and moment where and when home and inception hold sway. Appropriation is the event of the grounding of the there (183, 247); in this event, a site is staked out where being-there (Dasein) can happen. Be-ing thus takes place (or in German, das Seyii ndet statt, 'nds its site'). We 'nd the site' that is our own, a 'there' within which beings can be given to us as beings. Time and space thus happen together as time-space, as the Augenblicks-Sttte (e.g. 371). The there opens up at a crucial historical juncture, a moment of critical inception. We can call it the site of the moment, then-or the momentous site. (For once, English has an advantage over German.) The there is the site of all 'moment' in the sense of import-the place where the being of beings, their import, is gathered. Only in a place can beings make a difference tous. Only at a time can we receive and interpret a legacy for the sake of a _ possibility, cultivating and eliciting historical import.17 What does the momentous site have to do with appropriation? The site is rooted in the dimension of the proper, of belonging-understood as the coming-to-pass of one's own.13 In appropration, be-ing happens-the being of beings becomes our own. And only when be-ing happens can we come into our own as Dasein--the guardian of the being of beings. Appropriation takes time-not merely in thatit lasts a while, but in that it requires remembrance and awaiting (384). lt also takes space: it needs to be implemented or 'sheltered' in our habitation, in our dwelling amidst things.
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16The thought of Ereignis is not "an interpretation of being as 'becomin_g'_ (472). The seemingly obvious notions of becoming and change are embroled in the history of rnetaphysics (99). I-Iowever, this does not rule out the possibility that appropriation 'happens' in a nonrnetaphysical sense, a sense that does not exclude change even if it is not intelligible purely in terms of change. 17These ideas recur in much of Heidegger's work. For an excellent investigation of the question of the moment or Augenblick in a number of I-Ieideggerian texts, but with only passing references to the Beitrge, see William McNeill, 'TheL'GIance ofthe Eye: Heidegger and the_Ends of Theory (Albany: State University of Nevyf' York Press, 1999). 13Tirne-space is where and when "propriety [Eignung] can happen (51).
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Heidegger favors two words in thinking of time-space: Entrckmg and Berckung. These words name certain ways of 'shifting' or 'moving' (Rckung) that operate together to open up the there (70). I will use 'transport' for Ertriickmg and 'captivation' for Beriickung-at theprice of losing all trace of the common Riickmg. Entrckmg (transport) means _ in or carrying away, removing-and particular, rapture ecstasy. E_ntri2ckmg,l then, serves as a name for what Being and Time called the 'ecstases' of temporality--our removal into the dimensions of future, past and present, Berckmg (captivation) means a c-harm or spell, or in its more verbal sense, beguiling, luring or enticing. The word suggests a seduction that draws one into a enclosed domain. If Entrckung is temporal, then Berickung is 5paia1_ While Entrckung draws out, Berckmg draws in. Both words can have _ somewhat negative connotations, as Heidegger notes (385): Entrckung ie a kind of dispersal or dissolution, and Berckung is ia kind of estrangement and bewitching. However, maybethese connotations are negative only as long as we picture ourselves as self-enclosed, static precincts. If we can understand ourselves as Dasein-a thrown and throwing openness-then it will be entirely appropriate to speak of a captivation and transport that carry us i m g time and space, enabling rather than ,destroying ownness. Heidegger weuld add, however, that this must not be a mere change in how we represent ourselves; what is needed is a de-rangement (Ver-rickung) of humanity into Dasein (372). Time-space is--in a nearly untranslatable phrase-"die EntrckungsBerckungsgefge (Fgung) des Da" (371). The there ts together as the juncture of transport and captivation. What exactly is the relation between captivation and transport-space'and time? Heidegger sometimes wavers between assigning priority to time and making time and space _ equiprimordal.19 However, his primary intention is clear in the .phrase "timing spacing-spacing timing (Zeitigendes Rumen--rumende Zeitigung, 261). Instead of subordinating one member of time-space to the other, he prefers to think of them together, as complementary dimensions of appropriation (377~8). Space and time belong. together (189) because both are _ required in order for be-ing and Dasein to go to work.
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4. Beitrge 242: the enticements and raptures of the abyss

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With these basic points in place, we are ready to read 242, which is One of the Contributions' most sustained and original trains of thought.20 Each
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19For instance, in one passage (192) time's transport is said to schaffen space, which provides space or that it creates space; however, Heidegger adds that immediately space must also be understood in terms of its own spacing ). (Rumun _, :~ 20Forbtl'er readings of 242 see Daniela Neu, Die Notivndigkeit der Griindmg im Zeitalter der Dekonstruktion: Zur Grndng in Heideggers' feitrgen zur PI1z'loso"l1ie" unter Hinzuziehung der Derridaschen Dekonstruktion (Berlin: Duncker 8: Humblot, 1997), 204can mean either that it
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paragraph below presents a condensed paraphrase of one of Heidegger's main thoughts, followed by a more interpretive commentary enclosed in parentheses. I have taken some small liberties with the order of his _ faithful to the general movement of his thought. In statements, but I broadterms, 242 moves from the themes of abyss and emptiness to a meditation on transport and captivation, and from there to an account of derivative space and time.
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(a) Ground as abyss (379~380)
how be-ing as appropriation would involve time-space; unconcealment must involve it too. But how do ground and abyss happen?) The ground conceals itself while it sustains and towers through that _ which it grounds. (To seek a ground for the given is to seek something that is hidden-otherwise it would not need seeking, and would not be separate from the given. Yet the 'ground also pervades that which is given-otherwise it would not be the ground ofthe given. So the ground both lurks beneath the grounded and dwells within it. In this case, what is grounded is the given beings andthe given sense of their being; the ground is truth-the happening of unconcealment, the giving of the being of beings. Unconcealment is 'in' beings themselves, for they are what is unconcealed. Yet unconcealment as such stays away; it remains in the back-ground.) . _ The abyssal ground is the staying-away of ground. (We would normally think of this as the absence of all grounds, but if the ground as such is selfsecluding, then the ground itself essentially happens as abyss. As long as the ground refuses to come forth, it is abyssal.) Yet there is a hesitation here: the ground does not simply stay away. It grounds, "yet does not properly [eigentlich] ground" (380). (What would it mean- to ground eigentlich? Perhaps to provide an absolute, self-validating, fully self-disclosing ground. Such a ground is unavailable here, because be-ing happens contingently and secludes itself. If we are looking' for certainty .and security, unconcealment and be-ing will disappoint us. We can hold and behold beings in their being, as a given gift, thanks only to a giving that is itself self-withholding, that cannot give itself.-Alternatively, we could interpret "does not properly ground" as a contingent historical condition; maybe be-ing could happen in such a Way as to provide a trulyapproprating and potent ground, albeit not an absolute ground. It becomes clear later in 242 that this second reading is closer to what Heidegger intends.) An ambiguous ground, an abyssal ground, lies between giving and nongiving, in the realm of the hint (Wink). Through this hint, we are
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.Time-space is the abyssal ground (Ab-grund) that belongs to truth. (Truth here means the happening of unconcealment. We have already__seen
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beckoned (erwunken) into Dasein. Dasein is das Bestndnis der Iichtenden Verbergung+-withstanding1 the withholding, steadfastness within the clearing concealing. (The motto of this moment in 242 could 'be~I-leraclitus' fragment 93: pThe lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but indicates." If learn to follow the indication, to take the hint, we can leap into being the there. The hint is "the self-opening of the self-concealing as such, the self-opening for and as ap-propriation, as the call into to the event of appropriation itself, i.e. to the grotuding of Da-seinbelonging as the decision-domain for be-ing": 385.)
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(b) Emptiness as opermess (380-382)
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By withholding itself, the abyssal ground leaves behind, or allows, a special kind of emptiness. This emptiness is not a mere unoccupied void; it is an opermess within which the given is given. (An approach to emptiness as openness is provided by Heraclitus' fragment 52: The aeon is a child at play the kingdom is a child's. Time-space is a playspace or leeway (5pielraum; cf. 257 and SZ 368). It grants possibilities. If the ground' came forth as fully given, as self-legitimating and necessary, then there would be (nothing childlke about it, nothing playful-and it would provide no possibilities, only necessities. There would be no gifts, only consequences. The world would be a deductive unity-as some philosophers and scientists hope that it is. The withdrawal of the ground, the emptiness of time-space, thus enables' playspace to open up.) _ The empty openness has a denite character: it is attuned and tted (gestimmt, geigt: 381). ('Playful' though it might be, the openness is not an arbitrary whim or abstract freedom. It arises as a concrete historical juncture, shaped and appropriated by a specic urgency. Unconcealment is never neutral, but has its own, unique texture.) Does the notion of emptiness presuppose an unfullled will, desire, or need? 'Empty' seems to_ be a negative concept, dened only in relation to something that one was expecting and failed to nd. (This brings us to the paradox of a hidden phenomenon. Husserl might propose that not-showing can be shown via empty or unfullled intentions. This approach presupposes, however, that the conscious subject is an already established entity and that itsiexpectations are legitimate. With time-space, Heidegger is seeking a more fundamental happening, one thatprecedes the subject and its intentionality. To rephrase the problem: Heidegger is pointing to an absence of ground. But it seems that we cannot notice that something is absent unless either it was previously present-which is not the case here-or we approach the experience with a demand for presence, which in this case would 'be illegitimate. Heidegger do_es tolerate the expression presencing [Anwesmg] of truth, but only if weimmediately understand this Arwesmg as a Wesmg that far exceeds the -presence and absence ofeny entity: 381.) Yes, emptiness is linked to Dasein. But what' is decisive is not a mere desire or need; it is the urgency (Not) that impelstus to leap into
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appropriation, attuned by restraint. Since it creates so many false expectations, perhaps we should give. up the word 'emptiness' alto_gether.21 (Eliminating the word does not elirrinate the problem, so we need to extrapolate from I-Ieidegger's other remarks. Unlike need and desire, urgency calls forth a new self. It is not a_demand for presence, but a leap into Dasein. A pre~existi_ng subject does not bring time-space into being by an act of will; rather, Dasein comes to be when it is swept up into timing and spacing. This account is not completely satisfactory, however. When Heidegger says, for example, that Dasein is restraint "in the face of hesitating refusal (382), the problem seems to arise anew._ Refusal (Versagung) seems to presuppose a demand. What is the status of this demand? Maybe we can imagine a three-step sequence: an subjective demand for a ground; a relative 'emptiness' or 'refusal' in relation to this demand; nally, a 'restraint' that respects the lack of a ground, no longer tries to master and represent it, and thus transcends the initial subjectivity in order to be drawn into a different way of being and thinking:
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(c)_Pr`mordiaI timing und spacirg (382-6)
In time-space, the divine becomes an undecidable problem for us. (Are the gods permanently undecidable? Or do they become urgently undecidable at a specic- historical moment?) This undecidability is prior tothe 'time' that ows by the present-athand and the 'space' that surrounds it; time-space is the abyssal happening of unconcealment, not the beings that are unconcealed. (Now the theme of ' primordial 'timing' and 'spacing' is introduced: 383.) Time-space, asthe happening of truth, lets appropriation open up in a leap (erspringen lt, 383); truth lets appropriation pervade the open. (If unconcealing happens, then appropriation can take place. The precise character of this relation remains elusive, as does the meaning of Heidegger's claim that truth is not "more originary than appropriation: 383.) The emptiness (if may still use this word) transports us into futurity and having-been. The gathering (Sammlung) of past and future constitutes the present. (Heidegger makes a transition from emptiness to transport. It is ternpting to irnagine emptiness as a sort of vacuum that draws us into past
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21On 'emptiness,' see also 29, 338-9. The word 'emptiness' invites comparisons with Buddhism, despite Heidegger's exclamation that his position is the very opposite (171). Emptiness (shunyata) is interpreted in many ways in different Bucldhist schools, but the Mahamudra and Dzogchen schools, at least, do understand it as an 'openness' -or luminosity: see Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy und Religion (Boston: Shambhala, 1994), s. v. "Shnyat. The difference from Heidegger, perhaps, lies in his insistence on' connecting openness to historical urgency; this emphasis on particular-ity and engagement in history contrasts with the Buddhist ideal of detachment. I-Ieidegger's later-`GfIassenheit is closer to awaits a new historical Buddhsrn, but we should keep in mind that this 'releaseinent' 9 destiny, rather than nirvana.
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and future, but this would miss the sense of 'emptiness' as an historical juncture with its own distinctive texture. This becomes clear in his next _ thought.) The present is' the moment of "moving into abandonment" (Einrckung in die Verlassenheit, 383); This moment remembers belonging to being, awaits the call of be-ing, and withstands the abandonment of being. It is a moment of decision regarding the onset (Anfall) of be-ing. (Heiclegger's concern, it would seem, is not to describe future, past and present in general. He is intent on describing a specic historical juncture as a .state of abandonment.- He proposes no answer to the question of whether the abandonment of being is necessary--whether it is permanent and universal, applying at all times and all places. Such an answer would obliterate the character of decision to which he is pointing; it would eliminate the possibility of bei-ing's onset." The word Anfall suggests the unpredictable onslaught of an illness or an enemy.) It might seem, however, that because time-space is an abyssal ground, a ground that withholds itself, there is nothing to be decided: there can be no grant-ing. But this is_ a hesitating refusal; it bestows the possibility of bestowal and appropriation. (We return to the notion of a hint, which wavers between giving and withholding. Maybe only a hint can be the supreme gift-the gift of the possibility of giving. In any case, there is no necessity here, only an urgency that enables a decision.) Because the refusal hesitates, it is not only temporal transport, but 21150 spatial captivation. Captivation is a hold (Llmhalt): it entices us into the site where the moment is held. In this site, the abandonment of being is localized and withstood. (The .decision regarding be-ing must literally take place; a place must open up where be-ing is at stake, where the question of be-ing has force, l/Vhat is 'place' here? Presumably something like 'world'--an arrangement of givens and possibilities, an order where we nd ourselves dwelling and where we have opportunities.22 Even if it is the site of the abandonment of being, it is not a meaningless wasteland, but a genuine place where We must stand and endure.) At this point (384) Heidegger reviews his account so far; we should do so as well. I-Ie is describing the there, the rnomentous site where and when be-ing is at stake. The there is both temporal (transporting) and spatial (captivating). Time-space as a whole is characterized by the hesitating withdrawal of the ground-that is, the unavailability of a proper and potentfoundation for thebeing of beings and their truth. This unavailability is experienced as something like a passionate longing: but this should be
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22F0r 1-wc; ne recent investigations of place, see Edward S. Casey, Getting Back im-0 Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding ofthe Place-World (Bloomngton: Indiana University Press, 1993), and I. E. Malpas, Place und Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929.): Although both studies draw on Heidegger, they attempt to refresh our understandi!rg of an already 'given man evol<ing a possible phenomeron (as the title of Casey's work indicates) rather -" ' future site, as the Contributions do. _
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understood not as a desire or demand of an already-formed subject, but as a rapture that brings us intothe proper condition of Dasein. On the one hand, this rapture' transports us into pastness (recalling the belonging to being that characterizes the rst inception) and futurity (awaiting the call of be-ing, readying the other inception). On the other hand, the rapture captivates us into the present as the locale where the abandonment of being must be withstood and where be-ing may take place. Time and space are distinct, but intertwined:
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Space is the captivating abyssal grounding of the hold. Time is thetransportlng abyssal grounding of- the_gathering. Captivation is the abyssal hold of the gathering. Transport is the abyssal gathe-ing into thehold. [385]
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Time spaces in, never captivating. Space times in, never transporting. [386]
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connection with transport, and 'hold' (llmhalt) in connection with captivation. Transport gathers past and future into present; captivation holds the abandonment of being within a site. What Heidegger seems to be saying in these formulas, then, is that the past and future need a place into which they can be gathered, and conversely, the place needs to serve as the site for the gathering of past and future. To say that time "spaces in (rumt ein) and space "times in (zeitigt ein) seems to mean that time and space enable each other to do their 'work' of drawing us into the site and moment where we can step into Dasein. As we noted earlier, 'transport' and 'captivation' connote dissolution and estrangement; these connotations are belied, however, by the movements of gathering and holding, which suggest the opposite-a belonging, a coming-into-one's-own (385). Appropriation may disown us as .self-contained substances or subjects; but as this happens, we are . . appropriated-we become Dasein, the grounders of the there.)
(Heidegger has already used the word 'gathering' (Samrrlung) in
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(d) Derivative time and space (386-7)
How does primordial time-space give rise to time and space? This question points to several distinct problems. 1. How did the concepts of space and time arise in the rst inception, where aletheia remains unexplored? _ _ 2. How do they arise in the other inception, where time-space -is _ explicitly grasped? 3. I-low is time-space to be empowered in the future through sheltering the truth of appropriation in beings? _ 4. How can the thought of time-space as thehappening of unconcealment resolve traditional philosophical ridtlles concerning time and space?
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(Heidegger continues to think historically. Problems 1 and 2 stand at the juncture between the rst and the other inception, which give rise to separate ways of conceiving of space and time. Problem 3 looks forward to a decision' regarding sheltering. Problem 4 might seem like an ahistorical, purely theoretical problem--but we are about to see that it is not.) Being md Time took some steps toward addressing problem 2 by trying to grasp space and time in their pre-mathematical form. But what allows space and time to be mathematized? The answer lies in the happening in which the abyssal ground, barely grounded, is blocked by the "un-ground (387). (It seems that problem 4 must also beaddressed historically, in terms of this happening. But what is happening here? In an intriguing but undeveloped remark, the Introduction to Metaphysics distinguishes a "truly grounding Ur-grund from an Ab-grund, which "refuses to provide a _ foundation/'T and contrasts both with an Un-grund, which "merely offers the perhaps necessary illusion of a foundation/'23 This suggests the following story. In the rst inception, the event of unconcealing was glimpsed by the Greeks, who named it aletheia. But they could not properly ground this event by accepting and enduring its abyssal nature-its contingency and obscuty. Instead, they focused on the gift that .emerged from this event: presence as the being of beings. As the ultimate' given, presence easily offered the illusion of an unshakeable foundation; but it was actually subordinate to the giving, which was itself unavailable either as a present being or as the presence of beings. The understanding of the being of beings as presence allowed for an understanding of thinking as re-presenting, and representing becomes mathematical as soon as it engages in measuring. Space and time become mathematical when they are reduced to nothing but containers for present beings, which are the objects of a measuring representation. In order to retrace the decline from aletheia and go even further 'back'--to Ereignis-'we can begin by noticing the owning (appropriateness) that is at work in our everyday spatial and temporal experiences. This much was done in Being' und Time. The next step is to experience the abandonment of the being of beings (the fact that it is no longer a living issue for us) and our belonging 'to be-ing (our assignation to the hidden, contingent event of the giving. of the being of beings). Then time-space can go to work, as a wholly nonrepresentable,
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(e) The fertility
oftime-space
(387~8)
The hold of captvation offers an open expanse of possibilities. The gathering of transport offers the immeasurable remoteness of what is given as a task. (Heidegger has previously countered the notions of dissolution and loss that 'captivation' and 'transport' might suggest. l-Ie now addresses the opposite notion: that_time-space might be conning and stiing. Despite its
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23Introductz'on to Metrphysicsf trans' Gre80ry Fried ard Richard Polt (New Haven: " Yale University Press, 2000), 3.
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specicity and coherence, time-space is a fertile eld. lt opens up a world of distances and destinies.) The abyssal ground is not groundless; it afrms ground in its hidden expanse and remoteness. The 'not' that holds sway in it is the 'not' of the hint and of be-ing itself. (As stated at the beginning of 242, the abyssal ground is the staying~away of ground. But this is not equivalent to the denial of all grounds, or to nihilism. There is still the possibility of a genuine grounding. This would be a grounding that accepts the nothing within appropriationthat is, the contingency and strangeness of the happening ofbe-ing.)
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Instead of beginning with time-space itself, we can also take the opposite way: starting' with beings, we can examine their spatiality and temporality in a new way, in terms of the sheltering of truth. This interpretation will be guided silently by our knowledge of time-space as the abyssal ground, .but it will awake new experiences by beginning with the thing. (This nal paragraph offers an important insight into the status of "The Origin of the Work of Art" and Heidegger's postwar essays on technology and 'things' Various elds of beings can be approached in such a way that they point toward the abyssal unconcealing of time-space. How is this possible? The key is sheltering, Bergung, which is necessary in order for time-space to become historical (386). When be-ing is sheltered in beings, the site of the moment is truly grounded.)
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I have read 242 not as an account of eternal essences, but as an evocation and anticipation of a motion?--a unique and urgent happening. This, I think, is the aim of Heidegger's seynsgeschchtliches Denken: to take part in the possible taking-place of be-ing. The primary horizon of the text is, so to speak, future-subjunctive. _ But is a present-indicative interpretation also viable-an interpretation of 242 as a description of invariant structures? l think so. Heideggendespite his seynsgeschichtlich intentions, does retain the philosopher's habit of looking for grounds and patterns. Maybe this iseven a redeeming feature of this text--what saves it from becoming rhapsodic prophecy and keeps it tied .to thinking. Maybe we ought to analyze time-space and appropriation as ultimate conditions that are universal structures, secretly operative whenever and wherever human beings encounter other beings. Heidegger's thoughts on the degeneration of time-space into derivative time and space would not be a history or prophecy, then, but would be a phenomenology, much as we nd in Being und Time.24 'Seetig-15 93 and 150, for instance, appear to provide such a phenomenology. In 98 Heidegger claims that in the ordinary concept of time,
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24According to Daniela Neu, Heidegger's investigation of tirne-space in the Contributions is still "phenomenological: Die Notwendigkeit der Grndung, 204.
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"time is experienced in a disguised way as timing, as transport" (191). He sketches various ways in which the subsidiary phenomena of constancy and presence emerge from primordial time-space. Section 150 follows a similar pattern, but focuses .on the idea as that which is preeminently constant and present. Heidegger's central thought in these sections is that being as presence is given by a richer happening that must be understood in terms of transpo-t and captivation. When transport and captivation fade into inclifference, then all that is left is an inert framework within which present beings can be represented (70; cf, 371, 373, 382). This leads to traditional concepts of space and time--which are not false, but rather have a certain truth if they are understood properly, in the context of be-ing as appropriation (378). _ As I said, these passages can be read as descriptions of quasi-present structures--and maybe that is even the most fruitful reading. But it does go against the grain of Heidegger's thinking. As he says at the end of 98, it is a misunderstanding of space and time to take them as a particular kind of Anwesendes, a present something (192). It is not enough to train our .- _ philosophical attention on the phenomena of space and time; our way of paying attention must break loose from the present-indicative horizon. To state that be-ing exceeds presence is not yet to exceed presence in one's thinking-because as long as thinking remains stating, it is oriented towardthe present.25 Heidegger's own "way of posing the question demands a transformation of questioning from the ground up" (193). What he wants is "netto lapse into the usual formal concepts of space and time but to be taken back into the strife, world and earth-'~appropriation (261). Heidegger is arguably more radical in this way than others who have experirnented with exceeding the present-indicative horizon. Nietzsche--in Heidegger's interpretation, at least-has not given up the metaphysical hope of representing the being of beings, which he interprets as will to power. Derrida is a quasi-transcendental thinker, in that he tries to uncover necessary conditions of the possibility of presence.26 So perhaps Heidegger has gone farther than both Nietzsche and Derrida in setting aside .the quest for the universal and transcendental, for the sake of evoking the unique.
25A' possible example is Neu's careful account of time-space. She' correctly says that time-space does not concern matters that obtain "berhaupt und im Al1gemeinen," but rather what occurs "in cler Einzigkeit des Da-sens (ibid., 203); and in order to experience time-space as abyss, one must "in ihn aus einer Not verrckt werden (213). However, in her reading, the abyssal ground "je schon" indicates the ultimate ground, namely, the truth of be-ing (206, 207). It appears. that in Neu's interpretation, fh, Ereignis is still ultimately something pennanently present, a stncture that is 'always already' in place ancl is -more fundamental than any unique, contirgent moment
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of emergency. 26As' Gasch observes, even though Derrida is nondogmatic and nonsystematic, he persstently draws our attention to a certain 'system' or certain 'infrastructures' that are always already at play. Derrida reveals "the system of what, in spite of its thorou-gh alterity to the self-understanding of thought, is presupposed by such thought": Rodolphe Gasch, The Tain ofthe Mirror: Derrida and the 'Philosophy ofReection -' (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 250.
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5. Critical questions
questions. First, Heidegger seems to be asking us to think of time-space as ha-ppening. How can time itself happen? Would it need a medium in which to happen? That medium, it seems, would be linear time--but then linear time would not be derivative from primordial time-space. We can think of time. itself as an event only if we manage to distinguish the notion of event from the notion of change within the framework of a timeline. Heidegger thinks of the primordial event not primarily in terms of change, but in terms of the play of belonging and estrangernent, uniqueness and reproducibility. But how would this primordial happening of time connect to the ; sequence of changes in linear time? Even if it cannot be understood in tenrs of this sequence, .it must bear some relation to it. Perhaps in this play of time-space, ordinary time and space would open But if we say that primordial time-space is the origin of linear time, we up.23 must explain what 'origin' means here. We cannot say that the event of timeis earlier than linear time-we would then be placing space chronologically time-space within linear time in order to establish the priority of time-space, which is incoherent. But if the 'priority' here is one of ontological founding-so that, as in Being and Time, there is an essential structure thatalways _ underlies our experience of time and space-.-then we have given up radical eventuation and have returned to a present-indicative horizon, to the "formal concepts" of space and time that Heidegger was trying to avoid (261). It might be possible to construct a philosophical narrative that would unite time-space and ordinary time by reecting on the conditions thatmust already bein place if time-space is to happen. This would be analogous to the German idealist project of 'beginning' with self-consciousness, but using the features of s'elf-consciousness to reconstruct the process that must already have been at work in order to enable self-consciousness to arise. Similarly, we
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The text .Contributions to Philosophy is just one of Heidegger's many "thought experiments," as Theodore Kisiel calls them.27 One does not refute a thought experiment; one pursues it imaginatively and sees whereit leads, without giving up one's critical awareness. lr this spirit, I raise some
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23Cornpare Introduction to Metaphysics, 195: "appearing in the rst and authentic sense, asthe gathered bringing-itself~to-stand, takes space in; it rst conquers space; as standing there, it creates space for itself; it brings about everything that belongs to it, while it itself is not imitated. Appearing in the second sense merely steps forth from an already prepared space Appearing in the rst sense rst' space open. Appearing in the second sense simply gives space an outline and measures the space that has been
opened up."
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Alfred Denl-:er and Marion Heinz (New York and London: Continurn, 2002),' 29.
27Theodore Ksiel, "Heidegger's Apology," in Kisiel, Heidegger's Way cfThought, ed.
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could make the time-space of Ereignis our rst principle, but from the _ perspective of Ereignis try to understand its prerequisites, its antecedents. Heidegger never seems to have tried such a thought experiment, probably because he wants to preserve the contingency and unqueness of the event of appropriation. If I am right that Heidegger tends to think of Ereignis as a future event, then these problems become still more difcult. We return to the question of a prophetlc philosophy. Can there be such a thing, or does this text simply waver between prophecy and philosophy? Even if prophecy is not mere prediction or fortunetelling, it is primarily focused on possibilities. How does possibility become accessible as a phenomenon? If itshowsitself, then it is to some degree present and actual. Or if it is not a phenomenon at all, if it is _ completely hidden, then anevocation of it seems to lack all ground and authority. In short, does Heidegger have some phenomenal basis for_ describing a future, unique event? If he does, is it still a future possibility-or is it an aspect of the present? Is it impossible, in the end, for philosophy to' _ escape the present-indicative horizon?29 mood in to the imperative _a Finally, let me return sentence I quoted at the beginning of this paper. "The abyssal ground is thus the intrinsically timing-spacing-countersweeping mornentous site ofthe 'between' as which Da-sein must be grounded (387). What is-the character of this 'must'? What are the grounds for this demand? Heidegger is not saying that Dasein is essenlially already grounded in this Way-for Dasein is a possibility, not an actuality. "Man must be de-ranged into [Dasein] in order to be himself again (317). Were we once Dasein, then? But "man has never yet been historical (492). How, then, does the possibility of Dasein emerge as the urgent one fort us? . to Dasein is a goal that Heidegger is presenting us. He even says that he wants "to give historical man a goal [Ziel] once again" (16; cf. 99, 143, 386, 467). In this same text, however, he denounces the very idea of a goal as a symptom of:Platonic metaphysics (138, 266-7, 415, 462). Perhaps the ambiguity is resolved when he writes, "The seeking [of be-ing] is itself the goal. And that means that 'goals' are still too supercial and keep getting in the way of being (18). Or does this statement just intensify the ambiguity?
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_29Danie1 O. Dahlstrom argues that Heidegger, in the end, cannot elude a certain presence: Every thematization, be it objectifying or not, continues to lay claim to the presence of its' theme in a certain sense (not unlike a theme pervading a piece of music)": Heideggers Concept ofTruth' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 445. Hans Ruin puts it more paradoxically: "Ereignis is a concept through which Heidegger tries to think a presence beyond the present, and ir doing so approaches the limits of the sayable and thinkable": Enigmatic Origins, 204. William McNeill also brings out the paradox in his interpretation of Heidegger's account of the artwork: "The occurrence of this event, of this Ereignis, is the extraordinary happening of that which has always has not but unforeseeable: been and nevertheless been, the yet already remains' Of that and which in the future, the origin nonsimplicity of orginary e__.rugma present ~' _ _ essay is called 'art': The Glance ofthe Eye, 292.
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Heidegger has made an intense effort to pass beyond ousia, beyond the present-indcative horizon that has traditionally determined the sense of being. This transcendence of presence brings him. into the realm of the imperative-the good, which, as Plato writes, also lies beyond ousia (Republic 509b). Is seynsgeschichtliches Denken capable of thinking about the good?
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David Crownfeld
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Transcendental Synthesis, Imagination, Intertwinng

(The present paper is not primarily expository and analytic, but programmatic, imagining a
possibility of interpretation at the intersection of Heidegger and late Merleau-Ponty,)

Part Two of the Being and Time project was to exhibit the founded character of
metaphysics through showing it as a function of concemed temporal being there, and thus to
justify the characterization of Being and Time as .ndamental (foundng) ontology. This was to
be carried out through studies of Kant, Descartes, and Aristotle. While all three are discussed at
many points in Heideggefs work, the work thatmost directly correlates with this project and
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reachesits key aim is Kant and the Problem
ofMetaphysicl
The focus of the Kantbook is the problem of transcendental synthesis. This involves in
Heidegges account both the synthesis of unication in pure understanding and the synthesis of1
letting-be-disclosed of pure intuition, which in the A text of the Critique ofPure Reason have a
common root in transcendental imagination. These two syntheses are interdependent, and
articulate to one another in the schematc syntheses of apprehension (direct givenness),
recollection (intuition in the absence of the datum itseli), and recognition (which Heidegger
regards as essentially tural, construig a form that willbe recognized again).
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Transcendental imagination congures a structured space of possibility within which to

apprehend, recollect, and anticipate. It thus constitutes the eld of the actual. and real, in the unity
of a having that sustains the relating and distinguishng of before and after, here and there, this
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and that. The pure forms of intuition (time and space) and the categories of the understanding are
the structural -ames of this conguration, articulated to one another in the transcendental
schematism.
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Phenomenologcal Interpretation ofKant 's Critique
ofPure Reason is chronologically

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even closer to Being and Time, and clearly sets out in the announced direction. But Heidegger 2
did not reach and develop the key issues within the scope of the lecture course represented by that
book.
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transcendental -21
Heidegger proposes that transcendental imagination is the key to the whole problem of
transcendence, and that the underlying structure of that inagination is time itself Time is a
function of temporality, rather than vice versa. Metaphysics, as the theory of the transcendent, is
thus rooted in temporality (q.e.d.).
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But in Being and Time Heidegger has shown that being- there is always already in relation
to things and already with others, already discursive, historical, engaged, concemed. And The
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Metaphysical Foundations ofLogic specically acknowledges the concrete and dierential

determination of being there--for example, that in each instance embodied being there is sexually
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specic. But this recognition functions in this context only as.a formal indication. Discursivity,
too, is also always articulated
in a specic language and community, but its concrete

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Heidegger does sometimes write as though historicality is adequately understood as a participation in the history of Western metaphysics, the German language the privileged language
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of philosophy, and relationality adequately understood as membership in a determinate Volk. Such assumptions are not in fact formal indices but privileged instantiations. And as we have
more recently been learning in the case of gender, such differences have
substantive eècts in
conguring our understanding of being, and such privileged instances have invidious
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consequences.
Formal indication is a powerful phenomenological tool, but as applied here it does not
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always preserve the pure formality at which it aims. At some points it may effect an abstraction
and decontextualization that distorts the phenomenon, or that tacitly privileges one's own
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situatedness. Crucial to the present discussion is the fact that at times in Heidegger's work, the
concreteness
and importance of difference, and of relationality, move to the background, and the
Cartesian underpinning of the problem of transcendence, the model of a self-possessing subject

unsure of the realness of its
world, remains in play. (Heidegger's treatment of being-in-the-world

that__'1`1isl
does deconstructs Descartes, in principle, but I am argung
practice, and his focus on the
Kantian form of the problem in the work of the late l920s,}._le*ave the shadow of the Cartesian ego
transcendental -3-
on the discussion.)
I suggest that the project of a phenomenological reduction of rnetaphysicsmust revisit and'
extend the phenomenology of Dasein, with specic attention to the issues of the esh and
embodiment, of discursivity, including language acquisition, and of dierence and relationality in
general. The aim of this revisiting would not be to undo the fonnally indicative approach, but
rather to attend more carefully to the corstitutive and complementary roles of these particular
s
phenomena. If this revisiting is uitil, the theme of transcendence will at least have to be
recongured, and the mineness of -Dasein reformulated in a way that is more clearly disengaged
om the trace of Cartesianism --from- the traditionally presupposed externality of the relation
.
between being-there and world. The constitutive role of imagination will be strengthened and
focussed by explicating it within a more fundamentally historical, interactive, embodied, already articulated context.
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Dasein is historical. It is not only a participant in the metaphysical tradition, but is always
already historically congured by having been involved, related, bodily gratied and checked in
relations to specic others and to things, in specic trajectories of afnnation and negation, in
specic communities of interpretation. And a beginning of this personal prehistory is inaccessible:
there is the always-already where there is anything at all.
A number
ofthinkers have presented accounts of the prehistory of something ke subject,

a
or self, or experience, accounts which can contribute to the proposed expansion of the
phenornenology of being there. These also can be taken as contributions
toan interpretive
historiography of imagination, as phenomenologically exhibiting aspects of the synthesis of
apperception and of appearances. I will focus prirnarily on Merleau-Ponty's chapter on The

w ant to note briey some Chiasm, the Intertwinng,2 but before exarnining his contribution, _I
other thinkers that contribute to the topic.
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Lacans well-known early essay on the mirror stage postulates a iragmented body-
2The Visible and the Invisible, chapter 4.
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transcendental -4experience of the infant, and the discovery of oneseln a mirror--conjoining the proprioceptive
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sense of presence and movement with the visual likeness of one like the others, and imaginatively
identiiying with this reection, integrating the rnultiplicity of sensations through the identity
ascribed to the image. This is a powerl gure, taken as metaphor, though conceptually andempirically not weil established. Lacan seems to postulate without examination what amounts to
a transcendental synthesis of an image and an other and their likeness, and a concurrent synthesis
of proprioception
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--apperception- correlated with the image.
The story gets its impact om the
Y
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bearing on identity and self-integration of the others regard, of interactive presence, of some rudimentary recognition. But as a descriptive thesis the mirror hypothesis can't carry the weight required either by Lacan's theme or by ours.
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Jean-Luc Marion proposes a different focusing phenomenon. In his essay,
L'Interloqu, Marion holds that the address of the other evokes the emergence of oneself as
response. Until the address there is no subject who could respond. (lt is not possible to
determine this as al question of fact, but as an interpretive possibility it has some force.)
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With Julia Kristeva and others we might here speak of chora, of the possible site of a
possible beginning for the emergence of a subject or self. Kristeva also notes, briey, in Stabat
Mater, what she describes as a growing sense during her pregnancy that what is happening
within her isthe ene-gent presence of another within herself, the self-dividing of a unity rather
than the objective appearance of a novel atom.
'
Kristeva further observes that a child develops an imaginary identication, and responds to
address, within what is typically a triadic situation. Mother relates to child, and tothe other, and
these two clyads contextualize and irnplicitly interpret each other. As language emerges, there is
not merely address to the child but
conversation between mother and other in which the child is

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mirrored, objectied, synbolized, in their regard and interaction. This triadic nucleus does not
depend entirely on languag. Gestural and tactile interaction of each 'with the child and with the
other play important roles in the childs self development.
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Chora, self-ssuring, mirroring, the triadic matrix, the address, are all relevant gures to
transcendental -5mark the complexity and interactive character of Daseins self-emergence. I_ believe they are most
frutful when taken together with Merleau-Ponty's discussion of individuation and self- identity in
Ihe Visible and the Invisible. I focus specically on the chapter, The Chiasm: the Intertwining.
Merleau-Porty assumes, like the others, a primordial lack of self-integration, to which he

adds the assumption that there is no original separation of what must eventually be recognized as
self and as other. The infant, he supposes, is a multiplicity of sensations, impulses, sounds and
rnovements, without internal focus and correlation and without an experientially denite or stable
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boundary --without a priori synthesis. There develops a variety of cor-relations, not only between
le and right in seeing, hearing, and touching , but also correlations of seeings with hearings,
soundings with sensations, seeings with being heard, and I could add soundings and being fed, hearings and being held or cleaned or moved or comforted, andy so on. The soundings and
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hearings that occur are intertwined with all the rest of this. There is thus no original distinction of
subject, world and language.

As I read it, the texttued diversity of this mlange, animated by various not-yetv
dierentiated impulses and sensations, roughly corresponds to what Kristeva calls the semiotic
order, a patterning of diemeces that is not yet a system of meanings. Linguisticality arises,
intertwined with something like a nascent selood, as part of the process of coordination and
differentiation. Rather than a supplementary instrument of communication, language emerges in
and out of a primordial construal of the textures and dierentiations of being there in the world.
The semiotic construal of the intertwining, the diiferentiation of me and world, the
stabilization of symbolic reference, representation, and objectication, are not reections of a

universal and innate' logos. They are acts of invention, ventures into response and initiative:
works of a concretely and locally congured transcendental imagination. These unprececlented

ventures of imagination concurrently
congure something like a selfhood, and are utterly
provisional and exploratory. Consequences reinforce here and frustr-ate there, and evoke other
new semiotic marks yet to be construed. The emergent language; emergent self,gand emergent
world of otherness, are all thus socially constructed equally fundamentally with being
transcendental -6imaginatively invented. The very boundary of self and other, the very externality of the world, is
collaboratively invented.
I want to
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bequiteclear about the relationl see between this discussion and Heidegger's
own thought. I do not believe that Heidegger retains a Cartesian subject in speaking of Dasein. I
do not hold that Heidegger precludes the analyses of Merleau-Ponty, Kristeva, and the others, nor that they correct any supposed errors. My claim israther that the shadow both of Kants and of
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Husserls Cartesianism lies on both Heideggefs dction and the readers habits of interpretation,
and as a result, the discussion is unintentionally tilted toward continuation of those habits. It is
my sense that the sort of concernl raise here played an implicit role in generating the turning in
Heideggefs thought, and is a key to the role of poetry and art in that turning and in Heideggefs
later thought. I will not at this point, though, try to document this role 'orn specic texts.
_
My attention to these other thinkers on the role of the other, on regard and address, and
on the esh, and to the interactive character of language and of self, seeks to bring into sharper
focus and ller articulation the already-operative post-Cartesianism of the idea of imaginative
synthesis.
.
To return directly
toI-Ieidegger's interpretation of Kant: The two pure_ transcendental
syrtheses are the unication of the having of experience (transcendental understanding,
apperception) and the letting-stand-over-against of what is experienced (transcendental intuition).
The conjoined syntheses, in letting-come and letting-go, are the very enactment of nite being there. Time forms nite selihood in ordering presencing to before and after, by retairing and
anticipating. In its letting-appear what lingers, being-there posits and integrates itself as' perduring. Time, self, inagination, the standingfo'th of things, are thus tightly intertwined,
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inseparable, co-constitutive.
Merleau-Por1tys discussion of intertwining, conjoined with Heideggers emphasis on

imagination as inventing both a unied having and a letting-.stand-there, gives added force to the
relation between imagination and transcendence. If the same imaginative synthesis -- of having, of
letting, and their correlativity --constitutes both self and world together, as Heidegger indicates,
transcendental -7~
and if the prehistory of this imagination is an interplication of what will come to have been
havings and happenings, then the differentiation of self and world is itself, in a thoroughly post-
Cartesian way, a pure invention.
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For traditional modern thought, this account on its face founders on the supposed self~
evidence of the self-other distinction. But I want briey to recall in response some literary
treatments of the self-other boudary.
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In Book I of the Iliad, when Achilleus starts to draw his sword in anger, Atheneappears
and stops him. We would say, He thought better of it. In the Apology, Socrates tells of being
ordered to_ go with others to arrest Leon of Salamis, but his occasional inner voice told him togo
home instead. We call it conscience, and consider it our own doing rather than an intervention.
In his Confessions, Augustine develops a notion of self and self-knowledge in which the premise_
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is that I do not know myself, but God knows me. The cleavage ishere entirely internal, but
mdarnentally severs my self-knowledge 'om my Being.
Modern distinctions between phenomenal being-there as effect and the facts of

biochemistry as cause present a fundamentally Augustinian structure
--the self knowable only by
the Other --modied by a characteristic modem replacement of divine knowledge by scientic

knowledge as the norm for detemaining Being. Other cultures present their own constructions of
the boundary: in the Upanisads, the ultimate depth of self is identical with the ultimate .depth of
what we call the outside world." And for Buddhism, there is no self, and world, too, is empty:
there is only the play of illusions concretized by care: by attachment and desire, themselves
illusions.
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In each of these instances, the classic text is rooted in a community of transcendental

imagination, a community and history which has congured selood, realness, and othemess in
accordance with its own intertwining experiences.

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In this whole discussionl have assumed, and need here to underscore, one further point.
The emphasis on the sociality of irnagination in the constitution of self and world must be
understood as complementary to the existential centrality ofresolute self-appropriation; To let-
transcendental -8stand-there the social invention of self and world within which my own identity is located, I must
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receive, imagine, and take existential ownership of that construction as my own, as my self. In
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doing so I must also let-stand-there the community and history of imagination that has begotten
and borne me, that has construed, recognized, mirrored, included, adclressed me and let me -stand
there. Inowning as mine the construction that has been granted me and inreceiving as the work
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and gift of the others my self-nventionl enact that nite, mortal, transcendental resolve which is
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in Being and Tme the meaning of .self
The path I have traced through Lacan, Kristeva, and Marion, and especially late Merleau-
Ponty, proposes an imaginative disestablishment of the primacy and irreducibility of the self-other
distinction. The issues thus opened may wellbe undecidable, and we can presumptively not
1
explore them except from our already-constituted perspectives.
The test of the approach I have proposed here can not be some sort ofempirical verication or phenomenological demonstrability. It must be in a very broad sense a pragmatic
validation: that in imagining being in the world this way, the interplay of individual and
community, of self and world, acquires in concrete instances a more open, 'eer, richer scope of
possibility. And opening that sort of space is, I take it, the role of philosophy.,
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Postscript: Some possible consequences:
1. One area in which this approach should be nitful is in rethinking democratic theory. The
existential dimension accords' with the principle of the preservation of the space of individual
liberty, subject to constra.int for the sake of the other's space of liberty. The emphasis on social
construction of self and world offers the possibility of a richer interpretation of the sociality of the
community than the assunption of a social contract between initially autonomous- agents. And
the need to negotiate shared markers, interpretive schemas, and other instruments of mutual
accommodation, gives a stronger ground for institutions of representative government and of the
practice of the political in general.
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transcendental -9-
2. Another application could be the perhaps more basic problem o.f the mutual relativity of
differing communities of imagination. The notion of communities of imagination can formally
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indicate religious communities, ethnicites, the culture of science, and other communities
articulatedin relation to fundamentally derent imaginative construction of linguistic resources,

material means of sustenance, and historical memories. The present approach suggests that there
is no normative frame external to the problems by which they' can be managed--that normativity is
a socially constructed (existentially appropriated) work of imagination. Third-party mediation can
help broaden the imaginative corstrual of possible value, but it has itself no rormativity, rand only
mutually constructecl frames of accommodation are relevant.
With respect specically to religious dirences, the key problem is the relation between the claim
of the religious absolute and the claim of the other--with emphasis on the other community of
imagination. In a community of imagination where coherence of community and stabilization of
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selood are effected by reference to an absolute singularity, as in monotheisn, a challenge to the theism imperils the viability of the community and ofthe person at a level that evokes a virtually
biological defersive reaction. Attacking such reactions, or their symbolic foundations, is
destructive and, with respect to lowering hostility and violence, counterproductive. Establishing
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an equality of mutual respect, funded on each side by the resources of one's own imaginative
community and perhaps mediated by mutually tolerable third parties, would seem to be the only
way forward. The evident superiority of our own insights, values, and principles is a function of
our imaginative constructions. It is reciprocally relative vis-a-vis the absolutism or evident
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superiority of the other.
3. This approach to the thinking of identity and difference also has important consequences for
the question of the objective, shared world. I assmume withB__eing nd Time that the objective
world is a founded mode, an imaginative construal of ea't_h.- Freud's grandson can practice
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transcendental -10absence and return (fort and da) of his father, and develop a sense of object constancy. The
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phenomenology of the clock shows the link of real time to the problem of lcoordinating my life
with yours, so I can be here to present this paper when you are here to listen to it. Nourishment,
shelter, and bodily integrity are material matters and are facilitated by construng the earth in ways
that sustain us. And the solutions to these issues are social in character. Marx's genealogy of the
division of labor, in the German Ideology, depicts this interplay- of sociality and nateriality over a
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series of examples. Such material and social histo-ies are intrinsic to the constitution of human
cultures and societies, and intertwine materiality and imagnation in concrete and compelling
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congurations.
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Merleau-Ponty's discussion of Lacan's study of the childs mirror stage (The Child's Relation to
Others", in The Primacy of Perception), led me to try to think 'together Lacans imaginary and
the proposed post-Heideggerian transcendental imagination Insertng the mjrroring experience
into the matrix of intertwining found in_The Visible and the Invisible contributes not only to the
genealogy of self-consciousness, but to the genealogy of world as a shared space. The maginary
self can not, in the context I am proposing, be merely a kind of existential ina_uthenticity. Its emerging out of the intertwined mlauge constitutes together both itself and its world. The child,
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in locating itselfn a world constructed with aid of the mirror, the gaze, the address, sharing a
triadic space with mother and other, places itseln a social and relatively stable context. This
contextuallzing enables differentiation between expressing to the other and receiving from the
other, and empowers further development and the emergence of something like agency.
Objectivity here is not focally the releasing of the object to stand-over-against, but the assumption
of an interactive coexistence on common terms with the others.
l
Hnnneenn AGAINST THE Enrrons
Nnrzscna, Scinncn AND ran Barrnee as WILL roPower

Babette E. Babich
1
Department of Philosophy, Fordham University, 113 W. 60"' St., NYC, NY 10023

Z :
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Babieh@fmdham.=du
Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Modern Technology:
Machenschaft and Will to Power
Since its. rst seeming surprise publication out of the prescribed order for the Gesamtausgabe, scholars have read and reread the Beitrge without coming to anything resembling consensus
regarding its reception. Whether today's reader retains eafondness for the Heidegger of Being ana' Time or appreciates the transformations of the tum in itself, or in its resultant effects yielding the
complex linguistic resonances and thoughtful endeavors of the '-later Heideggen the Beitrge
remains a difcult t in the Heideggerian corpus.
Why so? Supercially, of course, the easy answer ought to be that the publication is too new too close to us - both in terms of its 1989 publication in Gennanor in the brief decade (by
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academic standards) until its appearance in English in December of 1999. But this reply seems wrong? For whether or not, as Otto Pggeler claims, Heidegger never mentioned the Beitrge
in his own reections, we do know, in a seeming contradiction, that Pggeler was to declare the Beitrge to be I-Ieidegges second major work" - a umor which simnered for forty years in German (and English-language) circles.5 At the very least, the surprise or novelty factor is inexact.
I propose to explore the relevance of technology and the constitutive role of Nietzsches thought
as aspects of related. importance in Heiciegger's Beitrge. The latter consideration is tactically more important as it concerns the relevance of style in Heideggefs reading of Nietzsche; the former
concems the enduring complexities of Heidegger's critical take on science in the modern world. Without adverting to Nietzsche's inuence and without raising the question of modern
science/techn0l0gy, as the essence of what Heidegger names Machenschaft, the function and meaning of the Beitrge in Heidegger's thinking can only elude usf'
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In this respect, key emphases in the Beitrge may well be compared to Heidegger's later Zollikon Seminars. And as both Fred Dallmayr and Dan Dahlstrom have noted, commenting on Heidegger' s
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thinking on the question of truth (or modern science or technology), without such an emphasis on the veritably scientic signicance of the question of truth (and modern technology), one runs the
risk of mistaking or even denying the importance of the continuity in Heidegger' s thought from early to later? To this extent, Heidegger by no means abandons the insights of Being and Time. It is thus
'I
important to emphasize a continuity between Heidegger's thinking, early and late. Such an emphasis opposes the tendency to read a readerly construct named Heidegger I (or what Ted Kisiel names
the early, pre-Being and Time Heidegger) as if one had
todo with another thinker entirely,

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addressing the personality dynamics of the two Heideggers Bill Richardson apotheosizes in his recent preface to the new edition of his Heidegger book? The same periodizing reication exacerbates the tendency toward mystifyng readings of the so-called later Heidegger, the recall and as Heidegger himself Heidegger 11 who comes after the turn or Kehre. But, as we
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emphasizes in his original letter to Richardson, Heidegger I and Heidegger II are to be thought together and ineliminably so because 11 is already, so Heidegger expresses it, to be found in Heidegger I: Nur unter I Gedachten her wird zunchst das unter II zu Denkende zugnglich. Aber
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I wird nur mglich, wenn es in Il enthalten ist.".'9'
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To the perplexities of thinking Heidegger I and 11, early and late, a reference to Nietzsche seems
only to compound the challenge. For many readers, Nietzsche's name works as a key signier for irrationalism. Hence Pggeler can tell us that it was nothing but Heidegger's excess regard for
Nietzsche that is totblame for Heidegger's lack of understanding with regard to either Hlderlin or Celan. 12 Correspondingly well known is the related assertion that Heidegger's irrationalism (usually
articulated in terms of an explicit antipathy to modern science and technology) is what rendered his philosophy vulnerable to or even sets it equivalent to Nazisma
No accidental byproduct of a contamination with Nietzsche's style, I argue that Heidegger composed his manuscript on the model of the publishing phenomeron that in effect constituted what
could be called Nietzsche' s Contributions to Philosophy, the same part of Nietzsche's philosophy
that remained Nachla. ''-' In this way, Heideggefs Beitrge zur Philosophie may be read as
Heidegger's Will roPower.
We recall as relevant to this claim
- and as already mentioned above
that Heidegger presented the world with an advance interpretation ofthe Beitrge zur Philosophie
I
in Pggeler's essay on the subject matter of (as well as his discussion of the relevance of) the Beitrge-in-the context of Heidegger's work as a whole. Thus in his rst lecture course on
Nietzsche, presented during the time of the Beitrge' s composition, Heidegger offers a reection on nothing but what he calls Eriegnis itself, which he sets equivalent to nihilism.16
n
It is a separate but relevant point to note that Heidegger encountered Nietzsche's textual Iegacy as a philosopher in no place but Weimar. Nor is it irrelevant here that the inuence of Heideggefs
_
Nachla remains the most fundamentally strained in the relation between Nietzsche scholars and Heidegger scholars. For, in fact and from the perspectiveof Nietzsche
reading of Nietzsche's
scholarship, and exactly unlike an edition letzter Hand, as it were, Nietzsche for his own part would have nothing whatever to do with the work Heidegger notoriously pronounced Nietzsche's
opus magnum-.19 ~It is also not irrelevant that from the very beginning of the same Nietzsche lectures
that I am now suggesting as an indispensable aid or cornpanion to reading the Beitr'ge.2 Heidegger alienated Nietzsche scholars, proving himself less a fellow traveller than a thorn.
The Beitrge as Heidegger's Will to Power

1
It is in such a deliberately focussed context that I propose we interpret Heidegger' s then-involvement

i
as one of the editors for the planned edition of Nietzsche's works. Afnning such a connection is not to claim that Heidegger's role' as a member of the academic board of directors for what would
doubtless have been the Nazi edition of Nietzsche's works (an edition which did not appear as such)2' had anything to do with Nazi sympathy. Indeed, the detailed circumstances of this editorial
engagement lend more rather than less substance to Heideggers claim that he conducted his Nietzsche seminars as loci of covert but explicit resistance to Nazisn Because Heideggefs
prime ofcial engagement with Nietzsche was adumbrated in a literally textual (editorial) fashion, Heidegger was also - consciously or unconsciously- inspired (as almost any reader ofNietzsche's texts can be seduced into seeking) to appropriate Nietzsche's style It was this, as I read it, that served as the enduring occasion for Heidegger's calamitous engagement with nothing less than the
limits of language itself. That is, to use Heidegger's own words to describe this affair: Nietzsche hat
mich loapur gemacht.

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The conditions under which Heidegger accepted Walter F. Otto' s 1935 invitation to join the board
of directors for the critical edition of Nietzsche's collected works were politically complicated and
arcane is here not too strong a word. Nevertheless, it was exactly this engagement which gave
Heidegger advance warning of the fate of an author's works. For, so Heidegger himself would argue at length, Nietzsche's Will to Power was not a work as such, corresponding not even to a research path in Heidegger's sense. Instead, The Will to Power was quite literally an editorial
"product" (copyright was held by Netzsche's sister, Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, as founding editor).23 For Heidegger, thesheer prospect of an editorial composite of an author's work (compiled in the author's own name) would have been an important inuence in the genesis of the Beitrge.
I thus submit that -Heidegger'scontributions to philosophy represent a conscientious effort to
establish a foundation of rotes for what eventually became Heidegger' s unpublished works
So regarded, the particular style of Heideggefs Beitrge would reect not -HeicIegger's philosophie voice but would testify to Heidegger's conscientious engagement with the fonnat, the sheer idea of
the Nachla as such. This aspect of Heidegger's engagement with Nietzsche's work responded to
Heidegger's growing (and at the time conicted) concem with his own reception and inuence.3
Heidegger attempted to avoid Nietzsches fate at the hands of professional and politically driven editors (and this is not merely to be imagined something that only happens under pa*ticular_poIitical'
regimes) by specically and deliberately composing his own "Nachla" materials in his own hand.
With rst hand experience of the role editors can play in the reception of a thinker (or,_the nature of a poet's voice, as the case of Hlderlin and Norbert von Hellingrath's discovery of- or counteredition - of the later poems of the time of assumed madness makes clear), Heidegger intended to
limit his Vulnerability to the same editorial interference by keeping what he expected could count as his own Nachla under_ his own control. To use Nietzsche's language for this achievement,
Heidegger composed his Beitrge as a posthumous text.
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Ironically, Heidegger himself would not escape editorial manipulations - nomore than Nietzsche could do. For although hardly a made-up work like Nietzsche's Will to Power, selected
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out in random editorial fashion and arranged from disparate notebooks, Heidegger s Beitrge is itself
a similarly (and similarly radical) editorialproduct as published onthe basis of the notes preserved
(and referred to) throughout Heidegger's life.
So far as I am aware, the Violence of this de-rangement has gone completely without remark. For the Beitrge's editor shifted nothing less substantial than an entire division: transposing it from its
original placement as the division after the overview to append it as the book' s concluding division.
As Friedrich~Wilhelm von Hermann explains in his epilogue, this editorial alteration _responded to
a note indicating that the division in question was not correctly arranged. Yet I-Ieideggefs
comments on the arrangement of his texts (obviously directed
against expectations readers might
have or contra the apparent ordering of the text as a whole) are, as Heideggefs readers know very well, far from unusual for the Heidegger who makes similar comments about argumentative array
in Being and Time or Introduction to Metaphysics or What is Called Thinkingf The remark in the
case of the Beitrge, which indicated only that the division was not rightly placed and offered no indication where it might better be included, was ,all the justication involced for the decision to
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transpose it to the very end of the manuscript, whereby as the editor explains, it no longer makes up the second part but rather the eighth part.3f* The manuscript section rst addressed to Seyn was
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thus deposed from its locus as recollective point of departure in advance of.Heidegger' s Anklang, to become, shades of Heidegger II, a kind of tacked-,on concem in the newly ordered text.
For me there is no Question that von Hei-mann's motives were more than well-intentioned and
evenunimpeachable, following the temporal order of the composition of the text. As editor, in all good conscience, von Hermann ensured the ultimate determining force of his own interpretation of
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I-Ieidegger's intentions by the simple expedient of rearranging the Beitrge.
If Heidegger himself had rst arranged and then despite his owncomment on the typewritten table
of contents, if Heideger nevertheless left the order of his manuscript (and, just to be sure, the
typescript for the same text) unaltered from 1939 (the date of -the manuscript gloss to which von Hermann-refers) until his death in 1976, and if Heidegger in the interim would transmit directions
concerning the dissemination of that same manuscript of eight divisions and 935 sections toPggeler
(among others), if Heidegger spent the last years of his life working on an exactly authorized, nal edition of his works, and if, as I argue, Heidegger had thoughtto elude the fate of Nietzsche's
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Nachla at the hands of editors convinced of their
own best insights, Heidegger's ambition in the
Beitrge was overcome by von Herrnann's milder sense of corrective order.
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Nietzsche as the Last Metaphysician: On the Last Men and the Last God
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In an important expression of the question concerning technology- and science, Heidegger declares Nietzsche the last philosopher of the West, crowning the end of metaphysics with Nietzsche's
philosophy of the will
Although Nietzsche scholars reject Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche as willful and inaccurate, I draw on the lecture courseson Nietzsche dating from the same time to ground myargument that Heideggefs engagement with Nietzsches
topower as art or rechne.
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thought in the Beitrge sheds important light on Heideggefs sin gular and woefully under-analyzed - or even ignored - preoccupation with the logic of science and modern technology."
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In the later Zollikon Seminars, referring to the subtitled theme of the Beitrge, Vom Ereignis, Heidegger will declare that as long one mderstands being as presence . . one cannot understand
technology and surely not the dsclosive appropriating Event at all.33 I-Ieidegger's recognition of the indispensability of Nietzsche's thinking precisely as the preliminary expression of the task of
thinking at the end of philosophy corresponds to nothing other than the epochal Ereignislitself in the Be'trge. For Heidegger, In truth and seen according to the grounding question that is foreign to
his thinking, what Nietzsche was the rst to recognize as nihilism
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in his orientation to Platonism
_- is only the- foreground of the far deeper happening of the forgottenness of Being, which comes
to the fore more and more directly in the course of nding the answer to the guiding question (55)
As Heidegger explains in the Nietzsche lectures, the phrase God is dead as it is usually associated
with nihilism misses' the true compass of Nietzsche's claim. Rather than making an atheistic
proclamationz it is a formula for the fundamental experience of an event in Westem history.4

For the philosopher whose concern with Being is still today routinely converted into mysticism
or else theologyj the forgetting of what Heidegger continually named the question of Being repeats the scotosis (using the language favored by certain scholastic philosophers) that blinds us in the
course of what Heidegger seeks to recall asthe inner truth in the case ofphilosophy and its inception:
a truth of intirnate or rst glimmering, sacriced from the start. This is a fundamentally aletheic
1
moment of truth, a moment of turning relinquished at the same event of inception and which loss
inevitabiy requires a retum or step back to what can only be another beginning for the sake of that
same inception.
-
To reduce the core concem of Heidegge"s thought to a secret theology as postmodem theological
voices have attempted to do is a tactic to be discovered on both sides of the so-called analyticcontirental dividef It is telling that on either side such a reduction works as a dismissal of
Heideggefs claims regarding reality and truth (i.e., modern science and modern technology) in the
modern world (nor do we fail to champion modernity even as we invoke the postmodern). In today's context, pronouncing Heidegger a rcligi0us writer - contra Heidegger's interdiction of this
interpretive reduction -~ betrays the hegemony of analytic philosophy as the legacy of the positivist turn in philosophy, i.e., modeled on the image of science and dedicated to dening science on the
terms of science and analysing it accordingly. From this perforce non-critical (Heidegger would say
un-rigorous) perspective, there is a recognized or received way to offer substantive philosophy concerning truth or reality (i.e, the sphere of modem science and technology) addressing matters of
1
knowledge or tnth in accord with the standard account of Iogical analyses and the valuation of the privilege of the methods of natural scientic theory and experimental process. Whether one takes
oneself to be doing philosophy in a so-called "continental" modality, or not, as one corcedes this analytic assertion, one excludes Heidegger's reections on science/technology from consideration. Thus we prefer to agonize over Heidegger' s words on decision and last gods, reading him theistically and chiding him along the way for his failure to afrm his theism and for inciting the moral danger that has so historically turned out to bea corollary of Judeao-Christian impiety. Irthe process, we
completely overspring what he has to say concerning modem science and technology/machination.
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This was not different in I-Ieidegger`s day
- and we can read Michael Friedmann's account of
the historical circumstances of Heidegger's debate with Camap and Cassirer with prot here. As much against Cassirer, the thinker of the philosophy of symbolic forn and myth, as more typically contra Carnap, the philosopher of the Iogical structure of the world who was to assume the mythic stance of Heidegger's nemesis with his analytically incendiay assessment of the Iogical content of Heidegger's work as reducing to the claim that the nothing nothings,' Nietzsche's insight into the
growing reign or sway of nihilism is not an insight into the simple oblivion or forgetfulness of Be-
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ing. Rather than opening up ,a need for a return to theology or religious values, Nietzsche's reections show Heidegger the singularizing event of nihilism as forging into the scientic domain
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of truthand the logistic domain of proof. When Heidegger writes: What fumishes the standard for the whole history of Western philosophy, including Nietzsche, is being and thinking (1l0), he does not convert Nietzsche to
terms imagined foreign to him, a routine practice used to un-cover Nietzsche's thinking on truth by
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revealing it to be enmeshed in its own assertions and claiming it in consequence

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as inherently self-
contradi ctory. This is not only because Heidegger takes over this very critical gure of thought from Nietzsche himself (this structure Nietzsche names genealogy, the key terms of which, as Deleuze
emphasized beyond Foucault, are terms of action and reaction in Nietzsche's dynamic economy), but also because rather than an insight to be deployed against Nietzsche's attempt to revalue all' values, Heidegger reads Nietzsche as a thinker and hence takes him (as Nietzsche is still all-too rarelytaken) seriously. This is the gravitational force Heidegger outlines as the dialectical force of
I
interpretation orAuseina'ersetzung: all counter-movements and counter-forces are to a large degree

co-determined by what they are 'against,' even though in the form of reversing what they are against." (92) Thus Countermovements become entangled in their own victory. (Ibid.)
a similar fashion, Heidegger sets his ownarticulation of truth as lsa in opposition to the ratonalist condence of the interchangeability of correctness with truth at every level, especially at
In
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the level of the absolute (as patently expressed in Hegel and as realistically, positivistically presupposed in the technological articulation of natural modem science). (Cf. 102 and 104) Equatin g his own conception of truth with Nietzsches conception of aletheic truth, it is Nietzsche
who shows -us how little such a controversion as the ratonalist project itself can succeed. (102) For Nietzsche, illusion degenerates into a necessary illusion, into an unavoidable Consolidation,
entangled in beings themselves [here we recognize Heidegger's challenge to the ontic metaphysics of Western technical rati0nality], determined as will to power ( 102) For Heidegger, accordingly,
Nietzsche represents both the culmination of and at the same time the overcoming of Western metaphysics. For Heidegger, Western metaphysics at its end is at its furthest distance from the question of the truth of Seyn, as well as closest to this truth - in that this metaphysics prepares the crossing to this truth as end." (Ibd.)
.
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Heidegger's challenge to Western techno-scientic rationality is manifest in this declaration of the closure and tuming point of metaphysics. But he expressed his claim byway of a Nietzschean
troping: Truth as correctness is incapable of recognizing and grounding its own full scope. It helps
itself by dominating everything in order that it needs (so it seems) no foun_dations. (102) Recognizing the relevance of Nietzsche's critique of truth as the history of illusion (or, better, the
devolution of truth into and as illusion), Heidegger outlined his own task for philosophical thinking in a list patterned upon Nietzsche's lists of tasks, themes, and titles in The Will ro Power as
Heidegger articulates his own task as the challenge to dare to come to grips with Nietzsche as the
one who most proximate to, as well as to recognize that he is furthest removed from, the question
of Being." (88) This is what Heidegger elsewhere names Nietzscht-:'s importance for thinking, and
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that is to say: for philosophy.
--
I-Ieidegger's Beitrge as Political Critique
In a stark contrast with the socio-political skepticism of the Frankfurt School, Heidegger makes the
calculated claim - a claim which would have been subversive and exactly dangerous to its author,
had the Beitrge been a public work -~ that our own world is anything but a disenchanted domain. We live in a perfectly if illusorily and today literally virtually enchanted world of technological power and ever-braver new and oh-so American possibilities for what we imagine the future to be.
But so far from arguing the perspective of nostalgia, Heidegger' at the time means to argue that the postmodem/modern, technicalfnew-age world is enchanted on the terms of and by means of the unlimited dominion of Machenschaft.'
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Machenscha as Heidegger articulates it here is specically referred to political gatherings (the

organized shouting" Heidegger analyses so well in this context was, however, an analysis which
because it remained unpublished demonstrated only the phantasm of resi'stance" or mental reservation). The same Machenscha also embraces the immediacy of broadcast communication
in general both as it served party needs and as we recognize it today. Here Heidegger's reference is to the unavoidabie immediacy of radio broadcasts and the even more immediate ventri-
loquism of the loud-speakers used to energize party rallies and which at the time worked in the
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fashion of todayfs intemet. Apart from the status of Heidegger's political resistance, his analysis remains germane to every kind of media and not merelythe journalism Heidegger (like Nietzsche) dismissively characterizes as ersatz knowledge responding to yet more ersatz concems, that is,
personal communications of all kinds and their respective and relevantly objective devices: email, beeper and cell-phone technologies. Both the loud-speaker driven political machinations of National
i
Socialism and todays cell-phones know nothing like an inherent or fundamental limit and are just
as inherently lacking embarassment, reticence, or awe.5 Precisely such an absence of restraint
unies Heideggefs conception of the unity between '-'live experience and machination.
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This, as Heidegger reads the anticipatoy character of intentional conception/praxis, is more than
the fact that what he calls the coincidence of machination and lived experience work to deprive living or real or genuine power of the possibility of any place or postition in the postmodern world.
Projecting upon representation in the sense of a grasping that reaches ahead, plans and arranges
everything that is already conceived as particular and singular, such re-presentation recognizes no limit inthe given and wants to nd no limit." In this way, Heidegger emphasizes that in its essence
or fundamentally, modern technical praxis must be interpreted otherwise than Aristotelian rechne: there is in principle no impossible; one 'hates' this word (70). This impatience with limit
t
continues as the watchword of our own technological optiniism and information-age technical ambition, which Ivan Illich names hubris, but here, some sixty-ve years ago, Heidegger is speaking
ofthe ruling logic
of fascism: Everything is humanly possible, if only everything is taken into account in advance, in every aspect, and if the conditions are furnished (70). Regarded from the terrnslof and within the Scheme of modern technoscience, everything may be taken as given or as known in advance: there is nothing that is question-worthy (51). Presented
as the era of the world spectacle, the scientic viewpoint or technological vision of modern times makes the very i-mmediacy of mediate experience possible in the rst place. Eliminatng in a
perfectly dramatic way everything questionable by transforming what is worth questioning into merely technical problems, that is: the question-worthy becomes no more than so many potential questions to be resolved, no more than a solution waiting to be found. The optimistic result is experientially rendered
-- E rlebns -
now accessible in the form of scientically knowable and
potentially universally available or articulable results. Such results have a single interpretation on
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the single road towards the increase of progress and prosperity, that anyone can acquire, available to everyone for eitcitement, entertainment, distraction, etc.
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Writing on the title subject of needfulness, Heidegger ponders the question of the late modern ethos of leisure or comfot as Nietzsche had earlier raised it- questioning the contemporary value
placed upon freedom from need asan unqualied good. In this, the echo of Nietzsche's reections in Beyond Good and Evil along with the third section of On the Genealogy ofMorals, recalls what
Nietzsche named Socratic (Alexandrian) optimism in The Birth 'ofTragedy and recalled again (in the name of Socrates and Plato, and indeed the entire tradition of philosophy) in Twilight ofthe Idols
(53 and 55).
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More than a focus upon leisure and cultural ease, for Heidegger, it is the abandonment of Being that has installed itself in our era. This leads beyond the derangement of the
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West to what Heidegger names the ight of the gods _ . .(56; cf. 13).
The occultation of Being in modern times is evident in the moments of calculation, high speed,
the gigantic (or titanic) - which generates the divesting, publicizing, and vulgarizing of all attunement (58) which for its part corresponds only to what Nietzsche namesthe leveling out of the tendency of everything to attain to the ever more common,
and the claim of the massive -
that is nothing less (self-)indulgent than what Nietzsche called the all-too-human." In today's modem technology, whatever alarms we have regarding the incidental, as we think of them,
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dangers of technology, we do intend to control technology. Thus in the philosophy of technology or in ethical, social-political studies of technology, .e., in professional circles dedicated to
questioring in the backwater of technology and its consequences and its meaning, an effective answer to the search for limits in an age of high technology51 hasemerged in the promise of what
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the Australian specialist Aidan Davison has analysed as the inherently contested" dimensionality
I
of technological sustainability.52 Given both the limitations of environmental resources and our
own technical cleverness/ingenuity, we nanetheless (this stubborness testies to the phenomenon
of technological autonomy, touse Winner's formulation, it is what Ellul calls techn and Heidegger
the essence of modern technology) continue to be committed to exploit every ecological resource,
every technology extant. That means, of course, that we are dedicated to the ideal of expansionism, an ideal conceived in advance as unlimited in principle, growing every market to every Comer of
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the globe and for all time. On whatever terms necessary, as Davison shows, even the ideal of restraintebecomes a means, however unwitting, for the proliferation of technology. This limitless tendency
is reected in terms of the gigantic ideal of totalization, this is what
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Heidegger would emphasize in his lectures to the Club of Bremen, lectures which later became essays condensing in and around his Question Conceming Technology _ and what is apparent even
in thisearly text is nothing but our condence. This corresponds to what the Heidegger of the
Beitrge calls a lack of questioning": in a questionless time. In the time of Heidegges Beitrge, in the time of his Question Conceming Technology, and still in our time, we are increasingly delivered over to technology. Thus weremain unquestioningly or blindly oriented towards both the
1
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machinations of our 'time and our technology.
This condence has endured numerous
transformations (and any number of refutations), nevertheless, and this is what it is to fail to' question, we continue to be fairly sure that we nearly have technology under control. Such control
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means only that
we want to manage the costs and sustain the benets of the power at our disposal
understood ecologically as the environment, understood as nature, and ultimately unclerstood
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as the means of self-expression or the development of the world and ourselves in our own image.
Heidegger's Nietzsche-Courses: From the Problem of Nihilism to the Meaning of Science, Art, and Life I have already adveted to the lecture courses on Nietzsche's philosophy which Heidegger offered
in Freiburg in the Winter of 19364937 and Summer of 1937 (and in 1939, he gives a course on The
I.
Will to Power as Knowledge), courses offered throughout the period of the composition of the Beitrge. In a well known claim - a claim we have already noted that most interpreters nd unsatisfactory --Heidegger asserts that his Nietzsche courses manifest resistance to the political rule of National Socialism. And to be sure, Heidegger does indeed advocate a radical way of reading Nietzsche given the context of -the times. Radical at the time, for Heidegger was to steer well away from the blood politics of racially inammatory language and the folk mysticism of an inherently
German Will, to 'emphasize not only the ubiquity of will and power, but the Will to Power as art and as knowledge together with the fundamental unity of Niet2sche's teaching of the Eternal Return
12
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of the Same in terms of his interpretation of the Will toPower - titles, respectively, of his Nietzsche lecture courses.
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Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche remains radical today less for the points of his interpretation
of Nietzsche's thought (and its difference from contemporary interpretations) than for the singularity
of his attention to Nietzsche as a thinker, that is, exactly as philosopher. Heidegger would say and mean - Nietzsche knew what philosophy is. Such knowledge, Heidegger did not fail to
underline, is rare. Only great thinkers possess it.54 As great in this sense, Nietzsche would stand
on the level of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, as these are the names representing for Heidegger
the history of Western metaphysics. In this way, by speaking of Nietzsche in relation to great thought, Heidegger did not merely mean to. set Nietzsche's philosophy into the scope of his own
understanding of the question of the essence of being, but to highlight Nietzsche's intoxicated relation to the task of philosophie thinking as such. Nietzsche's feast of thinking" would thus
correspond to I-Ieidegger's thoughtful ideal, to dwell in genuine questioning. If I am hardly supposing myself to be the rst to note Nietzsche's importance for Heicieggerf what I do argue in
particular is that Heidegger's engagement with Nietzsche provides the key to Heidegger's critique of technology and science in his Beitrge. _
In his lecture courses on The Eternal Return of the Same, Heidegger invokes the concept of familiar to us specically modern science in terms that recur in the Beitrge, terms that will also he
from Heidegger's repeated declarations concerning science in _The Question Concerning Technology, Science as World-View, and inWhat is Called' Thinking. This same orienting
terminology recurs
in Heidegger's
engagement with the patently pro-science convictions of the
physicians and psychoanalyst-participants in the Zollikon Seminars. As Heidegger expresses the
historically manifest trajectory of science in his 1937 Nietzsche course, The destiny of today's science too will be determined in corformity with the general trend in the history of man on our earth
for the past hundred and fty years, the trend, that is to say, toward industrial and technological
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organization.5
As its legacy to the modern era, the nineteenth century transformed traditional university disciplines and scholarship into industries, whereby cutting-edge timeliness and productivity
become measures of quality. This industrial transformation was most pernicious in what we call the
13
natural sciences which were transfonned from a knowledge of the nature of their subject matter into mathematical, technical discip_lines. The university disciplines do.not merely follow an
industrial muster. Whether it be information or computer science or food-engineering or biotech

rms, etc., today's corporate concems unmistakeably set the tone for research itself. In an observation still relevant to contemporary forms of natural, cognitive, and information science, Heidegger remarks Today, the major branches of industry and our military Chiefs of Staff have a great deal more 'savvy' concerning scientic' exigencies than dothe 'universitieS_`; they also have at their disposal the larger share of ways and means, the better resources, because they are indeed closer to what is real.
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Such reections are important for understanding Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche and they are also key for anyone who wishes to raise the question of Nietzsche's own highly specialized
conception of science as such. This' understanding presupposes a recollective reection of the idea
of science, the meaning of Wissenschaft. Both Heidegger and Nietzsche invoke rigorous ideals and
exigence when they speak of science, All sciences are rigorous, Heidegger writes, but not all sciences are exact." (76) and in the Zollikon Seminars, he says the same thing by noting that Not every rigourous science is an exact science For his part, Nietzsche calls for the law-giving of
genuine philosophers and declaims what he speaks of as the grand style, a style of high architectonic
rgor.
Heidegger draws our attention to Nietzsche's reections on science and the pursuit of truth as expressed in the bright character of daring joyfulness. This emphasis follows from Nietzsche's provocative reference to the Provenal language of the troubadours (and to theircraft, their song tradition or science of song). Nietzsche' s resort to the poem-tradition of the south of France occurs
in the highly stylised titling of his book The Gay Science
-- which Nietzsche himself subtitles
parenthetically: (la gaya scènza). .In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche would invoke the Provenal knight-poets as magnicent and inventive beings of the gar' saber ... (BGE 260) and in
his comments on The Gay Science in his auto-bib1iographicalEcce homo would speak of its union of profundity and exuberance testifying to the gift of transformation, the extent to which Wisdom makes a pact with laughter, and hence out of what a depth 'science' has here become j0yful. (EI-I, The Gay Science)
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For Heidegger, as we will see later in greater detail, what is at issue is the province of both
reective thought and practical (knowin g) science. As it was at the time ltered through the express invocation of Nietzsche's history of nihilism and in tacit correspondence with both Cassirer and
Carnap, the topical and schematic scope of Heidegger's Beitrge accordingly reects the
concentrated specicityof I-Ieidegger's engagement with what he at the time would call positivism butwhich for us continues as the veritably working efcacy of modern science andlas technology
as rnachination, the dealings of technology.
V
Nietzsche, Style, Technology

The particular manner in which Heidegger chose to articulate 'this engagement with the
Machenscha or technological set up of the modern world, especially in terms of its machinations
back and forth, that is, its as we have come tosee these dealings in even greater radicality in the intervening years between Heidegger's and our own times, was inuenced not only by Heidegger' s
reading of other then-contemporary authors on technology but, and with devastating consequences as I have suggested, by a reading of Nietzsche's rhetorical style. By Nietzsche's rhetorical style I do not merely mean to 'speak of Nietzsche's style and his focus on truth an recurring illusion as that
is so often discussed but rather to direct attention to the question of the dynamic of Nietzsehe's texts. This is Nietzsche's stylized direction of his texts to certain readers (always an achievement of some doing in a published -~ and therefore, as Nietzsche would rernark, a public and
i
consequently all-too~common7 - work). Heidegger's allusion to Nietzsche's style is revealed in his account of the way in which Nietzsche's Incipit tragoedia should be read as it works enigmatically in The Gay Science to
herald Nietzsche's masterpiece of style (and esoteric/exoteric indirection) in' Thus Spoke
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Zarathusrra: A Book far All and None. Using the metaphor of a veritably soundless revolution
to identify the philosopher who was then as now most readily associated withiborrbast, Heidegger explicates Nietzsche's stylistic achievement using Nietzsche's words to do so: Only the few, the
rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible revolutions will perceive the 'Incpir rragoedia.
'"
The revolution in question is the one Nietzsche wishes to coin as what he named a revaluation of
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For Heidegger, as we will see later in greater detail, what is at issue is the province of both
reective thought and practical (knowing) science. Asit was at the time ltered through the express invocation of Nietzsche's history of nihilism and in tacit correspondence with both Cassirer and
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Carnap, the topical and schematic scope of Heidegger's Beitrge accordingly reects the
concentrated specicity of Heidegger's engagement with what he at the time would call positivism
but which for us continues as the veritably working efcacy of modem science and/as technology
as machination, the dealings of technology.
Nietzsche, Style, Technology

The particular manner in which Heidegger chose to
aticulate this
engagement with the
Machenscha or technological set up of the modem world, especially in terms ofits machinations
back and forth, that is, its as we have come to see these dealings in even greater radicality in the
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intervening years between Heideggers and our own times, was inuenced not only by Heideggers reading of other then-contemporary authors on technology but, and with devastating consequences
as I have suggested, by a reading of Nietzsche's rhetorcal style. By Nietzsche's rhetorical style I do not merely mean to speak of Nietzsche's style and his focus on truth and recu-ring illusion as that
is so often discussed but rather to direct attention
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to the question of the dynamic of Nietzsche's
texts. This is Nietzsche's stylized direction of his texts to certain readers (always an achievement of some doing in a published _- and therefore, as Nietzsche would remark, a publiciand
consequently all-too-commonm - work).
Heidegger's allusion to Nietzsche's style is revealed in his account of the way in which Nietzsche's Incipit tragoedia should be read as it works enigmatically in The Gay Science to herald Nietzsche's masterpiece of. style (and esoteric/exoteric indirection) in Thus Spoke Zararhusrra: A Book for All and None. Using the metaphor of a veritably soundless revolution" to identify the philosopher who was then as now most readily .associated with bombast, Heidegger explicates Nietzsche's Stylistic achievement using Nietzsche's words to do so: Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible revolutions will perceive the Incipit tragoedia.`"
The revolution in question is the one Nietzsche wishes to coin as what he named a revaluation of
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all values, which revaluation Heidegger claims with a word from Nietzsche's Zararhustra, an
orientation Heidegger takes over for his own text, as expressed in the
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Beitrge section title Fr die
Wenigen - F r die Seltenen [For the Few - For the Rare]. This Heidegger expresses in terms of his own guiding inceptual question and his own conception of thinking questioning as such in
regard to nothing but silence itself - which he speaks of in terms of the inaudible, that is: stillness [die Stille] and in terms of reticence and awe- [Verhaltenheit, Scheu]. ( 5) And later, in his section
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entitled Anklang, Heidegger will ask again and again do we who are to come have anear for-the sound of assonarice which must be brought to ringing in the preparation for the other beginning?
( 52)
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In this way, in his Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger can say not everyone has a right toevery question." What Heidegger means by such an esoteric distinction concerns his own very esoteric
conception of the nature of questioning as the still awkward elusiveness of his ultimate call for the
few and the rare in Heidegger's own (and unremittingly problematic) expression of silence. The word breaks . . . from the start." Heidegger writes, The word does not come to word." ( 13)
Reecting on Das Erschweigen und das Fragen, he will claim that in seeking, questioning and
keepin g silent maintain an intimate evenessential relationship, as Heidegger explains Das Suchen als Frage und dennoch Erschweigungf" _
`
Where Heidegger sets questioning in its guiding modality, that is authentic or genuine questioning
(as opposed to the kind of questioning that, as Heidegger emphasizes by contrast in the Beitrge, corresponds to curiosity and which, we can add, likewise corresponds to investigative research),
Heidegger further details the
natureof
questioning in the
'Nietzsche lectures. The style oft
questioning to be opposed is scientic inquiry: answer-bound or problem-directed inquiry. (See N1,
477) For Heidegger, such inquiry stops short of genuine questioning. And contra received logicfs
Heidegger proposes the radicality of thinking itself.
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Heidegger criticizes' modern science in its totalising logic, which is also to sayits technological
essence. Much later, he will write, very much in Nietzsche's spirit: Science is the new religion.7 This' critique is manifest in Heidegger's denunciation of machination. It is important to note that today, just as much as in Heidegger' s own Nazi-politicized era, Heidegger' s contributions to thinking the essence of modern science strike us as conceptually opposedto serious attempts to cognizing
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science in general as well as to the cognitivist sensibilities (and analytic practice) of the philosophy of science. Taking a stance against science or pointing to the limits of logic and language, or the
respective roles of philosophy (thinking) and science, seems anti-scientic.
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Heidegger hardly makesmatters easier with his notorious declaration that science does not think in What is Called Thinking. And in the Zollikon Seminars,~speaking with medical scientists
and other practitioners, in a context that found him making frequent reference to Husserl's Logcal
Investigations, -Heidegger pronounced phenomenology more of a science than natural scie_nce.79 For the modern scientic sensibilities of his interlocutors, such an assertion of the scientic primacy
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of phenomenology can appear to strike a discordant tone.
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Thus even his more sympathetic interpreters nd Heidegger's views on science unsettling and a certain defensiveness concerning Heidegger's disposition toward the natural sciences can be read
from Richardson to Kockelmans and Heelan and even, most recently, to Pat Glazebrook. In the same
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defensive spirit, the translators ofthe recent English-language edition of the Zollikon Seminars were
inspired to address Heidegger's repeated reservations contra science not, as Heidegger himself suggested, to be regarded as against (rather than for) science as science, but as qualifying the
absolutist claims of natural science per se. To make their point, Askay and Mayr added a footnote to I-Ieidegger's text, invoking Krell's earlier translator's gloss to fend off the inevitable question of
Heideggers scientic and mathematical competence by citing Krell's emphatic appeal to Heidegger's literally academic authority: Heidegger never really abandoned his interest in
rnathematics and the sciences and remained capable enough in the former to
committees in the mathematics faculty.3
_
serve
on doctoral
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For Heidegger, only ancilla to theology, and that for impeccably metaphysical reasons,
philosophy was not ancilla to science, but the other way around. Heidegger had never varied his thinking in this regard for as we have seen almost thirty years before in his Nietzsche lectures, he
_ to the emphasized that science is only scientic, that is to say partaking of genuine knowledge __ extent that it is philosophical.8' And Heidegger's argument in Being and Time demands similar
distinctions. Laying the foundations of science is thus what Heidegger names a productive 1ogic."B2 Rather than limping after science, such a productive logic leaps ahead of science:
disclosing the constitution of its very subject-matter, thereby making these structures available to
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thepositive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry."
In his An Introduction to
Metaphysics, Heidegger compounds his claims in Being and Time, writing in direct response to Carnap's criticism of the illogical and unscientic character of his thought: To speak of nothing is
illogical. He who speaks and thinks illogically is unscientic. In reply, Heidegger notes that All
scientic thought is merely a derived form of philosophcal thinking which proceeds to freeze into its scientic cast." Philosophy is prior in rank and not only logically' or in a table representing a
sciences.5 What Heidegger means by this is a classicatoy as much as a thematically reective rank-ordering. But failing to grant to science its accustomed pride of place,
system of the
in today's age of scientic reason - NB, then as now - whenever Heidegger attempts to reserve
an orientation 'between philosophy and science that would require critical reection, or
thoughtfulness, and recognizing that for Heidegger critical reection is the proper province of philosophy and therefore and inevitably unavailable to science qua science, Heidegger is judged antiscience, a judgment he just as persistently rejected' as confusecl.
For'Heidegger, in the spirit of the genuine knowing he will always believe to correspond to the
real essence of scientic thought, the ascription of antagonism to science mistakes the critical point he had lea-nt so early in his own life from A1-lstotle`s specication of what we may name
methodo1ogical phronesis. Much of Heideggefs enthusiasm for Nietzsche's claim concerning the victory of scientic method over science itself derives from just this critical distinction H-_ and
indeed the philosophical importance of the qualifying philosophical ability to make distinctions. As
Heidegger cites Aristotle's account of such judgment in the Zollikon Seminars (following a lifetime of such references): For not to know of what things we may demand proof, and of what one may
not, argues simply a want of education." (Meta. 1006a, cf., Nic. Eth. 1094b, etc.) In Heideggefs
review of the propositions on science offered in the Beitrge, he also adverts to the same charge of being anti-science.'" Heidegger contends that his summary characterization of science doesn't arise from a hostility to science because hostility of the sort-is simply imp_ossible. (76) The disposition between philosophy and science, as the position ofreection and the objectof such
reection
excludes the very idea of hostility as affect. As Heidegger explainsz Philosophy is
neither for nor against science." (76.l 1)
If his crltics charge that his philosophy is anti-science and therefore irrational, the judgment has proven to endure Heidegger's own efforts to answer such
19
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critique directly. Any criticism of science 'is assumed to be irrational, and all Heidegger`s training in logic and mathematics, and in spite of his painstaking references to Aristotle, the rst master of
scientic logicfs and to the development of that logic into the organon of precisely modern science in Descartes (and Galileo) and in Kant (and Leibniz), all this does nothing to abrogate the charge of
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irrationality. If the current author argues against this presumption, it is worth remembering that this seemingly automatic association with iirationality is also what makes *Heidegger difcult to read
in the Beitrge.
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One Dimensional Technology: From Fascism to Global Democracy

This same emphasis on the modem (and technological) scientic world-view takes us to what is
arguably Heidegger' s most reviled textual locus. For the Beitrge repeats what Heidegger declares in his better-known passage in An Introduction to Metaphysics. Regarded in terms of the calculative, technological-rational ideal of modemity, regarded as a triumphalist, or logical ideal, Heidegger
claims that both "America" and Russia are effectively identical or the same." In context (or, at
least, in his own mind), Heidegger' s comment becomes a reproof: critiquing the then-current regime as representing the same dynamic politicizing, technologizing order and ordering momentum as other
(and otherwise different) imperial cultures. In consequence, the impetus Heidegger calls Machenscha would be as common to Bolshevi_k Russia as to Capitalist America, and such technological machination would also be, and this indeed was Heidegger's point here, common to
National Socialist Germany as well. S0, Heidegger argues, the 'nati0nal' [i.e, national socialist] 'organization' of science moves along the same lines as the American ... (76.10) We can
argue
if it remains a touchy political claim
-- that this very

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globalizing ideal, i.e.,
technological machination as such, continues unabated in the rnonotonic, more totalized than
monopolistic capitalist-cum~consumerist ethos of our own day.
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This totalizing parallel however may be seen to lend a different cast to the signicance of the Passa 8e from An Introduction to MetaPhJ'scs on the so-called inner truth and greatness _ of National
Socialism, precisely in the context of his parenthetical explication of it as the encounter between global technology and modern man.9 It now corresponds to Heidegger's assertion that the modern
or techno-rationalist worldview of Nazism would in essence be the same as-(or not other than Or not mportantly dijjferent from) American or Russian alternatives. We note that Herbert Marcuse
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makes a similar argument with regard to the bifurcation of reason into critical and objective or scientic (and exactly uncritical because absolute) reason. 'Marcus'e's point is that modem
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technologyjtends to eliminate the critical in favour of an authoritarian, absolute, objective ideal of reason. In Heideg`gers case, and thus different from the insights of his more politically (and dialectially) rened student, it seems clear that precisely Heideggers least redeeming political values
accord with his opposition to the essence of modern science. For it is his skepticism regarding the redemptive potential of democracy that puts him on the other side .of National Socialism and its far from unique political enthusiasm for science
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Heidegger's claim here is chillingly prescient to the point- of globalization as such. Today's current market economies already include Russia and America (and China as well); they will
eventually include, one can be certain of this when the dust of political conict has settled,
Afghanistan and Iraq, all of Korea, Pakistan, etc., all economics will be brought under the one umbrella of world commerce, constituting the totalized meaning of the global per se, now to be
understood both in a calculatively economic as well as in a productively rationalist sense (qua the global market and qua that non-locus we call the intemet). If the real market economy of the
globalized world continues to be beset by old-fashioned political issues, by borders and sociocultural values (so-called) - Iihad (or olive tree values) vs. McWorld (or Lexus economic->s)4
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we now know this global future better than Heidegger (however prescient he was) could possibily
have imagined it to be: we now know what a totalized, globalized world looks like in praxical theory, i.e., we know it virtually. Heideggefs point contra the vey idea of impossibility (whichour own regime of freedom hates in principle (70; cf. 51, 58) as much as the Nazi regime he
indicted [all-too-pointlessly because all-too-silently] in the Beitrge) is exemplied in the one global world all of us have "already" (at least ideally) become. In otherwise global terms, there are no
limits to the prospects of a totalized world market.
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The contemporary meaning of g1oba1ization as it is adumbrated within and eventuated by (and on) the terms of the intemet and its virtual world-compass offers us the best way to understand the import of what the Heidegger of the Beitrge called gigantism and which he would later name planetary technics. The internet (but also microsoft dominance but also neo-conservative economics and thoughtless hawkishness under the' guise of patriotism, but not only that) increasingly
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assures complete consumer registration and the 'new trend toward wireless conrectivity and the omnipresence of security issues would thus reveal the ubiquitous (or dangerous) side of exactly technological sameness, to retrieve Heidegger's language of the same once again in an
uncomfortably relevant context.
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In the Wake of the fundamentalist Islamic attack on the US on September 11, in the year 2001, we note (regarding what had formerly been a debate concerning the autonomy of technology of
interest only to specialists), that Heidegge-'s inquiry into the totalizing m_echanizatior of democratically user-specic or user-appropriated technology presaged an unc anny resolution to this debate by way of a world-historical shock as the impossible but all-too real demonstration of the non-masterability of technology even when (perhaps just when) appropriated by users. Thus we recall Heidegger's warning that we are most in thrall to technology not when it astonishes or bewtches us but when we think nothing of it, precisely when we use or control it, when it is
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ubiquitous enough that we assume we have technology in hand5 -. at least in theory. This
unduestioning condence is the point of Heidegger's critique of the enchantment of disenchantment

(the ench!antment of modem technology) in the Beitrge. If critics of technology like Marcuse or
more recently, like Winner could raise concems about the potential for the loss of certain freedoms,
formerly presumed inalienable, at least for Americans in their own land, such wonies are no longer
empty but constitute the new ground rules required for national security.
Graced with a specic program of technological schooling, a suicide collision transfonned jetliners into fuel-driven bombs. The model was already well known in the ongoing conicts of the
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Middle-East: ramming a truck through the barricades of a military complex, the drivers life
sacriced for the sake of some measure (nihilstically irrelevant whether more or less) of mutual
destruction. As a suicide driver drives a truck, now transformed only in mass and speed, the pilots
ew a jetliner, and with unimaginablyintensied consequences. We saw two skyscrapers drop from New York City's southernmost horizor, watched as they shuddered into themselves, collapsing in
death, spreading poisoning dust, and we continue to recoil from the obtrusive persistence of what
Jacques Lacan taught us some time ago to recognize as testifying to the impossible register Lacan named the Real, more than manifestly now a eld to which the gods belong. The rationalist
ideal Heidegger named logic well beyond the dominion of the imaginary sublime that is now
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consummate as the virtual image of modem technology is the modern scientic world view that today rages ever more unencumbered by any "possible" (irnaginable) alternative. This is the rule that
remains. Neither pluralism 'nor a retum to traditional societies can alter the monotonic play of technique. Neither the modern world nor pre-modern societies (as, using an outdated ideology, one
insists on regarding fundamentalist Islamic societies) may be thought as other than technological. There is only modemity, liberal or not, as we choose to claim it, and it is what Heidegger in this text names Machenschaft.
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For these reasons, a recollection of Heidegger's question conceming technology might yet carry
us beyond presumption, beyond prejudice, to begin to question- the ideologicai hegemory of the modernity that includes' and denes within its scope the premodern and the postmodern. I
II
A
Science and Technology (aka Machenschaft)

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I have argued that the transformation of Heideggefs Beitrge from its original manuscript form to its published disposition is not without signicant consequences. In particular, shifting the second
section to the end challenges our effort to understand Heidegger's original project. In particular what has been obscured is Heidegger's enduring concern with modern science and technology.
In what would have been the rst section of his original penultimate section, Heidegger writes of Die Zu-Knigen, the onesto-come." Thus, Heidegger exemplies the futural orientation on
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the terms of which contemporary times are to be regarded as decadent, that is as the times of
Nietzschean down going.7 In the evocative language of such under-going, the ideaof decadence,
or going to ground is to be distinguished from the cultural, pre- and proto-fascist notion of decline which is rather more familiar to us in Gibbon and Spengler. By contrast, Heidegger's language
invokes those who. are to come and therefore (and only in this way) those who prepare for what can
exceed humanity. This very post-human possibility corresponds to what Nietzsche meant by his oft-
misunderstood Zarathustran proclamation of the bermensch.

Hlderlin's poetry.
In addition to Nietzsche here,

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Heidegger's description echoes the more melancholy time of renunciation or abandonment in

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In its overtiy recognizable connection with nihilism as it is commonly regarded, the current era of decline is the cultural epoch of what Heidegger names Machenschaft /machination, understood
in terms of the cult of the industrial machine and electrornechanical technology. Later, Heidegger
would speak of cybemetics: today the word information sufces to indicate such technology. Machination is the erhos oftechnology which calls forth the question Heidegger would later raise
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as the question to be heard in the wake of the modern rule of technology.

Recalling Hlderlin's word of the reissende Zeit at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the time of modern technology is irrecusably an uprooting or tearing" time. .For the essence of the
machine, the "deal" of the service' offered by machine technology (and electronic technology is no
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different), can only correspond to a literal deracination, a local disengagement or globalizing impetus. In this way, industrial workers are tom from home and history [herausgerissen aus
Heimat und Gesch`chre], and put to use (mobilized" in Jnger' s and not only his words, or in more
economically neutral terms, engaged and made productive, wired orbrought into the loop). This unsettlin g displacement can be effected via industrialization in the ordinately modern technological
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sense or Via wireless and otherwise mobile communications in the now postmodem, increasingly cellular or atomicizing sense of connectivity in a condition of totaiizingdispersal (or
Today indeed we know that one can remain in one's home, deranged in this uprooting sense by nothing more egregious than an intemet connection. _ globalization).
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Declaiming the unrestrained hold of the frenzy of the gigantic (2) characterizin g the era of the post-industrial constitution of modemity, Heidegger observes, as had Jnger (and as other English,
Russian, French and American critics of the time had also done), that whatthe worker stands to
sacrice in the industrial era before and in the wake of the wars rnarking the last century, is what the
worker still stands to lose today in the postmodern, post industrial e'ra.9 What is volatilizecl, what
in Marx's words,rnelts into thin air, is increasingly substanceless modernity itself.

At risk, Heidegger argues, is the possibility and charge or responsibility of Da-sein -- both with
reference to the locale and substance of the earth and the known and knowable world. In place of earth and world is only machination _ that is, mechanization, i,e., global technicization, the ebusiness or digital ideal, where even the machine stands to lose its substance and its place to a
shadow, a play of light on an increasingly a-dimensional screen, like the technological projections
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of utter transparency elevated to the status of a movie icon of desire in Minoriy Report, or visceraliazed in the Matrix, or to be experienced at will in any home-theatre, that is anybody's living
room outtted with a sufciently gigantic at-screen or just a projection monitor.'
In this context, Heidegger begins his anticipatory projection of the plan or work of the Beitrge by invoking what he calls Ereignis - as an event that may only be called an enowning (despite
the working force of a sole translation) insofar as it assumes or takes over what it is to be human Dasein. Ereignis is the event of appropriation, emergent in what is of itself not to be equated to a human process or choice.
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If Heidegger argues that what he calls the guiding question, the question of Western metaphysics that fails to ask the question of Being, remains the same from Plato to Nietzsche,
Heidegger's recollection of the grounding question emphasizes the question-worthiness of Being. Questionin g Being in this way claims neither an answer noreven the domain of the answer."
(34) Thus Heidegger can write Von Sein und Zeit zu Ere'gnis, and thinking through the language of the words that turn of themselves into their own reversal, can speak of a transformation
of humanity itself (41), that is to say, again, the post-human, essential possibility that would ground human being in the truth of Seyn and to prepare for this grounding by reecting _Seyn and
Da-sein." (42)
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The sheltering of the truth of Ereignis and of the reticence of Da-sein is the great stillness of Seyn. (45) But what is at stal-ce here is humanity itself, already set upon by the globalized technicity of the modern world. From this perspective, Heidegger is able to offer nothing more than Contributions to Philosophy" just because, as Pggeler also emphasizes, all reections following in the Wake of metaphysics become inescapably transitional.'' But contributions are all that
remain, modelled on Nietzsche's seemingly fragmcntary form of the aphorism and. the truncated outline, because, as Heidegger here paraphrases Hlderlin's'Tod des Empedocles and in equally patent reference to Nietzsche: the time of systems is over.(2)12 If Hlderlin's Empedocles, after
resisting popular acclamation as king, declares the time of lordship past, the allusion for Hlderlin himself referred to the French Revolution. In a different political climate, Heidegger goes on to
say that the time of re-building the essential shaping of beings according to the truth of Seyn has
not yet arrived. (Ibid.)
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If Heidegger here also speaks of the transitionfrom the human to the technicized animal, the image he cmploys articulates an-organic technicity in advance of any available in his own era. Not
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a representation of Shelley"s Frankenstein, a human made in the image not of god, but man, of cobbled together body parts; not even the robot fantasy that still channs us in images of illusoy
androids, illusions that have given way to the similarly imaginary cyborg of fantasy and inclistinct
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interfaces between virtual and real, today, in the new language of genes, we nd ourselves named
in our essence..1" As genetically coded, we are not even the technized animal brought to life as dynamo i_n Fritz Lang's Metropolis machine, the malignantly armored but beautifuhmechanical virgin. As technized animality, we now imagine operators like nucleotide transcriptions, the uptake ofmodied genes as therapies or as remodeling transforrnations deliberately injected via the literally mechanical organisms ready made for the work at hand already extant (if not quite existent), and hence not at all dependent on our not-quite-ready technologies: viruses are (seemingly) designed for
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just such a process of on-the-y genetic modication. Using viruses as vectors, as today's researchers do, the technized animal has become the virtual machine.
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From Seyn to the Last God
From the start, as we have seen, the Beitrge links currents from Hlderlin and Nietzsche in
Heidegger's own sense of the future of his own thinking in an express articulation of a sketch planned as posthumous legacy: Regarding Emergence _ Vom Ereignis. Thus Heidegger outlines
the arrangement of the Beitrge with the division to be called Seyn as the ordering question recalling the question of Being and Time. This question is the question concerning the truth of Seyn." The theme of Seyn is recurrent as the matrix of the plan for the work as a whole: What is said is questioned after and thought in the playing forth of the rst and other beginning one into one another, according to the Assonance of Seyn in the neediness of the abandonment of Being, for the Leap into Seyn, towards a Grounding of its tnth as preparation for The~Ones-to-Come for the Last God." (2)
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Here Heidegger not only lists the 'divisions of the Beitrge (and we would be remiss if we failed to call attention to its ending with the last God) but emphasizes the importance of both Nietzsche
and Hlderlin. This emphasis is also heard at the section's conclusion where he moves from his own
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language of free-play,_time-space, decision, to speak of those who are without a future, i.e., those who arealways only eternal, and those who are to come, i.e., _ and here Heidegger shows us
how well he knows both thinker and poet

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-- those who are but once." (2)
'Heidegger continues to explain that the rare bring along the utmost courage for solitude in order to think the nobility of Seyn' and 'to speak of its uniqueness.*5 Heidegger thus highlights his
aversion to the then entrenched (ancl still today dominant) tradition of philosophy as Worldview, that is, what he later analyses as belonging to the essence of Modern Science as 'Worldview,"' that
is, of course nothing but the current understanding of the world on the positive and realist te'rns of
modern science. In an age of totalized, cutting-edge techno-science, philosophy 'falready lacks necessity and owes its 'cultivation' to its character as 'cultural commoclityf (14) Heiclegger's
arguments here follow a line Nietzsche had mapped in advance as the ight into nihilism, that is the ight into world-' or cosmic-darkness, where, as Nietzsche had it, one would rather will
nothingness, than not will at all. - (GM III: 28) In such need-ful times, the church itself is coopted, the masses are given what Heidegger declares to be no more than so many Weltanschauungen
(fo'r'Heidegger these would correspond ultimately to the function of what he named lived experience" and Nietzsche named values).l Philosophy itself continues simultaneously under
the mutually correspondent guises of ecclesiastical scholasticism (positivism, we might say today)
and the secular scholasticism of worldviews (Exisrenzphilosophie or today' s exstentialism). (14)

If Heidegger, as noted above, deliberately distances himself from then-contemporary political appropriations of Nietzsche and explicitly opposes the attribution 'of a philosophy to a people [Volk], it is vital to such emphases to note well that such criticisms are made not merely in a text that was'
not (in fact) published
either during or even after the regime of National Socialism, but one that
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also, so I have .been arguing, never intendedfor publication.
If the posthumous intent of the text were not otherwise clear, when Heidegger asks in his section
on philosophy, Who Are We'? (19), Heidegger invokes the convertibility of religious, moral, and political opposites denouncing liberalism as what ensures all such oppositions," where humanity
never becomes questionable and reason seems to unfold everywhere, progressing for all eternity
(20), Heidegger goes on to argue that Bolshevism itself is ultimately equivalent to National
Socialism insofar as it too is an originally Westem, European possibility: the emergence of the
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masses, industry, technicity, the dying off of Christianity

reason
Heidegger continues immediately to
point out that such dissolution itself corresponds to the essence of Christianity: the dominance of
asequalization of all people ismerely the consequence of Christianity and Christianity is fundamentally of Jewish origins __. Bolshevism is actually Jewish; but then Christianity is
fundamentally Bolshevist! And then, Heidegger challenges, what decisions become necessary from this point on? (38) Everything thus becomes Jewish, but the claim that everything is Jewish
amounts to the claim that everything is Christianity. The conversion of such self-convinced
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oppositions corresponds to Nietzsche's genealogical reection of the same dynamic structure:
everything is visibly becoming Judaized, Christianized, mob-ized (what do the words matter!) (GM I: 9) Rather less radical but asessential here is Heidegger's distrust of mechanistic reason, i.e.,
positivist rationality, as the logical engine of modem technicity or technology common to all-such regimes -- and the science of the same.
Ifwe re-institute Heidegger's original division of his text, we nd that in the section that would
have been 53 (i.e., the fourth section listed in Seyn, now numbered 260 in the published edition of the text), and entitled The Gigantic, Heidegger denes gigantism or titanism (or what I have also been dubbing globalism, to express its current scope) as the techno-scienticizing means par

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excellence. The means whereby the 'quantitative' is transformed as a kind of greatnessi, as its own
'quality' (26O) is the very scale of the massive, the supersize, to use commerical (but not only
commercial) terminology.
Quantity on a grand enough scale becomes quality. And, to be sure, as acaderics, as teachers, we routinely argue that we can put a number on excellence, hence the objectivity of such quantitative
judgments of quality (in peer rating, grading, citation frequency, etc.). Heidegger goes onto explain
that the gigantic is grounded upon the decidedness and invariability of *ca1culation' and rooted in a drawing out of subjective re-presentation into the whole of things." (260) Titanism represents the essence of science as wor1d~view and of modern technology as setting upon and representing (Ibid.) Accordingly, the pragmatic efciency of the modern techno~scientic orientation common to both modern science and philosophy (be it analytic or beit the pro-rational ideal of Habermas's comrnunicative discourse) work as kinds of calculation. The quantitative or gigantic so
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understood, is itself -
as the unconditioned domination of representation - a denial of the truth
of Seyn to the advantage of 'the rational' and the givenf" (Ibid.)
In what 'would oiginally have been the conclusion of its rst 'chapter following the overview (and, again, I am compelied here to point out that this chapter only misleadingly appears as the
work's conclusion), Heidegger invokes language as such. Calling on Ereignis, the sub-theme of the
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Beitrge itself, Heidegger writes:
Language and Ereignis: prelude of the earth, resonance of the world. Strife, the primordial harboring of the cleft, as most intimate rift. The open place. Language whether spoken or reserved in silence, the rst and broadest humanization of beings. So it appears. But precisely the most primordial non-humanization of humanity as an exmnt living-being and subject' and the heretofore. And thereby the grounding of Da-sein and of the possibility of non-humanization of beings. ( 281)
This is clearly Heidegger`s voice but the movement of the text is reminiscent of Nietzsche's occasional staccato stylization (that is not the same as what Heidegger takes to be I-Ilderlifs
parataxes) such as one nds for example in Nietzsche's one-page history of philosophy in Twilight
of the Idols: The History of an Illusion or `Howthe
*True* World Became a Fable." It's worth
noting as an intriguing characteristic of the Beitrge its recurrent allusion to the pattem (at least) of
Nietzsche's historical tour de force in six points, as Nietzsche writes his *history of illusion in six reversals of enlightenment. * Heidegger' s version of this fable he simply calls Man and the concern
here will be his later concem with humanism as such.
Heidegger's listing of this fable is instnctive to cite it at length, if only in part, runs as follows:
1. To what summits must we climb in order to freely have an overview of man in his essential -need? 2. Has man willfully lost his way into what is merely a "being" _ . 3. Man, the thinking animal, as extant source of passions, drives, goal- and valuesettings, tted out with a character, etc. This is at time establishable, as what is certain of everyones understanding, especially whenall have agreed not to inquire any ,more and to let nothing else be than that everyone is: a) as what we encounter _ man. b) that we encounter him. . . _ 6. Man neither subject nor object ofhis'tory, but rather the one blown upon by history (Ereignis) and pulled along into Seyn, the one belonging to being. Call of needfullness, handed over into guardianship. 7. Man as the stranger in the executed free throw, who no longer retums from the abyss and who in this foreign land keeps the remote neighborhood of Seyn. (272)
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If the above makes clear that Heidegger is no more able to stay within the limits of Nietzsche's
six passages than he can attain to Nietzsche's laconic power, and if it is true that Heidegger inevitably lacks Nietzsche's aphoristic self-containment, it is also plain that in such instances as
above, the language and structure of expression in the Beitrge reect a subversively Nietzschear
cast as it recalls the rnode
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of Nietzsche's History of an Illusion
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Science and Attunement

Heideggefs deliberate Assonance [Anklang}, recalls the beginning of his lectures
on Hlderlin,
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reecting on the resonance of the sounding word, like a bell in Hlderlin' s poetry, the soundless fall
of what is nothing but frozen cold: snow whirling in the bell tower: a cold that heightens the recognition of need [die Anerkennmis der Not] (50) As the highest need, it is also what
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a Nietzschean modality fthe neeallness of nee_dlessness. This provocatively paradoxical statement reects what will be the enchanting power
Heidegger calls in a Hlderlinian as much as in
of complete technological control and should be taken in the way that Heidegger in the Question Conceming Technology denes the essence of technology as nothing techno1ogical, that is,
nothing but the relation between essence and being.
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The needfulness of our needlessnessis not our ultimate resourcefulness (indeed our being of ourselves our own resources for ourselves, which is the watchword of the future technology that is
ourselves, the design of the human: cloning as human engineering) but our veritable abandonment - of Being, gods, even the world we have made. We increasingly approximate the time in which,
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as we note Heisenberg's expression, humanity encounters nothing but 'its own face where ever it turns to look on the earth, and we can add: however deeply it gazes into the depths of the universe.
At this point, human inuence has so transformed the world in its image that one recalls both H1derlin's reection on the uncanny power of the human hand -- und heimlich ist/sein Wort, es
wandelt die Welt /und unter den Hnden - andthe word Heidegger borrowed froma still older poet,
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Sophocles, deinon - t h a t strangely human way of being, recollecting the awful danger and self-same
saving prospect of humanity itself. An inkling of this same sounding forth takes Heidegger to the outlineof mechanization, articulated as experience, via the Latin or Roman transformation of the
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sense or essence of the philosophie eonception of the object, which so occupies Heidegger's thinking
in The Question Conceming Technology. In addition, Heidegger here is concerned with the modem understanding of nature and history as the technical scheme effecting the disenehantment of Being
and beings as such, inaugurating what Heidegger names the veritableand still today enduring "enchantment" of power, an enchantment that is rather than a disenehantment of the world as
already noted above articulated with reference to Weber but here to be explored in terms of
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Heidegger's discussion of the allure of the scientic as icon/ideal.
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Heidegger`s specic reference to science in Assonance does not merely begin with the sections
that name science in their titles but the concept of science as such resonates as the guiding motif of the division as a* whole. The needfulness of need, spoken as the utmost need or as the
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forgottenness of being, is revealed as springing not from what is ownrnost to being but out of Machenschaft itself. Heidegger immediately claries the technological dealings of machination
and constant presence with reference to rrorja- rgvy, parallel terms he names together, as he will similarly do in his Question Conceming Technology. As the meaning of this eonjunction of
rroyaz- re';(v7, rnachination paradoxcally reects nothing less controversial than the appeal to lived experience as Heidegger employs the language of Adorno (or Weber) as a matter of
disenchantment and as itself coordinate with (to use the lens of Nietzsche's own critique) enchantment as such, enacted by disenchanting being, as it makes room for the power of an
enchantment that is enacted by the disenchanting itself." (50)
Heidegger thus refers to the
dominant perspecti ve of common understanding with regard to the technological disenchantment of
the world or the de-auraticizing power of modemity in the later section addressing The Age of-the
Utrer Lack
ofQuestioning and Enchantment (59).
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Such an unquestioning aspect, bemused and captivated by technology and its constant
developments, which Heidegger calls its machinational dealings, eharacterizes modern times. H_eideggers Nazi-bound era (a time which in alarming ways resembles our own time) is a time in
which nothing remains essential. Even the sheer idea of essence inspires mistrust. Above all, there is nothing that remains impossible for us. Everything is 'doable' and 'can be done/ if one only
summons the 'will' for it.( 51) And this idea of potential doability - in principle" -- is how modern, scientic, technicizing disenchantment works its magic: such 'a virtual future is, in
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principle, accessib1e to everyone and anyone; The ideal of rational, commonized, 'lived
experience' transforms mystery, i.e., what is exciting, provocative, sturning, and enchanting
making the machinational necessary- into what bcomes public and accessible to everyone." (Ibid.)
For Heidegger, the current epoch of total lack of questionin g tolerates nothing question-worthy and
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annihilates any and all so1itude. (51)
Heidegger offers a prcis of what later appears as the discussion of the essence of technology in
its historical revelation. Technological dealing or machination begins at the inception of the revelation of making as such, more than a merely negative manner of the presencing of being: much
more, the name ought at the same time to refer to making (toino, rxvn), which we of course know a_ human disposition. (6-1) For Heidegger, as we recall here, what is as made, as makable,
whether from out of itself or else asunfolded at the hands of the craftsman, is not yet machination as such: cbot is disempowered from inception, machination does yet manifest itself in its
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essence. (Ibid.) The emergence of the machinations of modern (scientic) technology required the
original conception of the causal schema of beings as such, not derived from the era of modem science and so not limitedin historical time, but drawing in its roots upon the earliest beginning of
of formative manufacture or invention/creation philosophy, articulated in Plato who uses the tern _ and sets the standards for the same in his Tmaeus. With or without the idea of a creator god in the
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J udeao-Christi an tradition, what remains essential is the bein g-causedness [das Ve rursachtsein] of
beings._ (Ibid.) At the height of school philosophy, this fundamental cause-effect-relationship would become the rulihg idea (God as causa sui). Thus Heidegger can say that mechanical and biological
ways of thinking are always only consequences of the hidden machinational [machenschalichen] articulation of beings." (Ibid.) The very little that science has changed since the folk-'science of
breeding of 1930's Germany which was en vogue in nutrition and research intemationally - and not only in Gennany - conrms this. The ideal of hygeine, expressed as the health ideals of nutrition and exercise reected the idea of maximizing potential development, and raising superio' childrenf This same idea has found a new resonance but anything but a new ambition in to_day's vision of genetic engineering (this is of course not just for sheep but pecisely in its modality as human engineering) as Sloterdijk's incendiary tractatus Rules for the_Human Zoo has recently
"
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made an issue of the matter for philosophical debate (and even greater public consternation) in
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Germany.2
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What Heidegger means by ens creatum when he goes on to _coordinate ens creatum - modern nature - which technicity requires no reference to a divine creative power, and accordingly is non-
theological, as the coordinate conjunction of rr0'17a- r!gvrj should have made clear. Following
Nietzsche,
Heidegger refers the idea of ens creatum to the working force of causal thinking. As
Nietzsche writes, we explain everything with reference to ourselves-and our own motivational intentionality.t Consequently, we fashion or invent the very concept of a-cause (and, Nietzsche
argues, misconstrue the world and ourselves in one blow).1'3 Above all, Nietzsche argued, we everywhere explain theunfamiliar by reduction to the familiar - an illusion which has the charm
of silencing mystery and alleviating the discomfort of non-.knowing.' In this Nietzschean context,
Heidegger explains that the f'cause~effect relationship is
employed by all human- calculation to
explain something, i.e., to push it into the clarity of the ordinary and the familiar. Even the beingness of beings fades into a logical form into what is thinkable by a thinking that is itself
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ungrounded. (52) And almost in Nietzsche's voice, Heidegger continues with an express invocation of the same history of an illusion, important for Heidegger's exposition: Do we who are
to come have an ear-for the resonance of the Anklang, which has to be made to resonate in the preparation for the other beginning? (52)
V
The abandonment of being makes its announcement in terms that recall Hlderlin and Nietzsche
-
where Heidegger speaks successive_ly of

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13. The particular elucidation of the abandonment of being the decline of the West; the ight of the gods; the death of the moral Christian God; its reinterpretation (cf. Nietzsche`s suggestions). The masking of this uprooting by the groundless but supposedly newly beginning self-nding of hurnanity (modern tines); this unrnasking eclipsed and enhanced by progress: discoveries, inventions, industry, the machine simultaneously the loss of indivicluality, neglect, pauperization, everything as the disengagement from the ground and from arrangements, uprooting - which isthe deepest maskin g of need -- febrility for mindfulness, powerlessness of truth; the pro-gress into non-beings as the growing abandonment by Seyn. ( 57.13)-
as
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For Heidegger there are two points to be reected upon in the darkening of the world and the
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destruction ofthe earth, in the sense of acceleration, calculation, the claim of the globalized. (57)
Both darkening and destruction are ofcourse not to be resolved by technological mastery for they
are themselves its consequences: both have to do with the mechanization of modern theory or reason.
Heidegger follows Nietzsche's analysis of the mechanism for the installation of an era of unquestionng oblivion (the last, blinking man in Zarathustra's quartet). He explains this
unquestioning oblivion in such terms as a result not of a lack of theoretical knowledge or scientic literacy, but via its reverse, the epoch of our own unquestioning bemusement, that is:
the experirnent; the lack of technoscientic enchantment, as grounded in the mathematical . . _
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The incalculable here is only what has questioning in somehow making it; nothing is impossible . . _
not yet been mastered by calculation." (58)
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As elements of the forgottenness of Being, Heidegger had outlined calculation [Berechnung], acceleration, and the overwhelming claim of the massive. (57) In his following reections on
calculation, Heidegger points to the exact opposite of the precision claimed for it as essential to the
effective success of science: from the unclear pre-conception of leading principles and rules one
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derives the certainty of dispositions and plans." This trajectory for Heidegger corresponds to the essence of the experiment [Versuch], that is as attempts, understood in an arch-Nietzschean sense
but also even in a Machian, even Popperian sense, attempts which always remain corrigible (this
corrigibility is the problem-solving power of what Kuhn calls normal science.) For Heidegger ideal of idealized research science the essence of modern research techno-science abstracted from an
or falsicational logicising, exemplies no necessary correspondence with the real, physical world of empiricist or realist conviction but its owniunquestioning logic: The questionlessness of
somehow sturnbling through: nothing is impossible: one is certain of beings. (58)
As the persistent and dominant modem worldview, as Machenschaft and as Erlebnis, science (technology) is for Heidegger the problem of our era, not its) salvation. Rather than the time of
decisions, rather than a concem with other beginnings, rather even than a matter of'last gods, be
they saving gods or the new gods Nietzsche lamented as unheard of for more than two thousand
years, Heideggers constant preoccupation in the Beitrge concerns exactly technological institutions, reecting equally technological world dominion under whatever political regirne. And
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if for reasons I happily think of as personal pusillanimity or gutlessness, but which may also be
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thought of asthe egoism we each one of us here do know to betendemic to the academic vocati_on,'
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Heidegger did not publish his text during the political' regime of ultimate world damning evil, the
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times to come did not abrogate the timeliness of those same reections on the unbounded, global character of modern technology. Conceived from the depths of technological vision, there is no limit (and today we recognize Heidegger's clarlcation of the digital reduction of quality to quantity, the limitlessness
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characteristic of the ideal of literally global technology, corresponding to the optimistic expectation of innite expandability).
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Today's digitalized ideal is not expressed as the threat that humanity itself, and not merely the world of so-called natural resources may come to taken as standing reserve, as Heidegger had warned
but has today become quite trivially real. In theory, the entire population of Iceland. In practice, we
name only the fetility clinics as veritable banks of human beings, potential and actual. So many ova,
so many vials of sperm, so many embryos, not to mention stem cells and cloned cell-lines, the basis
of genetic research and cultivated in some cases now already for more than fty years. All already stock on hand and nothing at all compared with the virtual promise of the same technology. If the
3
genome project has proven to be as anticlimactic as it has, the genetic code still stands as' a signier
we take for granted in the place of the essence of the human being itself.
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t
'Endnotes
This lack of consensus remains today - even in the wake of a surprisingly unreective set of essays on the text presented as a companion to the Beitrge (please see note 7 below for full citation).
Thus, pre-publication typescripts of the Beitrge seem to have been as familiar and well-disserninated among Heidegger' s students and followers as were copies of Joan Stambaugh's alternative translation of Being and Time. Dominique J anicaud, for example, had such a copy asdid many others and werecall with reference to the Wirkungsgeschichte of Heidegger's temporally related essay, Die Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, no lesser witness than Hans~Georg Gadamer who tells us in his Die Wahrheit des Kunstwerkes (1960)" in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke 3. Neuere Philosophie 1 (Tiibingen Mohr Siebeck, 1987), pp. 249-261, that if Heidegger's essay on the origin of the art work rst appeared in 1950, so htte ihre Wirkung doch schon viel frher begonnen. Denn es war seit langem so, da Heideggers Vorlesungen und Vortrge berall auf ein gespanntes Interesse stieen und in Abschriften und Berichten eine weite Voerbreitung fanden, die ihn schnell in das. von ihm sebst so rimmig karikierte Gerede bracht. In der Tat bedeuten die Vortrge ber den Ursprung des Kunstwerkes eine philosophische Sensation. . . Von Welt und von Erde war dort die Rede." p. 252._
--
It is hard to evaluate claims of this kind for nearly everything that Heidegger said has been' analysed and transmitted, told and retold. We know that Heidegger read his own text again and again not merely from his own marginal notes or by extrapolation from experience (there are no academics who lack this characteristic) but because, as one is informed, Heidegger in correspondence told .iaspers (or Lwith) that he was unable to conment on a text he had been sent because he was preoccupied with correcting his own text. As repeated, apocrypha grows ivy up and down that expression and leaves us with the sight of a man who read only his own texts and the Greeks. And this may well be the case.
Z
Otto Pggeler ascribes the Beitrge to a meditative aftereffect of the events of 1933 Als er sich auf seine philosophische Arbeit zuckgeworfen sah, schrieb Heidegger in den Jahren 1936-1938 sein zweites Hauptwerk." Neue Wege mit Heidegger (Freiburg: Alber, 1992) p. 11. This tonality is not quite rendered in the English translation but is sotnewhat reduced to a generic reection. See Pggeler, The Paths of Heidegger's Life and Thought, trans. John Bailiff (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997), p. 1. Pggeler rst articulates the substance of the Beitrge (and in the same vein, it may be said that he simultaneously begins a manifestly public campaign to desseminate what seems to be nothing less than an outline of its place in Heidegger's thought) in the text (appropriately enough) entitled Sein als Ereignis," Zeitschrift fr philosophischer Forschung X111/4 (1959): 599-632 (see next note for English translation). Scholars such as Elizabeth Hirsch and others refer to the Beitrge and_ Pggeler's representation of its nature, especially with reference to his discussion of it in his book, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (1963) (translated by Daniel Magurshak and Samuel Barber as Martin Heidegger's Path ofThinking (Humanities: Atlantic Highlands, 1987), p. 115. . See Pggeler's Being as Appropriation, trans. R. H. Grimm,'Philosophy Today, Vol. 19, 2/4 (1975): 152-178. Thetranslation was of Pgge1er's 1959 text cited above, which is why I make the claim that this pleading on behalf of the Beitrge dates back at least forty years.
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Martin Heidegger, Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe 65, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989). Throughout I cite the Beitrge in my own translation but the- text has been translated as Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, trans. (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999). Contra the translators' advice, throughout this essay I offer arguments which would compel the
36
reader to regard I-Ieideggers work as expressly intended working notes."
Although I-Ieidegger's relationship to Nietzsche is well-marked_in Heidegger's writings, beginning with but especially after hisleing and Time, and in the Beitrge in paticular, this relationship is hardly in evidence in recent discussions of the Beitrge. In particular, indeed, one nds that it is absent from a
recent
collection entitled a Companion to Heidegger 's Contributions to Philosophy, edited by Charles E. Scott, et al., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) but it is also largely absent from very admirablejoumal compilations, such as, e.g., Heidegger Studies. Likewise absent from most discussions of the Beitrge to date, the question of science and technology was key for Heidegger, a question he pursued throughout his life. And although scholars read Heidegger in terms of engagement with Nietzsche's thinking (not easy as I argue elsewhere) and although others have attempted to read Heidegger in termsofhis concem with science and technology, such Scholarship is not only farufrom the rule in Heidegger interpretation but the conjoined emphasis I argue here is still more rarely _to be found. Nevertheless the conjunction between Nietzsche and science was Heidegger`s own.
I refer to recent reviews of the new translations of Heidegger's works-by both Fred Dallmayr and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (referring, respectively to the Zollikon Seminars and the Beitrge. Dahlstrorn, in a book length study originally published in German on He'degger's Concept ofTruth (Cambridge: University. of Cambridge Press, 2001) is scrupulously careful in his distinction between "science" as such and I-Ieidegger's usage. It is important to note that Dahlstron's distinction follows the English reference of the word science tolthe real sciences, not philosophy but physics or biology -'which last Dahlstrom reads with especially forceful sensitivity. See particularly pp. 444-445. For my part, Iargue that this interpretation is equivocal given Heidegger`s own emphases, and recommend, for further clarication, Gnther Neumann's Die phnomenologische Frage nach dem Ursprung der mathematischnaturwissenschaftlichen Raumaujfassung bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: Duncker & I-Iumblot, 1999). See also Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, Protokolle-Gesprche-Briefe. Herausgegeben von Medard Boss (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987); translated as Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: Protocols-Conversationsf- Letters, edited by Medard Boss, Fanz Mayr and Richard Askay, transf (Evanston: Northwestem University Press, 2001). Idiscuss this point further both below in the current essay as well as elsewhere inDie Wissenschaftsbegriff zwischen Martin Heidegger und Medard Boss" in a forthcoming collection, Harald Seubert, ed., Philosophie und Daseinsanalyse (Kln: Bhlau, 2004).
William J. Richardson makes this reference in his recounting of-a comment made by (one presumes) Charles Scott (Richardson does not name him here), as a colleague who convivially offered to concur with Richardson' s (exactly original) assessment of two Heideggers' in Heidegger, Through Phenomenology to Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), Preface to the U.S. Edition, p_.xxxv.
Heidegger, Letter to Father Richardson" in William J. Richardson's Through Phenomenology to

Thought. (Nijmegen: Nijhoff, 1965), xxii. The letter is dated Anfang April 1962.
Possibly setting the standard for all subsequent instances of such an association with irrationalism, one many note Georg Lukcs 1946 book: The Destruction ofReason: Irrationalism from Schelling to Nietzsche, trans. Peter Palmer (Atlantic Highlands: I-Iumanities Press, 1981). The political vector of this association, without, to be sure, Lukcs' anti-imperialistlanti-capitalist convictions, returns Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, eds. Why WeAre Not Nietzscheans Robert de Loiaza, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) and Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, Nietzsche Godfather ofFascism: On the Uses and Abuses ofa Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
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See Pggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger (cited above, including reference to the English translation: The Paths ofI-leideggers Life and Thought).
A
These names can be multiplied almost at will, but notorious among these are the French antiHeideggerians, but also Tom Rockmore, Richard Wolin, Hans Sluga, Pggeler and recently, Hermann Phippse who drenches Heidegger with the charges of anti-rationalism and pro-religiousity.
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Heidegger notoriously also named the same unpublished sources the locus of Nietzsche's genuine -philosophy. See Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), in two volumes, references throughout, especially Volume 1.
See Notes 4, 5, and 6 above. See Pggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, pp. 143ff.
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Heidegger writes Eine der wesentlichen Formeln zur Kennzeichnung des Ereignisses des Nihi_lismus lautet: <<Gott ist tot. Mit Nihilismus meint Nietzsche die geschichtlichen Tatsache, d.h. das da die obersten Werte sich entwerten, da alle Ziele vemichtet- sind und alles Ereignis, Wertschtzungen sich gegeneinander kehren." Heidegger, Nietzsche I p. 185. And in a much milder manner, what Pggeler had already done for German scholars 'in the know,' David Farrell Krell as translator would do inone of his notes to the text. Krell points out thatlHeidegger`s in-vocation of the 'event' of nihilisrn, cited four times in this and the followingparagraphs, occasions perhaps the earliest 'terrninological' use of the word Ereignis in Heidegger's published writing. Krell goes on to conclude with what this reader reads as a reference to the Beitrge made by Heidegger and published in 1969. Krell is referring to the protocol made by Alfredo Guzzoni to the lecture Zeit und Sein, dated 11-13 September 1962. See ZurSache desDenken , (Tbingen: Niemayer, 1969), p. 46; this protocol is also translated in On Time and Being, Joan Stambaugh, trans. (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 43. See the prior reference to the context of this reference in The Letter on Humanism and Identity and Dijfference, p. 36. Krell cites as follows'The relationships and contexts which constitute the essential structure of Ereignis wereworked out between 1936 and 1938,' which is to say, precisely at the time of the rst two Nietzsche lecture courses." Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume I, trans. D.F. Krell (San Francisco: Harper & Row 1979), p. 156. Krell`s helpful gloss is characteristic of his interventionist style in Heidegger's text throughout and, it is worth remarking, in the context of the present reection on the players in any work's paleography, that Krell's notes (and appended commentary) were expansive enough that they would render the publisher the bookseller's service of turning two volumes into four.
3
An encounter which then took place in the Aheady atmosphere of Hitler's cultural recognition of the propagandist value or use of philosophy as an institution - which Hans Sluga's Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Gemany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) nicely dramatizes by analysing the famous photo of Hitler - in prole - and the cut-off framing (frontalfprole or half-face) of the stone of Nietzsche's bust. A more restrained discussion of this atmosphere may be found in Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger. Unterwegs zuseineriographie (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988) and a readable account is offered in Rdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil,Ewald Osers, trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). A detailed attempted to dis-engage the relevant cast of characters may be tracked through Frank Edler's publications on Heidegger, Baeumler, Hlderlin and the Greeks, and his recent internet publication: Heidegger and K1-ieck: To What Extent Did They Collaborate See also notes below.
Cf. Jacques Taminiaux, On Heidegger's Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art, New Nietzsche Studies, 3: 3l4 (1999): 1-22; Tadashi Otsuru, Gerechtigkeit und AIKHI' Der Denkweg als Selbstkritik
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in Heideggers Nietzsche-Auslegung, (Knigshausen &-Neumann, Wrzburg, 1992), and Holger Schmid, L'oeuvre d'art comme priptie de la pense, in Phnomnologie & Esthtique (La Versanne: Encre Marine., 1998), pp. 166-177, esp. p. l70f., as we_ll as Babich, Heidegger's Relation to Nietzsche's Thinking-: Connivance, Nihilism, and Value in New Nietzsche Studies, 3: 3/4 (1999): 23-52.
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The Nachla Heidegger refers to as Nietzsche's legacy we encounter today in the edtions by Schlechta (too late for Heidegger) or Colli-Montinari (way too late) as Nietzsche' s collected works. But in Heidegger' s day what he spoke of referred not only to the manuscipts he himself was invited to edit or to the Graoktav edition (to which the project of the then-proposed Nietzsche edition would of necessity refer), but much more to the notorious version of the Nachla or collection of working notes and aphori`sms known as The Will to Power, as edited by Nietzsche's amanuensis Peter Gast -- Heiruich Kselitz -' and his sister, Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche. See Sluga's discussion for Heidegger. For a comprehensive overview, see David Marc Hoffmann, Zur Geschichte des NietzscheArchivs (Berlinzde Gruyter, 1991). .
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The prelirninary reections to be found in Heidegger's Nietzsche I, on Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, which would become the rst volume of the English translation (cited above) as The Will to Power as Art included section titles bearing on the bookish constitution of the Will ro Power, such as The Book, The Will to Power Plans and Preliminary Drafts of the 'Main Structure and even The Stucture of the 'Major Work. [Der Aufbau des Hauptwerk]. Most signicant are Heideggefs reections in his section Die Aufzeichunger aus der Zeit des Willens zur Macht (1884-1888), (NI, p. 4l0ff), where he argues precisely against the idea that The Will to Power be counted as one of Nietzsche's books in any authorial fashion. The Will to Power was never composed as a work - not that is to say in the way that Nietzsche was wont to compose his works. Nor is it a book that was abandonecl in the course of composition and left incomplete. Rather, all we have are particular fragments." [ Notes from the Period of The Will toPower (1884-1888), Nietzsche, Volume 2, p. 152.] If Heidegger here emphasized the fragmentary- character of the work, he also adverts forcefully to the very dramatic efciency of the editorial construct as such: Nietzsche's philosophy proper is now for all commentators, quite unwittingly, a 'philosophy of will to power.' (Ibid.)
The collection, Friedrich Nietzsche. Werke in drei Bnden, edited by Karl Schlechta (Munich: Hanser, 1954-),the most reliable edition of Nietzsche's works until the Colli~Montinari edition, grew out of the original critical edition. Schlechta himself was one of the junior members of the same board of editorial directors along with Heidegger, who resigned from the same board of editorial directors directly following the addition to its ranks of a notoriously pro-party line' Nazi. Heidegger, himself alltoo politic here, would offer no statement of his reasons for resigning. See Hoffmann,`Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs, p. 119. For further specics see note 25below.
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Heidegger himself makes this claim and it is repeated by Walter Biemel and others. In English, see Edler for a beginning (if very lengthy, and in several installments, noless) sense of the scope of the contextual complexities essential to a reading of Heidegger`s claims in this regard. One can also nd his review of Tom Sheehan's review Heideggerz A Normal Nazi, New York Review of Books, January 14, 1993 published in several loci on the web, Thomas_ Seehen and the Lapsed Heideggerians Rag': Bombs's Away (the riff in Edler's title seems to associate Sheehan with Tom Lehrer and his sense of such such piano plays which Lehrer himself borrows from Georg Kreisler to a degree which would be only be conspicuous if the set of those who listen to Lehrer and those who listen toKreisler were other than effectively null). Other scholars following Ott and Safranski may also be found in a still growing genre. It is, however, obvious that contextuallyattuned approaches
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to this problem remain uncommon and this may explain the lack of resonance Edler suffers. The majority of readings of Heidegger's political involvements in the late 1930' s rather than exploring the skein of complexities ofthe time, inevitably replicate a litany of denunciation already familiar to most scholars from Faras/Rockmore, see for a recent example Gregory Fried, Heidegger's Polemos: From Being to Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
In this way, to raise the question of Heidegger's devastating encounter with Nietzsche's style is to raise the problematic issue of style in Hedegger's own work. For their part, Heidegger scholars have avoided the question of style in Heidegger's writings, as if somehow, language should clear the way to thought. And, if Heideggefs Beitrgeis notoriously a stylistically troublesome text (of which the least one might say of it is it challenges ordinary ways of reading Heidegger, even for experts in his work), it is also a text where Heidegger addresses the question of style such. _
as
Otto himself had been a member of the board of directors since 1933 and invited Heidegger as well as Heyse and Max Oehler in 1935. For a schematic listing of this involvement, see Hoffman, Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs, p. 115. _
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We read in Hoffman, Auf Vorschlag Richard Oehlers wird Dr. Gnther Lutz in den Vorstand der Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv gewhlt." Important here are the exact political importance of this appointment, manifest in the titles Lutz enjoys as Hoffman details them: Lutz ist Sonderbeauftragte des Rich Ministeriums fr Wissenschaft, Erziehungs und Volksbildung, Wissenschaftsreferent von Propagandaministerium, Ersatzstab des Reichsforschungsrat_s." Hoffman, Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs, p. 119. Thereafter, Heidegger resigns by letter to Richard Leuthesser from the editorial commission for the Historisch-Kritischen Gesammtausgable withoutioffering an account of his reasons for doing so (p. 119). Beyond this, Edler is apparently indefatigable in tracking down the complex arcana of further aspects of this story beyond Nietzsche - which Edler depicts as having the complexity of a whodunnit, and which is differently parsed by Heidegger's more aggressive antagonists. One can approach this issue straightforwardly as Sluga has done (if not .quite exhaustively, as Edler shows) on the basis of Ott's (and other) historical reports on Heidegger in this very context. Specic discussion ofthe circumstances surroundirg the variety ofNietzsche's Nachla editions, circumstances and politics may also be found in Hoffn-an's account of the history of the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar. See Edler's third and (one imagines) concluding part of his discussion of Heidegger and Alfred Baeumler in the time of Nazi Germany. This last text has manifestly grown out ofEdler'-s' annoyance with Tom Rockmore' s convenient (for purposes of patent denunciation) nonexactitude with regard to historical claims. Edler, by contrast, aspires to the precisionof a philologistshistoricism.
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In addition to The Will ro Power itself, other editorial productions ofNietzsche's drafts or notes or otherwise unpublished aphorisms were published, sometimes asa kind of glimpse" -Erich Podaclfs collection would useuthe term: Ein Blick in die Nietzsches Notizbiicher. Ewige Wiederkun. Wille zur Macht. Ariadne. Eine schaensanalytische Studie (Heidelberg, 1963) into the workshop of Nietzsche' s ideas, sometimes as simply timely collections and even sometimes named breviaries. Such compilations of Nietzsche' s notes continue to be popular today, especially inGermany but can also be found in English-language editions.
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See particularly, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume II, 21 and throughout Nietzsche, Volume III. See Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht: Versuch einer Umwerturg aller Werte (Leipzig: C.G. Naumann, 1901), published as volume XV of the Grooktavausgabe of Nietzsche's works initiated by his sister,
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Elisabeth Frster Nietzsche, in IS94. The volume we know today as The Will ta Power clerives. not from this rst edition, comprised of only 483 sections, selected' and edited by Heinrich Kselitz, and Emst and 'August Homeffer, but from the second edition in 1906 edited by Kselitz, expanded to 1,067 sections, and the third 1911 edition, edited by Otto Weiss (but fundamentally unchanged from the 1906 version). .
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By asserting such a stylistic inuence between Nietzsche and Heidegger, Ido not thereby maintain that Heidegger's composition reects the Nietzschean style that has inspired literary readings of Nietzsche from Georg Lukcs more critical response to what Lukcs regarded as Nietzsche's-protofascist inuence exactly on the level of style, qua aesthetic politics- to Gottfried Benn's more approbative reaction to the same elusive style. See Gottfried Benn's own account, now available in English translation", Nietzsche After 50 Years." New Nietzsche Studies, Volume 4, Nos. H3/4 (20002001): 125-135. Nor, from a philosophie perspective, should my claim concerning ,Nietzsche's sty-listic inuence on Heidegger be taken to entail that Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche is the Nietzsche of a Hans Vaihinger or even a Karl Lwith, much less that Heidegger' s reading ofNietzsche resembles French readings of Nietzsche la Derrida, Deleuze, or'Kofman.
On this issue, see Ott and Safranski but also Edler and Alexander Schwan, Heideggefs Beitrge zur Philosophie and Politics in Karsten Harries and Christoph Iamme, Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art, ami Technology (London: Holmes & Meier: 1994), pp. 71-88.
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In a note dated 8 May 1939 Heidegger writes, as von Hermann notes as a justication of the fnal ordering of the published manuscript, that 'Seyn' as section II [part I1] is not correctly arranged; as an attempt to_ grasp the whole once again, it does not belong at this juncture. Editor's Epilogue: Contributions ro Philosophy, p. 365/514. Von Hermann thus took this to entitle the re-arrangement of the manuscript order, shifting '_'Seyn to the end of the rnanuscript and notes that by rearranging this part of the manuscript where by it no longer makes up the second part but rather the eighth part, the ordinal number changes from section 50 onward. For the preview has 49 sections: the ftieth section, in both the manuscript as well as the typescript begins with Be-ing whereas now, after rearranging, section 50 begins with 'Anklang.' In other words the entire text has been renumbered thenceforth: Anklang should have been section 75, following 74 Language (Its Origins). In a handwritten note afxed to his brother's composition of the typewritten table of contents, dating from the May 5, 1939' Heidegger wrote " Das Seyn als Abschnitt II ist nicht richtig eingereiht." Although continuing thatas an attempt to summarize the entirety one more time, the part in question, gehrt nicht an diese Stelle, Heidegger did not specify where it might go. And not only did Heidegger frequently draw attention toapparent ordering dissonance but also offered reviews, scholastic style, throughout the text, inreview and anticipatory summary fashion, not merely at the conclusionz .indeed a study of Heidegger' s specic manner of coming to end, the problem of ending as Nietzsche spoke of it, remains to be offered.
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Hence it is not inelevant that throughout all the years that would pass to his death, and even as he himself supervised not only the ordering of the nal publication of his works, published and unpublished, Heidegger himself left the note at that, and made no alteration to the manuscript. Now we know that he did not simply ignore the manuscript for the Beitrage, because Pggeler has told us that Heidegger himself authorized its representation as a second main work (a depiction that also accords with my assessment of it on the model or palimpsest of Nietzsche's Will to Power as I argue.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Von Hermann, Nachwort des I-Ierausgebe's," Beitrge zur Philosophie. (Vom Ereignis), p. 514. Von Hermann's transposition thus shifted_ the original order which had proceeded from Heidegger's introductory preview thence to Seyn" thence to Anlclang and so on and ending with a nal chapter entitled The Last God." Now The Last God would stand just before Seyn itself recast as the .new nal division of the manuscript.
Pggeler himself would quote the Beitrge 's itnroductory Overview" where Heidegger himself outlines the order of the text. The order explicitly begins with Seyn. It is useful to note Magurshak and Barber's translation as a contrast with Emad and Maly: What is said is asked and thought in to the pass of the rst and other beginning to one another. This occurs out of Being [Seyn] 'being heard' in the need of the abandonment of Being for the 'Ieap' into Being. Such a Ieap goes toward the 'grounding' of the truth of Being as preparation for what is to corne', the last god'. Pggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path ofThinking, p. 116. _
2
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t
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. .
After all, Heidegger at the time, was engaged with work onthis essay On The Origin ofthe Work of Art" and as von Hermann was himself the author of a substantivecommentary on Heidegger's ArtWork essay, in addition to ongoing seminar courses on the same theme over the course of many recent years, von Hermann could not but note similarities of language and concem between the two manuscripts.
'
Today's philosophers and sociologists of technology increasingly speak of techno-science and testify, as they do so, to Heidegger's prevailing concem with the specically modern expressions of both science and technology, See Don Ihde, Philosophy ofTechnology (New York: Paragon House, 1993) andhis recent Bodies in Technology (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2002). See for an overview of the eld called by an acronym, STS, Science, Technology and Society studies, Stephen H. Cutcliffe, Ideas, Machines, ana' Values: AnIntroduction to Science, Technology, and Value Studies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleeld, 2000).
,
Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 182/S. 286.

e
See, as already cited above in note 16, Heidegger's comment on Ereignis, and also as already noted, K_rell's footnote gloss in Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume I, p. 156.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume I, p. 156 (translation slightly altered). What Heideggeridiosyncratically calls the Abandonment of Seyn" may thus be said to have been as he would go so far as to say perhaps most covered over and denied by Christianity and its secularized descendants (55). Nihilism in Nietzsche's case, as Heidegger reads him, hence has little do with Nietzsche's famed proclamation of the death of God as a report on the character of human belief. Much rather,nihilism in Nietzsche's sense means that all goals are gone (72) and Heidegger reminds us that we have the tendency to be lulled by nothing less than Nietzsche's style into mistaking the philosophie signicance of what Nietzsche says: Partially misled by the form of Nie`tzsche's manner of communication, one took cognizance of his 'doctrine` of nihilisrn' as an interesting cultural psychology." (Ibid.) _ _
.
There is a great tradition ofthis. As its most recent instar, Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy ofBeing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) manages to avoid the question of Being as being in a 386 page book on the topic, claiming at the end of the book (and at the end of the day) -~ eliminatin Heidegger's serious value in the same stroke - that Heidegger was nomore than a surreptitiously religious Writer" whose genuinely secret project of secreting his religious message in philosophical garb, cf. Philipse, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being, p. 374. But other interpreters of Heidegger
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usually to be named continental (if also of geographically North American derivation), have made similar claims, even employing 'similar language.
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For an account, see the late Dominique Janicaud's.Le toumant rhalagique de la phnomnologe franaise (Paris: Editions de Pclat, 1991). The response given to Janicaud's challenge appears without offering Janicaud an opportunity to reply, either in the original 1992 French version- or the more recent English translation of the same debate, Phenomenology and the Theolagical Turn: The French Debare which although subtitled a debate includes only a translation of Janicaud's 1991 (or as they note 1990) The Theological Tum of French Phenomenology but exclucles, after an eight year interlude any response, giving Janicaud's respondents, Courtine, Ricoeur, Chrtien, Marion, and Henry, the effective and now enduring last word. _
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Michael Friedman, Recorsidering Logica! Positivism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Parting ofthe Ways: Camap, Cassirer, Heidegger (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2000).
A longer discussion of this can be made with reference to Heidegger's reections on setting Nietzsche as the overcoming and culmination of the history of Western philosophy, that is the whole of Western philosophy in 93 and then in specic reference to German Idealism 102, 104 and thence to logical _ positivism 116, etc. _
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If it is by now plain that almost none of Heideggefs efforts to urderscore the importance of Nietzsche's thinking for Heidegger' s own project for thinking has had any effect whatever in the wake of the interpretive force of I-leidegger's contention that Nietzsche's opposition to metaphysics entangled him in metaphysics at its end, just as because all these comments have been read by Heidegger scholars as license to disregard Nietzsche, perhaps above all other names 'in the history of philosophy, taking Nietzsche as the prime offender in the history of Western metaphysics, neatly ignoring the tension between the near and far, the closest and farthest, and so occluding the very practice of questioning that for Heidegger is the only way to get on (to employ Emad and Maly' s remonstrative language) with the task of thinking precisely conceived at the end of philosophy.
The German is more revealing: Heidegger invokes f'Die Behexung durch die Technik und ihre sich stndig berholenden Fortschritt ist nur ein' Zeichen dieser Verzuaberung, der zufolge alles auf Berechnung, Nutzung, Zchtung, Handlichkeit und Regelung drngt. Sogar der Geschmack' wird jetzt Sache dieser Regelung, und Alles kommt auf ein 'gutes' Niveau." Of course in the loci of I~Ieidegger's lecture courses on Hlderlinas in those on Nietzsche we do nd patent pronouncements that would indeed count as articulations of such resistance. Thus in his Hlderlin lectures we hear very explicitly: Not so long ago, everyone was engaged in the search for psychoanalytic foundations of poetry, now everything is dripping with {the terrninology ot] people and blood and soil [jetzt trieft alles von Volkstum und Blut und Bodenl, but it's still all the same (GA 39, 254) Edler's translation.
'
See for a focus on acoustic perspective (and perceptual indeterminacy in the absence of other cues), Rudolf Arnheinfs phenomenological reection on the sacral power of transmitted sound: The physical fact 'that the normal distance between the sound source and rnicrophone ls inconsiderable, implies as a normal condition of the age of broadcasting a spirirual and atmostpheric nearness of broaclcaster and listener. Arnheim, Radio (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), pp. 77-78. Arnheim the subtle style of an radio announcer who had managed to achieve the art of everyday comments on as a broadcaster speech (rather like the late Robert J. Lurtsema, who when I listened to him during his
43
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morning broadcasts as a grad student in Boston, exemplied the perfect understatement that was the best counterpoise not only to the moming (which he dedicated to music and began with birdsong) but to 'the classical pieces he played (second best, to be sure, was his studied pronunciation). But Amheim's example was an old Berlin commentator on the law of the day. Using an inverse metaphor that was neverthe-less-remininscent ofKant' s enthusiasm for Lampe, Arnheim explained the speaker' s cachet: Simple people think of the Heavenly Father rather like that: unseen yet entirely earthly, mighty in colloquialism, benevolent but with none of the overpowering sympathy of a near relative, . . . orrniscient and consequently rather ironic, unceremonious and yet commanding respect. . . p. 76.
The term is used in the psychology of perception, I am extending it in the direction of a phenomenology of the same in this political context. It is worth noting here that, due to another characteristic of sense perception, called accommodation by the same theori sts, we no longer respond to loudspeakers or radios as we once did, as preserved for our reection and most dramatically not in the images of the rallies at Nuremberg, a newsreel showing a family gathered around a large old fashioned radio set, listening to Franklin Roosevelt`s Day of Infamy" speech. (I thank Tracy B. Strong for this recollection). See for the language of broadcasting and voice-boxing, as well as ventriloquism: Freeman Dyson, When is the Ear Pierced in Mary Anne Moser and Douglas MacLeod, eds, Immersed in Technology (Bloomingtonz Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 73-101.
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It would be worth reecting upon the postmodem transformation of our relationship to loudspeaker technology in favor of more intimate direct personal address.
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This is the subtitle of Langdon Winter's The Whale and the Reactor: The Search for Limits in an Age ofHigh Technology (Chicago University Press, 1986).
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A useful discussion of this point conceming the ambivalent ideal of sustainable development/ecology" may be found in Aidan Davison, Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002). He also ctes a number of relevant texts in the course of contextualizing the issue in terms of technology development and planning, politics, and theory in tenns of north-south and European (or Global) economics and political practice and empowerment.
See Beitrge 14, 15, 19, etc.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume I, p. 4.
Ibid.
.
See the many studies by Michel Haar and Jacques Taminaux on this theme as well as Otsuru, Gerechtigkeit und AIKH' Der Derkweg als Selbstkrtik in Heideggers Nietzsche-Auslegung (cited note 18above) and see too and increasingly other scholars, as well as my own retrospective account adverting to some of the scholarly tensions between Heidegger and Nietzsche scholarship and the related context of the tension between analytic and continental philosophical approaches to the same in Babich, The Relation Between Heidegger and Nietzsche (citation above).
See the Zollikon Seminars.

Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume II, p. 16. Heidegger also notes the contraproductive quality of nationalistic designations of science incidentally here giving credence to his assertion of covert resistance": it has come to light that the Russians are today conducting costly experiments in the eld of physiology that were brought to
--
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successful completion fteen years ago in America and Germany, experiments of which the Russians are totally unaware because oftheir boycott of foreign science." Nietzsche, Volume II, p. 16.
Heidegger, Zollikon' Seminars, p. 132/S. 173.

See Beyond Good and Evil, We Scholars but see also my studies of Nietzsche and science. such as Babich, Nietzsche 's Philosophy ofScience : Reecting Science on the Ground ofA rt and Life (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) or, for a recent overview, my forthcoming Nietzsche's Critique of Science and Scientic Culture in G. Moore and T. Brobjer, eds., Nietzsche and Science
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(Aaefshe Avebury, 2003).
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.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume H, p. 20.
In the Zollikon Seminars, Heidegger emphasized that for the most part, science today is understood exclusively as natural science" and invokes, for clarifcation, the English language opposition science vs. arts. (p. 20fS.24) _ _
'
Ibid.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume Il, p. 112.
Ibid., p. 21.
_
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy Nietzsche, One the Genealogy ofMorals: A Polemic, I: 1.
ofthe Future, 1.
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I do this in careful detail in another essay, Babich, Nietzsche's Imperative as a Friend' s Encomiurn: On Becoming the One You Are, Ethics, and Blessing," Nietzsche-Studien, Vol. 33 (Dec. 2003). See also for an insightful reading of this same phenomenon, David B. Allison's introductory reections to his Reading the New Nietzsche (Lanham: Rowman and Littleeld, 2001).
Nietzsche, Allerwelts-Bcher sind immer belriechende Bcher: der Kleine-Leute-Geruch klebt daran." IGB/BGE 30.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume II, p. 28.

Ibid., p. 44.
_
It goes almost without saying that for a German ear und dennoch had quite a resonance; it would in any case have a powerful history in what was to become the debate between hermeneutics and deconstruction and Gadaner would use it to title his reections in his dalogue with Derrida. See, as his response to Derrida's Guter Wille zur Macht: Drei Fragen an Hans-Georg Gadamer in Philippe Forget, Text und Interpretationen (Munich: Fink, E1984), pp. 56-58, Gadamers Und dennoch: macht des guten Willens." pp. 59~6l.
A
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raid. p. 142-, cf. Belange 5.
This received logic would not merely be the logical positivists (the logic that was to become Carnap's intellectual capital) but would have more generic proponents of another less rigorous kind in the joumalistic self-importance and correspondingly cavalier self-confdence of the critics of Being and Time that would take Heidegger's musing to more bitter reections in other contexts, I refer here to Heidegger' s comments on death and what he called the j ournalistic" (and philistine) interpretations
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of his Being ana' Time which, when it was not presented as an anthropology (evolving into the terms of existentialism) was presented as a philosophy of death. See Beitrge, 162, 163.
, _
Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, p. 18/20. See Paul Valadier's essay on the same theme, Science as New Religion, in Babich, ed., Nietzsche, Epistemology, ana' Philosophy ofScience: Nietzsche and the Sciences II, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), pp. 241~252.
If today's philosophy of science is no longer dominated by scholastic philosophy or, as inHeidegger's day, by neo-Kantianisrn, it continues to be dominated by the still enduring analytic approach to conceivin g the very scientic problem of science on the terms ofthe modern world view (this is what Heidegger means by speaking as he does of science as world view, i.e., contra the idea and ethos of Heideggers thinking of science in the Beitrge and beyond).
'
if
Heidegger argues analogically that just as via history, a man will never nd out what history is no more is a mathematician capable of showing by way ofmathematics - by means of his science, that is, and ultirnately by mathematical forrnulae - what mathematics is. The essence of their spheres _ history, art, poetry, language, nature, man, God - remains inaccessible to these disciplines." Heidegger, What is Called Thinking, J. Glenn Gray, trans. (New York: Harper, -1968), pp. 32-3. Inevitably, the sciences, necessarily are always in the dark about the origin of their own nature." p.
43.
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Heidegger, Zollikon Seminar, p. 211/265.
Heidegger, Zollikon Seminar, t'anslators note, p. 123. Krells gloss appears on p. 12of his edition of Heidegger's Basic Writings. t
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Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume II, p. II2.
See Heidegger, Being and Time, Macquarrie & Robinson trans., (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), Int. I, (BT3 l/SZ 11). See also 1.1, (BT 75/50); 1.6, 44 (BT 256-273/SZ 212-230). Ibid.
Ibid.
Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 23.
Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 26.
This was a prejudice that would work to the detriment of Boss's hopes for a scientic reception of
Daseinsanalyse.
The anti-science charge clogged Heidegger since reviews of Being and Time, then directed to claims he makes there concerning truth and especially concerning physics itself, BT, p. 269/ S.226-227. See also his characterization of Galileo, als Physiker Philosoph." Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, (1925-26), GA 21, p. 97.. Later his direct comments on science and thinking drew greater re.
One is advised to read Patricia Glazebrook's Heideggerv Philosophy ofScience (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000) for a further specication of Heidegger's relation to Aristotle precisely on this point.
.
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Heideggers conviction concerning the sameness of both Russian and American regimes (for the longest time both were imagired as patently antithetical) is at once absurd (it is tacitly or immediately
46
rejected as naive or wrong) and it is also, given the tactically, politically unexpected events of recent history, exactly accurate.
90.
Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 199.
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It is for this reason that Schwan 'nds that a precise reading of the Beitrge (including Heidegger's unremitting and unexcepting rejection of what he termed liberalism [or anthropomorphic thinking or humanism]) offers a conclusive refutation of Far_as's case by showing that whatever one may think of the redeeming value ofmodem science and liberal democracy, Heidegger' s conviction contra the essence of modem science and his skepticism, carried into the sixties, contra the redemptive potential of democracy: The Beitrge thus constitute a single, great refutation of Viktor Faras's insinuation that Heidegger was, and continued to be _ also in the ideological sense, a convnced National Socialist." Schwan, I-Ieidegger's Beitrge zur Philosophie and Politics," p. 79.
9
92.
Herbert Marcuse, Some Social Implications ofModern Technology, Technology, War and Fascism.Collected Papers ofHerbert Macuse, Volume One, Douglas Kellner, ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 49 and passim.
1
93.
In addition to National Socialism's enthusiastically pro-research science and policy we have also to include its its dependency upon and engagement with democracy (we ought not forget, and the popularity of`Daniel Goldhagen' s controversial book makes the oblique case, that National Socialism was exactly a popular "movement" with broad political, i.e., democratic support) This is one point that Peter Schneider' s recent essay on The Good Germans in The New York Times Sunday Magazine (13 February 2000) seeks to make in his account of the non-heroic or exactly everyday and very small-time generosity of the 100 or so Germans who were instrumental in saving Konrad Latte throughout the Nazi regime. Yet the trouble with his argument as with all such nuanced readings is that they do run counter to the perfect contours ofthe politically correct and the black- and white-hat accounts of good _ _ and evil.
See Benjamin R. Barber, Jihaa' Versus Mcworld (New York: Times Books, 2001 [l995]) and Thomas L. Friedmann, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Global ization (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
This is Heidegger's point in his The Question Conceming Technology."
94
95 96
Jacques Lacan writes, The gods belong to theeld ofthe real." Lacan, Of the Network of Signiers in The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis, trans. A. Sheridan (W.W. Norton: New York, 1978), p. 45.
Unsere Stunde ist das Zeitalter des Untergangs 250; p. 397.
-
97 98
I argue that is not nierely a reference to the then-contemporary Spengler but seems patently to refer to the language of Max Weber - in addition to the critical reference, as Pggeler documents, to
Adorno.
-
99.
See here Friedrich Strack' s recent collection Ttitan Technik. Ernst und Friedrich Georg Jnger iiber das technische Zeitalter (Wrzburg: Knigshausen und Neumann, 2000). -
100. The recent movie, Minority Report, with its parabolic indictment of fascism, represents the lineaments of the all-too-often veritably previsioned future," as the visions of story tellers from Goethe to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley toJules Verne to George Orwell are so often able to do. The computer screens
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in Minority Report are projected into plain space, thin air: they are virtually there: projections of unrealised (anticipated) reality on a virtual, invisible wall.
"
101 Pggeler, Martin Heide-gger's Path

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ofThinking, p. 115.
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102 Hlderlin's Empedocies was important in much the same way for Nietzsche's Zarathustra. This is a complex point of reference and interconnection and I begin to address it in Babich, Between Hlderlin and Heidegger: Nietzsche' s Transguration of Philosophy." Nietzsche-Studien. 29 (2000): 267-301. See also David B. Allison's related discussion of Zarathustra in his Reading the New Nietzsche (Lanham: Rowman & Littleeld, 2001). See here also 43 where Heidegger cites Nietzsche's Twilight ofthe Itiols: The will to system signies a lack of probity.
103
See Pierre Bertaux, Hlderlin una' die Franzsiche Revolution (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969) for the signicance of this event for an understanding of Hlderlin' s life story (most particularly, most incendiarily, Hlderlin's madness) and see any number of extant historical accounts of the political involvement of Hlderlin`s writing for an understanding of the allusion. I discuss this in part in Babich, Between Hlderlin and Heidegger: Nietzsche's Transguraton of Philosophy." Citation given in note above.
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104
In the Zollikon Seminaren, Heidegger had argued with some ironic humor, against the reductive claim of the cybernetic denition of the human offered by Norbert_Wiener. What the human being is, is determined by the method of natural science." (p. 92/119). Weiner' s denition, which exists in print, describes man as an information device. For Heidegger, such a defnition attains absurdity in oversteping the scientic limitations of science. Heidegger then adverts to the critical objections that we have already seen are automatic in the wake of any critique, even one so seemingly well-justied: Customarily one labels the reference to this threatening self-destruction of the being of the human being within science (with its absolute claims) as hostility toward science. Yet, it it is not a matter of hostility toward science, as such, but rather a` matter of critique regarding the prevailing lack of reection on itself by science." This sense of critique, as noted above, Marcuse has in common with Heidegger, and here Heidegger emphasizes that more than a matter of separate domains, appropriate to science on the one hand and proper to philosophy on the other, such reective critique is essential to science qua science: as insight into the very method determining the character ofmodern science." (p. 95/ 125) If one can do science without philosophy one cannot do so reexively. This is not just 'a matter of thinking as some readers of Heidegger have supposed, but corresponds to the very essence of science proper, the- same essence that nds philosophy higher, as possibility is higher, as ontological inquiry is higher, than science orontic inquiry. (See Heidegger, Being and Time, Int I, p. 31/S.l l, and Introduction to Metaphyscs, p. 26.)
5. Die Herrschaft ist am Ende." Der Toa' Empedokles, Dritte Fassung._ By contrast, here, Hlderlin is both explicitly invoked: how should thinking succeed in achieving what earlier remained withheld from the poet (Hlderlin)?" and echoed Unpretentiously, as in a solitary eld, under the wide heaven, the sower paces off the furrows with a heavy, faltering step, checking at every moment, and with the swing of the arm measures and molds the hidden space for all growth and ripening. -(5)
106. See Eugen Fink, Nietzsche: Philosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960). Por a preliminary discussion of Fink and value in Heidegger, see Babich, The Relation Between Heidegger and Nietzsche: Connivance, Nihilism, and Value." New Nietzsche Studies, Vol 3: 1_/2 (1999): 27-60.
107
In the monotonicity emblematic for humanism, we have seen that Heidegger liked to quote Heisenberg's dictum that increasing humanity encountered only its own face. But see note 110 below.
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This distrust Heidegger shared with Nietzsche, beginning with Nietzsche's denunciation of Alexandrian reason in The Birth ofTragedy and continuing in Nietzsches rejection of the numbing character of industrial or mechanical reason in The Genealogy ofMamis. _
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See, as cited in th_e body of the text 272. See for other instanciations of this Nietzschean model, 278, particularly, and hardly incidentally, the section on K.F. Schinkel's argument for the origins of Greek art (and artifacts), 119, as well as, and at length, 58.
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I-Ieidegger's reference is to Heisenberg's declaration: ffor the rst time in the course of history modem man on this earth now confronts h'mselfalone. in Heisenberg, The Physici.s't'.s' Conception ofNature, trans. Arnold I. Pornerantz (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1958), p. 23.
`
See, for instance I.Newton Ku gelmass, Growing Superior Children (NewiYork: D. Appleton Century Co., 1935), a book published in English, indeed in America, by an expatriate Austrian physcianresearcher who practiced pediatrics in New York City.
1
Peter Sloterdijk, Regelnfrden Menschenpark Ein Antwortschreiben zum Brief ber den Humanismus
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhkamp, 1999).
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Nietzsche argues that Die einzige Kausalitt, die uns bewut ist, ist zwischen Wollen und Thun diese bertragen wir auf alle Dinge und deuten uns das Verhltni von zwei immer beisammen bendlichen Vernderungen. Die Absicht oder das Wollen ergiebt die Nomina, das Thun die Verba. Das Thier als wollendes - das ist sein Wesen." KSA 7, p. 482. See for references to this complex topic my several studies on Nietzsche and science, as cited above.
See Nietzsche, Twilight ofthe Idols, 'l`heFour Great Errors, 5. The 'relief' of non-knowing in question is what is important in Nietzsche's argument, an emphasis also made, if for different reasons by C. S. Peirce who spoke of the quiescent7' power of belief. _
An allusion to such unremitting academic egoism was perhaps, ironically, Weber's point when he demanded that his young listeners cultivate the modesty that does not resent the inevitable promotion of mediocrity above talent, as mediocrity tends to nd prime advancement, and Nietzsche makes the same observation when he points out that only one race survives beyond the day after tomorrow, the incurably mediocre (BGB 262 [... Nichts bis bermorgen steht, Eine Art Mensch ausgenommen, die unheilbar-Mittelmssigen. Die Mittelmssigen allein haben Aussicht, sich fortzusetzen, sich fortzupanzen, - sie sind die Menschen der Zukunft.] Both Nietzsche and Weber seem to be referring to the Bible's admonitionzi race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, ... Ecclesiastes (9: 1 1-12). _
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The Ethical Implications of Heidegger's Thought"
David Pettigrew
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Southem Conrecticut State University
I am grateful to Professor Huatab for the opportunity to reect onHeidegger and Practical Philosophy
(SUNY Press i1 2002)', the book that I co-edited with Franois Raffoul. A book like Heidegger and Practical
Philosophy unfolds in such a way- takes on unexpected dimensions with unexpected cliscoveries-that it canbe
interesting to think back on the beginningsof the idea for such a project. That reminds me of thestory of when
Victor Hugo went to see Bertholdi`S Statue of Liberty in Paris. The statuetwas on display for public relations and
fund raising purposes. Hugo was an imposing gure. As the story goes, Hugo looked at the statue intently and then looked at Bertholdi. He repeated this process deliberately several times, back and forth, withoutsaying a word, and
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nally said, The idea _. .it is everythingt

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What was the idea for glg book, what was its source? Claudio Magris's book, The Danube, is a meandering meditation along the entire length of the river,
2 incorporating people, places, events and cultures from across time. Magris points out that the Danube has tw_o
documented sources: the source indeed of heated contention between Furtwangen and Donaueschingen. There are
plaques posted at each location, marking the source" of the river. Perhaps the id for this book has several sources
as well. I felt that commentators had misinterpreted the implications of 1-Ieideggefs thought for ethics and politics, a
misinte_rpretation that perhaps began with Sartre's philosophical activism as expressed in his essay entitled
Existentialism is a I-Iumanism delivered at Club Maintenant in 1945 after the war. At any rate, Heidegger and
Practical Philosophy sought to consider _the ethical implications of Heidegger thought on its own terns. But no
doubt the work had, like the Danube, other sources, some of them found in the thinking and passion of those who
have contributed to the text. And no doubt the thoughts expressed in thebook will ow in numerous directions.
Today I welcome the opportunity to engage the volume Heideggerpand Practical,Philog|,v, and, to some
extent move beyond the book, however cautiously, to my own
questioning. This engagernent will attemptto

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encounter origins and directions, sources and ows, with and from certain chapters. The question I would like to
begin to address and rethink in this paper is whether the ethical dimensions of I-Ieideggefs thought can be set forth
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on the basis of the investigations in the book. Unfortunately, I will not be able to address all of the chapters, but
have only selected a few for strategic reasons.
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Heidegger and Practical Philosophy has addressed the relation of Heidegger's thought to practical
s
philosophy, including a range of ethical or political issues or questions. For example, Heidegger had an explicit
interest in the tradition of practical' philosophy. I am referring particularly to Aristotle and Kant. Heidegger
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interrogated practical philosophy in the philosophie tradition and ir this sense he had a relation to practical
philosophy. I want to say a word about 1-Ieidegger's Aristotle since Aristotle gave us anethical theory that involves .
an individual ethical
agent, an actor. It is this reliance on the action of the individual that Heidegger deconstructs or
Aristotle's virtues of
_
at -least de-centers. As Jacques Tamniaux shows in his chapter, in I-Ieidegger's hands, in 1924,
techn, gpistt-`:m_, phronsis, sophia and nous are not characteristics of the agent but modes of Lu1concealrnent,
modes of revealment through praxis,'.' an ethical practice that is not guided by norms or goods. (I-IPP, 18) In other
words, Heidegger's Aristotle, while practical in this inventive sense, is not primarily vaiued for its contribution to a
virtue-based ethics." Such a sense of praxis is evident throughout Heidegger's corpus. In Being and Time, Dasein
is, in its most important action, revelatog of Being. Later, in texts 'om the mid to late 30's, Dasein is displaced by
what might be called mythopoetic, nonsubjective forces,_including Being, Sein, Seyn, Ereignis, and so on. In the
books 'om the late 30's particularly in Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger speaks of the need to attune
ourselves to Hlderlin's word in order to properly await the arrival of the last God. 3 Not exactly an activism in any traditional sense.
In a similar vein, Jean Greisch, in his chapter entitled The Play of .Transcendence and the Question of
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Ethics, thematizes Daseifs nullity and nitude as an exposure to a limit, and further, characterizes Dasei_n's
authentic selthood asa powerlessness'(HPP, 112). This powerlessnessinsures the impossibility of any mastery.
Greisch suggests that selood isdetermined independent 'om the categories of consciousness and reection
(HPP, 111). I-le concludes that
such powerlessness prohibits a determinate ethics.
Even with this all too brief
characterization of I-Ieideggersthought one despairs for ethical implications ifwe are unable tomake an ethical
choice or have a framework for ethical action. Ethics seems to face an irnpasse, one of I-leideggefs expressions in
Basic Concepts: Ausweglosf'
In an interesting sense, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy carves an ethical or perhaps a political theme _
'
_ , = .
out of this impasse, this apparent impossibility of an ethics in Heidegger's'worl<, with what he deems the
1
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inoperative community." He thematizes a community on the basis of the impossibility of community. Nancy is
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most concerned, with such a formulation, to critique, to delegitimize, any
absolute substantial political entity that
would be derived -om a totalizing reason. Thus he thematizes, onthe basis of I-Ieideggerfs treatment of Dasein in
Being and Time, a community of singular bengs. Paradoxically, Nancy develops the idea that the community in
question would be a community of limits, a community of nitude. What would be shared with others would be our
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common limits and the impossibility of commonality. What would be shared
or held in common would be what
divides us. Nancy employs the French term Qartager, that means both to share ang clivide. But what is important \
here is that, for Nancy, such a community, based onHeidegger's analysis of human nitude in Being and Time, is
more authentic than a community that is wholly
fomed, substartial or absolute, a state of community that Nancy
equates with totalitarianism. Nancy's problematic is further developed in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy; by
1
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Walter Brogan who argues in his chapter that Being and Time provides in several essential respects the appropriate
philosophical basis for a contemporary, postmodem, understanding of ethical relationships and political community(I-IPP, 237). Perhaps here we identify an implication of l-Ieidegger's thought, at least for Nancy and
1
for Brogan, in the conceptualization of a community that would resist totalitarian closure or limits.
The powerlessness discussed by Jean Greisch might also have implications for the constitution of such a
community as Heidegger writes that Dasein is thoroughly ruled [durchwaltet ] by the beings to which it is
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abandoned (GA 27, 328). This is an interesting position from which to think Being-with, as it reveals the
exposure of Dasein to others. And we can note in passing that, in his chapter In the Middle of Heidegger's Three
Concepts of the Political," Theodore Kisiel discusses a possible politics on the basis of Heidegger's regression to
an archaic Greek-German Dasein". Through this regression, no less than the originary meaning of polls is restored
(HPP, 153). The Greek-German mission as Kisiel deems it, allows Heidegger himself to criticize the 'totalitarian
character of the Nazi vision of the political. (HPP, 254)

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I believe Heidegger's Greek-German problematic has other implications for the question of community.
l~Ieidegger's Contributions to Philosophy thematizes a peoples' proper belonging to their historical destiny. Such a
proper belonging could occur for Heidegger, it seems, through a retum to the Greeks (a motif already central in
Nietzsche and Hlderlin). Perhaps this was a return to a kind of ethos, in which the existence of the people was
contiguous with their mythology and poetic works. Yet this retum is in no way simple. With Nietzsche it is not a
'
retum to a Greece or to Greeks that-can be simply located in empirical time or space. And as regards Hlderlin and
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x
I
Heidegger we are told explicitly that one does not idealize the Greeks in order to become Greek- or to imitate the
Greeks
- but rather, in the projection or desire of the poetic, one returns in order to come into one's own; to belong
time. 5 Heidegger leads us to think or imagine, for example, in 'I`he Origin of the Work of Art,
to one's g
'
Qontributions
to Philosophy and Elucidations on Hlderln's Poetryf that one returns to one's own through an
enactrnent of a'culture, through a poetic, that is to say, Iiterary event. What seems to inscrbe a people in their own,
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what returns them to their origin, is a poetic event that provides an historical origin and that -through the founding
moment of an origin - opens out
ontoa destiny. The history to which a people belong properly has this bi-
_
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directional dynamic. The poetic enactment carries ns back to a proper origin as it opens the future. Heidegger hints
in the Hlderlin lectures that such a grounding opening has occurred through the work of Homer, Virgil, Dante,
Shakespeare and Hlderlin. (EI-IP, 52) Heidegger's name for the thinking that engages the poetic enactment in its
originary dimensions is seingeschichtlichen Dcnkens, being-historical thinking. One wonders: What author or
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poet has, or could enact a historical destiny for our time, as Homer did for the Greeks, or as Virgil, did for the
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Romans? Who could dare to receive re from the sky such as Achilles who receives the shield from Hephaistos in
Book XVIII of The Iliad, or as Aeneas who receives the shield from Vulcan, where receiving the re ignites a
peoples historical destiny?

French philosopher Pierre Jacerme, in his article entitled, Is There An Ethics for the Atomic Age, is
boldly engaging the ethos of our time, and is teaching, in a sense, for the all consuming annihilating atomic re of
v
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jacerme's essay shows that Heidegger referred consistently to the ethos of our age that led
to the catastrophic attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In particular, Jacerme reads I-Ieidegger's 1955 lecture
7 Gelassenheit, in which Heidegger condenms the dominant decient mode of thinking of our age as calculative; a
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thinking that is not meditative, and that as such does not gather the meaning of things insofar as it considers only the
use of objects in a calculus. Due to this calculative thinking of our age, we have been uprooted 'om our proper
origins. For_I-Ieidegger the so-called atomic age, its science and its violence, are but aspects -'albeit catastrophic of
this decient mode of thinking. In other words, if not Hiroshima or Nagasaki, then it would be something else, some other catastrophe, earlier or later. Nature becomes only a tool for industry and modem technology.
-
With respect to the calculative technological age, Heidegger writes, It would be shortsighted to condemn it
(technology) asthe work of the devil. We depend on technical devices

-
But suddenly and unaware we nd

'
ourselves so rrnly shackled to these technical devices that we fall into bondage to them. ... He continues, We can " 4
airm the unavoidable.use of technical devices and also deny them the right to clominate us, and
2
soto warp, confuse
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and lay waste our nature." (DT, 53'-54)
Yet, for Heidegger, unless we nd a new way of thinking and fashion an openness to the meaning of
things, we will continue to nd ourselves in a perilous situation in which we will succumb to calculative thinking
and technology and suffer a total and clevastating thoughtlessness. Heidegger asserts that with the atomic bomb a
!
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fundamental change has taken place, a-technological global transformation ofthe ethos that has charged us even if
the hydrogen bombs do not expiodef' We are ir danger, he asserts, of losing touch with our rrostfundamentally
meditative nature.
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Ir addition, Jacerrne's chapter points to the fact that Heidegger communicated with Japanese philosophers
who were attracted to his work because of the Gelassenheit lecture. In 1963, Heidegger received a letter from a
Japanese philosopher, Kojima Takehiko, who wrote that he felt a profound
connection with Heidegger's thought
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because of this essay. Thus began a correspondence and a friendship. 8 Yet another engagement with the .lapanese
people is recorded in Tezuka Tomio's report of his meeting with Heideggerf' Clearly, the Japanese philosophers
whose compatriots had endured the atomic re were moved by I-leidegger's words. Jacerme's essay brings this
philosophical relationship to life and challenges us to give thought to the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well
E
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as the technological ethos from which they spring. He makes reference to John l-Ierseys Hiroshima as hè reminds us
all too graphically of the effects of the bomb. Hersey recounts the story of Mr. Tanimoto, for example, who
attempted to help people stranded on a sandbar in a river as the tide was rising. Yet, those who were injured by the
4
blast, heat and radiation, were too weak to move and were to drown. Tanimoto tried to help a woman into the boat
H
but her skin slipped off in huge glove-like pieces I-le had to keep repeating to himself, these are human
'
beings.'
It becomes readily apparent, that Heidegger's critique of technology and his concern about the modern age,
permeated his lectures, interviews and essays. One recalls the interview in Der Spiegel magazine. The interviewer
challenges Heidegger, asking him what is wrong with technology when it makes things work so well, so efciently.
Everything nctionsf' the interviewer states. Heidegger responds, "Everything is functioning [Es nktionert
alles]. That is precisely what is awesome [Unheimliche|, that everything functions, that the functioning propels
'
everything more and more toward further functioning, and that technicty increasingly dislodges man and uproots
him froni the earth....
H;
But any account of Heidegger's critique of 'technology and the contemporary ethos has another
trace,
another source, as the Danube has its sources. The source to which I refer is his 50 years ofcorrespondence with
Hannah' Arendt. Heidegger and Arendt had a romantic liaison. Although Heidegger was (already married and Arendt
was to be maried twice, they stayed in touch through correspondence and rneetings. Their letters touched me
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because of their combination of personal greetings, affectionate tone, and philosophicai ruminations. When they
were younger there was a passion in the letters. Later, when they discussed books, translations, projects, and news of
oid 'iends, Heidegger and Arendt always seemed to bein a kind of profourdly endtring intimacy. In the
Heidegger-Arendt letters there are references to the problematic ethos of our time, the tyranny of mass media,
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cybernetics and technology.
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To conclude a letter of 22 June 1972, Heidegger writes: ln the information age, the
possibilities of learning to read are facing extinction (LD, 230). On 9 July 1973, against or in the face of the
utilitarian, consequentialist ethos of technology, Heidegger's letter calls for a thinking of the useless. (LD, 235-6) ln
a letter of 19 November 1973, Heidegger despairs about the confusion that rules our age. (LD, 239) In March of
1974, again discussing the plight of the modern age he maligns the tyranny of the mass media (LD, 239).
l-Ience, Heidegger's critique of technology and his critique of the ethos of our time has different sources
and it ows and touches on another catastrophic event of our time, namely, and signicantly, in the context of this
paper, his work touches upon the Holocaust of World War II. Giorgio Agamben addresses one of Hedegger's
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rernarks in his book, Remnants of Auschwitz. In this text he seeks an ethical perspective 'om which to understand
the horror of Auschwitz. In this respect, Agarnben considers a remarkable range of philosophers, including
Nietzsche, Levinas, Kant, Spinoza, Binswanger, Arendt, Foucault and others. I-Ieidegger's thought, however, more
than any other, haunts his book. This is not altogether surprisirg since Agamben, as a younger philosopher in 1966.
and 1968, was one of a select few to attend Heidegger's_ Seminars in Provence along with Janicaud, Beaufret,
M Fdier, Vezir and.others. Agamben's remarkable book meditates upon the brutal dehumanization of the inmates of I
the camps and on the difculty of witnessing such horror. Agamben is drawn to reect in this context upon
I-leidegger's powerful statement that the victims of Auschwitz were denied the dignity of their own proper death.
Heidegger stated ir Die Gefahr, referring to the victims of the Holocaust, that, They were eliminated. They
became pieces of the warehouse of the fabrication of corpses. They were imperceptibly liquidated in extermination
Camps (RA, 74). In other words, for Heidegger, the victims of Auschwitz and the Holocaust were denied a
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fundamental aspect of humarity, a right to a proper death and were thus dehumanized. Heidegger goes on to lament
_.
..
the immense misery of innumerable atrocious deaths" (RA, 74). Hannah Arendt repeated the phrase, fabrication of
corpses," in an interview in 1964. In his text Agamben interweaves the statements of Heidegger and Arendt along
with Primo Levi and asserts that, As always it is Levi who nds the most just and, at the same time, most terrible
formula" (RA, 70). The formula to which Agamben refers is as follows: One hesitates to call their death death.'5
7
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For Heidegger, the dehumanization and mass murder of the Holocaust resulted 'om the ethos endemic to
the modem age. While many have despared conceming the horror of the Nazis, Heidegger's thought, his critique,
has appealed to some thinkers since it provides a perspective from which to give thought to the Holocaust, namely,
K
his critique of an ethos, the utilitarian consequentialist ethos of an age that takes everything only as a object or
resource to beexploited in ancconomy,'whether of prot or of death. Any intrinsic meaning of human life is denied
by the utilitarian ethos. The horror is
intensied by the detached efciency of the camps: the fabrication of corpses.
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For Heidegger the ethos of that detached efciency had already permeated and degradcd our existence. Such
unspeakable events for which testimony or anguish seem futile are but indications of this underlying ethos that
awaits another opportunity to erupt. Ultimately, Agamben is somewhat tentative concerning the value of
I.
I-Ieidegge"s statement. Agamben does not state that it is incorrect, but rather inconplete and moves onto a further
analysis of the problem. I think even he fails to appreciate the importance of Heidegger's thinking. When Heidegger
speaks of the denial of a proper death the emphasis here is on the nauthenticity of death. But the principle that one
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should have @ with dignity implies more importantly that they would have lived with dignity. What can be coneluded about the ethcal implieations of I-Ieideggefs thought? I have considered issues
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including the nature of conunmity, -tle..crit5qu_e of the modern ethos, the Holocaust, and bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The critique of technology and the contemporary ethos is a critique of an ethos that values (or devalues)
people, objects, and nature only in tenrsof their ug, in terms of their utility, and actions are vaiued only in
terms of their
"
calculable conseguences. But if this is the case, and if we have understood this aspect of Heideggefs
thought well, then perhaps we cannot ask the question as we -have asked it. That is to say, that we cannot or should
not ask whether there are ethcal img' lications of Heidegger's thought, if hy implications we mean the ways in which
it can be used, or if we refer to its conseguences.
But what is the altemative? Can we even think in these terms? What use is something that is useless, that
has no effect or
consequences, that does not tell us what to do? no
In the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger rejeets the

'
distinction that would divide theory from practice. He states that the deed of thinking isneither theoretical nor
e
p-actical, and asserts such thinking has noresult; it has no effect. But what would human action or human
thought be when 'eed 'om the tyrannical imperative to produce results? Hence our question would ask what
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Heidegger means when he speaks of the humbleness of the inconsequential accomplishment of meditative
'
t11<ughi'e (BW, 239).
What' action without effect, what accomplishment without result? Rather than implications perhaps we
must speak in terms of a dimension
1
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of thought that abides at a limit oras an exposure. to our limits. What limits?
Agamben writes that Auschwitz marks the end and the ruin of every ethics of dignity and confo-mity to a norm
(RA, 69). What are we to think... or to do? Perhaps Heidegger exposes us to such an impasse for logic, or for
1 1
reason, in an attempt to restore dignity to thought. While the idea of dignitymay be too derivative of a metaphysics
\ 1
of subjectivity perhaps thisis what Heidegger meant when he calied us to openings to meditative thought, to the
humbleness of the inconseguential accomplishment meditati-ve thought.
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Hence for the moment I would attempt to rethink my approach or restate my question, addressing not the
implications, but the dimensions of inconsequential accomplishment in Heidegger's thought in the space of the
I
impasse. Heidegger has given us such indications, and such a thinking that we might explore would be the work of a
Nachdenken. With Contributions,to_ Philosophy I would identifythis ireonsequential reecton as mindfulness, a

mindfulness such as would oscillate or turnbetvveen and amongthe themes that surface in this paper: the theme of
community, his critique of the ethos of our time, his enduing relationship with Arendt, his communications with
Takehiko, and his reference to the Holocaust and to Hiroshima. The Besinnung within and among these themes
wouldnot aim at a consequence, as it encounters problematies and catastrophic events, events that in some cases
circumscribe the limits of reason. The Besinnung in this case is perhaps an exposure to a limit, an arrival at a
threshold where any calculus otmders.
With such mindful exposure, as described in Contributions to Philosophy, Dasein is attuned to the swaying
of being. Dasein is mindful not
asa mentative psyche but as a selood that is enowned in the turning of the swav.
This attunement to ttuning, to swaying between ethical concems-- as described in this paper-~ expresses the being of
Dasein insofar as it is expressed as a being-between, as a turning-point in the tuming of enowning, the self-opening
midpoint ...the ownhood or own-dom |Eigentum| (CP, 219). The tuming-exposurei-_of.__enownment is not a technical operation but a project_ing-grounding that isthe being of Dasein. Would this projecting-grounding of such
mindfulness be, then;the praxis of Dasein's Being?
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Yet, it would seem
inappropriate to conclude these reections with this particular question, in a paper that
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began with the question of multiple origins and of multiple directions and ows by drawing onthe image of the
Danube' in Claudio Magris's Danube. Rather than to conclude, it would seem more appropriate to reverse direction,
to cross back to the begirming, and to begin again, as it were, with I-Ieidegger's Hlderlifs Hymn The Ister. '.7 In
this text Heidegger rneditates on I-IlderIin's The Ister as an encounter with (not a representation ot) a river as a
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locality of the dwelling of human beings as historical upon the earth (HH, 33). The river, its origin, its springing
forth, and its ow, are the locality and joumeying of a historical coming to be (HH, 33). I-Ilclerli-i's treatment of
i
the journeying of the river evokes, for Heidegger, a poetic mindfulness that is not limited by the empirical
geography of the river. Indeed, Heidegger emphasizes that, in I-Ilderlifs poem, the river ows back to the enigma
of its source, deconstructing the orderly unity of space and time (HH, 36 and 39),
Charles Scott, in fact, seizes upon such a motif in the cautious and thorough investigation in his chapter
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entitled Heidegger and Practical Politics:_0f Time and the River (HPP, 173-190). Scott asserts that such a
deconstructive poetic mindlness carried by the trope of the river, for Heidegger, interrupts a wide range of
manipulative and ideological behaviors (HPP, 179), displaces any predisposition to aggression (HPP, 180) and provides a political site that offers an opening, a threshold to something essential but unappropriated in his people's history and culture" (HPP, 181). This is an opening, a tlreshold of a peo'ple's_ arrival into'the_i`' oeiirl,
4
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S
22)
Our turn back to the beginning, with the Danube, and with Charles Scott's chapter facilitates yet another
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passage through the locale of poetic mindhess in Heidegger's Hlderlin's I-Iymn The Ister and its relation to
S
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what we might call the dwelling of human beings as historical upon the earth in their ownness. Hence in this case we
would conclude, not with a single question, but with a step back |DerSchritt zurck] into the paper, a step
back into the question.
'S
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Franois Raffoul and David Pettigrew, eds., Heidegger and Practical Phiiosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002). 1-lereafter cited as' HPP followed by the page number.
9
2
s
Claudio Magris, Danube. A Sentimental Jon-nev_'om the Source. to the.B_lack Sea, trans. Patrick Creagh (London: The Harvill Press, 1999), 19-20. _
3
Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy/_(From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). Hereafter cited as CP followed by the page number. On page 297 Heidegger asserts that The historical destiny of philosophy culminates in the recognition of the necessity of making Hlderlin's word be heard. Heidegger continues on the very next page to assert We must perhaps think this history [of be-ing] if we are to prepare the arena which in its time must preserve the resonance of Hlderlirfs word - a word which again names gods and man- so that this resonance attunes those grounding- attunements which appoint future man to the to the guardiarship of gods' needflness.
4
1
3
1
Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts, trans. Gary Aylesworth (Bloonington: Indiana University Press 1993), 68-69. Hereaer. cited as BC followed by the page number. Heidegger writes in these pages that when thinking Being we must attemptto experience that, located between both limits, we are placed into a peculiar abode from which there is no way out." For Heidegger the impasse results ~om Being itself.
1
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On page 158 in Science and Reectionf' in 'jhe Question Conceming Technology, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper& Row, Publishers, 1977), Heidegger species the nature of his dialogue with the Greeks: A dialogue with the Greek thinkers - and that means at the same time with the Greek poets - does not imply a modern renaissance of the ancients. Just as little does it imply a historiographical curiosity... ln this essay reection is Lovitt's translation of Besinnung.
6
Martin Heidegger, lucidations of _I:I1derlin"s Poetry, trans. Keith I-oel1er(Am.herst, NY: Humanty Books, 2000). Hereafter cited as El-IP ={o'llowed by the page number. _
.
V
Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New`York: Harper & Row, 1966). 1-Iereafter cited as DT followed by the page number.
M. Heidegger - Kojima Takehiko: Une correspondanct-:_,
"
I !
3
9
inPhilosophie, volume 43 (Paris: Minuit, 1994).
'I_èzuka Tomio, An Hour With Heidegger' trans. Graham Parkes ini-Teideg`ger'siidden S0ur'(London: - . __ Routledge, 1996).
',
'.iohn Hersey, Hg' osling (London: Penguin Books,
1946).
oniy e
12
(Chicago: Prec'edentPub1ishing`~'Co, :Inc 1981), p. 56.
cen"save*Ue' in The spiegel (1966) in Heidegger the Men andne Iraker, 'rhemee _seeehen
_
Lettres et autresdocuments 1925-1975. Hannah Arendt Martin Heidegger, trans. Pascal David (Paris: Editions number. oiiawad aliiaiard, 2991).. Heener .cited es
Giorgio Agamben, Remnar1ts_ofAusch`wtz. T_he__Witness'aniiie `fr`l1ìvg 1'I.`Di1'Hel1er-Roazen (New

York: Zone Books, 1999). 1-Iereafter cited as RA followed by the .page number.
1
".Agamben`s participation in"the s'erriirarìs recfdd in photographs in Franois Fdier's Soixante-deux photographiesde Martin Heideggg (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1999). See photograph #31 (10 September 1966) and, #50 (8 September 1968). These Seminars are fothcoming in English as Martin Heidegger, Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and Franois Raffoul (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
10
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'5 Prino
16
Levi, Survival at Auschwitz, trans. Stuart Wolf (Touchstone Books, 1996), p. 90.
Letter on Hurranism in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977), p. 236. Hereafter cited as BW followed by the page number.
Martin Heidegger's H1derlin's H g g The Ister trans. William McNeill and Julia Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Hereafter cited as HH followed by the page number.
1.
The term step hack is borrowed 'om Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambagh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002).
'B
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The Praxis of Being

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Franois Raffoul
LSU
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I would like today to investigate I-eidegger's thought of practice and in particular what I would call the "praxis of
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being," in order to stress 'om the outset that praxis for Heidegger is not be taken within the anthropological or
subjectivistic horizon, not within the tradition of the will, but solely in tenns of being and of its event: Praxis is not the
acting subject, and not even the counterpart of theory, but has to do with the event of being itself. Hence, the "praxis of
being." Heidegger has often been reproached for his alleged neglect of practical issues. I-lowever, a more responsible
reading shows that Heidegger deconstructs metaphysical accounts of praxis (as opposed to theoria, as acting subject,
as applied philosophy, as enframed in tree will and causality, as belonging toman, etc...) so as to give voice to other senses and understandings of "the'practical." I would to like in these pages to begin exploring such an understanding,
t
by proposing a few directions to follow on the way to a Heideggerian thought of praxis.
Practical Ontology.
\
If it is the case, As Jean-Luc Nancy stresses, that "only those who have read Heidegger blindly, or not at all, have been
able to think of him as a stranger to ethical preoccupations," then it is our task to understand the practical rdimension of
his thought. On a purely impressionist level, we see a lot of motifs in' Heidegger's thinking that in fact attest to a
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continual concern for our engagement in our world: one could mention here, of course, his celebrated texts on
technology, nihilism, the atomic age, etc. But the charge I mentioned above of a neglect of the practical may rest on a
radical misunderstanding: One seeks to nd in his work a classical problematic, does not nd it, and concludes that
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Heidegger ignored the practical dimension of existence. In that respect, those critics are absolutely right: Heidegger
does not offer us-a traditional understandingof praxis, and this is why if one seeks it, one will not nd it. For instance,
where Heidegger takes issue with traditional conceptions of ethics, or where he actually rejects ethics as a disciplire in
the metaphysical tradition, it is concluded that his thought is an-ethical, if not anti-ethical. But isn't it the case that his
rejection of the tradition of ethics is done in the name of a rethinking of a more originary ethics which he attempts to
ptusue?
I
Instead of proposing norms, a "program" for existence as it were, we are led to the situation in which "being in
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the position of choosing": praxis is resituated in its possibility, for instance in the factical setting where it takes place and how it takes place. The critique of traditional ethics is then, fu'st of all, a critique of the abstract character of such
1
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ethics. Heidegger stresses that no values," no ideal norms oat above factical existence. Further, when one
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consiclers, for instance, the authenticity/inauthenticity altemative in Being and Time, one sees that it is a matter of an
.
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existence coming into its own, the inunanent movement of a radically nite and open existence, and not the
"application" of mies, 'om above, to a previously un-ethical realm. Ethics vis. .. existence itself, in its specic motion,
.f
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_
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and existence therefore does not need to be "ethicized" from above. The issue, then, is not to enframe l-1eidegger's
thought of praxis in pre-established schemas, but rather to' approach and question his thought with respect to the way
in which [it] encountered and 'posed the question of praxis. Ontology thus urderstood is always practical," always
engaged, and thus bears an intrinsically ethical dimension. This isdoubtless the reason why Heidegger has not
written on ethics: because he does not need to add it on to an ontology that would then itself be conceived as non1 I
ethical.
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His thought was formed in an appropriationttofthe traditicmggf practical philosophy;

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In fact, not only did Heidegger not neglect the practical, recent publications of his early lecture courses in the
Gesamtausgabe have made manifest that he developed his w thought through an appropriative reading of practical philosophy and its fundamental categories. Several commentators (Volpi, Taminiaux, etc.) have stressed that genesis
of 1-lIeidegger's thought. As earlyas 1919, in an early Freiburg lecture-course (Zur Bestimmung der'Philosophie. GA
56-572), he spoke of "breaking the primacy of the theoretical" (p. 59), on the way to an originary phenomenology of
the facticity of life, later renamecl Dasein. The 1924-1925 course on the Sophst offers detailed interpretations of key
1
passages 'om -Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and an appropriation of such notions as phronesis or arete. Other
courses from that period also testify to the inuence of practical-ethical categories in the genesis of Heideggers
thought and vocabulary. The reappropriation of Kant's practical philosophy,_an often neglected aspect, also gures
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Franco Volpi, for instance, has argued that the key terms of Being in Time are the result of anappropriation of Arstotle's practical concepts --for instance the corespondence made between "care" and orexis, or "noetic desire,"
2
phronesis and conscience.
Phnomerologie und rranszendentale Werphilosophie (Sommersemester 1919); 3: Anhang: ber das Wesen der Universitt und des akademischen Studiums (Sommersemester 1919). Translated as 1. The idea of philosophy and the problem of worldview; 2. Phenomenology and transcendental philosophy of value; 3. " On the nature of the university and academic study, by Ted Sadler.
1: Die Idee der Philosophie und dasWeltanschauungsproblem (Kriegsnotsemesterl 919); 2:
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prominently in this respect. The structure of the morallaw, for instance, is understood in the Kantbuch as the mark of
the iinitude of existence, assigned to the dissymetry of the law. Kant's practical philosophy is then reinterpreted in the
perspective of an analytic of nitude. One may aiso note here Heidegger's ontological appropriation of the motif of
freedom in Kant's practical philosophy Qn the Essence of Human Freedom. Freedom is there reinterpreted as the
transcerdence of Dasein.
One can state furtherthat the categories of Being and Time are practical, in a fundamental-ontoiogical way, beginning
with Dasein: 'Dasein is defmed asa care or a concem for its own being, that is, not as an abstract subject (as the
reexive subject of the modern tradition), but in a "practical" sense. Dasein is "to be," that is, not some contemplative
consciousness and self-consciousness, but a task of Being, a possibility to.be. "Care" is an originary practical category.
As a conrmation of this, isn't theoretical enterprise itself understood in Being and Time as a certain comportment of
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Being-in-the-world?
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By stressing the practical dimension of Heidegger's thought, one is not to understand a mere "application" of l-leidegger's thought to various practical concems, as though his thought- or thought in general, for that matter could be used as some kind of tool, following a consequentialist, utilitarian or instrumental model. One encounters today (in volumes, conferences, etc.) many such examples of "applications," which all share the same characteristic of not being engaged in the act of thinking because they are all too busy "appIying" what is assumed to be a settled theory. Such an approach unclerestimates both theory and praxis: because both are considered within the impoverished horizon of instrumentality. The current and growing development ofso-called applied ethics in the curriculum conceals a peculiar and paradoxical blindness regarding the nature of ethics, and a neglect of a genuine philosophical questioning concerning the meaning of ethics, at the same moment that it betrays an almost desperate need for ethics in our age. But this need arises out of the fact that ethics is left groundless. It is then ethics itself which is in need of a philosophical foundation, even it that means, ultimately, revealing its... grotmdlessness. Indeed, the notion of "application" provides a grounding for ethical precepts: Ethics is guaranteed by a theoretical basis. But ethical judgment, .it could be argued, takes place in an ungrounded way. I cannot secure in advance the noms and the value of the choice that chooses norms and values! The concept of "applied ethics" is self-contraclictory, an Oxymoron of sort, if you will. The sort of decision involved in ethical determinations thus evades any notion of "application" and of ground.
Praxis ofbeing is not applied philosophy
Praxis of being.isouts_i,de_the_thegr3g'praxis opposition

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How then are we to understand Heideggers thought of a praxis of being? In a striking sense, by rst seeing that it
takes place outside of the theory/praxis opposition. We recall that the practicality that emerged in Being and Time was
in a sense prior to the traditional theory/praxis opposition, since both theory and praxis attest to it. They are both
the practical over the theoretical, as we read comportments. These motifs testify, not so much to a simple priority of
sometime (Volpi,) but rather to an attempt to rethink the very status of the practical, which would no longer be situated
within the traditional theory/praxis dichotomy. In "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger thus contrasts an ontical praxis
1
--
manipulation of entties, production of results under the law of efciency, application of theoretical models
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with an
i
ontological practical ergagement --praxis of Being, the act of thought as accomplishment of the relation to Being, the
bringing forth
ofthe
useless. What is clear isthat Heidegger takes issue not with praxis as such but with its
metaphysical --ontical-- determination. The way isthus opened for an ontological interpretation of praxis.
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In "Letter on Hurnanism, Heidegger makes the striking remark that the deed of thinking (das Tun des
Denkens) is neither theoretical nor practical." (BW, 263). In one sentence, thus, he has at once stepped out of the
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theory/praxis opposition and re-inscribed another sense of praxis (deed of thinking) at the heart of thinking -as the
adventure into Being. He continues: Thns thinking is a deed. But a deed that also surpasses all praxis (BW, 262).
What of this praxis beyond praxis? A praxis beyond praxis, theory, and beyond the theoryfpraxis opposition altogether? The rst
feature of such an "praxis of being" is that it is dentied with thinking itself, understood as the thinking of the
' truth of Being. To act now means to think , if thinking is not theory but "insight into what is." What is thinking when no
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longer understood as the contemplative theoria on the basis of which effects can take place? in fact, thinking does not
need to be put into action, as it were, for when action is dened as the accomp1ishment of man's relation to Being,
then thinking becomes itself an act, the highest act (Thinking acts insofar as it thinks [BW, 217]). Thinking is thus not
tantamount to theory, and then not opposed to praxis. It is in that sense that one can speak of practical philosophy": in the sense that Heidegger advances when he states that thinking is Pengagement par lltre pour l'Btre (engagement by
Being for Being) (BW, 218, in French in the original).
'
A second feature ofthis praxis of being is that it cannot be measured in terms of results, or production_of
effects. Heidegger states that such thinking has no result. It has no effect" (BW, 259). It has noeffect, not because it is
solely
theoretical or contempiative (in fact it exceeds all contemplation" [BW, 262]), but because the praxis here
evoked
isno longer understood as the production of effects on the basis of a theory, within the end/means apparatus.
The essence of thinking as praxis of being, he reminds us in the very rst lines of Letter on Humanism, is not that
which causes an effect, noris it governed by the value of utility. In fact, in the Beitrge, Heidegger makes the claim that
genuine thinking is "powerIess" in the sense that the "en-thinking of the truthof Being. _. does not tolerate animmediate
conclusion and evaluation [clostu-e], especially when thinking must... bring into play the entire strangeness of be-ing
[openness] --thus when thinking can never be based on a successful result in beings" (Contributions, p.33). This is all
f
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the more the case since as we know any calculation of effects produced quickly proves. .. incalculable! The concem for 'results
--the denition of praxis in terms of production of effects -- in fact belongs to what Heidegger calls in that text
attimes equates being with a "dead-end" and the praxis ofbeing must then accept a sort of
"machination." Heidegger
experience ofthe "impractical," of an aporia within it, that which does ng; pass, and does not produce results.
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Praxis of being is not the at_gf a willful subject.

What is at stake
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inthe critique of the theory/praxis opposition, aswell as -the instrumental conception of action,
is an atternptat 'eeing praxis itself as the act of being itself. Praxis is not the "active" manipulation of entities, but the
enactrnent of Being itself. Such an enactment, we should note right away, cannot be the act of a subjectivity, because as
Heidegger says of projection (Entwurf), it is always thrown (Geworfen), and therefore always already under way,
always already in motion, "before" the will, and before the subject, as it-were. As Heidegger says in the Beitrge,
"Every Projecting-open [Entwur is Thrown 0ne," par. 263, p.3 18). The "act" or "enactment" of Being refers to such
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a motion, which we are, but not as its authors. Rather, we are "en-owned" by it: "IE throw is thrown in the resonance
of en-ownment" (p.320), he writes in a very compact sentence. I will return to this later, but this already indicates that
freedom, the "free throw," according to the recent translation, "never succeeds by mere human impetus [Antrieb] and
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human make up" (320). Humans do not initiate the ee throw, they are the ones who, as Heidegger puts it, "always
return 'om the -ee tiu'ow"'(ibicl).
Praxis is, of being, but we have a part in it. This is what appears in the motifs of
freedom and decision
a)_Freedom and Decision;
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In Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger stresses that ln @n
Da-sein still stands in the shadow
of the 'anthropologicah' the *subjectivisticf and the individuaiistic,` etc (GA 65, 296; CP, 208). As we know, the
Contributions to Philosophy, attempt to go beyond such a subjectivism. Examples of this turning in thinking" are given,
when, for instance in paragraph 41., he explains that the word "decision" can be taken rst as an anthropological human
act, until it suddenly means the essential sway of be-ing (GA 65, 84; CP, 58). Thinking from enowning will thus
involve that man [be} put back into the essential sway of be-ing and cut off from the fetters of 'anthropology' (GA
2
65, 84; CP, 58). Praxis now names the essential sway of be-ing. One of the senses of this praxis of being is the
rethinking of eedom away from the subjectivity and causality of the will, or "'ee-will," and the seizing of Being as
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decision, or decidedness. It is perhaps not emphasized enough that Heidegger has an important, positive, thought of
freedom. I-lowever, freedom 'is approached outside of the theorylpraxis opposition, outside of the metaphysical
constructs of free-will, subjectivity, and causality. Let us think here of that passage, among many others, from k
Question Conceming Technology (p.3 30), in which Heidegger asserts rmly that, The essence of feedom is originally
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not connected with the will or even with the causality of humar wi1ling." The critiques of the metaphysical ways of
enaming freedom (in subjectivity, ir the Will, ir causality, etc.. _) prove inadequate to an authentic thought of
freedom. Heidegger concedes in the Beitrge that it "is hardly possible in the end not to approach eedom as cause and
faculty, hardly possible not to push the question of decision off into the 'moral-anthropological' dimension
(Contributions,
p.60). Yet, the task is to do just that. In fact, as he states in What is Called Thinking: "Fre-zedom, \
therefore, is never something merely human" (p.l33) (nor is it merely divine, he addsl). It is a matter of thinking the
free-ing in freedom, what is freeing in our being, what makes us -ee, "sets us free," in what he calls "the free scope
of freedom" where "free human nature may abide" (ibid). This is what Heidegger indicated when, already in Being and
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he claimed that Dasein is characterized as being free
[Freisein]for its ownmost potentiality-for-being (SZ,

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191), or that Dasein's being toward a potentiality-for.-being is itself determined by freedom (SZ, 193). What sort of
action is then freecl when subtracted -om those categories? It appears that the issue, in the end, is to think freedom as
originary to Dasein's Being, and in a sense to Being itself. The essence of eedom would then be the essence of being
itself.
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This appears in I-Ieidegger's rethinking of decision. We know that decision is traditionally assigned to a willful
subject and an agent who decides, to the extent that decision in the end becomes only about such a subject! The stress
is always on who decides, -who has the power to decide, who leads and who isthe leader. In contemporary French
language, a popular term used in the culture to name those "leaders," a name to designate and glorify those who run and
lead, is "les dcideurs," literally "those who decide" or "the deciding ones"... So that the population is divided between
those who decide and those who don't! One can see how decision participates in the ination of subjectivity, with all of
its variations. (In passing, I should say that when in the Beitrge Heidegger asks: "Who decides?" (p.69), he replies
immediately: "Everyone,- even in not~deciding and not wanting to hear of it, in dodging the preparation" (ibid); so
`
everyone decides,
even those who don't!). But we also know that Heidegger does not think in the
horizon of
subjectivity. Decision is then no longer about the glori-ed subject, and is displaced 'om a subject-based thinking to a
2
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thinking which is concerned with what the decision is about, the "decisive."..
The "decisive": this irnplies that in the decision the matter is not settled, not already decided, or is to be
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decided. This is why decision is not for Heidegger a choice, always between two pregiven established realities.
Choosing "always involve only what is pregiven and can be taken or rejected," he writes (Contributions, par. 46, p.69).
In other words, choice not only involves a subject of the choice ('ee will) but also an understanding of Being as what is
already laid out available for manipulation. All inadequate representations for Heidegger.: De-cision is not a choice
between given ontic possibilities, but is the essence of being itself." There can only be an authentic decision if the
matter is not already settled. What matters is not the subject who decides (but is there one at all?); at the risk of
tautology, we would say that what matters is

t
"the matter" of decision itself. This is why Heidegger says that decision
is about... decision, about deciding or not-deciding"! (Contributions, p.70). This is the case-especially if one notes that
the greatest danger, the sign of nihilistic machination, is to believe matters decided, hence the "lack of distress" which is
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the most distressful of all. The decided (lack of distress as utmost distress) has to be retumed to the undecided
(distress), so as to bring out decidedness as such. In Derridean terms, one might say: so as to bring out the undecidable!
.
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As recently as July of 2001, Derrida still explained in an interview for Le Monde: "The aporia I speak so much about
not a mere momentary iaaralysis before an impasse, but the experience of the undecidable through which alone a
is
But a decision does not end some aporetic phase" (my emphasis) (L 'aporie dont je parle tant,
ce rz'est pas unesimple paralysie momentane devant I''mpasse. C 'est .Vpreuve de l'inde'c`dable dans Iaquelle seule
une dcsion peut advenir. Mais Ia dcision ne met pas n quelque phase aportique). And this is precisely the act of
thinking: to bring out the undecidable so as to render possible the act of Being. We remember that in Being and Time,
what is at issue for Dasein is the meaning of Being itself; here too Being iswhat matters, what is to be decided in the
decision. But we need to stress that Being is what is at stake in the decision, and decision is about nothing but Being.
Being is the matter of decision. Decision is about Being. What is atissue in the decision is the decisive, i.e., being. As
Heidegger puts it, "Decision (Entscheidung) means already decidedness (Entschiendenheit)" (p.70). "Being is the
decisive," this would be one of the main ways to grasp the practicality of Being.
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Conclusion
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ln the recently translated God, Death, and Time, Emanuel Levinas brilliantly presents I-leidegger's thought of .
Being in the following way: He states that "Heidegger opened the path of a rationality of disquietucie or of nonquiet"
(p_l36). In what sense? In that Being, ir contrast with the Greek determination of the meaning of Being as ousia, ishere
understood as that which is "in question" or "at issue" in Dasein. Being in question, continues Levinas, attests to its
being a "bottomless abyss," a "n0nfoundation." Because Being is no longer enamed in an ontology of substance,
order, and arche, it becomes, as Levinas puts it, "a task of Being. This gives to Being an irreducible and originary
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practical
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sense: Being is to be, that is, "enacted," as being. Being can oniy be as enacted, in an originary praxis, a praxis
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of being. We know that Levinas, when presenting Heidegger's thought, always begins by emphasizing that the major
contribution of I-Ieidegger's thought is to have brought out the so-called "verbality" of Being. Being is not a substance,
but an event, a "doing" or "happening'." One could say, in an impossible English: Being is not, but Being
And since we know that Being happens as withdrawal --and in this sense is the mystery
beings!
--then what remains for us to

'
think is how praxis and withdrawai belong together (expropriation as activity of Being). It is as if praxis takes place as
the withdrawal of being in its very movement of arrival, a withdrawing arrival which we are, and have to be, practically.
\
Such would be the "secret" essence of praxis, the praxis of being, that neither the tradition of the subject, nor that of the
will, and nor the traditional theory/praxis opposition, were able to see.
i
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withdrawal of essence in of the a in the and his Heidegger's rethinking priori Beitrge thought of the simultaneity of be-irg and Whereas in his had beings. early courses, Heidegger attempted to reappropriate the a priori away from the tradition of subj ectivity in order to make it designate Being itself (for instance inGA 20), here Heidegger insists that the a priori is the "guiding-question" of metaphysics, and that the relation between _be-ing and beings is "totally different" (C, p.155). Indeed, the truth of be-ing "and the essential swaying of be-ing is neither what is earlier nor what is later" (ibid). Heidegger rejects both the platonic version of the a priori (priority of the Eidos as beingness over beings) andits modern subjectivist version (the priority of the in Descartes's second meditation). In the preview, he explains that "be-ing is not representing subject as S0m6hi1'1g earlier subsisting for and in itself (C, 10). Rather, enowning isthe temporal-spatial simultaneigg or be-ing and beings" (ibid, my emphasis). Later, he speaks of Dasein as the "simultaneity of time-space," the "between" and the mid-point" in beings themselves" (ibid). Being cannot be posited prior to beings, but is the between which can only be enacted in a leap. This is echoed in J eanLuc Nancy's recent Being Singular Plural, when Nancy states: "Being absolutely does not preexists; nothing preexists; only what exists exists" (BSP, 29). What is important for us in this discussion is that the simultaneity of be-irg and beings, this "leap in the between," can only be enacted. No grounding in an apriori, there is instead a performativigg of being. Heidegger says so explicitiy, as does Nancy. This rethinking of being reveals its inescapable practicality, away 'om all representational thinking. _
One. nds a strong indication of this n_on-substantiality of Being
--
--
--
Wayne Froman
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PRAXIS AND TECHNE
11
With the publication of more work by Heidegger dating from the Being and Time ,_
period, it becomes clear that one of the topics in Aristotle's work that was quite important
for him at that time was the topic of praxis. I want to propose here that in this regard, the
1
question of the relation between praxis, on the one hand, and techn, onthe other, was a
crucial question. Incleecl, I want to propose that this would remain so along the entire
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course
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of I-Ieideggers work. To these ends, I am going to turn rst to two texts' from the
Being and Time period, namely, the discussion of Aristot1e's texts that opens the lectures
on Plato`s Sophist (1924-1925), and the transcript of the series of lectures under the title
Wilhelm Dilthey's Research and the Struggle for a Historical Worldview (1925). 1 will
tLu~n next
to The Origin ofthe Work ofAri (1936, in the original version of the text
published in 1951, also based on a 1935 lecture). Finally, I will make reference to the
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lecture Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1951). While
myproposal
isthat the question

,
conceming the relation between praxis and techn demonstrates a constancy in
Heidegger's questioning, I will specify a change along the way, and it is a change in his thought that I nd stands out quite clearly once this question
isunderstood as a unifying
factor. My proposal is not just that the question concerning the' relation between praxis
and techn can be elicited from Heideggers texts, nor is it that somehow this question
guided Heidegger without his being aware of it, but rather that in _a denite sense, which I
want to specify, this relation pertains to the very questioning that in Heideggefs words,
is, in fact, the piety of thinking.

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I turn to Heideggers discussion of Aristotle that opens the lecture course on PIato's
Sophist. Praxis and techn name different modes of aletheuein, of truth, or of coming to
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appearance. Praxis is what carries out phronesis, prudential or practical wisdom,
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circumspectful insight, and praxis is a mode of truth, or of coming to appearance, that

pertains to Dasein as such. Techn, by contrast, carries out poesis, producing, and this is
a mode of truth, or of coming to appearance, whereby Dasein brings entities other than
Dasein to appearance. By virtue of petaining to~Dasein alone, which means that it has its
end, narnely, action, within itself and not in a different entity, praxis is of a higher order.
At the same time, praxis is not the excellence or the virtue, the aret, proper to techn, 1
and this is so not .simply because the former pertains to Dasein alone and the latter
involves another entity, but because the way in which each carries
out what it
does is
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different. Specically, while techn involves development via trial and error, and for this
reason can
in fact be characterized by an aret, praxis knows no development of that sort
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but rather either fails or succeeds. No development goes from one to the other. Praxis is
not
characterized by an aret, but rather, when it gets carried
out, it is an aret. Praxis,
then, ranks higher than techn, but is not, at the same time, the aret, the excellence or
virtue belonging to techn.
Although praxis ranks higher, it is techn, Heidegger nds, when it is understood as

production that accords with an eidos, which actually serves as the grotmd of the
interpretation of Being that identies Being with presence, the interpretation ofBeing
that will hold sway in the metaphysical tradition. Heidegger underscores that for
Aristotle, the virtue, or the excellence, the aret proper to techn is Sophia, intellectual or
cornprehending Wisdom. At the same time, however, sophia, as a mode of aletheuein,
stands higher than phronesis. Heidegger underscores the basis for Aristotles j udgment in
this regard. While phronesis stands higher than poeisis, in that praxis, unlike techn,
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pertains to Dasein alone and thereby contains its end in itself, sophia entails orientation
by what
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iseverlsting and thereby allows for fulllment of the htunan psyche.
Fu1l1ment here signals a making present understood as akin to a production that

acc_ords with eidos and shows how sophia, which stands higher than the praxis of
phronesis, could be designated as the aret of the techn of poeisis.

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The guiding thread in delineating how the different modes of aletheuein stand in
relation' one to the other is the interpretation of Being as presence. The relation between
Being as presence and the modes of aletheuein will then serve Heidegger as a clue for an
analysis of P1ato's thought in the Sophist in regard to the relation between Being and nonBeing.
What do these elements of Heidegger's discussion of Aristotle in the opening ofhis _
,
Iectures on Platos Sophst have to do with Being and Time? If techn is taken in its
initial sense of production as bringing to appearance, which it is as a mode of aletheuein
involving beings other than Dasein, the Preparatory ,Fundamental Analysis of Dasein,
the analysis of being-in-'the-world that comprises Division One of the published text of
Being and Time (which stops after Part One: The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of
Temporality and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon of the Question
of Being) largely concerns techn. That is to say it concerns how Dasein is n the
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truth and how the disclosedness characteristic of Dasein pertains equiprimordially to the
dis-covery of entities encountered within the world. It also concerns how Dasein is in
unt_r.th by virtue of becoming caught up amidst entities encountered within the world.
Here, however, techn, as bringing toappearance, is not understood along the lines
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indicated by a production that accords with an eidos.
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If Division One largely concems techn, Divison Two of the published text, Dasein
and Temporality, with the analysis of authenticity that takes its point of departure in
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Dasein`s being-towards-death, largely concerns praxis, a mode of aletheuein that pertains

to Dasein alone. _ Here are two passages from the text Wilhelm Dilthey's Research and
the Struggle for an Historical World View that comprise a preliminary determination of the character of authenticity. It is helpful to cite the passages at length because they
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address being-towards-death, resolve, and authenticity in terms of action, while in Being

and Time, Heidegger expressly wanted to avoid the word for action, handeln, precisely because it suggests an operation of some sort on something, and thereby distorts the
matter that was at issue, namely, praxis. This is so at least as much as techn is distorted
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when it is understood as to make,'rather than as a mode of aletheuein, a bringing to

appearance. With this proviso regarding the word action, the rst passage reads:
To endure the possibility of death means to have it there for oneself in such a way that it stands before one purely as what it is-indenite regarding its when and certain regarding its that. To let this possibility exist asa possibility and to not turn it into actuality, as is done in suicide, for example, means to run forward toward it in an anticipatory manner. Here the world withdraws, collapsing into othingness. The possibility of death means that I will, at some time, depart from this world, that the world will have nothing more to say to me, that everything to which I cl-ing, with which I busy myself, and about which I am concerned will have no more to say to me and will no longer be of help to me. -The world, as something on the basis of which I am able to live, will then no longer be there. I have to deal with this possibility purely on my own. Here we see that the possibility of choice is given in advance for Dasein. At every moment Dasein can comport itself in such a way that it chooses between itself and the world; it can make each decision on the basis of what it encounters in the world, or it can rely on itself. Dasein's possibility of choosing offers the possibility of fetchng itself back from its having become lost in the world, that is, from its publicness. When Dasein has chosen itself, it has thereby chosen both itself and choice. To have chosen to choose means, however, to be resolved. Thus running forward anticipatorily means choosing; to
an
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have chosen means to be resolved-not to die but to live. This choosing and this being resolved is the choice of responsibility for itself that Dasein takes on and that consists in the fact that in each instance of 'my acting I make myself responsible through my action. Choosing responsibility for oneself means to choose one's conscience as a possibilitythat the human being authentically is. [Wilhelm Dilthey's Research and the Struggle -for a Historical Worldview, translated by Charles Bambach Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, edited by John van Buren. SUNY press, p. 168 (boldface emphases mine.)]~
And then:
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This anticipatory running forward into the most extreme possibility of myself, which I am not yet, but will .be, means to be futural. Being guilty is nothing other than carrying the past around with oneself, for being guilty is a kind of being past. In this state of being guilty, we can see how one holds onto the past and how along with this human Dasein, through its actions, comes authentically into the present.. In being resolved, Dasein is its future, in being guilty it is its past, and in acting it comes into the present. The being-there of Dasein is nothing other than being-time. Time is not something that I encounter out there in the world, but is what I myself am. In rmning forward anticipatorily, being guilty, and acting, time itself is there fort us. Time characterizes the whole of Dasein. At any particular time, Dasein is not only in the moment but rather is itself within the entire span of its possibilities and its past. It isremarkable how, in acting in the direction of the future, the past comes alive and the present vanishes. Those who act authentically live from out of the ture and also can live from out of the past; the present takes care of itself. Time constitutes the whole of my Dasein and also denes my own being at every moment. Human life does not happen in time but rather is time itself. [Supplements, p 169 (boldface emphases mine).]
I
The analysis, in Being and Time, of the aletheuein that is carried through by praxis is
not oriented by a contemplative awareness of what is everlasting, any more than the
analysis of the aletheuein that is carried through by techn is oriented by a production
-
that accords_ with an eidos. The import of the former is indicated by the character of das
Augenblick, by what is of the moment, and holds the entire span of Dasein's
possibilities as well as its past. It should be noted that while authenticity means relying
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on oneself, rather than the world, it does not mean severing oneself from the world. To
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the contrary, Heidegger says
inBeing and Time, the futural quality of authenticity

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depends on Dasein's being always-already-ahead-of-itself as in-the-world. But just how

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we are to understand the relation between acting authentically, on the one hand, and the
way in which Dasein's disclosure is equiprimordially a dis-covey of entities encountered
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in the world, on the other hand, we are not told. We are not told exactly how we areto
understand the relation between praxis and techn. It would seem that this might well
entail a description of the existentiell mode of existence that pertains to authenticity. It is
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tempting to think that Part Two would have provided this analysis this relation.
Unfortunately, as it stands, without that analysis, authenticity can take on the appearance
of sheer decisionism, notwithstanding that in so far as the issue isapraxis, the restraint of phronesis, which is to say, circumspectfulness or prudence, is very much to the- point.
I next turn to The Origin ofthe Work ofArt, which followed nine years after Being
and Time. First, two prelimnary points about the placementand the signicance of the
text. The text dates from the period of the Beitrge zur Phz'losophie:_ Vom Ereignis and
can be well understood in regard to that unnished work. First, in the unnishecl text, the
initial intimation regarding the possibility of another beginning is one Heidegger discerns
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in the character of this age of technics The subsequent essays on technology from the
late 1940's, which likewise take their point of departure in the unnished Beitrge,
specify that technics is a highly ambiguous conguration in that it is a mode of disclosing

and as such it does harbor a indication toward a free relation toward it, but its frenzied
activity (the machination, die Machenscha, as this is called in the Beitrge) is precisely
what obscures that indication. Heidegger recommends that in so far as art went by the
same name, i.e. techn,
in Greece, it would help, in regard to disceming that indication
toward a free relation vis--vis technics, to turn our attention to art. In effect, this sends
us back to The Origin ofthe Work ofArt. Moreover, the Beitrge itself already species
that the capacity for another beginning is to be found in art, singularly so inthe poetry of
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Friedrich Hlderlin.
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My second prelminary point is that in The Origin ofthe Work ofArt, Heidegger
discusses how art is a mode of aletheuein, that is, how in art, truth happens in the midst of
what is. Heidegger species that art is one among a number of ways in which truth
happens in the midst of what is. He writes:
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One essential way in which truth establishes itself in the beings it has opened up is truth setting itself into work. Another way in which truth occurs is the act that founds a political state. Still another way in which truth comes to shine forth is the neamess of that which is not simply a being,`b'ut the being that is most of all. Still another way in which truth grounds itself is the essential sacrice; Still another way in which truth becomes is the thinker's questioning, which, as thinking of Being, names Being in its question-worthiness. [The Origin ofthe Work ofArt in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper and Row, p. 60.]
I think it important to note that there is not a discussion of any relations among these
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various ways in which truth happens in the midst of what is. In particular, there is'not a
discussion of a relation between art and the act that founds a political state." I nd it
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quite plausible that the attention Heidegger devotes here to artwork signals an intent at
extricating himself from political activity of a basically catastrophic nature. This is quite
consistent with what we nd in the Beitrge in that regard. This is not to say that this
factor is what was driving Heideggefs thought at this point, but one need not say that in
order to suggest that it registers here. Also, this is manifestly not to say that art amounts
to a momentarily refreshing diversion. But if a relation between art and the act that
founds a political state is not discussed here, it is also hardly self-evident that ultirnately
art and such a founding act are compatible by necessity.
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What then of The Origin ofthe Work of Art in regard to the relation between techn
and praxis? First, in regard to techn, here is the critical passage:
It has oen enough been pointed out that the Greeks, who knew quite a bit about works of art, use the same word techn for craft and art and call the craftsman and the_ artists by the same name: technites. It thus seems advisable to dene the nature of creative work in terms of its craft aspect. But reference to the linguistic usage of the Greeks, with their' experience of the facts, must give us pause. However usual and convincing the references may be to the Greek practice of naming craft and art by the same name, techn, it nevertheless remains oblique and supercial; for techn signies neither craft nor art, and not at all the technical in our present day sense; it never means a kind of practical performance. The word rechn denotes rather a mode of knowing. To know means to have seen, in the widest sense of seeing, which means to apprehend what is present, as such. For Greek thought the nature of knowing consists in aletheia, that is, in the uncovering of beings; Techn, as knowledge in the Greek manner, is a bringing forth of beings in that it brngsforth present beings as such beings out afconcealedness and specically into the unconcealedness of their appearance; techn never signies the action of making. The artist is a technites not because he is also a crasman, but because both the acting forth of works and the setting forth of equipment occur in a bringing forth and presenting that causes beings in the rst place to come forward and be present in assuming an appearance. Yet all this happens in the midst of the being that grows _ out of its own accord, phusis. Calling art techn does not imply that the artist's action is seen in the light of cra. What looks like craft in the creation of a work is of a different sort. This doing isdetermined and pervaded by the nature of creation, and indeed remains contained within that creating. [Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 57-58.]
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Where art isconcerned, techn does not amount to a detachable handcra or skill.
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Rather it is intrinsic to what happens in bringing to appearance. It pertains to' the .way in
which Dasein isthe openness of the Open, the openness of world. Heidegger's turning to
art
as a means of discerning the nature of techn does not entail some sort of primitivism
q
that favors handcraft, because handcraft is not the ndarnental character of teehn.
What then of praxis? In order to sustain my claim that the question concerning the relation between techn and praxis stays crucial along the course of Heidegger's thought,
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it is indispensable to specify how the issue of praxis gures in this text that is pivotal in
so many ways. Heidegger species that just as a work cannot be without being created
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but is essentially in need of creators, so what is created cannot itself come into being
without those who preserve it. [Poet1y, Language, Thought, p. 64.] He then describes
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this preserving:
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Preserving the work means: standing within the opemess of beings that happens in the work. This standing-within of preservation, however, is a knowing. Yet knowing does not consist in mere information and notions about something. He who truly knows what is, knows what he wills to do in the midst of what is. _ -The willing here-referred to, which ,neither merely applies knowledge nor decides beforehand, is thought of in terms of the basic experience of thinking in Being and Time. Knowing that remains a willing, and willing that remains a knowing, is the existing htunan being's entrance into and compliance with the unconcealedness of Being. The resoluteness intended in Being and Time is not the deliberate action of a subject, but the opening up of human being, out of its captivity in that which is, to the openness of Being. However, in existence, man does not proceed from some inside to some outside; rather, the nature of Existenz is out-standing standing-within theessential sunderance of the clearing of beings. Neither in the creation mentioned before nor in the willing mentioned now do we think of the performance or act of a subject striving toward himself as his self-set goal. Willing is the sober resolution of that existential self-transcendence which exposes itself to the opennessof beings as it is set into the work. In this way, standing-within is brought under law. Preserving the work, as knowing, is a sober standing within the extraordinary awesomeness of the truth that is happening in the work. [Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 65.]
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Preserving',' standing-within, staying or lingering all name Das_ein's bringing

Dasein to appearance in the midst of what is. They all name praxis.
e
The work of art as an originating, the origin
ofthe work of art, in the genitive sense,
is an originating both of techn and of praxis, and this ist the sense in which Heidegger
indeed says that it is an originating of both the artist and the preserver. Techn and praxis
now stand in greater proximity than where they stood when Being and Time stopped.
What is there in Heideggers thinking this relation, via the work of art, that has changed?
_;
I think a change lies in a rther articulated description ofwhat happens between Dasein
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and world, one made possible by this understanding of techn and praxis in greater
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proximity. When Heidegger asks directly what art is that-we may call art an origin, his
response is:
_ _ .
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In the work-, the happening of truth is at work and, indeed, at_work according to the manner _of a work. Accordingiy the nattue of art was dened to begin with as the . setting-into-work of truth." Yet this denition is intentionally ambiguous. .It says on the one hand: art is the xing in place of a selestablishing truth in the gure. This happens in creation as the brnging forth of the urconcealedness of what is [i.e., techn]. Setting-into-work, however, also means: the bringing of work-being 'into movement and happening. This happens as preservation [i.e. praxis]. Thus art is: _ the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art then is the becoming and the happenng oftruth. '[Poerry, Language, Thought, p. 69 (boldface emphasis mine).]
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immediately thereafter, Heidegger asks: Does truth, then, arise out of nothing'? He
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responds:
It does indeed if by nothing is meant the mere not of that which is, and if we here think of that which is an object present inthe ordinary way, which thereafter comes to light and 'is challenged by the existence of the work as only presumptively a true being. [Poetry Language, Thought, p. 69.]
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In the 1925 Dilthey discussion, Heidegger had said that with anticipatory resoluteiess,
the mode of aletheuein that brings Dasein per se to appearance, .e. praxis, the world is
cast
down to nothingness. But when he says in The Origin
ofthe
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Work ofArt that this is
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so only if by nothing is meant the mere not of that which is, .e. an ontic not, he has, in effect, qualied that rstdescription..
Following right after the detennination that the originating.of the work of art is an
t
originating not only of the techn of the artist but of the praxis of the preserver as well,
and approaching the end of the text, Heidegger, somewhat abruptly, turns again to techn.
Here he writes:
'
Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen' of -the advent of truth of what is, is, as such, essentiallypoerry [which is to say, poiesis, the mode of aletheuein-
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carried through by techn] .. ..By virtue of the projected sketch set into the work of the unconcealedness of what is, which casts itself toward us, eveythingordinary and hitherto existing becomes an unbeing [where this unbeing of everything ordinary is the mark of being in the moment, the mode of aletheuein specic to Dasein per se, i.e. praxis]. This unbeing has lost the capacity to give and keep being as measure. _ The curious fact here is that the work in no way affects hitherto existing entities by causal connections. The working of the work does not consist in the taking effect of a cause. It lies in a change, happening from out of the work, of the unconcealeclness of what is, and this means, of Being. [Poejy, Language, Truth, p. 70.]
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1.
What Heidegger characterizes as curious here is that while there is no' causal process,
there is, notwithstanding, a change: a change in Being, a change in the Open, a change
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in world. This change, I think, is what Heidegger calls nearing.

Finally, Heidegger writes of poetry:
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Projective saying is poetry. ...Projective saying is saying which, in preparing the sayable, simultaneously brings the unsayable as such into a world. [Poetry, Language, Truth, p. 7l.]
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In the unsayable as such it is possible to detect a reference to praxis. Again the
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difference lies in the qualication of theearlier description to the effect that the world
coilapses into nothingness, and also that it is necessary to choose between ones self and
the world. The qualication is effected by the discemment, in the ori ginating of the
artwork, of a greater proximity between techn and praxis. If Division One of the text of
Being and Time as published, which is to say Part One alone, largely concerns techn,
and Division Two largely concerns praxis, and if one entertains the thought that Part Two would have been addressed directly to the relation between the two, then The Origin
the Work
of
_
ofArt addresses would have been the issue in Part Two.
That Heidegger stays with this issue later on isdemonstrated by his 1951 lecture
Building, Dwelling, Thinking. The text is linked to The Origin ofthe Work ofArt in that
the 1936 text notes that poeisis does not pertain to the poeisis of poems alone but rather
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pertains as well to the other arts, and Heidegger mentions archictecture here rst. In the
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later text, the poeisis is architecture, which is carried through by the techn of building.
DweIling now is the preserving, the staying, the lingering, that is, the mode of
aletheuein that pertains to Dasein , and that is to say, praxis. Here, building as techn,
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is a letting dwell, while at the same time, building is only possible in so far as
hmnans are capable of dwelling, which is to say, praxis.
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To pursue the point concerning the pertinence of the question concerning the
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relation between techn and praxis to what might have been Part Two of Being and Time,
when Heidegger determined that Part Two could no longer be completed without
thoroughly rethinking Part One, what exactly was it that would have to be rethought?
The answer is given precisely, I think, where Heidegger writes in the Beitrge that what
is needed is a thinking that is not transcendental in the manner in which Being and Time
remained transcendental, and this can be understood precisely in view of how the
question concerning the relation between techn and praxis remains crucial. A thinking
that is not to start from any entity, butrather is to think the coming to essence [das
Wesen in a verbal sense] of das Seyn, and thereby may in fact seem to amomt to world-
abandonment, or world derial, actually means thinking the relation-'between the mode of
aletheuein that pertains to Dasein per se and the mode of aletheuein that pertains as well
to entities other than Dasein, or in other words, thinking how the bringing of the
unsayable into a world takes place.
_ -
The transcendental character of Being and Time is clearly indicated by the title of
the entirety of Part One, namely, The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality
and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon of the Question
ofBeing."
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An indication that this has changed indeed is to be found in Building, Dwelling, Thinking

where Heidegger writes both that the relationship between man and space is none other
than dwelling, Strictly thought and spoken [Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 155 (boldface
emphasis mine)] and writes as well that dwelling. ..is the basic character of Being in
keeping with which nortals exist [Poetry, Language, Thought, p. l58]. An earlier
1
indication from The Origin
ofthe
Work ofArt lies, I think, in Heidegger's observation'
that if we x our vision on the nature of the work and the connections with the
happening of the truth of what is, it becomes questionable whether the nature of poetry,
and this means at the same time the nature of projection [the release of the throw of
Dasein by Being], can be adequately thought of in terms of the power of imagination

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[Poetry Language, Thought, p.70], given that in the Being and Time period, Heidegger
had identied the imagination with time.
In the age of technics, it is impossible to tell now whether we are enhancing our
sway in the world or in fact becoming marginalized to the point of total impotence. More
precisely, it seems that both are happening at once. What is most uncanny about this is
that it while this cannot be conceptualized by any analysis, it all, nevertheless, goes on,
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and this is precisely what signals the capacity of techn, understood as bringing to
appearance, to bring the unsayable into a world, that is, it is precisely what hints at a
possibility of bringing praxis into a world. Heidegger says this in a number of ways,
a sense of Being's need for beginning in the Beitrge where he speaks of how a lack of
Dasein is precisely what signals this need. This is why, for Heidegger, the issue is not, in
the end, a devolution that exhausts all options other than the machinations of power
politics. Nor is it, as he says in The Origin

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Work ofArt, a question of a truth [that
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exists] in itself beforehand, Somewhere among the stars, only later to descend elsewhere
among beings.
Building, Dwelling, Thinking, then, names techn, praxis, thinking, where thinking
is charged with demonstrating, in a mamer akin to art, but not identical to it, the
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proximity
orthe intimacy of techn and praxis.
This, and not the suggestion that thinking
is a fallback or holding position in lieu of doing, is what is meant in saying that thinking
is acting. The questioning
ofthinking means learning to dwell.
This never runs its
course, nor does it ever get overcome. The real dwelling plight, Heidegger writes in
Building, Dwelling, Thinking, lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of
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dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell [Poetry, Language, T houghr, p. 159].
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Wayne J. Froman George Mason University
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(1) Beitraege technology. . .art...later lectures on technology (2) footnote on techne in BT (3) politics .... ..
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in terms of the way .in which eidos gures in techn, which is to say, in the production of
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'an entity that is other than Dasein.
Making present.. .Sophia. ..Sophia as arte of techne
and as higher than praxis. Heidegger points out the decision between phronesis and
.decisivez making present. . Sophia as to which is higher. ._
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Techn and praxis
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Publicatuion of work from Being and Time period demonstrates isignicance of issue of _ _ praxis
Discussion from Aristotie portion of Plato's Sophist
Pertinence to Being and Time
Daseins existential structure pertaining to techn Step to authenticity (anticipatory resolve) pertainng to praxis.. .Dilthey text. . .brings Dasein to appearance in phronesis
What can be said now about relation of praxis and techn? (Dasein and world..not just issue that can be ferreted out of what Heidegger said but rather a question.) Legitimate question in so far as both are modes of aletheia.
Later work: techn becomes important in regard to technology (and this is to be found in _ Beitraege) _ Art (signicance also found in Beitraege) _ Origin of the Work of Art (one way in which truth happens in the midst of what is. _ .others mentioned in essay. . .relations among them are a question) Discussion of techn as bringing to appearance Praxis?. . ...Preservation. ...(One specic point that I want to establish. .indispensab1e) _ Createdness of work marks createdness of artist and _ .issue: relatedness of techn and praxis. _ preserver. _ .ambiguity of denition of work of art. _ .techn and praxis BROUGHT CLOSER ...from the side of techn: marks the Openess 0_f the Open, the need of Being for appearance -and hence Dasein (See
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reference to Being and Time in Origin of the Work of Art); from the side of praxis": Iingering.. .i.e. dwelling (see Building, Dwelling, Thinking) _
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Further: (I) Lingering. ..being in the moment, from Being and Time. ..difference: world is not reduced to nothing (as per characterization of authentic praxis in Dilthey text), the description is more elaborate where Heidegger describes what happens in and through the work of art: what is loses its measure.. .there is a change in Being". ..point of greatest proximity between techn and praxis _
(2) Poesis. ..brings unsayable into world. _ .unsayable_ and . praxis. . .Lethc (explain)
Implications: Beyond transcendental (Beitraege) Building,Dwel1ing,Thinkingbb
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How is lack of a sense of need where technics ist concerned an indication of need? (Task: to bring about awareness of lethic in technics as disclosure) _ _ Thinking is acting: what does that mean? _
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On Hlderlin 's "Andenken Heidegger, Gadamer, Henrich-a Decision? Bemard Freydberg Slippery Rock University
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Heidegger would indeed like his interpretations to be taken only as suggestions (Hinweise)(GA LH, p. 2) and experiments (Versuche)(GA XXXDL p. 8; LIII, p. 1). But those interpretations, which give the appearance of a kind of rapprochement (die wirklich die der Annherung ist), conict with the altitude (Bewusstsein) the author brings to bear on the text and so too with the character (Verfassung) of his questioning and argumentation (Begrmdens). Heidegger is no help at all in methodically uncovering Hlderlin's approach or the kind of thinking from which it derives (in berlegten Schritten zu erschliessen). He speaks instead with the conviction of someone in touch with Hlderlins ideas from the outset and is therefore imperious (imperatorisch) rather than thoughtful (erwgend) and reective. We can thank Heideggerfor contemplating Hlderlirfs work in relation to real philosoplical questions, and here we can agree with him. But depth without exibility (Geschmeidgkeit) in questioning can easiIy_-distort and obstruct; moreover. it encourages mindless (gedankenlose) imitationf
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This passage, it seems, must be taken as either the proper umbrage of a sober
scholar confronting undiscplinecl work or as a rant from another otherwise sane human
being driven at least partially mad hyHeidegger. (I cannot here resist remarking-in light of Henrichs *mindless imitation swipe--how much like one another the
philosophical work of respectable scholars looks and sounds, including Hem-ich's

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jererniad against a philosophical opponent with whom he disagrees.) Other than the most
supereial words of praise for rediscovering a poet who deserves philosophical attention,
Dieter Henrieh`s words drip with contempt for Heicleggefs Hlderlin- interpretation. It
seems that no 'middle ground could possibly be fomd.

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On the other hand, a clear and authoritative middle ground has unquestionably
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made itself, and himself, felt in this matter. The itselt to which I refer is his essay
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Ci Thinking and Poetizing in Heidegger and in HIderlin's Andenken, and the himself
is Hans-Georg Gadamer. Heidegger was Gadamefs teacher, =and later became his
colleague and friend. Regarding the matter that occupies us in this paper, Gadamer has
written:
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It was from Heidegger that I learned the most, and this applies especially to the moment when, for the rst time, I heard Heidegger speak about `the origin of the artwork' in February in 1935. This moment was like a conrmation of what I had long been seeking inphilosophy. Here, too, the theme of `poetizing and thinking' will lead us into questions which move us. In connection to these, I-can only try to suggest a direction of thinking to be explored; I will leave it to the younger _ generations [author's note: usl] to work these indications out further."'
Gadamer was also Dieter Henrichs teacher, supervised his doctoral dissertation
on Max Weber, and the two also remained on the best of tenns. Henrich not only
dedicated Der Gang des Andenkens: Beobachtungen und Gedanken zu Hlderlins

Gedicht -to Gadamer, but recalled the rst conversation with and the lifelong
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encouragement he received from his mentor. More to the point of this essay, Gadamer
not only gives Der Gang des Andenkens a very warm endorsement: Dieter Henrich has
published a highly learned and insightful book on this poem, a book whose main thesis
contradicts Heidegger, in that from the beginning Heidegger takes the mariner' to be the
poet. I can agree with Henrich's point that one must look at the poern as a sequence,
which Heidegger did not do."i But further, Gadamer seems in major ways to prefer
Henrich's reading of this specic poem, and in an essay presumably dedicated to

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Heideggefs approach!
In his characteristically generous as well as thoughtl manner, Gadamer does try

in his conclusion to bring the two readings fruitfully together. Whether, to what degree
and how this can be done-and so what sort of decision, if any, one can reach regarding
a Hlderlin-interpretation that can claim -philosophical superiority--these matters
constitute the concern of this paper.
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I: Who are the Mariners?

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Gadamer certainly raises this matter as fundamental to the difference in
interpretation between Heidegger and Hem-ich, and he clearly answers it is Henrich's

favor. For Gadamer as for Henrich, both the source of the poem and the poem itself are
signicantly rooted in biographical detail. Hlderlin visited and hence was aware of the
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reality of the port city of Bordeaux, the only contact the poet had With southem Europe
in his life. The imagery of the poem, they claim, is drawn directly from this visit. Henrich
goes to great pains to reconstrct as much of the precise appearance and history oflate
18"/early 19th century Bordeaux, and to note itsaccord with Hlderlifs imagery. In
sympathy, Gadamer writes It is odd that the interpreters of this poem, above all
1
Heidegger, cast aside this relationship with reality, although the poem from the rst to
the last strophe has to do with the ships and not with the poet, who, almost as a surprise,
has the last word, although it is certainly an illuminating last word."
Henrich, for his part, anchors the poem around the two dorts (theres), which
he claims Heidegger misreads as refer-ing to the same place (of origin and return). For
Henrich, they designate two crucially different sites designating two major moments in
the
courseof remembrance. When one knows the landscape of Bordeaux as Hlderlin
did, one recogizes that while the rst dort refers to a place in Germany northeast of
Bordeaux, the reference to the `zephrous peak (luigen'Sp`z '} can and incleed must be
depicted injust this wayom Bordeaux tsel.."i" Thus, there is no departure from
Germany toGreece," followed by a subsequent return to the German origin.
_Gadarner's reading may be the more open, as he interprets the course of remembrance
not as imaged by a literal travelogue but by the true progressioii of thought in the
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recollectionz from the poetically conjured friends [in Hyperion] to admred men
experienced in lived realityfx The mariners are precisely these adnired men, who
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Hlderlin came to know, love and wish to commemorate.
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It is time to let Heidegger speak in this Auseinandersetzung. It is one of the great
rnisconceptions of 20"' century philosophy that the so-called' violence of Heidegger's
interpretations (called such even by him) is inconsistent with sound scholarship.

Heideggefs words on this matter sound neither like Gadame"s nor like Henrich's. Yet
as I will attempt to show, the words of Hlderli-n's poem lend themselves far better to his
reading than to their more realistic alternatives.
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After citing part of the third and the entire fourth line of the poem (fwe'l er
feurgen Geist/ Und gute Fahrt verheisset den Schr`f_fem;/because aery spirit/And
happy voyage it promises mar'nersx), Heidegger takes a fragrnentary passage from
elsewhere (Bruchstck n. 1, IV, `237) and seems to make a leap to his conclusions:
So wandert das Wetter Gottes ber
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Aber du heiliger Gesang

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Und suchst armer Sch)_'jfèr den gewohnten
Zu den Sternen siehe. '
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" Die 'Schi/fer sind die kommenden Dichter Germanens. Sie sagen das Heiligex.
So God's Weather wanders above//But you holy song//And you, poor mainer,
seek the inhabited//look toward the stars.
The rnariners are Germania's coming poets. They say the holy.'m While this may
seem to be an imperious reading disdainful of proof or exibility, Heidegger indeed
offers a tantalizing clue that yields a far more rigorous reading of the poem than that
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offered by either of his distinguished critics. Everywhere in the poem where Hlderlin
says 'I' and `me, he speaks as this poet [calling to the truth of the concealed essential
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willing of his destiny]. This is so not only insofar as these `personal pronouns' come
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forth in a poem poetized by Hlderlin, but because this remembrance thinks ahead
toward the essential destiny of the poet and does not think back to his `personal
experiences'.'i""
The words Ich and mir occur at vital places in the rst three strophes of this
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ve-strophe poem. The theme of the ends of the poet dominates the fourth. The h
and nal strophe culminates with the poets' task of the Stiftung (founding) of what
remains.
Now comes my initial unimperious account in support of the Heideggerian

I t
other reading but reading. The rst .ll sentence of the poem seems that it can support no the one that Heidegger offers. The northeasterly blows, the most beloved among the winds to me, because it promises ery spirit and good journey to the mariners. (Der Nordost wehet,/der liebste unter den Winden mir,/weil er zurigen Geist/und gute Fahrt
verheisset den Schjj'rn.'')(my emphasis) To be sure, we are dealing with a poem and
not a series of propositions. But the text of the poem seems to declare that the
-
northeasterly is most beloved to me for two reasons: (1) the ery spirit upon which I
draw, and (2) the good journey promised to those of my calling. In other words, it is
the I of the poet in the rst Strophe who gathers 'both the promise of ery spirit and
good journey into himself from the northeaster. Everything in the rst strophe ofthe
T
poem indicates that the mariners, the voyagers, are the poets. Nothing in this strophe, or
'_
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for that matter in the next two strophes, so much as draws upon the imagery of real
seafaring mariners.
'
Similarly, the second strophe speaksof the happy recollection that comes to
me: Noch denket das mir wohl... (Still well I think of tl1is..."''i) The series of
images-the elm wood, the mill, the g tree, the brown women onholidays in March,
the footpaths, the lulling breezes heavy with golden dreams--are one and all gathered into
the memory
ofthe poet.
-Heidegger irsists that the ery spirit in the rst strophe, as well as the g tree in
the second, as well as the imagery drawn from southem Europe, signal Hlderlin's
lifelongorientation toward Greece.

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Heidegger thus cites Hlderlin (V, 320):

We shall learn nothing more difcult than to eely use our national character. And as I believe, it is precisely the .clarity of presentation which is as natural to us as the re of heaven was to the Greeks. But what is proper to us must be learned as well es what is foreign. That is why the 'Greeks are indispensable to us.'"'"
Gadamer found it odd that Heidegger did not account for Hlderlin's
relationship with reality, although he conceded that the Hyperion novel was
rnag_ical1y produced through his poetical eye."i' However, it is at least equally odd that
neither Gadamer nor Henrich treat two ftmdamental features of Hlderlin's poetizing: (1)
his drawing upon the Greek spirit and Greek imagery in what can only be called, as
-
Gadamer did, a magical manner, and the inspiration that made this access possible,
_
p
Henrich aclmits that he does not treat the mythical 'side of the poem at all, though
does not deny that it is present, albeit distantly and in the background. However, he
clearly regards such concerns as less important than the facts of 'Hlderlins life and , . thought. Research into topography and landscape, into the city of Bordeaux near the
1
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5
Garonne and its surroundings, and especially into what Henrich regards as direct
philosophical underpinnings of Hlderlin's poetry (particularly through his early
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infatuation with and later transcendence of Fichte's Wissenschaslehre) constitute large

portions of his book. His reading of the poem, as Gadaner notes, is sequential. His title
Der Gang des Andenkens faithlly encapsulates the guiding force of his reading of the poem. The poem itself enacts the course whereby remembrance becomes the
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establishing deed of the poet.

_
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But can one not call a reading that insists upon excluding the mythical Greek
elements from Hlder1ins work imperious, however reasonable its tone and however
learned and insightful it may be on its own terms? And what can one say of a reading
of Hlderlin that inssts in such a na'`ve conception of reality? A Hlderlin passage
cited years earlier by Heidegger takes care of both questions. In Becoming and PassingAway (III, 309-316), Hlderlin Writes:
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[in] the state between Being and not-Being, everywhere the possible becomes
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real, and the actual ideal, and this is in the free imitation of art a terrible but divine
dream xix
Taking the second question rst, then, the realm of art has' an entirely separate
measure jbr Hlderlin than its contact with what Gadamer and Henrich call reality.
With this in mind, the rst question answers itself: for Hlderlin, whose enrneshment
with the Greeks was second to none, the dreams had to be dreams in which the Greeks
appeared vividly. Thus, the to me (mir) cannot refer to the waking, reasonable, later-to-
--
be-troubled man of such early promise. Rather, the me to whorn the remembrance is
given over is the one in the throes of what Plato in the Phrus called divine madness.
'
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1.
a'
3.
of By the way, Heidegger did not claimithat quite apart from the identity the
mariners, the return to origin was a geographical retum to the same place. Rather, the
wind' of the northeast, which Yigen Spiz' lets one think anew of `the air' and `the
now waits in its relentless sharpness in order to bring the nariners back on the way to the
most distart of all distances, the origin.' I-Ieidegger's poetic dort is the rnoorng-place
of the remembrance, where the mariner-poets preserve what has been for the future.'
So who are the mariners in Andenken? According to both the words and the
echoes of the words, they are the poets. They are the ones who dwell poetically between
before us the heavenly sky and earth, the ones whose serve by journeying to bring back
re that once was.

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II: Beyond the City
Just as with its counterparts in the rst two strophes, the rst full sentence of the
third strophe hinges upon mir: Es reiche aber,/Des dunkeln Lichtes voll, Mir einer der
der duftenden Becher/ damit ich ruhen mge; den sss/ Wr' unter Schatten
Schlummen (But someone pass/full of the dark light/me the fragrant beaker/ so that I
It is perhaps might rest;/because sweet/ would sleep be under shadows.)(emphasis mine)
outcome noteworthy thatboth Heidegger and Henrich agree to the sonewhat surprising
'
that these lines indicate that the poet is not seeking sleep. Unsurprisingly, their
interpretations diverge greatly. Heidegger reads the subsequent
lines as a call from
beyond the city. It is a' call from the wine god, also the god of poetry who provides the
dark light,"the god to which the poet must most wakefully attend. The holiday where the wine is served isin the poetic sense of this poet, the weddngjstival
ofmen and
are the demigods.""" gods.''5 The rivers are the ones who endure the `betwee_rf,f;'.tl1ey
For Henrich, these same lines indicate the need of the poet to overcome his
\
loneliness now that the mariners have departed, and to take his part in the holiday. Not
wine and sleep, but what would do him some good is precisely what one who need
not,
be lonely on a holiday may.enjoy, namely a conversation not dwelling on anxious worries
and requests, where you can say what is really on your n1incl..."'
2
2
Thus, there is no issue between them concerning the need for attentiveness on the
part of the poet. But can the question of non-violent interpretation be settled, where
there is fundamental general agreement and a poetic song to interpret? I think thatthere
can. Henrich claims that Andenken represents a break from poems created out of
I-Ilderlin's mythic view of the world (Welts`cht), in favor of a new lyrc poetry taking
shape based upon harnessing his creativty to the images clrawn from his own worldly
2
experience.'' But is it possible to one who has dwelled with the poem not to hear the
following lines and not associate them with Dionysus, with Plato, with Homer? ...Des
dunklen Lichtes voll ([beaker] full of dark light); ...Doch gutst ein Gesprch,
(however it is good to converse) and zu hren viel /"Von Tagen der Lieb',/Und
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Thaten, welche geschehen (To hear much of days of love and deeds that occurred.) Further, even in the narrowest sense, is it correct to maintain that Hlderlin had
a nythic view of the world as if Hlderlin's appropriation
ofthe Greeks arose out of
some conscious choice rather than through the thralldom of poetic inspiration, and so
could be exchanged for another more realistic view? Does Hen'ich's statement:
...because awork of this stature can only arise out of mature poetic reection, we much
assume the poet engaged in such reection with some essential purpose in mind for the
work'M," have a truth value? Could it be any less imperiously in touch with Hlderlins
ideas than Heideggefsqwords connecting
I
Hlderlin's imagery with that ofthe Greeks?
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Despite the freedom that must be acknowledged and permitted in the realm of
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poetic interpretation, the answer to all of the above questions must be no. I-Ilderlins
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Greek inspiration carmot be questioned or written off as a kind of view of the world."
The suppositions regarding what Hlderlin might have been thinking are the merest
speculation (and lack documentary justication).'The evidence for a Greek connection is

1
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overwhelming. While I-Ienrich's reading succeeds in exposing a great deal of material

about the poem and its account of the poem's movement is surely not without interest to'
.
1
lovers of Andenken, its scholarship carmot in any way beregarded as more ri gorous
(nor its interpretation as challenging and provocative).
i
Perhaps at this point we can come to a better understanding of Gadamers
puzzling remark, cited earlier, that Heidegger taught hirn the most about poetry and, by
extension, about Hlderlin. In addition to creditirg Heidegger for introducing h.im to the
naming power of words'," Gadamer paid homage to a very different kind of thinker,
but one who regarded Hlderlin as unique in a way akin to that of Heidegger. Gadamer
speaks of the book Hlderlin: Weltbild und Frommgkeit (1939) by Catholic theologian
A
and iurgist Roman Guardini as
a ne interpretation of HIderlin's poetry. The standpoint Guardini took in introducing his theme is noteworthy. Hlderlin, he said, was the only great German poet whose gods one must believe in. Guardini is obviously speaking here om a standpoint that tums away -om the classical BiIdungsrel`g'on`tl1at is found in Schil1er."" .
t
In his preface to the rst edition, Guardini writes that HIderlin's work proceeds
along an entirely different course and according to a different measure than that of others,
i__; ;
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for whom their work is in any sense the creation of the artist: This representation has no
validity for the work of Hlderlin, because [Hlderlin's] proceeds not from the
production of the artist, but from the vision (Schau) and the convulsion (Erschtterung)
ne
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sea- (seher).''**'
But how Gadamefs endorsements of the standpoints of Heidegger and Guardini
can be reconciled with his preference
on key matters for Henrichs reading, whether in
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general or with respect to Andenken, remains as puzzling asever. Unlike for Henrich,
i
for whom the poet is lonely and in needof contact with the people of the city during the
1
holiday, for Heidegger the poet is present not at the literal festival taking place in
Bordeaux, but (as we have seen) at the divine wedding-feast between mortals and gods.
What is heard during the conversation is not being together with one another [in the
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city], everyone [talking] about the way things were and what is important to them'' as
i t
Henrich maintains, but the ever wordless address of what is sent to us, the silent voice of
the greeting, in which there comes to pass the demand of that which someone must bear
in his heart, and be determined by this voice to be the one who points.' The poets
location in the city is at once his place beyond the city, in the artistic between spoken
of in thepreviously eited Beconiing and Passing-Away."
'
The fth strophe begins with what Heidegger properly notes is the only question in the poem, Woaber sind die Freunde? (Where are the friends?) However, this
conceals another, more' fundamental question, namely who are the friends?.For
Henrich, this question is rooted in Hlderlin's worldly experience, the acute loneliness
that Hlderlin putatively undewent in the absence of real friends and in his real
exclusion from the holidaym. For Heidegger, the question 'fs a poetc question, a
u
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question that does not want to locate the friends' whereabouts geographical1y, but
thinks the essence of the place to whose location each of the friends has now been
i
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destined.''i"" The friends are the very mariners sung of in the rst strophe. They are the
poets, on a kindred journey.
p
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What do the words of the poet tell us? The iends like painters, bring together/
the beautiful things of the earth... (Wie Mahler, bringen zusammen/Das Schne der
Era. ). The friends disdainl not winged war, and/ to live in solitude, for years (und
verschmhn/ den gegelten Krieg nicht, und/ zu wohnen einsam, jahrIang). Are these
two
images more appropriate to a poet or to a sailor? Isn't apoet more like a painter who
brings together the beautiful things of the earth, than like a sailor whose undeniably great
service parcels out and returns with items of utility? On the matter of disdaining winged
war, (Hlderlin signicantly does not say ghting in war), doesn't the epithet
wingecl suggest the poetic images of Homer far more that it does the struggies of n
sailors against predators at sea? In addition, in light of their companions on board, it is

not quite accu-ate to speak of real sailors as being alone, einsa.m, at sea.
'
The closing lines of the strophe signal the apartness` of the poet from the city in which
hedwells. For Heidegger, the necessary ongoing watchfulness requires that the
marners are wi1outholidays.'"' The night in which they dwell still remains the
mother of the day which is dened as the holiday on the day before the festival...'' It
does not seem at all that it could be the case that real mariners never see the sun under
a mast that has no shade. The city of Bordeaux, and its precise geography that is so
central to Henrich's interpretation, is not the place from which or in remembrance of

which Hlderlin poetizes.
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Once again, it appears that from a reading that seeksstraightforward scholarly

support for the obviously more da-ing Heidegger interpretation, there is a preponderance
1
of evidence to favor it. This is not to deny certain strengths to the Henrich or the Gadamer reading, which I will speak of toward my conclusion. It is merely to point out
i
that Heidegger-'s Hlderlin-interpretation, like many of his interpretations that may at frst
reading seem idiosyncratic and unmoorecl to the texts about which they speak, is _
s
thoroughly rigorous in the most traditional scholarly sense.

Where is the poetic place from which the poet sings? The place is closest to,
yet distant from, the place of thought. On lofty mountain peaks of the same height, both
nearest and furthest away, the
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language of poetry and the language of thought speak with
one another. In Heideggefs Andenken essay, the questioning of thought dares to asks
3
what is essentially worthy of questioning and the questioning of poetry brings forth...the saying of the holy.'"i' The poet, whose feet never leave the earth and so in that sense is bound to the polis (Greece, Germany, southern France), always poetizes from beyond the city.
.
III: Poetic Stiung
Gadamer rernarks that in listening to a poem, one is not permitted to take the word as just a sign pointing to a specic meaning; rather, one must simultaneously
perceive all that the word carries with it...i' This view certainly aecounts for his
aforementioned sympathy for both Heideggefs and Henrich's approach as well as for his
ultimate conclusion that will attempt to reconcile the two approaches. I-Iowever, as we
have seen, he later claims that the poem from the rst to the last strophe has to do with the ships and not with the poet who, almost as a surprise, has the last word, although it is
vv
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certainly an all-illumnating last word.'"i" It is quite remarkable, given the crucial

presence in the poem of mir and of the friends of the poet, for Gadamer
to nd the
fnal word in the poem surprising at all. For everything prior, including the image of the
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ships, calls forth and reects upon the journey of the poet. The journey is named
Andenken. It begins with the blowing of the northeastcr, dearest to me. It ends with the
founding by the poets of what remains.
p
This paper can only, of course, offer some very brief sketches of the three
i
accounts of the founding saying of the poets in relation to Andenken. For Henrich, the
course of remembrance is enacted by the movement of the poem, -in particular the
journey of the mariners departing from one site (indicated by' the rst dort, in the
'
second strophe) and retrning to another (indicated by the second do-t, in the nal
Strophe).
`
Thus the rnariners do not leave their origin to encounter the foreign, only to return
to the same origin-having appropriately assimilated the ery heaven of Greece at all.
l
Rather, they have undertaken a journey that has separated them om the holidays and the
love present in the city and have, on their journey, come to value appropriately both the
holidays and the city they left for the rst time. But like Fichte's Schweben (hovering,
oscillation) -of imagination in the Wissenschaslehre, there is no xed starting point and
no ascent in consciotsness to the innite. Nevertheless, this bond to nitude suggests

86
the ground that transcends everything nite, and moreover its emergcnce orr out of
itself into the wor1d...'' It is at once place and placeless, toward all the places that- are
origins of insight and whose own signicance reveals the ground of what is lastingfd
.
- r ;
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To provide a sense for its strength, and forjustifcation of Gadarner's high praise,
here is how Henrich collects his thought on the concluding line:
-
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Remembrance (Andenken) is at once the course and the retrospective connection to the whole of the course. The course leads to its goal only if at the same time _it leads to an understanding of itself as a course. Without the structure of the whole, the course would not arrive at any such perspicuous view...It is therefore in virtue ofthe structure of the poem that the course of remembrance is able to proceed as it does, harboring its 'conclusion within itself. What is Iasting, what, what stand rmly rooted- in the concluding insight, is as much the basis of conscious life as it is the basis of the structure of the work. Andisince the basis of life lies in remembrance, which is cultiyated by and culminates in the poetic work (dem das dichterische Werk reine Ausbildung und sicheren Abschluss gibt), the basis of life too is grounded in and supported by the structure of this threefold sense: Was bleibet aber, sten die Dichter (But What is lasting the poets provide.)"
p
Henrichs excluson of the gods from his interpretation rests upon his conviction
that Andenken departs radically from the rest of the hymns, precisely insofar as it is
drawn entirely from conscious life and its vital drives.' Given that there is no explicit
menton of the gods in the hymn, and that accordingly Henrich intcrprets the poem
entirely in tems of its own internal movement, one can surely praise the outcome on the
terms by which it proceeds.
~
However, these terms pay no homage to the insight of Gadamer, cited earlier, that
in reading a poem one must sirnultaneously perceive all meaning that the word caries
with it. What can be said about this decision on Henrich's part to limit his reading of the
course of remembrance to theway real images disclose their ultimate ground' in their
subtle movements through the poem, and to ignore Hlderlin's inspiration and his
unmistakable thralldom in the face of the imagery of the Greeks?

Gadamer offers a provocative answer. He denies that a decision for either
interpretation can be made at all. He disputes the claims that Hlderlin `forces us to make
."'
a decsion, from Heidegges side, one that had obviously been against Schelling and
15
Hegel and for Hlderlin, that is, against the concept and for the messages from the
divine'"".'l He explains that Heidegger had to see Hlderlin not asa person belonging to
I
the age of idealism but
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as
someone belonging to a future which could usher in an
overcoming of the forgetfulness of being.'' But given the real life source of the imagery
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in Andenken, and given I-I'enrich's thoughtful humaist reading based entirely
on the
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text of the poem, the historical details upon which it draws and the subtly drawn journey
it depicts, a decision of that kind is not only not required, but also it omits much of the
material and detracts from its signiticance for us. Both Henr_ich's and I-Ieidegges
readings car be accommodated at once, as Gadamer will try to demonstrate in his
'
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concluding words.
'
In the penultimate paragraph of his essay, the spirit of Gadamer's conclusion
becomes evident. He reproduces the famous Hlderlin couplet, claiming of its famous
lines lines that today more than ever [they] express the situation of human beings in the
world:
'
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Seit ein Gesprch wir sind
und Hren knnen voneinander.

J
Because wearea conversation And can listen to one another."'

His concluding words are: "But what kind of conversation is this? Is it the
conversation of humans with the gods or of hurnans with humans? The poem wants to tell
us that we cannot distnguish in this way. What we must tiy to do in our given situation is
to go beyond ourselves, whether it be in listening to the other person or in seeking
somehow to correspond with what is completely other than hurr_an.""i"
16
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2
Thus Gadamer holds, in effect, that the difference between his teacher Heidegger and his student Henrich, between the poetry as the singing of the holy and the propheey
of a return of the gods and poetry as the recollective founding of always incomplete but
ever- striving enterprise belonging to human life, not only can but must bereconciled in
order to interpret the poem, and ourselves, appropriately.
'
However, even the ever-scrupulous Gadamer seems to have been governed not by
Hlderlins poetry but by his own interpretive orientation. For we -must not merely take
the famous lines 'of Hlderlin as a pronouncement-although perhaps a wise oneabout the nature of human beings, or even as an aphorism to be thought through. The
lines (actually one line) are poetc lines, and occur in poetic context that renders
Gadanefs reading at least suspect if not entirely arbitrary. The line is from
Friedensfeier, a hymn that has as its entire theme the intersection of the human and the
divine at the festival of peace. I'reproduce the entire strophe in which the line appears in order not only to indicate this context, but also in order to show the superiority on mere
textual grounds for Heidegger's Hlderlin-interpretation: Viel hat von Morgen an Seit ein Gesprch wir sind und hren voneinander, Erfarhen der Mensch; bald sind wir aber Gesang. Und das Zeitbild, das der grosse Geist entfaltet, Ein Zeichen liegts vor uns, dass zwischen ihm und andern _ Ein Bundniss zwischen ihm und andern Mchten ist. Nicht er allein, die Unerzeugten, Ew 'gen Sind kennbar alle daran, gleichwie auch an den
'
Die Mutter Erde sich und Licht und Lu sich kennet. Zulezt is aber doch, ihr heilige Mchte, fr euch Das Liebeszeichen; das Zeugniss Dass ihrs noch seiet, der Festtag,
'
Panzen
17
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Much, from the morning onwards, since we have been a conversation and have heard from one another, Has human kind leamt; soon, however, we are song; And that temporal image, that the great spirit unfolds, lies As a sign lies before us, that between him and others Is a covenant between lim and other powers. All knownis this, as likevvise also the plants Know mother earth and know light and air. Yet ultimately, you holy powers, is the sign of love, the witness, the feast day..."""'
g
In the context of this paper, one notes at once that the same sentence contains the
words we are a eonversation and soon, however,
we are song.'_' (emphasis mine) The
futural orientation of,Hlderl_in's poetic words is clearly contained within their

presentness (the sinds). Heidegger writes, Remembrance is a poetic abiding in the
essence of what is tting to _poetic activi which, inthe festive (zstlichen"'"' destin Yof
Germany's ture history, shows the ground of its origin in celebration (feiertglch).Xllxn
t
Heidegger foreshadowed this interpretation of the internal temporality of
HIderlins poetry, including the poetic Stg'ung sug in the last line of Andenken, in'
his earlier (1930) I-Ilderlin and the Essence of Poetry? There, he wrote The poets
'name the gods and name all things in that which they are. This naming does not consist in
providing something already previously known only with a name, but rather insofar as
the poet speaks the essential word, beings (das Seiende) rst become nominated
_
(ernannt) as what they are. Thus are they known as beings. Poetry is-the establishing of
Being (Sein) by means of the word.' But the namng of the gods is a once a sinultaneous naming that projects the past foward to a possible future:
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How do the gods speak?

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`...and signs to us from antiquity are the language of the gods...' (IV, 135) The speech of the poet is' the intercepting of these signs, in order to' pass them on to his own people. This intercepting is an act of receiving and at the same time a fresh act of giving; for ìn the rst signs' the poet catches sight already of the completed message and in his word bo_Idly presents what he has glimpsed, so as to tell in advance of the not-yet-fullled. .
'
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Thus, the fomdirg saying of the inspired poet opensga space whereby what is
highest and best in the past can come toward us out of a possible ture. The undergoing
l
of the poem, of those ofus who experience the Andenken of the poern, is ajourney of
remembrance that always stands ahead of us.
In the Andenken essay of six years later that this paper addresses, Heidegger
speaks somewhat differently, although not at all in disagreement with his earlier
fonntlations. His later words can be read almost as a sorites, which is howl shall
represent them:
(1) The poiesis ofthe poets is now the found!ng of the remaining.
1
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(2) What remains is-essentially (west) as the original remembrance of the poet.
(3) [The remembrance] does not only at the same time think that of what has been
and what is coming, but rather itponders from where the coming had frst been uttered,
and thinks back to where it must have been concealed, so that this foreign element can
remain what it is even when it is approp-iated.m
Toward the end of the Andenken essay, Heidegger argues that the abers give
the poem its concealed tone, that aber is the word of the enigma by which the
pu_rely~emerg'ng remains in the o~igin.'m According to Gadamer's attempt to synthesize
the two, one might say the one can now select the dorts that signal the heart of
f i
19
I-Iemich's interpretation, and now the abers that do the same for Heideggers, or
perhaps one can hold the two contradictory nows simultaneously in some way.
But when one focuses on the words of the poem, one must conclude that such a
synthesis does not accord with the textual evidence. As I have endeavored to show, the
m'rs are not only crucial nerve points of the poem, but also they are the words that'
constitute the thread that leads so inexorably to the poem's closing line concerning the
poets.
Further, the two interpretations have profoundly different views of the temporality
internal to the poem, and these two interpretations both make large claims regarding the
philosophcal importance of the poem, including its temporality. It is vain to suppose
some sort of supra-temporality that can somehow stand outside the two tenporalities
'
while embracing them.
.~
On what grounds, then, can one decide that I-Ieideggefs Andenker
interpretation is superior to those of Henrich and Gadamer? On purely scholarly grounds,

this decision is well nigh indisputable.
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Henrich, Dieter, The Course ofRemembrance and Other Essays on Hlderlin, tr. Taylor Carnan, ed. Eckart Frster, Stanford University Press (Stanford: 1997), p. 294 note 94. This corresponds to note 95 in the original: Der des Andenlrens: Henrich, Dieter, Gang Beobachtungen und Gedanken zugllderlins Gedicht,
In Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays an the Work ofthe 1930s, ed. James Risser, tr. Richard Palmer, SUNY Press (Albany: 1999), p. 145-162. f" ' Ibid., p. 145-46. The Course Henrich, Dieter, ofRemembrance, p. 249. (...we have always been closest to each other in [conversations] concerning poetry. I thank him for the early and ever-renewed condence that one is able to nd one's own way in thinking, and for every possible encouragement. _ V Translator Palmer has sailor for Scher. I will retranslate as mariner to maintain oonsistency with the translations of Heidegger and Henrich. 154. "f_Ibid., p. `"_f_Ib'd., p. 156. f"" op. cit., p. 165-6. "' Henrich, 157. Ibid., p. rst My book, entitled Imagination and Depth in Kant 's Critique ofPure Reason, Peter Lang (New York: 1994), consisted almost entirely of an interpretation of Kant's Aesthetc and Analytic using Heidegger's thesis on the Kantian imagination in Kant and the .Pmblem cy'Metaphyscs, but employing traditional means to demonstrate its textual delity and its cogency. _ xf' For the most part, I have followed the translations of Michael,_I,-Iamburger, changing them occasionally for consistency with the other translations and or for reasons of clarity. Hamburger, Michael, Friedrich Hlderlin: Poems and Fragments, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor: 1967), p. 489. '_f_Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 4, Vittorio Klostermann (Frankfurt am Main: 1981), p. 86 ' From KeithMartin, Hoeller's translation of Andenken in Heidegger, Martin, Eludications of Hlderlin 's Poetry, tr.'Hoeller, Humanity Books (Amherst: 2000), p. 111. I employed a double in order to indicate the spacing in the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe. slash X" Heidegger, GA 4, p. 86.1 used Hoeller's translation of Andenken (in Elucidations, p. 111) bu`t revised the second sentence quite a bit. _ V 488. Hlderlin, Friedrich, Smtliche Werke, Zweiter Band, Hamburger, Hlderlin, op. cit., p. ed. Beissner, Verlag W. Kohlhammer (Stuttgart: 1951), p. 188. I haveemployed Beissner's text the poem. of 'M Hamburger, Michael, op. cit., p. 489. I chose Hamburger's translation after tryingunsuccessfully--to preserve the passive voice. The German suggests a being handed over to the memory, rather that the more active thinking or having of it.) Andienken, in Elucdations, p. 112. _i "" Heidegger, ` Gadamer, op.cit., p. 155.
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xxx_Ibl-dpo ''f_I-Ieidegger, Andenken, Elucldatons, p. 146. Henrich, The Course ofRemembrance and Other Essays on Hlderlin, p. 195. uf" Heidegger, Anclenken, Elucidations, p. 150. 158. '`Ìbid., p. ''_Ibd., p. 158. ''f_ fbfd., p. s. '''" ff_Gadamer, op.cit., p. 154. Ibd., p. 154. 'mb' Henrich, The Course afRemembrance, p. 228. _ *'_16zd., p. 223. *'f_1zfd., p. 241. ''f1_ mia., p. 243, ana 6. 144 & 6143, p. 301, 302. Gadamer, op.ct., p. 152. f" *" Ibzd., p. 152. _16:4., p.6o.
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Heidegger, Andenken, in Elucldarions, p. 136. _16fd., p. 162. f_ Ibid., p. 162. _ 'ff_ Ibd., p. 126. Ibid., p. 126. f" '" Henrich, Ihe Course ofRemernbrance and Other Essays on Hlderlin, p. 195. '_Ibia'., p. 144. See the citation from Roman Guardini on myth in note lii below. ''__16fd., p. 149. Gadamer, op. eit., p. 147. Ibfd.. ''"" p. 152. ''' Guardini, Roman, Hlderlin: Weltbild und Frommigkelt, zweiten Auage, Ksel-Verlag (Mnchen: 1955),' p. 11. _ _
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"'" 1bia.,p. 160-61.

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Hamburger, op. cit., p. 439-41. I emended Hamburger's translation at several points for the sake of consistency with the rest of this paper and, a few times, merely to make the translation . .. mpre literal. Hoeller as mistranslated secure. ''f'' festl'ch " Heidegger, Andenken, in Elucidations, p. 171. Heidegger, GA- 4, p. 41. '_ _ 'f_ 1ba.,p. 45-46. I" Heidegger, GA 4, p. 149-50. Heidegger, Andenken, Elucidations, p. 171. Hoeller leaves out origina1 (ursprngliche) in his translation of my (2). Guardinis interpretation is not far from I-leidegges: ...the seer, to whom the gleam (Blick) has been loaned 'and the message (Auftrag) has been given, places the mythical actuality from its hovering existence (schwebende Ansich) i_r_to history." Guardini, op. eit., p. 60. 1"' Heidegger, GA, p. 171. Translation mine.
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FRIEDRICH HLDERLIN
POEMS AND FRAGMENTS TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HAMBURGER
B P LI NGUAL EDITION W I T H A PREFACE INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
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THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
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ANDENKEN
Der Nordost wehet, Der liebste unter den Winden ~ Mir, weil er feurigen Geist Und gute Fahrt verheiet den Sehiffem. Geh aber mm und gre _
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Die schne Garonne,
Und die Grten von Bourdeaux Dort, wo am scharfen Ufer Hingehet der Steg und in den Strom Tief fllt der Bach, :Im-iiber aber Hinschauet ein edel Paar Von Eichen und Silberpappeln;
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Noch lcnket das mir wohl und wie Die breiten Gipfel neiget Der Ulmwald, ber die Mi.ihl', Im Hofe aber wchset ein Feigenbaum. An Feiertagen gehn Die braunen Frauen daselbst Auf seidnen Boden, Zur Mnenzet, Wenn gleich ist Nacht und Tag, Und ber langsamen Stegen,
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Von goldenen Trumen schwer, Einwiegende Lfte ziehen.
Es reiche aber, Des dmkcln Lichtes voll, Mir einer den duftenden Becher,
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REMEMBRANCE
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The north-eesterly blows, Of winds the dearest to me
Because a ery spirit
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And happy voyage it promise: n ari ner; But go now, go and greet The beautiful Garonne And the garden: of Bordeaux, To where on the rugged bank The path runs and into the river Deep falls the brook, but abovethem A`noble pair of oaks And white poplars looks out;
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Still well I remember this, and how The elm wood with its great leafy tops Inclires, towards the mill, But in the courlyrl a g-tree grows. On holidays there too _
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The brown women walk On silken ground, In th e month of March,
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When night ami day are equal And over slow footpaths, Heavy with golden dreams, Lullng breezes drift.
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pass me The fragrimt cup Full of the dark light,
But
someone
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Damit ich ruhen mge; denn ii

Wr' unter Schatten der Schimmer. Nicht ist es gut, Seellos von sterblichen
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Geilanken zu seyn.Doch gut Ist ein Gesprch und zu sagen
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Des Hezens Meinung,zu hren viel Von Tagen der Lieb', Und Thaten, welche geschehen. Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmi Mit dem Gefen? tmm Trgt Scheme, an die Quelle zu gehn;
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Es beginne: nemlich der Reichtum Im Meere. Sie, Wie Mahler, bringen zusammen Das Schne der Erdnd vechmhn Den geiigelten Krieg nicht, und Zu wohnen einsam, jahrlang, unter Dem entlaubten Mast, wo nicht die Nacht durehginzen Die Feiertage der Stadt, Und Saitenspiel und eingeborener Tanz nicht.
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Nun aber sind zu Indiern Die Mrmer gegangen, Dort an der Iuigen Spiz' An Trnubenbe-gen, wo herab Die Deriogne kommt,
Und zusammen mit Ader prcht'gen Geronne mee:-breit Ausgehet der Strom. Es nehmet aber Und giebt Gedchtni die See, Und die Lieb' auch heftet eiigi die Augen, Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.
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So that I may rest n o w i for sw eet Ir. would be to drowse amid shadows. It is not good To be soulless
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With mortal thoughts. But good
Is converse, and to speak The hea-t's opinion, to hear many tales About the days of love Aid deeds that have occurred.
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But where are the friends? Where Bellarmine

Ahd his companions? Many a m an Is shy of going to the source; For wealth begins in The sea. And they,
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Like pninters, bring together The beautiful things of the earth And do not disdain wingel war, and To live in solitutie, for years, beneath the Defoliate mast, where through the night do not gleam The city's holidays Nor music of strings, nor indigenous dancing.
But now to Idians Those men have gone, the airy peak There On grapecovered hills, where down The Dordogne comes And together with the glorious
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Garonne as wide as the sea The current sweeps out. But it is the sea That takes and gives remembrance,
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And love no less keeps eyes attentiveiy xed, But what is lasting the poets provide.
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Theodore Kisiel
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Was he_il3_t das-g-pgolitish zu sein? Between Two War Generations: The Gulf Uniting Heidegger and Arendt
Was heit das-politisch zu sein?
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"What does it mean to be political? With its stress on the formally indicative to be, the question is raised ontologically and poised existentially, onthe brink of existentiell decision, in keeping with Heicleggefs long-standing interrogative predilections. We now know that Heidegger was already raising the question in Germany`s annus terribilis of 1923, on the way to his magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (= SZ), and would repeat it more decisively in the even more politicized early thirties, on the way to his purported second magnum opus, Beitrge zur Philosophie. By the time of the Beitrge (1936-38), repeating the question of the political will amount to a leap into the pre-ontological archaic depths of a radically new and different inception. In each and every instance, the question of being political is raised by Heidegger in close conjunction with the Greek polis, from which the very word political derives in all European languages. Words like politics, policy, police, polity, being-politic, all derive from the historically unique organization of the Greek city-state and so echo the experiences of the community which rst discovered the essence and the realm of the political" (BPF 154). 1 Contrary to Hannah Arendt's own lack of recollection, it is in this Greek form that the question of the political is cornmunicated by the young Professor Heidegger to his enthrallecl student, who would be destined to transnute it out of her own unique context a generation later. With her characteristically unique stamp, she thereby at once "renained faithful and did not remain faithful" to Heidegger's ideas, "and both in love" (HA-MH319/ 114). 2 So reacls Hannah _Arendt's dedication of Vita activa (1960)--her German rendition of'the book Human Conditions (1958)--to Martin Heidegger, but never sent to him, which reects both her Iaspersian sense of authentic communication' as a "loving struggle" 'BETWEEN (Arendt's key term, as We shall soon see) unique individuals, as well as the anarchically pluralistic sense of the philosophical community that ows from the unique occasionality and insuperable "temporal particularity" (leweiligkeit "to each its while") of Da-sein. The ultimate goal of
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hortatory appeal to each person who truly hears it to confront and develop her own sense of facticity of being-here, be it conservative German provincial peasant of the n-de-sicle culminating in the First World War or expatriate Iewess of the mid-twentieth century coping with the aftermath of the Second World War, and to communicate from this irrevocably unique vantage ofthe facticity of one's own generation. As Heidegger puts it to his very rst habiltation student, Karl Lwith, three years before Arendt appeared in his-life:
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The one thing that matters for us is to understand each other in agreeing that what counts [in philosophical "objectivity"] is for each of us to do one's utrnost radically by going to the limit for _what and how each understands the unum necessarium ['one thing necessary,' the demands exacted by one's own historical facticity of being-here]. We may be far apart-from one another in "system/' doctrine, or position," and yet together. as only human beings can genuinely be together: in existence
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position,' and yet together as only human beings can genuinely be together: in existence": this is the relationship of identity and difference that I wish to test in bringing teacher and student together in their respective concepts of the political. Pertinent to this exercise of comparison in contrast is Heidegger's own forewa-ning directed rst to himself in SZ (p. 310), 4 that any ontology is irrevocably ontically founded, that his own ontic ideal, say, i-n the choice ofhis heroes (SZ 385,5 371), enters into the shaping of his formal ontology of Da-sein, here in its sense of authentic existence. An analysis of the heroics he has in mind would quickly demonstrate how muchiHeidegger was a creature of the First World War, thoroughly under the spell of the "Ideas of 1914-'' (Figure 5) as a path toward German national urity and identity, to the point of identifying himself With the "front generation/' as we shall soon see. Hannah Arendt, by contrast, wrote her "Daseinsanalytik called The Human Condition (=HC) in the 1950s, after twodecades of expatriate engagement in the political life of the times and events surrounding the Second World War, and clearly identies herself with the generationbf stateless refugees in ight from the extermination camps of`Nazi totalitarianism, all of which gave her an urgently rst~hand perspectve on Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). _ These twoontologies of Dasein are thus grounded-ging and so motivated by, the ontic facticities of two distinct war generations of the late great 20"" century, the
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THE, HUMAN_CONDITION AS DASEINSANALYTIC
AND ARISTOTLE'S PRACTICAL PI-IILOSOPI-IY

In October 1960, upon informing Heidegger that he would be receiving a copy of Vita actva from the German publisher, Arendt wrote:
You will notice that the book bears no dedication. If things haclgone right between us [Wre esgyyischen uns je mit rechten Dingen zugggangen]--I mean not just you, nor me [weder Dich noch _ri1.i;:hL but between-I would have asked you whether I could have dedicated it to you. For the 'book
had its origin directly from our rst Marburg days and in every way owes just about everything to you. As things are, this seemed to me impossible. But at least I wanted to tell you, in one wayor another, the naked truth. (HA-MH149/114)
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In a letter some years earlier (May 8, 1954) in which she summarizes her current work in response toa curt query from Heidegger, Arendt had already "paid homage to his mentorship" .(HA-MH 146/ 115) in naming two topics that had their origin in "what I had learnecl from you in my youth" (HA-MH 145f/100), namely, 1) the relationship between action and speech as distinguished from work and labor, and 2) philosophy and politics ("-in your interpretation"). In a public address shortly thereafter in the same year, she in fact pinpoints the Heideggerian concept that mrediibefween these two themes. "It -may be . . . that _IIeipdegg5rls_cp_ngeptpof 'world,' which in many respects stands at the center of his philosophy, constitutes a step out of this difculty [of philosophy's penchant for the solitary singular versus thepoiitical 'plural]. At any rate, because Heidegger denes human existence as being-in-the-world, he insists on giving philosophie signicance to structures of everyday life that are completely incomprehensible if man is not primarily understood as being together with otherS [i.e. die Mitwelt, in Arendt's German rendition]." And in an appended note: "It is almost impossible to render a clear account of Heideggers politicalgtholghts that may be of political relevance without an elaborate report on his concept and analysis of 'world.'"5 In
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her "frst Marburg days" much more so than in SZ, this "elaborate report" articulated itself according to Heidegger's- distinction between Umwelt, Mtwelt, Selbstwelt (environing world of things, world-with-otherS, and self-world) and further sub_ distinctions like the work-world and thing-world, the public world (sometimes "common world") and domestic world. In SZ, there is the tmdeveloped distirction between the public "we-world" and one's own and nearest, private "domestic enviromnent" (husliche Umwelt: SZ 65). Arendt's HC, in its rened distinctions between labor, work, and action within the vita activa, could itself be construed asjust such an "elaborate report," which however ternporari-ly puts aside the "self-world" of thinking/willing/judging, which constitutes the vita conremplativa. And in her elaborate report on the human world of vita activa in HC, Arendt goes beyond Heidegger in at least one crucially signicart point. While Heidegger emphasizes that human being is immediately and always with otherS in the world, he never artieulated the implications of his use of the plural (EU 443). What Arendt does is simply to radicalize I-leidegger's frequent use of the plural "otherS" with whom the self from the start nds itself in order to artieulate its full implications. To explore the full implicatons of the fact that pluralitv is specicajhr the [indispensable cnablingl condition (..)_of apolitcal life (HCA7) 6: this isthe fulcrum of Arendt's entire political philosophy. The basic Facts of human pluraltand natality constitute for Arendt "the facticity of the entireiworld of human affairs." Plujalitv is the hugan gqndition that mgtivates politics.. "Politics is based on the fact of the plurality of human beings. Politics thus has to organize and regulate the being-together of different and unequal beings" (WP Il). 7 Another noteworthy step beyond Heidegger in this context is that Arendt, in locating the most general condition of human existence in the cycles of coming to be and passing away, more specically in birth and death, natality roducts are and mortali , to which all three activities of the vita acriva and their _ P _ therefore subject, in her inimitable contrarian fashion shifts the emphasis to natality as the creative driving force within the vita activa and relegates the inevitability of mortality primarily to the domain of vita contemplativa (HC 8-9): natality, ard not rnortality, may be the central category of political, as 'distinguished from metaphysical, thought It is often said, even by Arendt herself, that the student Arendt was apoltical in her early inclinations and interests, almost as apolitical as the early Heidegger himself. Incleed, orthodox Heideggerians, who in defense of the master Wish to insulate his thought from his life, anclespecially from hispolitical life, even make the claim that Da-'sein itself is apolitial,-akin to Sartre's observation that "Dasein cloesn't seem to have a ser life" and Levinas's "Dasein
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seems to get hungry." The emerging archival record of the "rst Marburg days" shows that this is decidedly not the case in all three arenas, especially in the context of the Greek precedents to Da-sein that Heidegger was then invoking and busily developing in idiosyncratic glosses of original texts like Aristotle's Rhetoric and Politics. I_-Ieidegger's lecture course entitled "Plato's So_jhist," held in WS 1924-25, was the very rst course by Heidegger that Arendt attended in Marburg. Arendt scholars should take special note of the degree to which this course is governed by the distinctions between the rhetorician-statesman, the sophist-politician, and the true philosopher. Perhaps one of the last lectures in the winter semester course on Log that Arendt attended, occurredon Ianuary 15, 1926, as the decision for her to leave Marburg was rst being broached. In an hour that in retrospect seems like a farewell address directed personally to her, Heidegger for the very rst time inhis Daseinsanalytic schematzes the two extreme modes of being-for-the-Other, in formal terms that nd their immediate concretion as much in communal-political as in personal-pedagogical contexts: at the one extreme, the mode of leaping inpand dominating the other by taking care of her concerns, as. in a Welfare state,and atthe other extreme, of leaping ahead and liberating the other to her maturity, freeing her to care for her own concerns-, especially the "unum necessarium" of fundamental care, as Heidegger fanciecl _ himself to be doing pedagogically vis--vis his studentss Generally speaking, we nd Heidegger in these "rst Marburg days" deep into his Greek-Aristotelian phase of development towarcl the systematic structures ofDa-sein, the unique human situation, what Arendt will -later retitle the human condition." Heidegger the phenomenologist was in- the midst of relocating his ontological -paradigms for the Daseinsanalytic away from the traditional theoretical habits of science and Wisdom, in view of their orientation toward eternal being and permanent presence, resituating Da-sein instead in the more practical virtues orientecl toward temporal-historical being that Aristotle called rechne, the art of making, the know-how of getting around with things in the environing world (Division One of SZ), and phrness, the pruclence of acting, circumspective insight into human action, rst of all the "ethical" action of the self responsive to its self-situation (Division Two of SZ) but also the "political" action of the self being-responsible for others, for its Mitwelt. Accordingly, Heidegger himself, on the way tgSZ, repeatedly takes his orientation from the ve excellent habits of being-tr.ue'according to Aristotle's Nicornachean Ethics, Book 6 (see the appended Eigre 1). Two of these
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ontological habits are theoretical, two practical, and a fth, nous, governs and guides these four, which accordingly are called the dia-noetic virtues. As a virtue, each is a habit (hexis) of excellence (arete), something that is had by us, or better, like language, a habit that has us, echein, determining how we have and hold ourselves in the world, behave, "be-have." Only the supreme habit of nous, direct apprehension' ofbeing, is regarded by Aristotle as beyond language. This will change w"ith'Heidegger, who will re-place eternal nous by a ternporal "Clearing" cornprehending be-ing by way of the ecstatic unity of Da-sein's contextualized and thus very nite temporality. Inthe terms of Greek ontology, it is a shift in focus from the being that always is. (aei on) to that which can also be otherwise (endechamenon allos echein), the contingent being that manifests itself in the vicissitudes of history and thus displays an ever-changing context, "je nach dem." Now, the excellent habits of being-true oriented toward "beings that can be otherwise" are pre-theoretical practical excellences, the rechne of poiess, knowing how to get around in one's occupation with pro'-ducing things, and the phroness ofpraxs, circumspective insight into human actions, the ethical-political virte. Such circumspective insight at its most authentic always begins With one's own self-referential actions in the resolute response to the call of conscience, i.e. to the demands of the protopractical situation of one's own be-ing, then accommodates one's own self-referential action to the actions of others, authentic solicitude, "forthe-sake-of-others" (SZ 123) by becoming the conscience for others, being-for-the other by "leaping ahead and liberating" the other (SZ 122, 298). 'Such a liberation movement is the seed of an authentic politics in Heidegger, which of course can only be sustained by an authentic rhetoric, by a language .that transcends the everyday in the direction of the lifetime considerations of fate and destiny, once . . and religion. Since these two pre-theoretical again the language of politics _ and therefore proto-practical dispositions of being-true constitute the respective ontological paradigms of the two published Divisions of BT, and the more "theoretical" habits of trueing are now to be derived from these two ways of coping with historically varying contexts, "je nach dem," it is clear that the "science" (episteme) that Heidegger is after no longer has as its "objects" merely the traditionally static ones ofconstant presence, but in particular the ec-static ones of past self-nding and future projection. The comprehensive "theoretical" virtue, the authentic understanding of philosophy, sophia, in turn would now become the comprehensive temporal science of the ejrrlunique human situation of be-ing. This unique temporal "clearng" of be-ing., the nous-surrogate that
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generation allotted its own time, must accordingly develop those peculiarly _ temporal universals sensitive not only to the distributive "each" (jQe_s) but also to its varying temporal contexts, "je nach dem." Such novel universals adaptable to the changing situations of history might therefore be called jeweilige _ Unversala the temporally particularizingi universals. After all, Aristotle had already observed that "being is not a genus," cannot be reduced to the indifferent commonality of a generic universal, of the All or Everyone, but is very much oriented to the distributive plurality of particulars. _ Outside of not noting the methodological approach of formal indication inorder to arrive at such universals in proximity with the particular and individual (and equally the plural), Dana Villa's inventory of themes that Arendt drew from the early Heidegger is thus reasonably complete: "_ . Heidegger's emphasis upon nitude, contingency, and worldliness as structural components of human freedom; his conception of human existence as disclosedness or unconcealment; the distinction between authentic and inauthentic disclosedness. and his view of the 'there' or 'Da' of Dasein as a space of disclosedness or 'clearing."'9 It has been observed that, among A'endt's Works, HC is particularly prominent in its "I-leideggerian concerns with 'disclosure'," notably in the revelatory reciprocity between action and speech that_is reminiscent of the "equiprimordiality" between thrown project and discursivity in SZ, both understood as fundamental modes of disclosure. HC has also stood out in its "agonal and highly. individualistic view of po1itics," as a measure of authenticity in politics, as opposed to the stress on cooperative participation in public affairs found in Arendt's later worl<s.1 We have only to add the nostalgia for the Greek pols that many commentators have found in Arendt as a way of introducing our examination of the two I-Ieideggerian texts on Aristotle: "[T]he full sig-nicance of Arendt's transformation of Heidegger's ortology requires a more detailed examination of Heidegger's reading of Aristotle in the period from 1923 to 1925. Arendt, as opposed to Heidegger, found in Aristotle's concept of praxis the key to a new revaluation of human action as interaction unfolding Within a space of _ '
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TI-IE POLITICAL IN HEIDEGGER'S GERMANY OF THE TVVENTIES 8:

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It is also worthy to note that Heideggers very concem for the concept of the political rst emerged during the politically charged year of national crisis of 1923, after the French had occupied the Ruhr industrial region and iation accelerated into stratospheric proportions. Both events combined to escalate, to a fever pitch, the propaganda
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speeches and putsch actions of an already severely factional internecine politics in the Weimar Republic. It is in and outof this propagandistically charged background context that Heidegger, by way of the phenomenological counter-example of the cvic politics drawn from Aristotle's Metoric will make the rst tentative steps to locate the domain of politics within the protopractical ontological eld of Da-sein. 1923 was thus a particularly bad year, an armus terribilis, for postwar Germany, in which the full punitive effects of the Versailles Treaty came to catastrophic fnition in the Weimar Republic. Heidegger's rhetorical-phenomenological concept of the political takes shape against the historical backdrop of a viciously internecine party politics turned more rabid in its rhetoric by the increasingly rarnpant ination brought on by the Weimar parliamentary govemrnent's scal policies to fund the general strike in the Frenchoccupied Ruhr valley. It is out of this political and economic turmoil that the Munichbased Nazi party led by its chiefrhetorician, Adolf Hitler, rst came to national prominence, as it decided to translate its talk into action by way of a putsch. The ensuing trial for treason served only to place Hitler indelibly in the national spotlight, and beyond. Far from coincidentally, Heidegger at this time was busy developing his hermeneutical and protopractical ontology of Dasein by Way of a Wholesale confrontat-ion of the phenomenological and practical Aristotle. Aristotle's several denitions of man are being interpreted close conjunction with his practical works, including his Rhetoric and Politics.The three Aristotelian denitions of the living being called human are in fact understood as egually primordial: a living beingthat has and is had by speech (logon echein understood as middlevoiced), a political life (zoonpolitikon) that expresses itself by speaking in and for
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community' in concertwith others, a practical being-in-the-world whose action is pervaded by speech (zoe praktike tis to logon echontos). The human being both occupies the world and is occupied by it, practically, politically, and most basically, discursively. The world is always a_c_liscu-six'-re space functioning in practical ways that precede and underlie theoretical assertorics and
'
denonstration. The understanding human being in its practical and political world accorclingly has hearing, responsiveness to the wor1d's cliscursive speech, as its most fundamental mode of perception. _ In SS 1924, Heidegger will make clear how deeply the Greek denition of the human being as zoon logon echon is itself rooted in the self-interpretation of_ Greek Dasein as. a being-with-one-another in the polis, by suggesting its approximate equivalent in the crisis-year of 1923: the modern human being, and German Dasein in particular, is the "living being who reads the newspapers (GA18: 108). 12 The animal possessed by speech is through and through political and rhetorical, gregarious and loquacious. But the rhetorical locus now shifts from the predominant orality of the ancient Greek _:li to the predominant textuality of the modern "pulp-media" reporting speeches from far and Wide to post-WW1 German Dasein, a textuality which in its own way is just as transient as the oral speech soon to be transmitted by radio, and 'governecl by the vicssitudes of place and time. But it isprecisely this dimension of contextdependent temporality that attracts Heidegger to the problem of political rhetoric, and the need to situate it in his temporal ontology of the unique human
`
situation, Dasein, both as situated I and situated we in its varyng historical contexts. It is this search for ontological language to fornally articulate the existential temporality of the crisis situation of speech, the Da-sein of the orators
i i
and the Da-sein of their auditors, that motivates Heidegger's gloss_of_Aristotle"s _ @2tri_c a yearlater. The overt confrontation of the matter of rhetoric, more specically, the Greekytext of Aristotle's Rheto-ic, occurs in two occasional pieces in the
9
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Heideggerian opus:
'
'
SS 1924 (Marburg): "Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie" Karl Lwith's transcript entitled "Aristotelesz Rhetorik II"), recently
published as GA Volume 18 (2002).
December 1-8, 1924: "Dasein uncl Wahrsein nach Aristoteles _ (Interpretation von Buch VI der Nikomachischen Ethil<)." Lecture tour through the Rhine-Ruhr valley, still under French-Belgian occupation.
B
'
Although the references to politics in these two pieces are usual-ly brief and sometimes exegetically allusive, it nevertheless becbmes clear that Aristotle's
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Rhetoric, "the rst systematic hermeneutics of the everydayness of being-withone-another" (SZ 138), depicts a speech community, a 'being-with that is at once a speaking-with, whose basic goal is to come to an understanding agreement with one another, he_rmene'a, communication and the accord that it brings in the public sphere. It is byway of this phenomenological rhetoric out of the Greek context that a rudimentary protopolitics begins to take shape and to seek its site in
Heide_gger's emerging fundamental ontology (GA18: 45-85, 127-140). In view of the close proximity, indeed the "equiprimordiality," of rhetoric and politics (ergo of speech and action) in a Greek loquacity that places a primacy on the political, What is being situated ontologically is in fact "rhetoric as politics," a rhetorical politics and political rhetoric of an everydayness in crisis. For the early Heidegger, the more ontological Greek Urtext of political philosophy is Aristotle's Rhetoric and not Plato's Republic, which Will play a different role a decade later, at a more fateful occasion of his political development. At this early stage, the ethos of Greek civic discourse is held up asa paradigm in counterpoint to the propaganda-ridden speech community of the Weimar Republic; each will serve as an example contributing to the formal ontological structure of the "interpretedness" of the "everydayness of being-With~one-another," whose least common denominator is das Man the anonymous undfferentiated Anyone. The talk on "Being-here and Being-true According to Aristotle" was,according to Heidegger, initially drafted as a fragment in "1923-24," still near the peak of the Ruhr crisis. But it was not nalized and actually delivered until December 1924 under the auspice of the Kant Society, West German Industrial Region, in at least three of six cities in the Rhine-Ruhrvalley, most notably in Cologne (with Max Scheler ashost). The postponement and delayed delivery probably reects the continuing domestic turmoil in the region even after the international tensions had eased after the governrnent's capitlation in 1923, followed by ongoing negotiations of the Dawes Plan of reparations payments in 1924._French and Belgian forces Were still very much present in the Ruhr in December of 1924. The orator Heidegger might therefore have felt a little like Fichte in 18.08, delivering his famous Addresses to the German Nation in a Berlin still occupiled by the Napoleoric armies. Once again, the apparently straightforward gloss of the Aristotelian texts comes alive against the the talk background of the tensions of the current events of the day. _ Moreover, between initial and nal form provides a kind of clrbnological frame for the more detailed gloss of Aristotle's Rhetoric in the course of SS 1924. As the rst
1
-.
10
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version and dstant cousin of the well-known later talk marking the turn to the later Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth" (1930-1943), the Ruhr.talk 'also provides a general conceptual frame. sit-uating rhetoric/ politics in Heideggers developing ontology of practical truth and untruth, the context-ual truth of human actions and human lives rather than the vericationist truth of judgmental statements, in a theory of truth that will nd its rst denouement in
SZ in 1927. _ The uid situation of the last Weimar years will soon eclipse the rmnus terribilis of 1923 with ever deeper crises that culmnate in the collapse of the Weimar Republic and its eventual displacement in 1933 by the regime of National Socialism. __ln' keeping with its concept-ualization, Rektor Heidegger Will develop a second concept of the political , and nally, With his disenchantment of this reg-ime, a third, more archaic sense. But before We quickly traverse these "three concepts of the polis and the political" in Heidegger, and then Arendt's well to leap across the generation gap dif-fering relation to them, it would be dividing teacher and student and exanine the dffering historical context in which Hannah Arendt herself rst encountered the problem of the philosophical concept-ualization of the political.
'POLITICS' IN ÀRENDT'S AMERICA OF THE FORTIES AND FIFTIES

I
On the Genesis of OT and HC

What is politics/politics?
p
Hannah Arendt and her husband came to the United States in 1941 as' refugees from Europe, stateless, homeless, andlpenniless. In ight- from an intemment camp in Vichy France, they emigrated to escape the
virtually certain prospect of being transpoted to an extermination camp in Gerrnany. Her American odyssey began for her, her husband Heinrich, and her mother Martha with twenty-live clollars in their
possession and
monthly stipend from the Zionist Organization of America." l-ler biographer, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, puts the very fu-st step of this itinerary in the New World in the baldest of tenris: To survive and eam a living, some English had to be leamed, and Hannah was the most
likely member 13 to do the learning, from a household that included a workingclass husband and an old mother, so that she could qualify for a job in the New York labor market." Forced to become the breaclwinner" of her European-American household, forced to support a husband as well as a mother by
a seventy-dollar
earning a living," she soon found work, in keeping with her overqualied European credentials, as a
ll
novice joumalist, in order to supplement the bare-subsistence stipend provided by the New York Jewish community, collecting puny honoraria for book reviews and articles-on-demand for the German-language
x
newspaper Aufbau and other literary venues available in the Jewish quarters of New York City. There is more than a touch of irony here which is nevertheless very much in keeping with her later political theory and the sharp conn-ast it draws between the necessities of labor and the freedom of (political) action, that
Hannah Arendt's rst entry into the free space of speech acts that American politics offers came by way of the daily grind of labor, albeit intellectual labor, the compulsion of rst having to take care of the necessities of life. _
.
P 1
l
Writing to the academic Karl Jaspers about this frst year in America, Arendt describes herself as a free-lance writer, somewhere between ahistorian and a political jou-nalist.14 By 1943, she was
completing the transition 'om her native German to English articles for rnagazines of the Jewish community such as The Menorah Journal, Contemporary Jewish Record, Jewish Social Studies, -The Chicago Jewish Forum, New Carrents: A Jewish Monthly, and Jewish Frontier, all of which set the stage for her rst articles in 1945 for the newly founded magazine, Commentary. A Jewish Review. Her early reputation as an articulate polemicist with provocative opinions soon spread beyond Jewish intellectual
circles into more secular circles, as she was being sought out to'contribute articles to magazines like Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, Twentieth Century, and The Sewanee Review, as well as
distinctly Catholic journals like The Review of Politics, The Commanweal, and Cross Currents.
Borrowing the title
of a novel by Mary McCarthy, Arendt came to call such literary
venues
'oases', places where the glurality of views of thehworldg could be freely expressed. To print polemics, replies, and counter-replies was part of what the intellectuals of those days meant by a free and sustained
intellectual life." 15 What Arendt found was a sgectrum of magazines in which she could publish, all held together by a deeply felt sense of the -democractic values of free speech and freedom of the press. In their reciprocal interaction and common bond, they constituted a kind ofurban town meeting calling for communai action on the local as well as the national and intemational levels.. Speech and action for Arendt
belong together. She will later i I-IC refer to the Greek self-understanding and write: To be political, to live in a polis, meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through force and
violence (I-IC 26). She will make her point even more strongly by referring to Aristotle's statement that everybody outside the polis - slaves and barbariars - was aneu logou [without speechi, deprivcd, of course, not of the faculty of speech, but of the way of life in which speech and only speech made sense
and where the central concerns of all citizens was to talk with each other (HC 27). For oasis" is a
term that Arendt would apply to any and all outbreaks of [participatory] democracy or islands of ._ , 'eedom, even when these were secreted within unlikely places like the Soviet gulags (OT 296n, 501) 16
'
and the necessarily clandestine French resistance movement (BPF 3). She would eventually identify such of the Russian Revolution of l9l7,'the upsurges of democracy" in the earliest soviets" (= . councils) . _
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12
people's councils that spontaneously emerged in the rst days of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the students' councils ofthe 1968 demonstrations. But* her prime examples remain the town meetings that
sprung up around the American Revolution both in its colonial and 'post-colonial phases. Thus, with Thomas Jefferson, she-expresses regret that these cells of participatory democracy and the exhiliration of public happiness" that they bring become lost treasures with the institutionalizaton of representative
2
1
democracy in the U.S. Constitution, which, aside from the right of assembly, makes no allowance for these more spontaneous expressons of democracy.
9
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_Conditioned by her own rst-hand experience within the magazine circles of urban New York and
beyond, Arendt thus identies a second source for her developing sense of the political, not only the Greek polis toward which Heidegger gravitates, but also the lost treasures of the revolutionary tradition in
politics.
1
It was Waldemar Gurian's joumal, The Review ofPolitics, that provided Hannah Arendt with an early forum, beginning with a book review in 1942, for articles that clearly constitute the beginnings of her
rst book seven' years later, The Origins of Totalitarianisrn, with titles like Race-Thinking Before Racism
(in January 1944), Imperialism, Nationalism, Chauvinism (in October 1945), Peace and Armistice in the Near East?" (January 1950), and The Imperialist Character" (July 1950), along with her important review
of J.-T. Delos' book La Nation (1946). Delos' war-book (1944) obviously made a deep impression on Arendt, still fresh from the experience of being a stateless refugee and homeless person stripped of all rights, and thus virtually of all identity and humanty. Delos' preference for the state over the nation clearly stems from the seeds of racism and totalitarianism that he nds in the very idea of a nation." A
people becomes a nation when it takes consciousness of itself 'according to its history"; as such it is attached to the soil which is the product of past labor, thus a soil that still bears the traces of a people`s
history, its sweat and tears. A nation constitutes the 'milieu' into which man is bom [the natalitv of nationalit, a closed socig to which one belongs [only] by right of birth." By contrast, a state is an
open society, ruling over a.ten'itory [and not blood and soil} where its power protects and makes the law"; it is a legal institution which recognizes citizens no matter of what nationality; its legal order is open to all who happen to live on its territory." A state, far ti-om being identical with the nation, is the supreme
protector of a law which guarantees man his rights as man, his rights as citizen and
[even] his rights as a
national.
Of these rights, only the rights of man and citizen are primary rights, whereas the rights of nationals are derived and implied in them. With the idea of federation, within federated structures [like
the USA], nationality becomes a personal status
rather than a te-r_itorial_o,ne (EU 208, 210).
In the 'constellation of opinion-setting magazines andjoumals in the highly competitive New York ambience of the forties, one small magazine holds a unique place in the annals of American political
development. It is the one-man magazine" founded and edited by Dwight Macdonald bearing the title politics (with a small p', no lessl), whichsurvved for ve brief postwar years, from 1944 to 1949. Yet in
spite of its short life and small size and circulation, its impact and _=int`luence and the durability of its ideas
13
never far outst-ipped anyone's original expectations, including its editor and sole motivating force. Arendt a contributed any articles to Macdonald's magazine politics, but their correspondence shows that she was and goals in high regard. In part regular reader of this one-man magazine" and held the magazine's prole because of the trans-Atlantic ties that it cultivated, politics played an important role for the European-
Americans in the New York intellectual circles of the postwar years. In the inaugural issue of Febnary aim 1944, Dwight Macdonald, in an introductory note entitled Why palirics?" sketches the magazine's and editorial policies by announcing his intent to create a center of consciousness onthe Left, welcoming
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all varieties of radical thought." 17 Against anoverly narrow conception of politics iclentifying it with the comment so as to policies of "certain parties and leaders, politics will try (1) to broaden political
include all kinds of social, technological, cultural and psychological factors; and (2)- to measure month-tomonth developments with the .yardstck of basic values." The magazine clearly has a normative understanding of what politics ought ideallv to be, which is radicallv humanist ingorlentation. the Macdonald cloesn`t politics as 'who gets what, and how,' his intention is to bring back to
1 I
1
understand
i
z
it." Here we touch on a theme that Arendt public opinion the meaning of politics as the Gfeeks represent and Macdonald held in conunon: they both were convinced that politics is about more than administrating interest. 'They also came to the conclusion buclgets and managing national wealth or acting out of private two essentially long before others that Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia were both totalitarian systems, identical systems which were clearly growingconstantly more alke in exterior forms of rule (OT 429), with aims that are totally antithetical to any and every form of the political, beginning with their demand to For both, the concept of the political must politicize all domains of human life into a uniform total state." be revisited and reconstituted precisely in the face of the massive "total" assault on the political that the totalitarianisms of the 20' cent..ry have launched. 13 Arendt exchanged opinions on the articles in politics with Macdonald, tried toencourage him in 1951 to get back into political joumalism," 19 they shared common experiences with the Ford Foundation,
'
2 he was her guest at her New Year's parties in the postwar years, during which time she developed a sense of comradeship with him. Comradeship or friendship, as Arendt schoiars know, plays central role in A1-endt's life and thought, from her old friendships with Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger to her Randall extraordinary capacity for new friendships in America, with Waldemar Gurian, Mary McCarthy, Ia-rell, W. 'I-I. Auden, Alfred Kazin and, of course, DwightMacdona1d'. Friendslig could, moreover, when it arises within those cases of according to Arendt, assume a political dmenson, especially freedom that constitute the cells of political action. To avoid misunderstandings, friendship is not
as 'is cornpassion, since iendship refers to the individual, and friendship is as selectiye compassign
egaIitarian.*'1'-2
That this one-man magazine, (...) never was the magazine of one man's opinion," but made it obviotsly guite important for possible for man y voicesand viewrioints to have their 831, was ~.._ as a Arendt's own sense of poiitics." In particular, Macdonald's owrr" series of articles,-later published 'contribution to [political theory, in its] book, The Root is Man, is in Arendt's eyes his most important
14
1 <
discovery of new roots in the realm of theory, on the one hand new Ancestors' -(...), and 'New roads in Politics' on the other." This new creed consisted of a radical humanism for which man was not merely
1
I
the root, the origin of all political issues, but the ultimate goal of all politics and the only valid standard of judgment .to be applied to all political matters." She clearly understood the magazine's intenton as it is expressed in its name politics, this most unpopular term, with the intention to restore to
it its ancient dignity." 23
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That man is no_t_onl1_th_e_orLgin_of ah_po_litcs,_but also its ultimat_e_goal,_'eventually nds its concrete articulation in The Human Condition, where Arendt explores whatis necessary for human beings to experience conpanionshig. To join in companionship and comradeship, man needs a public realm. The public realm, according to Arendt, is the guaranteed space where human beings can reveal who they are, a
realrn that both binds
distinguishes us from one another. Arendt emphasized in her Introduction to the Reprint of Macdonald's magazine that there was a feeling of cornpanionship among the readers of politics, sometimes almost embarrassngly personal, and it was precisely this personal note
that inspired condence in the magazine, not in the rightness of any opinions so much as in the reliability of those who wrote for it." 24 The politics-ci-cle was a kind of oasis; where oases for Arendt are all those
ustogether and
places where the feeling of companionship between uniquely distinct individuals becomes possible. Speech and action, we read in The Human Condition, are the modes in which human beings appear to each other" (HC 176), in which they reveal the unique distinctness conducive to frendship in the space
of appearance that is the public realm. Without their revelatory character, action and ,.ggggl__ would lose anhuman reevanee" (Hc sz).
A
The compatibility of Arendt's thinking with Macdonald's politics can be further exemplifedby a closer look at one of its more signicant articles by Nicola Chiaromonte entitled Remarks On .Tustice,"
published in politics in __May 1947. Arendt, who was never very fond of Chiaromonte, nevertheless liked his pieceon justice. 25 Remarkably, Chiaromonte observes in his article that the question of justice arises
when the fact of *being together' (the social) is seen as annoiigirlal part of the human condition, is acknowledgedas an [intersubjective] really of its own and not confuscd with the merely subjective
g
(which belongs to a given individual and no one else) or the merely objective (which belongs to everybody in general andnobody inparticular). But if the fact that men live in relation to each other is not regarded
as an original datum but merely as a moral problem to be solved in the light of a moral law (of Duty or of Love), then the peculiar substance ol' the relationship is 0verlooked. Once this happens, [the terms]
'just' and *unjust' become synonymous with 'good' and 'evil', a problem for individual co`nsciences. The conclusion Chiaromonte draws 'om this dis-socation is that the common ground, society, - and
society (...) means relations" is made to be simply the ground (...) of cornpromise with one another and with the powers-that-be.2 Manifestly, Chiaromonte 'places great emphasis on the peculiar substance
of' the interrelationsljps o.f_*be_i_rgt,ogg_l1er.' Arendt also tries to nd a name for this realit and arrives in The Human Conrtian at a metaphor, the 'web' of human relationships, (...) by the metaphor [she
15
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somewhat intangble quality" (HC 183). Intangble but nevertheless real, no less real than the physical in-betweens found in the world of things, the peculiar substance? of this, already existing _in;between of human relationship; into which we insert ourselves to become more fully human, thereby thrusting ourselves into the thick of human affairs, consists of words and deeds and owes
wants
its-
to indicate]
v i
its origin exclusively to [human beings interacting] and speaking directly to one another. (...) The reahn of human affairs, strictly speaking, consists of the web of humamrelationslgps which exists whereve' men
live together" (HC 183-4). [Arendt thus raises, we might say in a I-Ieideggerian vein, the question of the ontologicalstatus ol' the political realm, the be~ing_qt`_political interrelations.]
The intangibility of the web of human intenelations leads to another aspect that Chiaromonte _and Arendt share: they both accept the fact that human action, because it is free, is its contingencies ' ` ' unpiedictable and boundless. In view of this, both see the necessity to lmt acton
l)
According to Ch_iaromonte, this happens by practicing justice. But justice in practice is not _an intellectual scheme to be imposed on society with more or less Violence, on the pretext that it is required by reason or history." Doing iustice is rather, rst and foremost, the defense of a specic
right (that of the Egyptian serf, of Al'ed Dreyfus, or of the rnodern proletarian), which denes and limits any action on our part."
2) According to Arendt, the limitation of the boundlessness of action happens in a body politic by way of laws that provide human beings with the necessary protection against the boundlessness of action.
Once a public realm is established and guaranteed through the bounds of law, men can safely enter its space of appearancc through the free exercise of speech and action and thus reveal who ithey are.
The wall-like law harbors and eneloses public political life much like a fence hedges in a' private property and 'protects the privacy of the household living there (I-IC 64). Without the political protection of the intangible wall of law, a public realm could not exist and endure. As the American
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poet laureate, Robert Frost, reminds us, Good fences make good neghbors.
Regard for individuals in their personal uniqueness along with a concem for the public world defne the shared values of the New York intellectuals who gatherecl around Dwight Macdonald's politics, as well as magazines like Commentary or Partisan Review. These values lay the basis for Hannah Arendt's conceptualizing of the public realm the guaranteed space where human beings can come together to
I E
as
reveal who they uniquely are, a realm of action and speech that both binds us together and distinguishes us -om one another." This intricate web of human intcrplay necessarily makes politics into a mulually
cooperative interpersonal activity of mutual development rather than an anarchical conict between ciisemboclied, isolated egos,"27 where the rst and foremost 'joint endeavor -is that of establishing,
cultivating, and augmenting thisjublie
'
sp a ,
of appearance
sind liberating
web of- human
relationships.
16
On the one hand, the very initiative to act in this public space springs from the beginnings which came into the world when we were bom and to which we each respond by beginning something new on our
s
l
own individual initiative. To act in its most general sense
meansiosstake an iniative, _to ben, (...) tg
set something into "motion" (HC 177). But inasmuch as it may be stimulatecl by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join," to actjn anothe_r_sense means to act in concer_t" (Burke),
together with others. Since-to act means toact in a web ofelationships which
consists of the actions

l
and desires of others, I can never foretell what ultimately will come out of what I am doing now. In
other words, we can act politically, but we cannot 'make histoyf" It is against the makers of history", Arendt continues, "that a free society has to defend itself, regardiess of the vision they harbor." Reading
recall Chiaromonte's warning in 1947 in politics against the implicit danger of any thinking that this, we `_nakes history' (e.g., Communist and Nazi ideologies). W'hen, by way of the laws of the Historical
human enterprise is made into a sort of organized artice, and the man of action becomes nothing but a ghastly drudge, then there can be no meaningful sorrow; nojust pride in success; no
Process,
restraint in victory; and surely nodignity in defeat.29
So much for the tale of how the stateless and homeless expatrate refugee Hannah Arendt found not only a state and a home but also a political (and phlosophical) voice among 'iends in oases like that provided by the magazine politics, places where the feeling of companonship once again became
possible.3 Itwas out of such literary oases that her rst two major books emerge, HC on the question What is Politics/ P alit:'cs?" and OT on the uni ue form of government arising in the 20"? centu W that is so antithetical not only to the political life but to any vestige of human life whatsoever. It is these two
poles--a totalitarian politics" that threatens not only political but, more radically, human existence and, in response to that extreme threat, the retrieval and restoration of what politics ideally should be in order to secure a truly human world-that will dene Arendt's outlook-the outlook of a different generation--on
the concepts of the political that we shall now uncover in Heidegger.
Heidegger's Three Concepts of Polis and the Political
Period
1923-5 Phenomenological patlios,ethos, logos
_
Wgasi Text
, _
Basic Cqlgpl
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.
Aristotle, Rhetorca
of doxic speech.
situation
l7
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1
Metontological 1933-5
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Plato, Politeia
l
leader of
_ _ _
_
_
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2
people,_
_ _state,
-
guardi_ans of
_
l .
1
3-leveled service
Sophocles, Antigene
pole-mos of thinker, _poet,
5
i
Archaic-Poietic 1935-43
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and
statesman as
.
prepolitical
the political invariably pass through the simple I-Ieidegger's various concepts of of paradigns provided by the Greek polis. His early phenomenological concept of the political, which takes its point of departure from the equiprimordiality and Aristotle's three denitions of the living beingcalled human, as the talking the political animal, develops its sense of the political arena punctuated deliberative future, of temporally by crisis-laden occasions public speaking (the the judicial past, and epideictic present) as they are described in Aristotle's on Rhetoric (Figure 3). His metontological concept of the political is based loosely the tripartite structure of the educational state as depicted in Plato's Republic and modied by neo-Kantians like Natorp to accomnodate the unique identity to the ideals of a uniquely "German unity of a state to be patterned according socialism betting the "German people" (Figure 4).' His later archaic-poietic at level ofthe unique concept of the political nds its prepolitical roots the human situation of comrnunal facticity that precedes and underlies the fateful conict' between family piety and royal dictate that Sophocles (and, by way of his
'
.31 German translation and commentary, Hlderlin) portrays in the Antigone
from the The Rhetorical Polisgf Greek Civic Democracy will rst be developed 32 talk of 1923'-24 entitled "Being-here and Being~true According to Aristotle." The text of this "Ruhr-Rede" was intially drafted at the end of 1923, still near the the rnilitant and territorial rhetoric peak of the Ruhr crisis, and is still marked by of 'of this dramatic year. But it was not delivered in its f_i-nal form until the end 1924 in several cities of the Rhine-Ruhr valley, most notably in Cologne with
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Max Scheler as host. In its structure and movement, the text resembles the well-
known later talk marking the turn to the later Heidegger, "On the Essence of Truth" (1930-1943). The uniqueness of the 1924 talk is however its quick dispatch of judgment in the usual sense of a declarative (apophantic) statement, v traclitionally the locus of truth as correspondence through the scientic "demonstration" that "lets something be seen" as it is, in order to get to the more practical and "crucial" kinds of judgment (lgrinein) at issue or in abeyance in critical everyday speech situations. And the everyday speech situation quickly takes us to the public space of the polis, which will soon be identied with the veritable "clearing of be-ing" that is disclosive of a linguistically developed historical people, whether it be that of Greek Da-sein or of German Da-sein (Note that Da-sein begins to assume national accents along- linguistic lines already in SS 1924, where a people is understood to be rooted in and native to a language [GA18: 15, 25, 33, 39ff.]). The everyday speech situation generates practical judgments that are far more varied and richer than the incipient theoretical judgrnent of declarative sentences. Its prejudicative possibilities, not always reducible to mere preludes to judgment, include requests, wishes, questions, imperatives, exclamatories, pre gnant pauses, and other such punctuations, none of which are immediately subject to the hyperjudgment: true or false. Or better, they point to a much more original, comprehensive, tacit, prepredicative sense of what it means _"to be true." On the ordinary everyday level, logos does not mean judgment, concept, or even reason, but simply speech, Which includes every form of discursivity and articulaton, even the non-verbal kinds, in actions that 'speak louder than words' (e.g., passive versus active resistance, or a general strike). The basic aim of every_day_ natural discourse, speaking to and with one another, accordingly listening _to one another, is not knowledge but understanding, hemeneia, simply put, getting along together, living in accord, the understanding ( of concord. The investigation of this spectrum of phenomena of speaking to one another belongs to rhetoric, which, as the study of logos in its very' rst fundaments, could also be called the very rst "logie" The speech in question' is public, not private, its judgments are not scientic but practical, its discursivity is not nerely linguistic but extends to the non-verbal articulations of action and of passion, its truth does not reside in the clear and distjin_ct logic of statements, but in the chiaroscuro logos of doxa, the partial truth of'pi'ej'udgrnents and opinions.
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Understood as the hermeneutics of everyday life of the Greek polis, classical rhetoric has classied three peak moments ofdiscourse, which have generated three gem-es of civic speech-making. Heidegger's matter-of-fact summary of the three' clearly bore immediate relevance to the German polis of 1923-24. For his Ruhr-audience had repeatedly been, and continued to be, addressed by all three forms of public discourse over the course of the previous two years of crisis1. The properly political speech seeks to persuade or dissuade a popular assembly or deliberative body toward a certain decision or resolution of a crisis, say, in matters of war and peace. The speaker does not seek to educate his audience about a state of affairs, but wishes rather to talk his audience into a
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bring it in tune with one's own opinions and convictions onthe present condition of the state (Lage des Staates) and counselor its future course of action. [Germany at this time continued to be inundated by propaganda from factions both right and left about the "November betrayal" of the 1918 _armistice and the call to overthrow the "November criminals" of a Weimar Republic inept in its handling of a continuing series of state crises brought on by the generally hated Versailles Treaty.] 2. The judicial speech before a court of law in prosecution or defense is addressed to the audience of judges or jury. [On trial for treason for his instigation of the Munich putsch, Adolf Hitler had in the past year successfully made the entire nation the audience and jury of the speech in his own defense. Having dictated the rhetorically charged Mein Kampf during the brief incarceration following sentencing, he was about to be 'released back into
certain mood which will
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German public life before Christmas in 1924.] 3. The festive speech, Heidegger notes, was rst designed to celebrate the victors ofthe Olympic games, thus also applicable to the Germany of 1924. It is intended to bring the audience into the presence (Gegenwart) of something. admirable and noble. But the epideictic speech may involve either praise or censure, designed to create the moods of either admration or outrage of our folk heroes and .their actions, [like "Benedict Arnold" or the police spies who betrayed Albert Leo"'Scl'lageter to the French authorities occupying the Ruhr region. The epideictic speech thus had recurring relevance to the Ruhr at the time of the rst anniversary of Schlageter's execution in Dsseldorf, and each year thereafter.] On the tenth anniversary of Schlageter's execution on May 26, 1923, by a French ring squad, Rektor Heidegger would himself give' his rst political
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speech for the new Nazi regime, in honor and praise of Schlageter, the day before his more widely publicized rectoral address of May_ 1933. Heidegger had clearly learned his lessons in. political rhetoric quite well from Arist_otle's Rhetoric, as well as att-uned himself to the ethos of the time, as he attempts to inspire the Freiburg student body into the presence of Schlageter's nal "noble" moment of death for the Father-land:
decade ago died the hardest and greatest of deaths. In his honor, we wish to remember this death for a moment so that from this death we may understand our own life. Standing defenseless before the French ries, . . _ Schlageter died the hardest of deaths. . . . Whence this hardness of will to withstand the hardest? Whence this clarity of heart to set the greatest and the farthest before the soul? Freiburg student! German student! Learn and know this as you, in your
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walks and marches, t-read the mountains, woods,_and vales of the Black Forest, the homeland of this hero: Primeval rock, granite, are these mountains in the midst of which the young peasant boy grew up. They have in their very duration created the hardness of our wills [etc. etc.].33
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The Heidegger of 1924 does not say this, but Schlageter's example of witness and death speaks directly to the titular theme of his talk: being-here itself as beingtrue, the truth of a life that comes from the resolute authenticity of Da-sein, revealed through Schlageter's actions and death in the clea-ring of be-ing of Germany in 1923, Which are now being made present rhetorically and so being drawn_into the clearing of be-ing of the Germany of 1934.. In Being and Time, Heidegger will concede that the existential-ontological ideal of authenticity is founded upon his own "ontic-existentielI" ideal of a_ pantheon of heroes determined by his German ethos. I-iIeidegger's epideictic speech for this native son of the Black Forest thus highlights Sch1ageter's virte of being "true" (r_el._ = constant, faithful, loyal: SZ 385, 391) to the native roots of his homeland. Virtually from the start, the Nazi movement accepted Schlageter as the perfect specimen of the "new man," whose deeds were gloried in song and story as much as Horst Wessel's Would be from 1930. In his speech, "On the Origin of the Artworl<," in 1936, Heidegger will identify "essential scrce" as one way in which truth happens," along with the artwork andi the "state-founding deed." By
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way of further exemplication in this context, an earlier unpublished version identies the "people-saving death" as still another _form that the "happening of truth" assumes in historical context. . _ From his concrete rehearsal of the three speechsituations, all broadly regarded as political speaking-with-one-another, Heidegger now summarizes the elements of Aristotelian 'civic rhetoric that would become important for his own protopractical ontology in the making, to begin with, for his ontology of everydayness: _ 1. Deliberation over a future course of action, judgment of a past action, reliving the presence of a praiseworthy action: the simple temporalty of the three genres of speeches of the Greek polis spell out, punctuate, and dene the rhythms of its _ public life, ofpolitical everydayness in crisis. 2. These speeches have as their telos, not the communication of expertise on the everyday matters at issue, but rather the auditors themselves, aiming to win the audience over to a view of things by way of forming a receptive disposition or
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mood, which sometimes involves transforming another prevalent mood, typically apathy; The pathos ofthe listener is therefore the most basic of the three classical means of persuasion and opinion-formation, the three pisteis, the "trusts" that inspire "condence" in the credibility of the speaker and his speech. In addition to the pathos in which' the hearer is placed (or "thrown," as Heidegger will soon put it), the condences. include the ethos ofthe speaker and the
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deikmma' of the speech itself (logos). _ 3. Over the ethos of the speaker, Heidegger will have precious little tosay in this Greek talk on truth, since he is more concerned with the concealrnent of truth that comes from rhetoric and .its more malicious cousin, sophisiry. We, must wait for SS 1924 for a bit' more precision. Let me at least summarize what he does say on this "ethical"` dirnension of the speech situation, since it does suggest that ethos is not just "character," let alone "moral" character, but is to include both where the speaker is coming from and in particular how he projects himself out of this thrownness: ,"His entire existence speaks along With what he speaks for," demonstrating whether he is trustworthy as a person, familiar with his subject matter, well-disposed toward his audience. The speaker, in short, must throw himself into his speech with' the full expanse and meaning of his existence. Heideggers' language recalls his later depiction of what it . means for authentic Da-sein to be truly "there" in its situation, as an already thrown project that is equiprimordially discursive in both its throw and projection. In fact, Heidegger
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will soon translate ethos, in the language of Being and Time, as the action of resoluteness receptive to the call of conscience, the call of the critical situation. (ln the later Heidegger, ethos will be the "usage" of the situation itself which we accept as our abode and standard of dwelling.) _ 4. The kind of demonstration (deiknunai = showing, pointing out) in the everyday speech situation is not a matter of logical proof or scientic procedures. They are instead enthymemes, the abbreviated syllogisms of rhetoric, literally curt speech that goes directly "to the heart'f (en-thumos): striking examples, memorable punch lines (What are currently called "sound bites"), emotionally charged but pithy tales ("November betrayal"), narrative "arguments" that hit _ home quickly and powerfully. Opinion formation is sometimes opinion creation, giving currency to a new view which however is never outof keeping with the prevalent and average public opinion, doxa. The public speaker draws upon the way one on the average thinks about things, upon popular prejudices and suspicons, from which he selects the seldomstated major premises (doxai) that found his abbreviated but striking conclusions about how things look and what seems to be the case. For the thinking of the crowcl (hoi polloi = the many) is shortwinded, having absolutely no interest in the lengthy process of getting "at the things themselves." The Greel<s,_who loved to talk, had a strong sense of this most immediate phenornenon of speech, of being With one another in common gossip, chatter, and idle talk. The human being even for Aristotle isrst of all not the rational animal but rather the living being dwelling in ordinary language and idle talk, who has neither the time nor the inclination to speak originally about the things themselves. Socrates and Plato in particular took arms against this dimension of the prevalence of idle talk, which Heidegger here identies as one of the inescapable concealments of truth, the concealment of and by opinions in which daily life on the average rst of all and most of the time operates. But Aristotle the rhetorician had a much greater appreciation of the doxa of his native language, its "folk Wisdom" (e.g. the gnomen [maxims and proverbs] of Rhetorica Il, 20-22), and so its partial truth whenproperly authenticated by a native orator whouncovers it in appropriate speech situations that aim at the preservation and advancement of the polis.34 _l-Iis common front with Socrates' and Platowas rather against sophistic phrase-mongering, which deliberately perpetuates and exploits idle talk to self-advantage. Through the preponderant use of the catchphrase and clich, through the glb polish of concepts; the pseudo-pnhilqsophical sophist takes originally disclosed matters of the philosophr and puts them forward in
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the guise of obvious matter-of-fact self-evidence, parading his pseudoknowledge as a familiar possession that is in no need to be returned time and again back to its original sources, in a constant interrogation of its authentically original concealment, its "mystery." Thus, inhis very rst listing of the three modes of concealment, Heidegger attributes two of them directly to the language of rhetoric. Correlatively, the three modes ofbecoming true, of "trueing," the process of wresting matters out of concealment, are: _ 1. The disclosure that brings beings to the fore by way of the initial and _ immediate opinions commonly held about them, since such everydayviews do contain a partial glimpse and measure of insight into the be-ing of these beings. 2. Pressing into those unfamiliar original domains of being that have hitherto never been revealed at all, about which we are still totally ignorant. 3. The struggle against chatter and idle talk, which gives itself out to be knowledgeable and disclosive of the way things are. The struggle (Kampf) comes in tearing off the disguises of the concealing catchphrase and clich, thereby exposing not only the underlying be-ing of things but also the forces of concealment that militate against such discovery. This very rst listing of truth's concealments andunconcealments thus enlists not only the philosopher but also the rhetorician-statesrnan into the gigantic struggle _(Titanenl<amp_f,_g1gantomachia) of "wresting" truth from its concealment, which always begins with the siruggle of tearing away the _ of the the surface the "sound bites" of clich, disguises concealing catchphrase, popular jargon, in :order to expose the more telling "enthymeme" betting the particular speech situation of a native people, more in keeping with the ethos (custom, usage) of its "fo1k Wisdom." One cannot help wondering how Heidegger, professor at a state university and so a civil servant of the state, might have applied this threefold structure of truthful exposition drawn from the Greek Dasein, admittedly involving- a measure of irterpretive violence, to the then current German Dasein, to the trying events of the day and the crucial affairs of state that his country was undergoing in the crisis years of 1923-1924. AsHeidegger clearly states at the beginning of this talk as well as at the end of it, in response to a question from Max Scheler, his goal is to transform the ontology of constant presence inherited from the Greeks into a radical ontology of history and' the 'temporal human
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world, "which not for one moment has the sense of cultivating any sort of antiquarian interest."
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The _same grand effort of radical transformation of Greek metaphysics into a_ temporal ontology governs the lecture course of SS 1924 on the "Ground Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy." The basic ain of the course is to understand some of Aristotle's ground concepts in their native growth out of the native soil from .which they sprang and continue to stand (Bodenstndigkeit). That native soil is the Greek language (Bodenstndigkeit der Begrifichkeit: _ GAl8: 15, 269f,' 340, 354). A glance at the Lexicon ofMetaphysics V shows .that Aristotle developed some- of the most basic terms of his philosophy by way of a renement of ordinary everyday Greek, the doxa of its language. The most important of the 30 concepts that Aristotlelists in his lexicon is the eighth, ousia, one of Aristotle's words for being. It is a word which since Parmerides, as Heidegger had just d_isc_overed in a major revolution and caesura in his own thought, means constant presence for the Greek "titans," Aristotle included. More specically, in the native soil of the Greek language, the word ousia nds its practical roots in the domestic domain of household goods, property (Habe, having), and real estate, Anwesen which in the German tellingly also means presence. In placing ousia rst in his philological analysis, Heidegger is here inaugurating his -own lifelong project of re-placing it, of displacing the ousiological elements of "being as having"_ and habit operative in the Greek xation upon the real estate of an eternal everlasting world. He Wants instead to translate these ousiological insights of Greek Dasein into the kairological language of a German Da-sein that never possesses itself but is always dispossessed,- thrown into the world temporarily, in this temporal situation never constant and static but ever ec-static, i. e., underway in its project toward life, and death. Heidegger goes to Aristotle's practical philosophy toclraw out the native soil and natural growth of Aristotle's insights into non-static temporal be-ing, "that which also can be otherwise." The life that repeatedlyencounters contingent ,changeable being proves to be the practical and political life of the living being possessive of speech. Since life always means being in a World, this means that the human being both occupies the world and is occupied by it practically, politically, and most basically, discursively. Understanding human being in its practical and political world accordingly has hearing, akouein, responsiveness to speech, as its most fundamental inode of perception (GA18:
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44). Aristotle's emphasis here on the primacy of hearing in understanding is striking, inasmuch as the model theoretical life will for him, by conirast, have the direct intellectual seeing of knowing, nous, as its most fundamental form of perception. This. nous is accordingly aneu logou, without speech, speechless,
. beyond language. Our analysis of SS 1924 here will be conned to highlighting some of the Greek-German rhetorical-political categories that arise inHeidegger's survey of Aristot1e's ground concepts. The Public Generic Anpne, Speech has the basic function of making a 'world manifest to one another and, in that conunuucative sharing, at once manitesting one's being-with-one-another in mutual accord and active concert, which accordingly is the locus of the political. What speech rst makes manifest politically is that I am one-among-many, the Anyone, das Man in an average' concrete being-with-one-another. This is not an ontic fact but an ontological howof-being. The true bearer of the peculiar universal of averageness called the Anyone is our language (GA18: 64). The domineering prevalence of the Anyone properly resides in language, in the prevalence of the self-evident "what one says" rst and foremost that the Greeks called doxa, opinion (73f), the usually tacit major premises of rhetoric., It at once points to the possibility of forms of' of a more developed being-inthe being-with-one-another authentically by way polis, that of hoi aristoi, the few who excel. As many readers of Being and Time ` " like Pierre Bourdieu have long suspected, das Man ho:` pollo, the many" _ . understood not as a loose sum of individuals but as a public kind of power of gapathy and indifference built into the repeatability of language, is the base-line category or "existential" of Heidegger's properly political ontology. And since political being-with is speaking-with, communication, sharing this public _ linguistic world with the other, a Mit-Teilung, the anonymous impersonal Anyone is= lil<ewise a starting category that denes an extreme limit of levelling, that of least common denominator with regard to how one "in general" or "on average" is (64), in .what might be called Heidegger's "rhetorical ontology,"35 since language itself is the proper locus and modus openmdi of the Anyone.. 'This "rhetorical-"political" realm of language that circurnscribes the self-evidence of public opinion (73) also provides the basis for the "universal validity" so indispensable for "agreement" in the objective sciences(64). But What "many" readers (Bourdieu, Marcuse}-';rendt)'of BT's politicalrhetorical ontology have not noticed is that Heidegger also fornally outlines a
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path out of the leveling mpersonal anonymity of the masses whereby a "beingwith-one-another in the same world. . in cornmunication and in struggle [Kampj]" (SZ 384, my_ emphasis of these twoprhetorical dimensions) nds its way to an authentc grouping by actualizing the historicalunigueness and selfidentity of its "folk community." In the leveling of its essentially general state (SZ300), the Anyone "itself" is not historical, just as the "masses" are rootless, homeless, and stateless, stripped of all uriqueness and credentials of historical identity. The everyday Dasein is innitely scattered in the average with-world and in the rnultiplicity of the surrounding world (SZ 129, 389). The groupngs of the Anyone are endlessly dispersed and manifold--businesses, circles, classes, professional associations, political parties, bowling clubs, robber bands-'-"such that no one stands With anyone else and no community stands with any other in the rooted unity of essential action. We are all servants of slogans, adherents to a program, but none is the custodian of the irner greatness of Dasein and its necessities. . The mystery is lacking in our Dasein. . .".36 The authentc grouping of being-with-one-another can never arise "from the ambiguous and jealous conspiracies and the garrulous factions of clans in the Anyone. . . Authentic withone-another rst arises from the authentc self-being of resolute openness" (SZ 298). The passage to authentc co-existence "in the rooted unity of essential _ action" proves to be a historical rite of passage to a concerted historical action in rst nding that one's 'own unique fate is inextricably rooted in the historical destiny of a unique historical people acting in community. "The fateful historical happening of unique Dasein as being-in-the-World is thereby a co-happening which is dened as dest-iny. This is how we dene the happening of a _ The power of destiny rst becomes free in community, of a people. _ comnunication and in struggle. The fateful destiny of Dasein in and with its 'generation' constitutes the full authentc historical happening of Dasein" (SZ 384f)._ (This historical authentication of a people acting in and for its unique community will become a central theme in Heidegger's second concept of the
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political.) Th_ePolitical Lifeas Historical. One way of exposing the essential historicity ofthe political life already in Aristotle, of Capturing the historical characters of that model life in medias rei publicae, is by contrasting it in its distinction from the life of pleasure on its one side andfthe theoretical life on its "higher" side: bios apolaustikos, bios polikos, bios theoretikos (GA18: 74-78). These three options of model human lives each offer their unique reward (good or telos)
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to the individuals who lead them. [But a focus on the personal goals of the stateman or politician should always keep in mind, in counterbalance, the communal goals of a polis, that of a being-with-one-another inthe world set upon fullling communal cares and practical concerns that range from economic distribution of functions and of wealth to social peace within the commonweal, all of which tend telically toward the closure of communal- self-sufciency. The public discussion, in its orientaton toward communal goals, seeks therefore to discrirninate the useful from the inexpedient, the tting from the improper, the just from the unjust. 'The propriety of these distinguishing judgments vis-~vis an ever-uid historical situation is the measure of the prudent statesman and public speaker.] -. _ The goal of 'the individual political life, in conixast tothe narrow selfsatisfaction of the life of pleasure, is m, honor, eudoxon, a good reputation, a recognition amplecl in and by the doxa of Shining in the splendor and glory of public esteern, like Schlageter through his death, Rektor I-Ieidegger's commitment to the Nazi cause, Arendt's beginners making their debut in the public "space of appearance," say, by peaceful demonstrations against a war in Iraq. Dependent as it is on the public opinion of the many, it is just as temporal and temporary as the temporally particular situation (kairoi) that our politicianrhetor must address and judge in the crisis of krinein, discriminating judgment. Of the three life-styles that Arstotle examines, only the political life manifests the full temporality of the unique human situation in its momentous decision that is the ultimate focus of Heidegger's own protopractical ontology of historical being, of that be-ing "which can also be otherwise." The constancy of presence achieved by the life of theoretical contemplation is matchecl in its constancy at the other extreme by the constant state of well-being that comes from just being alive that Aristotle identies as the very background as well as telos of the life of pleasure, and calls a natural and normal settled state of katastasis. T-hat is why pleasure as a ground stasis of well-being is ultimately not a pathos, like the ek-stasis of fear that charges the speech situation of deliberations over war and peace. For emotions move and thus make 'fr history; pathos by Aristotle's lexical denition is intrinsically upsetting and peace-disturbing, even revolutionary in its historical impact. Only the political life in Aristotle's scheme takes a look, in its measured Greek way, at the full tumult of life in motion that Heidegger was witnessing as a matter of course in postwar Germany and wished toanake central in his own iasteady state of seeing that is temporal ontology. No pain, no history. Instead of
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theoretical contemplation, Heidegger takes us squarely to its historical genesis in the aporetic shock that startles its interrogation and initiates the movement of search and research, the movement of human history. _ Modes of and Trust Persuasion (_ Truth). Heidegger nds Equiprgimordial the same historical qualities in Aristotle's book on rhetoric, where the gem-es of speeches explored involve cases of ordirary speech "exponentialized" (GA18: 110) by crisis down to their most incipient interrogative moments. Aristotle's Rhetoric is for Heidegger accordingly a hermeneutics of everydayness in crisis, of being with one another in an everydayness that has been radically disturbed and thus exposed, in its structures, for ready ontological examination. Greek Dasein, understood as a public life of human speech, is being translated into 'the analytic of Da-sein understood as a situated being in historical transit subject to abrupt transition, meiabols. Tocomplete the circle of translating from Greek 1:0 German Da-sein, Heidegger at times reads his own hermeneutic emphasis and sense of Dasein back into the Dasein of the politician-rhetor and Greek audience confronting their particular situation of "that which also can be otherwise." Greek rhetoric's three modes of persuasion, pathos, ethos, logos, that structure the speech situation thereby become close kin to the three modes of "being-in" and _ disclosedness of the human situation: disposedness, understanding, discursivity. The exploration of this equiprimordial trio of the truth/ trust in Heidegger's rhetorical ontology of SS 1924 will conclude our necessarily brief summary of the rich lode of ontological insight incorporated in that lecture course. If hearing belongs properly to the auditor, it is also-a component of the rhetor rst having to "size up" the critical speech situation in which all in c ommon nd themselves. The skilled rhetor is at once pltrojimos, a statesman whose keen responsiveness to the crisis situation generates prudent counsel approprateto the common situation of action. The rhetor demonstrates his mettle by demonstrating phronesis (practical Wisdom, prudence) or resolute openness to the demands exacted by the situation of action, which in one formula in Being and Time is characterized as the capacity to listen to (heed, hear) the call of (comrnunal) conscience. Being able to hear is the other side of speech, in a Way of being possessed by speech. One allows something to be said to oneself by the authentic other functioning as the conscience of the community. In practical life, one rst listens not so much to learn to receive some directive for concrete practical concern, to heed it. This is themost rudimentary type of understanding, found on the level of orexis, the lifeyof desire, care, and concern.
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And care is deeply ensconced in the life of pathos, mood. The cultivation of the appropriate mood 'of the auditor by the skilled speaker, so that the attentive listener will then speak With the speaker by speaking after him (Nachreden) in-__ conta-gious attunement, suggests that speech nds its deepest roots in mood (GA18: 177).'Discourse is not only rational, but irnpassioned, or better, passional in its rationalty. We need only add the third mode of persuasion to completethe speech situation at its roots. As Heidegger puts it, "ethos and the pathe are constintive oflgein itself" (165). There is an "equiprimordiality," convertibility, thus interchangeability of the basic terms of conviction, trust, and condence that dene the speech situation, thos, logos (rst 'as doxa, enthumema), and pathos. This also' entails aninterchangeability of the roles ofspeaker and-auditor: _ the speaker is rst auditor to himself (his "conscience"), the auditor. already speaks simply by auditing. As Heidegger puts it in Being and Time, attuned silence may well be the most authentic form of speaking. The not-yet-speech of hearing, the receptive tension of listening to speech becomes the receptivity of the discoverer to the never-before-said about the world, a self-receptivity of listening to oneself speak and being-spoken-to, or in more Christian terms, of listening to the silent call of one's own conscience. After all, Aristotle himself suggested this direction into the not-yet-logos of ignorance and silence in his analysis of the practical speech situation as an appeal to the passions and the call to future action, to the unspoken dimensions of the human psyche, the alogon of orexis (desire, care) which in its responsiveness to the logos is itself a kind of _ speech (GA18: 105). This relation becomes important in translating the counseling dianoetic virtues into the actional "ethical"- virtues that the speaker, armed only with the power of words, must incite. What then does the speaker as speaker bring to the speech situation? To ethos is the general bearing of the person, how one presents oneself, the gure one cuts. In the Aristotelian context, it is usually translated as the "character" of the speaker, judged to be appropriate or not in this speech situation of judgment and action, persuasive or not by and for his audience. One listens as much to the ethos as to the words of the speaker. This bearing and derneanor, comportment and attitude, this be-having, this manner of holding oneself in the world with and toward .others is to ethos (GA18: 68,106). As a-demeanor, it might be described as being or at least appearing to be "savvy,_solid, and politic," where . the speaker is seen todisplay "good sense, goodness,'and good will" (GA18: 16537 As a 9). Way of comporting oneself to the worlclitbears on the question of
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'deliberate choice, or better, pre-choice, proairesis, a fundamental option in polity and policy that constitutes the very purpose of the speech. In Heideggers ontological framework, ethos in its display of conviction translates into the particular resolve (En-tschlossensein) manifested by the speaker in his speech, and the way he attempts to bring others to the same resolution regarding the current situation of action, the kairos, this moment of decision in polity and policy (171, 176, 180, 183, 189). And resoluteness is the receptive response to the call of conscience in the Heideggerian framework. To follow up in this framework, then, the politician-statesman projects himself as the authentic conscience for the other, through his prescient insight leaping ahead in order to liberate the particular other. More inauthentically, at the other extreme of how one is for the other, he leaps in and dorninates the other (SZ 122, 298). _ And what is rhetoric itself, in this framework of resolute response to the call of conscience? It is rst of all not an art but a power, dunams. Not immediately the power of persuasion, as the sophists would have it, but rather the cultivated power of situational insight, phronesis, of being able to see/ hear/ feel, in a temporally particular situation of action, what speaks for the matter at issue, "j_e nach dem" (GA18: 114)-9). Ethos translated as personal character thus nds deeper roots in the interpersonally shared situation of action to which it must be receptive. Only the later Heidegger will perform the middlevoiced turn on this "mode of persuasion," from having tobeing-had by the situation, that he had earlier performed on logos_and pathos. It is the later I-Ieidegger's turn from human being to the situation of being itself. Here, Heidegger can appeal to the older I-Ieraclitean sense of ethos as 1) haunt, abode, and accustomed place, therefore as 2) custom, usage (Brauch), the habit of ahabitat, the tradition Which articulates, restrains, sustains, and guides the "character" of al speaker as well as the "be-having" of a people ("German Da-sein") and nourishes its resolve. Accordingly, ethos is 3) the history and destiny of a people in its shared actional topoi, which pregure and prescribe patterns of behavior, its ways of having and holding and taking possession of itself. If the human being is distinguished from the animal by being the shaper and cultivator of worlds for dwelling, this cultivation is achieved bybeing responsive to the aura of usage, the ways and rnores that belong to a particular place and come to us in the logoi of fables and myths developed over time and history. This is not
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where one stands and what one stands for, the conviction of a person with regard to polity and policy. In the deliberative speech, the speaker projects a
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as arch-conservative as it sounds, when we couple it with a sense of being that is always that which "also can be otherwise," especially in the generational
which we in particular now happen to be thrown, like our character and destiny: the authoritarian-militaristic ethos of Germanys in the twenties and thirties, the
exchange at the core of historicity (SZ 385f). Itis something that happens to us from the tradition towhich we happen to belong, from the historical context into
democratic ethos of America in the forties and fties, Heidegger's romanticized work' ethic of peasant building and dwelling, ]ifnger's heroic ethos combining the hard and earthy military life with technological weaponry of destruction and Nietzschean Dionysianism, the ethos of civic discourse as opposed to _ propaganda rhetoric typically coupled with threats of force, or' the tonalities of
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__ "political correctness" now in currency. The later l-Ieidegger's move is simply a further reminder that rhetoric's three modes of persuasion are rst of all highly intercalated contexts that subtly move and guide us in our situational decisions: thecleeply rooted mores and customs of a country looming as a fatality, the sustaining resonance of its language, the mood of the times forced by circumstances of crisis..The intercalated mediating milieus of community, language, and historically particularzed mood (e.g. modern versus postmodern) delimit the contexts out of which we can come to better understand the developing persuasions displayed in the cases we have been following for only a short stretch, the notorious case of Heidegger in the twenties and thirties, and Venfant terrible Hannah Arendt caught up in the postwar polemics over the nature of politics in a post-totalitarian age.
The Metontological Polis of NS. The two basic existentials of this conceptof the political, a people and its state, are conrected as beings to their political be-ing by the crucial political act of historical decision (phronesis) of the human beings who as a people decide for the state appropriate to its unique tradition (ethos) and freely unite to support and maintain it. The model of "national socialism" as the basis of organization for that state nds its immediate precedent in the "front communityf' of World War I, when Germans from all European regions and dialects spntaneously united to defend themselves on the battle front and at the home front. University Rector Heidegger sees his role in the educational service within this worker state of tluee services (labor, defense, knowledge), based on the Fhrer principle according to the German tradition of the two Reichs preceding the Third Reich, to be that of political educator of the "guardians"
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when it aims to actualize the will of another or of an entire group, a community of will, a people's will. It is a people's will, which is not a mere sum of individual
wills, that a leader has to contend with and carry out. There are two ways of carrying out such a Will, either by persuasion or by coercion. _
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( i )who, as future leaders of the nation in whatever profession they had chosen at the university, would be called upon to assist the Fhrer and share in the responsibility for the state. Such a political education would impart a . knowledge the people and the state destined by its tradition that would facilitate each individual to come to meaningful terms with their particular selfresponsibility for the people and their state. "The state now rests upon our watchfulness and readiness and upon our life. Our way of be-ing [our ethos] marks the be-ing of the state. [Accordingly] our task in this historically decisive moment (kairos) includes the cultivation of, and reeducation in, the idea of the state. Each man and woman must learn that their individual lives decides the clestiny of the people and the state, supports or rejects it.'*33 The emphasis on human decision as the core and well-spring of the _ political suggests that it is "will-power" that founds, sustains, and rules the state and carries' o.ut its tasks. First the will of a people, then, through their acknowledgrnent, the will of the. leader (Fhrer) or leaders, and, by abstract extension, "the will of the state" enorcing itself by ruling, administerng, and other organizational actions bent on maintaining and restoring order. Heidegger's use of German idealism's vocabulary of the will is conditoned by his understanding of the will in terms of Aristotle's political virtue, phronesis. Will is a striving that puts itself into action by engaging in the pursuit of the goal dictated by the situation with a clear sense of the means needed to actualize that goal. "The will deliberatively grasps the situation in the fullness of its' time, in it the kairos is at work, calling for resoluteness and action in the full sense." Action is practically technical When it aims to actualize a thing, and practically moral
of
forceful style of "propagandizing" (Trommelnder), suchen impression is but an unconscious acknowledgement of the power of speech that the Greeks had already uncovered politically [in the pisteis of rhe_to"rical politics: cf. above]. But
Persuasion can occur through speech or through deeds._ The Greeks in particular recognized the power of speech as a political power. Their politicalinstinct made the persuasive power of the speech into a paradigm of politics, as in the unforgettable speeches of Thucydides. If nowadays the speeches of the Fhrer give the impression of "drumming" their points across, in his inimitably
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the active will "persuades" most forcefully through deeds. The doer of deeds and the man of action_is at once acknowledged as the "power in authority," the "ruler," whose Dasein and will is determining through "persuasion," i.e. through acknowledgment bygthe people of the superior governing will of the Fhrer. True rule manifests true knowledge of the goal-I-the Wisdom of a statesman (phronimos)--along with engagement--the active leap toward its realization--and the perseve-ance, the staying power, to bring this commitrnent of action to its
conclusion.
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True effectuation of such a governing will does not come by the dictatorial coercion of commands and orders but by awakening the same willing in the other, i.e. commitment .to the same goal and its fulllment. It in effect brings about the re-creation of the others into accord with the mood and temper of the ruling will. It comes about not by way of a momentary yes-saying but by way of a sustained decision on the part of the individual. Important here is not the number of individuals but the qualitative value of .each individual decision. This is the Way in which the present requirement of "political education" is to be understood: it is not a matter of learning maxims, opinions, and forms "by heart," but of creating a new fundamental attitude of a willful kind.39 The will of the leader, through his persuasiveness, rst of all re-creates the others into a following out of Which a community arises. lt is from this vital solidarity of followers to leader that the will to mitual sacrice and service arises, and not from sheer Obedience and institutional coercion. Political education is a superlative form of the effectuation of the will of the leader and of the state's will, which is the peop1e's will. Other forms of putting the will of the state into effect, like the administration of governance and of justice, follow from the will of the people on its way to becoming a leader state (Fhrerstaat). The highest actualization of the human being happens in the state. The leader statecthat we have sig-nies a completion of historical development in our tradition: the actualzation ofthe people in the leader. The Prussian state as it was brought to completion under the tutelage of the Prussian nobility was the preliminary form of the present state. This relationship generates the elective afnity and congeniality that prevailed between_Pruss_iandom and the leader. We come from this great tradition and stand in it when We confess to its sense in the words of the royal elector, spoken in the spirit of Luther: "Si gestamus principatus ut sciam rem esse populi non meam privfatarff To assume the mantle
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of leadership is for us to understand that the affairs the people of are not my private affair."
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The Archaipc_Prepolit-ical Polis. Heidegger tacitly expresses his growing disenchantment with a Fhrer turning from statesmanlike to coercive ways to "persuade" his following and with a "total state" bent on coerciv_ely politicizing (the phrase is an oxymoron for Heidegger and a at-out contracliction for Arendt) all walks of life -public and private, allowing no room for the independent counsel of his educated coterie of guardians, by Way of _a reduction, in of the to a begun 1935, polis prepolitical originarity that is the source of not only the political but alsothe philosophical, poetic, religious, and other creative human endeavors. In the context of the tragic phronesis of the conict between family piety and royal edict in Sophocles's Antigone, Heidegger observes that polis is not me_rely a geographically located state (Staat) or city (Stadt) but, more basically, an historical site (Sttte) virtually identical with the ontological site of historical Da-sein in which a unique humankind (e.g. Greek being-here, German being-there) "takes place" (statt-ndet, statt-hat), is "granted stead" (gestattet = permitted), and in this "leeway'-' (Spielraum) of allottecl time and historical place makes its unique "homestead" (Heimstatt) betting its historical destiny. This _ historical site of Da-sein is the "pole" (polus) of the polis, from which human beings receive their orienting stance and status in a state and acquire their unique stature in each of their historical instantiatins. This "'politics' in the supreme and authentic sense" thus takes place at the supreme site of radical historical transition displayed by the Greek tragedy, which glosses the oxymororic status othe tragic heroine (Antigone) as hypsipo_l's apolis, at once far beyond and without home and site, unhomely, lone-some, un-canny, singled out for lofty greatness in creating a new home for her people, as well as for the precipitous destructon which was also the fate of I~Ieideg'ger's more contemporary heroes: Hlderlin, Nietzsche, van Gogh, and Schlageter. Aroundthis core of history, the Da-sein as polis, not only statesmen and thinkers, but also poets and prophets are gathered together in unity and in lonely, untimely, tragic, and contentious dialogue. Politicians (or better, statesmen) are not the only creators of the polisand so of the political. Especially in the "land of poets and thinl<ers," I-Ilderlin's "fatherland," politics nds its 0ri_giI1_S in P0eriZng and thinking. "It is from these two prior activities that the Dasein of a people is made
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fully effective as a people through the state [which is the locus of] politics [in the _ proper sense]."4 _ It is from this archaic vantage of originary Da-sein that Heidegger now criticizes the Nazi claim of the totalitarian character of the political. "These [Nazi] enthusiasts are now sudderly dscovering the 'political' everywhere. . . . But the polis cannot be dened 'po1itica1ly.' The polis, and precisely it, is therefore not a 'political' conbept. . . Perhaps the name polis is precisely the word for that realm that constantly became questionable anew, remained worthy of question, and necessitated certain decisions whose truth on each occasion displaced the Greeks into the groundless or the naccessible."41 Aristotle saw clearly that man is a _ political animal because he is the animal possessed by speech. But he did not see the full uncanniness that membership in the polis brings, far outstripping the rhetorical as well as the political of a people's state. Hlderlin's poetic words, "Since we are a conversation/ and can hear from one another" refer to the thoughtful dialogue among solitary creators (poets, thinkers, statesmen) at the very abysses of be-ing. Language here isthe original institution of being in the violent words of poetic origin and not just a means of communication for the sake of quick and easy agreement, rhetoric. The community of creators is a combative community of struggle over the extreme issues of be-ing. I-Iearing from one another, listening to one another, reciprocally nvolves radically placing each other in question over the radical issues at stake. Rapprochement here is contention, contestation, war, pole-mos. Coming to an understanding is combat. "Conversation here is not communication, but the fundamental happening ofradical exposure inthe thick of beings."42 _
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ARENDT RE-MARKS HEIDEGGER'S THREE CONCEPTS OF THE POLITICAL

Arenlt's
Public Space of Doga as Rhetorical.,It is not 'clear whether Arendt in
her "Marburg years"_ (1924-26) ever had access to any of the circulated student transcripts of the SS 1924 course on Aristotle's ground concepts, from which she could have gleaned, as We have done, Heidegger's phenomenological- rhetorical conceptioniof the protopolitics of the speech situation. But her own work on what can only be called the "protopolitics" of the "human condition" isclearly marked by the uniquely phenomenological approach the Greek polis to which she had been exposed during herisojourn in Marburg." Aristot1e's Rhetoric is one of the Greek "political writings" from which she sometirnes draws to make
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her own protopolitical points, notably in her repeated distinction between the solitary singular ig which philosophy has traditionally done its thinking and the political plural between which public communication takes place and generates its political arena ofaction. Traditional philosophy tends to speak of "man" in the singular, as if there were such a thing as a single human nature. This impression is conveyed by the genus-species structure of Aristotle's famous denitions of man, even as the early Heidegger interprets them, despite his growing sense of the "temporal particularity" (le-weiligkeit) of Da-sein, which is "in each instantiation mine." Politics, however, does not arise Q man as political animal but between humans, as its very space. Arendt thus interprets the equiprimordiality of denitons of man with this plirality of individuals and public space of interchange in mind; "that man is zoon polikpn and logon echon, that insofar as he is political he has- the faculty of speech, the power to understand, to make himself understood, anl_to persuade."43 To understand by listening to the speech, topersuade by speech,these are the powers of "the highest, the truly political art... rhetoric"44 cultivated by free men in the Greek polis, whose institutionalized speeches are recorded and formally analyzed by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. But Arendt's phenomenology of the speech situation is even more orginary and protopolitical, reaching back to the "gi-ass-roots politics" of impromptu voluntary associations that arise spontaneously even before institutionalized representative assemblies and rudimentary judicial systems are in place, thus to spontaneous communications within "town meetings (nowadays peaceful`street demonstrations) that are less hierarchically structured than an authority addressing an auditorium, whose _ spontaneous occurrences are then preserved and memorialized in more inforrnal stories than the epideictic speech. On the other hand, Arendt does stress the need for at least an implicit "judicial" pre-structure of laws (e. g., granting the right to assemble and demonstrate) that serve at once to bound and to allow the open "space of appearance in which public speaking and' acting can "take place." The Human Condition (HC) is by Arendt's admission a critical _ appropriation of Heidegger's Daseinsanalytic that she rst Iearned from his lecture courses, seminars, ancl more private tutorials in her three semesters at the University of Marburg. The Heideggerian anti-metaphysical stress on the facticity/ contingency 'of the "human condition," its l_),a-,sein--as opposed to anything like a human nature--is overt in HC 's analysis of the three levels of human activities in the World: of labor in the private sphere of thehousehold,
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work in the environing world of things, and action in the interhuman world (Mitwelt) where I from birth already nd myself thrown together with others (Figure 6). HC reaches its climax in Arendt's uniquedeveloprnent of Heidegger's concept of the Mitwelt, of being together with others, that will yield her unique concept of the political. What she does is simply to radicalize Heidegger's occasional use. of the plural "'otherS" with which the self from the start nds itself, and articulate its full implications. The basic Facts of human plurality and natalityconstitutes for Arendt "the facticity of the entire world of human affairs." One therefore begins with how human beings in their full particularity are in fact situated together in their life-world. Pluralityjs specicallv thgindispensable enabling] condition (...) of all political life (HC 7)"Politics is based on the fact of the plurality of human beings. Politics thus has to organize and regulate the being-together of different and not equal beings" (WP I_I). But despite their essential differences, human beings share equally in the capacity for mutual cormnunication. This- equality of mutuality implies that humans spontaneously engage in non-sovereign relationships with each other. If pluralig sggies persgnal uniquengss, equality enablies community, no more and no less than a political community of unique individuals. It is not in man as political animal but between or among humans, as its very space, that politics arises. FREEDOM. What in fact arises in this public space between humans is freedom and spontaneity. "The very content and sense of politics is freedom" (WP 52, III). In this public space, freedom "is not a concept but a living political reality" (MDT 81), a mode of be-ing proper to this public realm and not, for example, to a clandestine faculty called free will. Freedom is a state of being [that is] manifest in action andnot as a free will independent from others." Freedom is not secreted from some occult faculty, but appears precisely in the lnbetween of the public realm as "aworldly reality, tangible in Words that can be heard, in deeds that can be seen, and in events that can be talked about, remembered, and turned irto stories before they are nally incorporated into the _ great storybook of human history" (BPF 154f.). . ACTION. Freedom is a state of be-ing that manifests itself in action, the political activity par excellence (HC 9). By word and deed we insert ourselves into the
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human world." For the sake of an important recuring distinction, it is worth citing in its entirety the powerful passage in The Human Condition in .wliich Hannah Arendt recounts
this second birth of making our debut in the world '_b)_/word and deed: This insertion
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is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse spings from the begiming which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on om own initiative. To act in its most general sense_rear_s.to take afnninitiative, to
177). This more individual initiative might be called the prgpolilggl sense of acting, which paves the way for the more political sense. For inasmuch as it may be stimulated by the presence of others whose
begin, (...) t_o__set__something
into motion
company we may wish to join," to act in ,another sens.e__mea;s toact__in concert (Burke), together with others. To act here means to a_ct in a web of reiationshps
which consists, of ,theactions and desires of others." While the freedom to start something, to make a new begiming, is a spontaneity arising from the individual, and is accordingly a pre-political spontaneityjf the freedom to talk _to each other needs as a basic condition the interconnection with other human beings and thus involves a different
kind of freedom, which is made possible only by way of the prior web of human relationships (WP 51). The latter is the more purely political spontaneit.
I
This distinction mirrors another distinction
in action:
Action understood as
beginning corresponds to the fact of birth and as speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness (HC 178). Spontaneity is to be free, to begin,_to lead, to take the initiative.
It is in the public space of plurality that new beginnings and new initiatives are possible: each new birth inaugurates a new voice which can spontaneously initiate new actions and
manifest its virtuosity before others. Natality thus introduces Spontaneity into the public space of politics. This is politics in action, its veritable praxis. Politics is the free
disclosure of self through words and deeds, to one's equals in the public realrn of inter-esse, of being together in the In-Between.
Spontaneity is freedom of movement through the leeway provided by the public space. The freedom of movement that in fact comes from this public space, is
granted by the very character of this space, gassumes two forms: 1) the aforementioned freedom to begin something nevtr and unprecedenteci, the _-
freedom of initiative that comes from the natalitycf being-there; 2) the freedom _ 3
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to move among the many and speak with them, thus to experience the many, which in their totality is in each instantiation the world that we share in common,
about which we speak and exchange our perspectives with one another and opinions against one another. This is the freedom of speech and urimpeded
communication with others ("the many") in expressing our opinions about the actual world in which we live and which we share in common. The freedom to
express' opinions is "the right to hear others' opinions and to be heard in return."
This second freedom, "which became crucial for the organization of the polis, distinguishes itself from the freedom peculiar to action, the freedom to posit a
newbeginning, in that it is dependent to a far greater degree on the presence of

others and being confronted with their opinions" (WP 48~52).
speech, the polis is superbly the public space of freedom, "the realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are talked about, remembered, and turned into stories before they are nally incorporated into the great storybook of human history" (BPF 154f). , Arendt tends to call this public space of themany the "space of . appearance," of dokein or doxa in the twofold Greek sense of "opinion" and
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Constituted by this twofold sense by the freedom of action and freedom of
"spIendor, fame, repute,"45
Ansicht and Ansehen in the German, of how things look to me and how I look toothers, my "public image." This double sense immediately recalls two of the equiprimordial dimensions of persuasion (condence, trust/ truth) that Aristotle identied in the rhetorical speech situation, namely, the doxic content of the speech itself and the ethos of the speaker himself, how he presents himself in the judgment of his audience. At rst, "space of appearance" referred almost exclusively to the domain where "I go public" and "make an appearance," "make m Ydebut, have mYcomin3-out Pa-1Y ," as it were. The Greeks established the
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polis to multiply the opportunities for every free man "to distinguish himself, to show in deed and word who he was in his unique distinctness" and thus to win
"imrnortal fame," or ignoble shame (HC 197; also 199, 204, 208, 220). A sister New Yorker and friend of Arendt, Mary McCarthy, provides a`-'ultra-modern example of this "theater" of appearance: "Through politics, men reveal not their skill or
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their products [of work] but themselves in their words and actions, held up to admiration orlcontempt in the free open space of the agora or forum--a tradition still maintained in the open-air "forums" of Union Square and Hyde Park. The desire to achieve glory and everlasting remembrance through conspicuous deeds and words has shrunk, however, in modem times, to the right to "blow off steam"--the most evanescent thing there is."4 Nevertheless, a major way in which I show myself inthepublic space, there to be seen -and heardby others, is in the expression of opinions. This dimension of doxa multiplies the public world into a vast manifold of appearances (doxai), a pluralized "space of appearanceS" that sometimes threatens to reach anarchic proportions. Each person assumes a position toward the world in accord with _ their particular position in it, and the political realm clegenerates into a "battleeld of partial, coricting interests, where nothing counts but pleasure and prot-, partisanship, and the lust for dominion" _ _ (BPF 263). When this agonal spirit took over, the Greek polis became "an intense and uninterrupted contest of all against all" and the domestic life of its citizens Were poisoned with the pathos of mutual hatred and envy, "the national vice of ancient Greece." This agonal spirit eventuallyrbrought the Greek city-states to ruin, which in this atmosphere of enmitywere incapable of forming saving alliances. As an antidote to this ultimate threat to the comnonweal, Aristotle recommends friendship as the real bond of community and a political virtue more basic than justice (so in Platols Politeia), which is no _longer necessary among friends. Friendshipmakes citizens equal partners in a common world of lateral relations and dispenses with the sovereign hierarchical relations of rulership. In the friendly dialogue between equal but radically different persons, one comes to understand the other's point of view to the point of seeing the world as the other in fact sees it,'by entering into the other's unique opening onto the world. Doxa here is no mere subjective illusion or sophistic distortion, but rather a "true opinion," and therefore an insight, partial as it may be, into the very reality of the common world that constitutes ou1_rc0mmunity.47 Such a community of free communication and interchange of opinion among friends, among mutually respected equals who are at once very different and "other" (often an "exile" become "alien resident"), may sound a bit utopianArendt notes that one prerequisite for such a commurtiqr Would be that each and in its truthfulness and every citizen "be articulate enough to show his opinion , therefore to understand his fellow citzens"43 -but t s precsely such
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corrununities that Arendt discovered in the forties and fties in New York intellectual circles centerecl around a particular magazine of public opinion, like Dwight Macdona1d's short-lived radical magazine, politics, the small but interrelated cluster of periodicals for which Arendt herself was recruited to 'T contribute her uniquely European perspective on current events, thus "making her appearance" on the pages of Commentary, Commonweal, Partisan Review, The New York Review of Books, etc. These "oases of freedom" and enclaves of participatory democracyrconstitute the very models that exemplify her phenomenology of protopolitical communities of spontaneous democracy, in which consensus is established by lateral and not hierarchical relationships. The public realm is formed by spontaneous associations like town meetings and voluntary neighborhood associations- that constitute the very cells of participatory democracy. "Some public interest concerns a specic group of people, those in a-neighborhood or even in just one house or in a city or in some other sort of group. These people will then convene, and. they are very capable of acting publicly in these matters, for they have an overview of them."49 When the public matter at hand is resolved, they disband and dissolve back 'into their neighborhood life, only to reform into another public forum in the next _ community crisis. Who we are is thus disclosed in such public convenings in the company of others, in the discharge of our responsibility to others, in the inbetweenness of being-for-the-sake-of-others. Traditional philosophy's sovereign self, cut off from the shared humanity of human beings, is replaced by the person disclosed in action and speech in the face of others. . . But what about representative democracy in the space of appearances and often opposing opinions? Arendt invokes the "enlarged mentality" multplicity of of cosmopolitan "common sense" to guide the prudential judgments of the phronetic statesman who is delegated to represent the views of the entire body politic. This is the common sense that assumes an interpersonal universality for the cosmopolitan Kant, as "a sense common to all a faculty ofjudgment which, in its retlection, takes account of the mode of representation of all other rnen."5 lt is the moral mperative of acting in such a way that your principle of action can become a (Clistributively universal law: whenever of us acts ratonally, legislate for all of humanity. Common sense is the ability to look beyond one's own point of view and see things from the perspective ofall involved. The outstanding _virtue of the statesman is to understand `tlle"g_1-eatest number of _ divergent realities "as these realities open themselves up to the various opinions
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of citizens" and to communicate between the citizens and their opinions in order to bring out the reality of the common world that they share with o_thers.51 Common sense is therefore the "good sense" of the statesman, in making his judgments and decisions, to look to the non-subjective and, in this sense, "objective" world that we share in common. It entals the "good will" to listen to others in order to reveal the full sense of this "sharing-the-world-withothers" as it bears on the statesman's decisions torepresent the fullest possible constituency. It may still not be the most pragmatic decision, but representaiive thinking is clearly a practice carried out between humans in communication with one another rather than a performance of a single individual who in his selfchosen solitude has "lost touch" with his fellow humans and is no longer oriented to their common world. The cosmopolitan ethos of Kant specied for any moral and for the statesman thus With the ethos of the agent especially converges political speaker detailed by Aristotle into the character traits of "good sense, good will, goodness."52 The application of these character traits of common sense and humanity have no less currency for the contemporary statesman who must adjudicate the often contradictory advice of "expert opinion" with the "common good" in making even more complexdecisions of competing national and humanitarian interests at the millennium, like "Hiroshima," the "Cuban missile crisis," and "911-01" (EU 21).
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The Totalitari_an.Devastation ofgthe Political. Arendt, the thinker of the "origins of totalitarianism," never directly addressed Heidegger's brief but fateful commitmentto National Socialism and was probably unaware of the full ontological conceptuality in Which that political commitment was philosophically justied. But what she did know of that conceptuality from the published record led her to surmise just where Heidegger's thought had become infected with one of the bacilli of NS-totalitarianism, fo1l<ish'nationalism;
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In order to cover over his early solipsistic existentialism, in which the authentic Self distances itself from the public Anyone so radcally that it departs the common world shared With fellow humans and is now " "representai1`ve of no one but itself, Heidegger "later brings in, almost as an afterthought, mythologizing confusions like Folk and Earth in order to supply his isolated Selves with a shared commdn ground, a kind of social foundation. It' is evident that such muddle_dj`concepts can only lead us out
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of philosophy and into some nature-oriented superstition [like the primal myth of the autochthony (Bodenstndigkeit) ofalanded gen_try,_ of a _ peasant folk rooted in the earth from which they. rst sprang and which thus constitutes their native grouncll. If it does not belong to the concept of man that he already inhabits the earth together with others of his kind, [the only thing left] is a mechanical reconciliation of atomized selves in a common ground alien to their nature. This results in an organization of selves intent on willing themselves into an Overself inorder somehow to make the transition from guilt, accepted in resoluteness, to action.53 Arendt's char-acterization of a people as a mechanical .organization of atomized selves is of course a caricature that smacks of some of her characterizations of mass m a n prone to subjugation by atotalitarianism, to which we now turn. Against this backdrop, we shall then return to the terms of her critque of _ Heidegger's apparent "national socialism."
'
"
Totalitarianism began its experiment of total domination by seeking to totally "polticize" every domain of life for consolidation into the total state,'(Carl Sclunitt's term in 1931). in doing so, it ended by rendering null and void any sense of the political whatsoever, certainly in any non-violent human sense, demonstrating the truth of the statement, "If everything is political, then nothing is political." nthe
.
contrary, with totalitarianism, everything becomes anti-political as well as anti-social, by way of the systematic destruction of the very bases of the political, social, and private realms. For what it gystematicallv destrovs is the verv In-Bet\veena_n1g;g_hgn,_a_n beingg, as its _iron band- presses
nasses ofnen" ever more closelv together and so
tota lly
destrovs thespace of movement between
men that makes _the_p_olitieal, social, and private sphe-es possible. With the destruction of the Between of plurality, every experience of companionship is rendered mpossible, be it political, social or private.
Isolated and lonely. the individual is rendered thoroughly speechlessand humanly immobile, thoroughly
impotent both politically and privately, and thoroughly volated in his humanity. Totalitarianism, through its terror and total domination, is a total depolitization, desocialization and deprivatization of human life, in
which speech, action, and humanity become utterly impossible.
'
Totalitari.n's experiment of total domination became possible only aer the social and political Industrial created the masses of humanity that provided the raw upheavals of the Revolution, which ~. . . material needed to feed the power-accumlating and man-destroying machinery of total dominaton (OT
311). For totalitarianism's Systematic destruction of human qualities- had already begun with the experience of modem masses," who experience their superuityor an overcrowded earth," and the
world as a place where senselessness is daily produced anew",-(OT 457). The masses are in fact
_
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44
constituted of isolated individuals livingl in a state of affairs where people live together without having anything in ,comrnom withottsharinggsome visible tangible realm, of the world" (EU 356f`) living in "spiritual and social homelessness (OT 352) and completely uprooted," The rnasses thus have
no place in the world recognized and guaranteed by others" (OT 475), which makes them willing and ready candidates for entry into the stream of historical necessity (OT 220), the sole political," albeit
reactive, act le to them.
'
Massication became a common experience ae' the central institutions, the nation-state and the class system, collapsed, .resulting not' merely in the isolation of individuals but at once in an atomization of society. When the world no longer provided human beings with a place to live, they became a nonpeoplef' a caricature of the people understood as an actual political body capable of exercising its one power of acting in concert (EU 357). A non-people is constituted by isolated individuals' in an atomized society. The instrument of isolation for both tyranny and totalitarianism is'te-ror. Te rror rules all
relationships between men, rendering them politically inpotent, Since they are unable to act in concert, unable to act together. Isolation is that impasse intoiwhich men are driven when the political sphere of
their lives, where they act together in the pursuit of a common concern, is destroyed (OT 474). The total terror of the terror-ruled movement of totalitarianism goes one crucial step further than tyranny, its iron band presses masses of isolated men" even more closely together and destroys the space of movement
between men in the social and private spheres as well. Isolation then becomes loneliness, throwing me in a situation in which i as a person feel myself deserted by all human companionship (OT 474). Under the conditions of total terror, one feels oneself subject to dentuciation and betrayal even by memberspf one's own family, one is no longer free to express one's mind even at home, for the bonds of mutual trust in the
intimate spheres of the household have collapsed. One feels oneself utterly alone in a world where nobody is reliable and nothing can be relied upon (OT 478). This is the novelty of totalitarianism, the form of
government" even more extreme than tyranny, and rst emerging in the
organized loneliness" (478) of robotic functionaries atomized by ten'or

!
20 centuryts nal goal is the into complete subjugation to the
'
System.
The systematic thoroughness of the measures taken to achieve this goal of clehumanization is most
clearly seen i.n the operations of the concentration camps (corpse factories [OT 459], annihilation camps, holes of oblivion"). Arendt describes such 'camps' as laboratores in the experiment of total domination
(EU 240). Total domination is acheved, she goes on, when the human person, who somehow is always a specic mixture of spontaneity and being conditioned, has been transformed into a completely conditioned being whose reactions can be calculated even when he is led to certain death." This -process of
disintegrating the personality, of tuming it into a bundle of reliable reactions," is achieved in three
intercalated stages:
1. destruction of the judicial person in man, by voding' all rights,ybo_th civil and political.
2. destruction_ of the moral person in man, by voiding every ves_tige of conscience. 1 , .
45
3. destruction of individuality itself in. man, by eliminating the last vestiges of identity, uniqueness, spontanety, and initiative. (OT 447-456)
t
The true signifcance of such laboratories of thoroughgoing annihilation, which distinguish them from all former types of concentration camps, is thus the systematic attempt to tum human beings into
specimens of the human beast (OT' 426). Active and spontaneous human beings, the beginners" or initiators of the political life for Arendt, are totally reduced to reactive and predictable animals, the prototypical Pavlovian dog with fully conditioned' reexes (see the contrasts of Figure 7). Totalitarian govemments pursue not only the ambition to global ruIe,'f strive not only toward total despotic rule over
human beings, but also toward a systemyin whichhuman beings as human are rendered superuous (OT' 428/457). Men insofar as they are more than animal reaction and fulllment of functions are entirely
superuous to totalitarian regimes. (...) Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity (OT 457). A' totalitarian
regime's demand for unlimited power can only be secuecl if lterally all men, without a single exception, are relably dominated in every aspect of their life. (...) 'Individuality, anything ndeed that distinguishes one man fromianother, is intolerable. As long as ALL men have not been made EQUALLY superuous
and this has been accornplished only- in concentrationcamps
- the ideal of totaiitarian domination has not

*
been achieved (OT 456f.).

l
It is a goal repeatedly attempted in the.20"' century, but never totally achieved: the reduction of active and spontaneous human beings to totally reactive and predictable animals and robots. Total
t 1
domination succeeds to the extent that it succeeds in interrupting allchannels of communication, those from person to person inside the four walls of privacy no less than the public ones which are safeguarded-in democracies by 'eedom of speech and opinion. Whether this process of making e ve rype rson
' ' ncommuncado succeeds ( ) is hard to say " (OT 495) . What is the key to avoiding this inevitability . Arendt proposes a retum to the grass-roots democracy of active and spontaneous human beings operating in
an instittionalized space of freedom and Ieeway in which individuals are free to speak their minds and to act inconcert as a pluralty of unique individuals, whenever they~ choose, thereby fullling themselves in
their public as well as their private lives. The preservation of the distinction between the public and the private thus-constitutes the very rst basis of Arendt's sense of the political.
To fully understand the fundamental meaning of Arendt's central concept of plurality in its relation to political action, as this is developed in I-IC (1958), it is well to be aware of the negative counterparts uncovered in :OT (1951), of an atomized society of isolated individuals and of organized loneliness toward .which totalitarian govemments strive, which not only refer to the masses' experience of
isolatin in the political sphere, but also to the individual's experience of "loneliness in the sphere of ` ` social ntercourse (OT 474) . Loneliness" , Arendt states, is atthe' same time contrary to the basic of every human life, is the requirements. of the human condition and one of the fundamental experiences - .
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common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian gove'rrnent'.'-as for ideology or logicality (OT 475). It isthe lonely man, the man who nds himself surroundedtby others with whom he cannot establish
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contact or to whose hostility he is exposed" (OT 476), to whon logicality appeals. Once the experience of companionship is destroyed, once the in-Between is destroyed, ideology, or more precisely, 1ogicality, provides the only bond. On the repIac_en_ent_of the bond of the 'In_-between' bv that of
3
1
logicalitg, Arendt re-marks the following in her Denktagebuch: "Ideology is the logic of an idea. As a process, logic brings the idea into movement and thus pulverizes its substance. This loss of substance is fundamental (...). 'The idea seizes the masses' namely, through logic, whose inevitability takes hold as
i
i
the rope takes hold of the hanged man. Or: the idea seizes the masses through logic, where logic at the same time presents that which is binding for us all - in truth, the lowest common denominator'. 54 The
ideology that inpeis a mass movement is then accelerated by terror. Ideology and terror are the twin pillars that constitute that novel form of government called totalitarianism. Its chief aim is to make it possiblefor the force of Nature or of History to-race freely through mankind, gnhin<_l_ered b_v_anv spontaneous human
gk_n. As such, terror seeks to 'stabilize' men
inorder to liberate the forces of Nature or History. It is the
movement which singles out the foes of mankind against whom terror is let loose, and no free action of either opposition or sympathy can be permitted to interfere with the elimination of the objective enemy' of
History or'Nature, [the enemy] of the class or the race. Guilt and innocexce become senseless notions (OT 465: see Figure 7).
Arendt's versus Heidegger's sense of_th_e people. It is of course not true that the concept of the "people," expressed in an exaggerated "foll<ish way by Arendt's critique, is a mythological latecomer to Heidegger's vocabulary. Along with the terms "community" and "generation/' "people" is already introduced existential of Dasein in the passages on authentic historicity in SZ ( 74) as a kind of onto-socio-logical nexus of historical belonging within whichthe individual Dasein makes its more historical decisions not only about its individual fate but also about its communal destiny, like the decision that Heidegger would soon make regarding "national socialism as he understood it out of the "Ideas of 1914 (Figure 5). These Ideas found their focus in the "spiritof the front" as Germans from all over Europe came together to ght the war in a newly found unity long sought but never achieved in the history of the German people. It w as this front community backed by the industriousness of the home front that during the Weimar years came to be the model of a "national socialsm betting the identity of the German people. The front community, based on tlrfe duties and responsibilities of cornradeship Within ghting units, thus becomes the model foria future state in keeping with the German character and in response to a long-felt need for unity and identity by the German people. Rektor Heidegger, following the mandarin thinkers of{'German socialism like Paul Natorp, would -seek this unity and identity in a state that is at once a worker
as an
T
47
<
state and an educational state. Despite some speeches that call the intellectual life the "work of the brain." in order to put it on a par with the "Work of the hands". of manual labor, the elitism ofthe philosopher-ruler emerges in Heidegger's commitment to provide a political education to the "guardians/' the professional classes at the university destlned to become the leaders of the nation. Its quasimilitary character already intejects a "leadership principle" and "rank and order" even into the mandarins national socialism. In the context of such a national sociaiist community, freedom is no longer individual initiative and-spontaneity but rather responsiveness to the bonds of community, binding comnitment to it, the "letting-be'y' of the binding obligations that come from commitment to the community (GA 26, 2471? / 191f). 55 Freedom as binding conmitment tg and responsibility for the community is. set in sharp contrast by Heidegger to the sense of freedom that cane from the cries of "libert heard with the French Revolution (GA16: 290). For the freedom that came with the modernist Ideas of 1789 proves to be a negative freedom, a mere liberation Q the ancient tyrannical authorities of Church, State, and Community that yielded the anarchy of an equality of individuals abstracted from' any realistic human context (Figure 5) and provided the model for the lassez-faire individualism of classical liberalism. There is also an anarchic avor to Arendt's starting point in a plurality ofindividuals armed only with the freedom of individual initiative. But the rootedness of a native people in its geography and history, its land and its customs, has also proven to be a dangerous provincial trap subject to ready political exploitation. To Heidegger's credit, however, he resisted all the biological reductionism put forward by the Nazi racist propaganda of Blut und Boden" and found- his rootedness (Bodenstndigkeit) instead in his native language and its cultural tradition. Only a lingstically developed people can in fact have a tradition and develop the historical sense needed to appreciate its historical uniqueness and to make the decisions necessary to authenticate and cultivate this historical self-identity _ within the polity of nations. Also to Heidegger's credit is his afrmation of the right of self_-determination to each nation and people, an afrmation that ows directly froin his sense of the Ieweiligkeijc des_Daseins, where Dasein is applicable not only to individuals but, as it was in the thirties, to peoples. Arendt had more than one occasion to question whether the 'ffrqnt _ _ community" is a t model and basis for any permanent 'political organization. After all, the "front experience/' as intense and invigorating as it is, has been
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taken in many ways, not the least of which is the intoxication-of clestruction that was propagandized by Nazism and cunningly exploited into totalitarian reigns of terror. "The strong fratemal sentiments engendered by Violence have led many good people into hoping that a new community together with a 'newman' would arise from them." 56 But as a matter of fact, such experiences have _ never found an institutional political expression (VFW and the like?). The front community of a "band of brothers" (Kameradschaft), which inspires self-sacrice out of loyalty and devotion to the group, is theessence of ghting morale but not of political action. "The 'I' of a soldier passes insensibly into the _'We' of a ghting unit, and one, feels so much alive that death no longer matters to him." 57 Thebonds of comradeship are much stronger but less enduring than those of friendship civic or private. The front commurity therefore cannot provide a lasting foundation for a political community. In her insistence upon non-sovereign lateral relations in order to bar entry to any and every form of despotic power, and upon a spontaneous freedom of individual initiative that enters into the political arena from the outside, as it were, ex nihilo, Arendt proposes a political grouping of individuals that contrasts sharply with the tight ingrouping of a traditional community and its indigenous ethos. On the political level, there are no natural bonds, there are only the bonds freely entered into by way of agreement in
'
a
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order to be able to act together. This isthe sole power of the people, and the source of the peoples power (potestas in populo), the power that is a potential of any plurality. The human condition of plurality means that action and speech are essential to the political, but it also means that no single individual possesses power, it means that power springs up between me when they act together and vanishes themoment they disperse (HC 200). Accordingly, power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence (HC 200). 'Living together constitutes a plurality into a people capable of generating power, where power comes into being among people in the_act_of bjnding themselves through promises, covenants, and mutual pledges. Binding and promising, combining and covenanting are the means by which power is kept in existence; where and when men succeed in keeping intact the power which sprang up between them during the course of any particular act or deed, they are
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already in the process of foundation, of constituting a stable worldly structure to house, as it were, their combined power of action (OR 174).~f*ThB men of the American
Revolution understood that power comes into being when and where people would get
49
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;
together and bind themselves through promises, covenants, and mutual pledges; only such power, which rests on reciprocity and mutuality, was real power and legitimate
(OR 181i). But neither compact nor promise are sufcient 'to assure perpetuity, that is, to bestow upon the affairs of men that measure of stability without which they would be unable to build a world of their posterity, destined and designed to outlast their own
mortal lives (OR 182). What is needed is a constitution. And the admirable element of the American constitution, according to Arendt, is that the creating (process itself contains
its legitimacy and authority. Jeffersorfs famous words, Ele hold these truths to be selfevident', (OR 192) combine in a histoically unique manner the basis of agreement
between those who have embarked upon revolution (.. .) with an absolute, namely, with a truth that needs no agreement since, because of its self-evidence, it compels_ without
5
argumentative demonstration or political persuasion. By virtue of being self-evident, these truths are pre-rational - th ey inform reason but are not its product- and since their
self-evidence puts them beyond discourse and argument, they are in a sense no less compelling than 'despotic power' and no less absolute than the revealed truths of religion or the axiomatic verities of mathematics. In Jefferson's own words, these are *the
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not on their own will, but follow opinions and beliefs of men (which) depend involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds' (OR 193). Jefferson ,thus nds an Enlightemnent solution to the problem of a 'fhigher law, a transcendent absolute that
.
i
would give sanction to man-made positive laws and to a govemment of laws and not of men." The American Constitution thus rests on two foundations and springs from two
1
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sources: the source of power which springs from below, from the grass roots of the people, and the source of law whose seat is above,_ in a higher transcendent domain
1
(OR 183).
A1-_e_ndt's Re-mark
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political sitt___ates steadiness in its proper historical context. Out of this deep core of historythat constitutes the pole of the polis, human beings in turn receive their stance and status in the state
and achieve their stature therein. . Arendt nds the source ofstatus and stature in a state , ',; _
'
of the Third Conceg. Heidegger's archaic-poietic concept of the the polis ate its archaic historical site where it is granted stead and
-'-ff,
coming more from its formalized statutes that grant rights and leeway to its citizens. The _ . ft
50
stability provided by law became an existential as well as_ essential requirement for the modern polis for Arendt, who with millions of others in the 20 century suffered the desperate plight of statelessness, homelessness, and rootlessness._ Arendt'si polis offers a stable site protected by the formal bounds of law, delimiting and securing the space of
appearance which allows for channels of communication, a place to stand (and reside) for stateless persons, political status through its statutes of rights and freedoms, and the
leeway for each to achieve stature in its public space.
ENDNOTES
1. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future_;.Eight Exercises in Political Thought_(New York: Viking, 1968), p. 154. Hereafter BPF. _
2. Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger, Briefe 1925 bis 1975 und andere Zeugnisse, edited by Ursula Ludz (Frankfurt: Klostennann, 1998), p. 319. A narrative English translation of this correspondence is in part available in Elzbieta Ettinger, Hannah A_1endt`- Martin Heidegger (New Haven/ London: Yale UP, 1995), p.114. _ Hereafter HA-MH. 3. Heidegger's letter to Karl Lwith of August 1_9,'1921, elaborating Heidegger's attitude toward his best students in the context of university politics, is published in: Dietrich Papenfuss and Otto Pggeler (eds.), Q philosophischen Aktualitt Heideggers, Vol. 2: Im Gesprch der Zeit (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990), pp. 27-32, esp. 31f. An English translation of the letter, by Gary Steiner, is to be found in Karl Lwith, Martin Heidegger and Europear Nihilism, edited by Richard Wolin (New York: Columbia UP, . _ 1995), pp. 235~9, esp. p. 238.
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4. SZ = Martin Heidegger,
132000).
5-.
.1
(Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1927, 71953,

9
Hannah Arendt, "Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophical '1`hought," in Essays in Understanling_(l 931)-54), ed. Jerome York: I-Iarcourt Brace, Koh_n3(New _ _ 1994), pp. 443 (my italics), 446. Hereafter EU. __
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51
6. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (The University of Chicago Press, 1958), p._7 Hereafter HC.
c
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7. Hannah Arendt, Was ist,I__olitil<`?: Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, edited by Ursula Ludz, Foreword by Kurt Sontheimer (Munich/Zrich: Piper, 1993), p.II. Hereafter WP.
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,
8. Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of I;Ieidegger's BEING AND TIME (Berkeley: _ University of California Press, 1993), p.386.
9. Dana Villa, rendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996), p. 114.
10. Margaret Canovan, Hanlah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), p. 138. `
11. Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Moclernism of I-lannallzsrrendt (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996), p. 107.
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12. Martin Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Marburger Vorlesung Sommersemester 1924 herausgegeben von Mark Micha1sl<i,.
1
Gesamtausgabe Volume 18 (Frankfurt: Klostermarn, 2002), p. Hereafter GA18.

13. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt,_l_r_L_ove ofthe World, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 164.
P 4
14. Hannah Arendt-Karl Jaspers, Cgr_r_espondencel_9_26-1969, translated by Robert and Rita Kirnber (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1992), p. 31.
15. Irving Howe, 'The New Yorker' & Hannah Arendt", Commentary Vol. 36, number 4, 319. I am grateful and beholden to the researches and as yet unpublished wrtings
of Helgard Mahrdt for the following account of Arendt's early years in New York.
'_
_)
..!_.
16. Hannah Arendt, The Origins ofTotalitariaisn (NC_W_'Yrk/Cleveland: Meridian Books, 195.8., 2' enlarged edition), pp. 296n, 501. Hereafter OT.
S2
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rst 'letter of February 21, 1945, Arendt comments on Macdonald's article o n ' which Greece, appeared in the January number, and on Meyer Schapiro's Noteon Max Weber." Dwight Macdonald Papers, Box 6, Folder 98, Sterling Library, Yale University.
I7. In her
18. Macdonald, politics, February 1944, p. 6.
19. Letter from Arendt to Macdonald, June 6, 1947.
20. Letter from Macdonald to Arendt, January 5, 1948. 21. Letter from Arendt to Macdonald, August 16, 1951.
22. Arendt, On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing", Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace-& World, 1968), p. 14. Hereafter MDT. 23. All quotations are from I-Iannah Arendt, He's all Dwight, Ihe New York Review of Books 11 (August 1, 1968): 31-33, which served as the Introduction to the Greenwood Reprint of politics. As Alfred Kazin recalls, poiitics, from my point of view, was ai refreshing contrast to the petty egotism and dogmatism of those intellectuals who had grown up inside the radical movement. Macdonald's capacity for dissent from the majoity point of view, his almost physical resistance to war slogans, made hirn oppose particularly the liberaIs indictment of Germany as a whole, the silly conceit and even sillier optimism of the New Dealers as world regulators. Ir addition to this, he had the hurnility to present to his readers, who certainly needed some fresh ideas, the insight of . European witnesses (and victims) of totalitarianism: Sirnone Weil, Bruno Bettelheim, Nicola Chiaromonte, Victor Serge, Albert Camus. See Alfred Kazin, Old Revolutionists: Dwight Macdonald, Contemporaries, Boston/ Toronto, 401.
1
24. Ibid.
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25. Arendt's letter to Macdonald, June 6, 1947.

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26. Nicola Chiaromonte, Remarks On Justice, politics, No. 3, May-June 1947, pp. 89, 90. 2
27. John Francis Burke, Hannah Arendt, Encyclopedia of Phenomenolggy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), p. 32. = _ _
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28. Hannah Arendt, Ex-Communistsf' EU 396.

29. Chiaromonte, Remarks On Justice, politics, p. 92.
30. Building oases seems to have been a common political goal in politics in those early days. The expression was apparently rst used by Arthur Koestler. See Irving Kristol, Koestlerz A Note on Confusion, politics, May~1944, p. l08f.
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31. For a more detailed survey of Heideggefs three concepts of the political, see my In the Middle of Heidegge_r's Three Concepts of the Political,Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, edited by Francois Raffoul ad David Pettigrew (Albany: SUNY Press, . 2002), pp. 135-157.
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32. A rnore detailed elaboration of I-Ieidegger's rhetorical-phenomenological concept of the political especially out of this still unpublished text of 1923-24 is to be found in Theodore Kisiel, "Situating Rhetorical Politics in Heidegger-'s Protopractcal Ontology (1923-1925: The French Occupy the . Ruhr)," International Iournal ofP_1'i1osophical Studies 8, 2: (Summer 2000): 185-208. A longer version under the same title is to be found in Existentia 9
g
:(1999)=11-30..
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p
33. Guido Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger;__Dol<ument1e zu_seinem Leben _ und Denken (Bern 1962),'p. 48. "Gedenl<worte zu Schlageter (26. Mai 1933 vor der Universitt)" has recently been reprinted in Martin Heidegger, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910-1976), Gesamtausgabe Volume 16 edited by Hermann Heidegger (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2000), pp. 759f.
34. Cf. Rhetorc II, 21, Where Aristotle discusses various examples of the gnom, the maxims (folk sayings, proverbs) pertaining to human comportment, that
constitute the premises or conclusions of the rhetorical enthymeme, the speech' sit-nations in which they are most appropriately employed, and the variatons _ they undergo in such appropriations, e.g., "Nor do.I approve the maxim 'Nothing in excess,' for one cannot hate the Wicked too much" (1395b1).
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35. Pierre Bourdieu, The.Political Ontology of Martin]-Ieidegger, translated' by Peter Collier (Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 79'. This formalization of existential categories like the one-like-many is at the_ same time phenomenologically sustained and illustrated by concrete examples out ofthe tradition like hoi polloi, the "crowd" versus Kerkegaard-'s "incliviclual,." and the masses caterecl to by the competing mass media of the Weimar Republic. _'I`hus, Herbert Marcuse could see, in the phenomenological description of das Man in BT, the implicit cultural sociology of Weimar and a premonition of the disasters of totalitaranism: Herbert Marcuse and Frederick Olals_or1, "Heidegger's Politics: An Interview," Graduate Faculty_Plilosophy]0urnalf 6"(1977): 28-40.
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Einsamkeit GA 29/30: lecture course of WS 1929-30 edited by F.-W. von Herrmann (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983), p. 244. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker as The _Fundamental_Concepts of Metaphysics: World", ` ' ' Fntude Solitude (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1995), p. 163.
37. Both citations are translations of Aristot1e's trio, phronesis kai arete km' emoia, Rhetoric II, 1, 1378a10. The trio of virtues will recur in Arendt's account of the cosmopolitanethos of the statesman making judgments on the basis of Kantian "common sense." _ _
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36. Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe derlyletaphysik. Welt _Endlichkeit_-
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38. Citations are from the student protocols of Rektor Heidegger's seminar of WS 1933-1934, "Vom Wesen und Begriff von Natur, .Geschichte und Staat." The concept and essence of the state were treated from the 7th to the 10th and nal hour of a seminar that was held once a week.
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39. A rectoral greeting addressed to "German Studentsl" at the beginning of WS 1933-34 concludes with the following statement: "Neither doctrines nor 'ideas' are the rules governing your being. The Fhrer himself and alone ig the present and future actuality of Germany and its law" (GA 16:184).
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40. Martin Heidegger, Lllderlins I-Lvmnen "G.e,rmanie_n" und "Der Rhein." GA 391 lecture course ofWS 1934/ 35 edited by Susanne Ziegler (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980), pp. 214, 51.
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41. Martin Heidegger, I-Illerlins Hymne "I1erIster," GA 53: lecture course of SS 1942 edied by Walter Biemel (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1982), pp 98f, 102. Translated by William McNeill and Iulia Davis as Hlderlinfs Hymr "The_lter" . (loorningtonz Indiana UP, 1996), pp. 80, 83.
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42. GA 39; 73.

43. Hannah Arendt, "Concern with Politics in Philosophical Recent Furopean . Thought" (1954), EU 442, with my emphases. _
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44. Hannah Arendt, "Philosophy and Politics" (1954), Social Research 57, 1 (Spring 1990): 73-103, esp. pp. 74, 79.
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45. bia., p. so.
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46. Mary McCarthy, "The Vita Activa," On the Contrgy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961), pp. 155-164, esp. p. 161. This review of The Human Condition rst appeared in.The New Yorker.
47. "Philosophy and Po1itics," pp. 82-84. 48. Ibid., p. 84.

49. "A Conversation with Gnter Gaus" (1964), EU 1-23, esp. p. 22. 50. Ibid., p. 21n. cting Kant's Critigue of ludgment, 40; Between Past and Future, pp. 220, 241.
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51. "Philosophy and PoIitics," p. 84.

52. Essays in Understanding, p. 441; Between Past and Future, pp. 221, 241; cf.
note 37 above.
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53. "What is Existenz Philosophy?," i g w 13 (1946): 34-56, esp. p. 51; Esspavs in Understanding, p. 181: a composite citation of the two comparable'
texts.
54. Hannah Arendt,.1)e_n_ltagebcher 1950-197_3_ , Volume One, edited by Ursula Ludz and Ingeborg Nordmann (Munich: Piper, 2002), p. 193.
1
55. Theodore Kisiel, Freiheit und Verantwortung im Dritten' Reich Heideggers, 193335, Piotr W. .Tuchacz and Roman Kozlowski (eds.), Freiheit und Verantwortung: Moral, Recht und Politik (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 189-205. GA 26 is Heidegges course of SS 1928, translated into English by Michael Heim, Ihe Metaphysical Foundations of __ Logic (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984), pp. l91f.
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_:
56
56. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970), p. 69. On the front experience, see alsopl-Iannah Arendt, Approaches to the German Prob1en, The Partisan Review 12 (1945): 93-106.
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57. Harmah Arendt, Introduction to the Torchback Edition" of Glenn~Gray's Ih_e Warriors (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. vii-xiv, esp. p. ix. 58. Hamah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963), p. 174. Hereafter OR.
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57
l
'I
i
i
w
1923-5
<f1q.a= md
lPo1ig
Phenomenological
Aristotle, lgia
iisnnehs
pathos, ethos, logos of doxic speech situation
? l
Metontological
l
1933-5
Plato, Pg]i1;gia
leader of people, guard-!ans of state, 3-leveled service

_
Archaic-Poetic
!935-43
Sophocles, Agggng
pole-mos of thinker, poet, and statesman as prepolitical
Situatings_Rhetorical Politics in Heideggers Prmgpractca_l___C)ntology (1923-25: The French Occupation of the Ruhr)
.
SS 1924: Grundbegriffeder aristotelischen Philosophie [Aristotelesz Rhetorik II]
Dec. 1~8, 1924: "Dasein und Wahrsen nach Aristoteles (Interpretation von Buch VI der Nikomachischen Ethik)"
'
eternal 1/OS
1Lo!n
(del, 'v)
SZ Division I
SZ Division II
oocboi
'
'rxvn
[Tr0f.T|GLS]
(vcx!evov 'lthws !xetvl

temporal
cbpvnots
[Tl'p.!LS`]
Three- "e_quiprimordial1' de,nitiQns_(/pt 0"O,L)_of the human being_ Cuov P\'y0v xov - the living being having (had by) speech _3ov_ 'rro>\L_T,<v - the political animal _ Cw rpot<'rL< T t g To Ayov ')(o/T09 -the practical life pervacled by speech Heideg, translates: "a practical life concerned with getting around in a sayable world
Modern German Da-sein 1924 = "the living being who reads the newspapers"
Aristotle's Rhetoric = "the rst systematic hermeneutigs of the everydayness of being-with-one-another" (SZ 138) y = p"m/Ella coming to an understanding with others about something communication achieving its accord in the public sphere understanding how to get along together (at rst not knowledge) Ol. 1T'0>\0f =_- "the many", the one-lik'e~many = the Anyone, a generic universal das Man "The truebearer of the peculiar universal of averageness called the Anyone is our language" (SS 1924,'p. 23): its tendency toward genera-vs; das je-weilige Universal
y
1
The three rhetorical modes of persuasion (conviction, condence, trust [truth]): a " d itg r speech speaker . Tf<9O os ~>\y0: v-G!os founded in SECI LKOELV "bearing" 1/E LI/ responsive to speech be-having of !L judgment as Kp
All three dimensions interwoven in a speech situation of Kottpg Temporal situationof deliberatve (future), judicial (past), _festive (present) speeches
Stceots
Bendlichkeit
= dis-posedness
Trpoapeots = pre-choice
Verstehen
A
` _ -
Rede
ì
.
J
Metontological Concept of the Political (1933-1935) particular PEOPLE

nai_Q_gens_ (biological)
t
(MOVEMENT pf) scovnwcs

lisg1ig_1 decisiveness 8:
apropos STATE
National-Sociality
Il
Natives of Land self-identity of who- WE are _

Will of people
S
ope-mess to destiny = -= resolute openness

=
if-Unity
<1>p/ncs
Will of Leader
-
= will
to become who we are
6 0 Q of F]
community = custom, tradition

'
translated by <bpv`qO LS into
habit of STATE
Q-lgvglgd sgrvige
work for State sac-ice for State service to State
'
Revolutionizng the University: - i n t o a People's University --lnstructors' Camps --political education of Guardians
Work Service rDefence Service Knowledge Service
Me ta physic a l F ol k
NS German Worker State (Greek) Educational State
Da-sein of German FOLK
re~placing German IdeaIism's "Cultural State"
'rxvn ofrronots
versus <1>pVT]0'L9 of11'pL!L
State as Artwork? Ruler as Artist?
Ruler as Statesman
WHAT DOES
IT MEAN T0-BE~POLITICAL?
The POLITICAL is a basic possibility and outstanding mode of the be-ing of human beingS, who a s i a PEOPLE DECIDE for this STATE, work to bring it into _be~ing and through their support (service and sacrice) sustain it in its be-ing.
Essence of the Political:
1. Fateful de-cisions of 2. a people-becoming-a-state
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HGURE1
_
Aristotle's ve ways in which the human soul "trues," }\T]6E6L 1/ . (Nic. Ethics 6):The "intellectual" dia-noetic virtues
(direct apprehension) of being-that-always-is, V OS
def V
'
(knowledge as Erkenntnis)
`
(pure understanding)
i

l
LoT!n
oooia
(know-how [art] of making, T.'0_:r]O1Q)
(insight* into situation of action,
_1T
f!. 8) O
Txvn
opovnots
.
[eosl
I
f}\>\uJ xetv practic. domain of be-ing-that-also-can-be-otherwise, l/x!evov I = _ _ -"Changeable Be-ing" i.e., the temporally unied clearing (LIQHTUNQ) of historical be-ing = = _ Heidegger's VOS-surrogate of temp. GOS habit of habitat g u i z tradition, custom, usage,
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H
*holistic in-sight of circum-spection, the "look-around" to size up the whole situation order to make sense of it in its historical possibilities and necessities (e.g. facticity Q a German) an d contextual limits (e.g. death), in the process articulating the "circular" interplay of this whole with these temporal parts; ergo not a "mystical" intution, but the laborious h er m en e ! tig development of this temporal whole being 'explicated by resolute openness, Ent-schlgssenheih _
'
Heidegger aadds the essential note of HISTORY to Aristotle's phronesis: Phronetic hermeneutics as an ongoing expository movement responsive to the demands exacted by the uniquely historical situation an d holistic context in terms of which we are called upon to nd ourselves and de-ne ourselves. Phronesis = prudential self-exposition~ancl-interpretation in historical context
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4
Ha*-5
fr-14`lif,!{,'\_
i
l l l
MJ/H" ';;f..')1
Labor
Work
Action
corresponds to the _ condition of life itself
corresponds to the condition of worldiness, i.e. that we always enter a pre'-existing world
is always work of the hands homo faber
_
corresponds to the human condition of pl_;gh_ty, i.e. there' are men in the world, not just Man
y
'
is always' labor of -the body

animal In-borans
the biological processes of the human body
r
always involves speech

bios polikos
l
i
Ii
prcduces the aticial world of things that brings a sense of permanence to our existence (Artifacts, durability)
i
'
the basis for the political 'as it is the interaction b__'geen people, also each action disclo ses the intention, and consequently the identity, of the actor
.
repetitive
instead of repetition, workinvolves multiplication (based upon idea/model/fornj of product)

'
i
'
'
unique and irreversible, but can be repeated (re-called) by the . storyteller

l
use of machines
! l
use of tools
always has a denite beginning and a denite, predictable end, i.e. the
1
i
use of speech
'cyclical and endless _ production of consumer goods

`
product (use-object)
always has a denite _ bggining, but is unpredictable, sothat we never really know what ' we are doing
`
not always birdensome, however, as it cormects us with the experience of really being alive and in this sense can be joyful
completely determined by categories 'of means and end, only the work of art transcends these categories
<
0'è'l~
'
Labor i
Work
`
Action citizens is the basis for

the political world
-
;
4
worldless ,_
1
. 1*:
. `=_ ' .`
'-
. -
the work world is the exchange market
meeting-place of
conspicuous consumption
conspicuous production
V
conspicuous individuals who speak and act and thus achieve greatness
reversible; man can destroy what he creates

\ `
-
always involves violence as man violates nature to obtain raw material for the productonprocess
e
-Fo\"<\V9' l'\ Pwef Of stinsimsher

is never violent
irreversible: acts cannot be undone, ' he Uil
stable world of durable

goods
man as slave of nature
l
durability of memorability
man still is dependent on his fellow men, polis not
man as master of nature,
the world of artifacts he creates and the production process
a created artwork, but a stage for actors' performances

v
but head of household, rules over-slaves, all are still servants of nature
`
'
worker as master over nature, destroyer of nature and builder of world

elemental feeling of human strength
l
equaiity of opportunity, no ruler or mled
'
_hon-sovere
power of acting in concert
the only!aspect of the vita activa that is truly
"
painfui and exhausting

no'
'
eedom involved, based purely on necessity

~
not truiy free, as work is prompted by wants and desires

t
free
intimate domain of
-
common world of things
privacy
public space of appearance
' 01'..
( _.- 7;,
af
Hannah Arendt . Origins of Totalitarianism (not a historical but a political boolg) The phenomenon of totalitarianism, its constituent elements: Locus of concerted assault and crimes against humanity. Experiment in total domination in dehumanizing enslaving KZL (Corpse factories, annihilation camps, holes of oblivion")'.
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the nature ofpolitics) Our humanity, its constituent elementsi I_-Iuman beings need the constant transfonnation of chaotic and accidental conditions into a man-made pattern of relative consistency (OT 352)
'
-- The Human Condition (a book about
0
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- a caricature of the people: out by society and buming with individuals spat resentment against ordered society (OT 107, 189); become functionaries or agents of the secret forces (OT 220); the Masses vs. Individuality: result of the collapse of institutions of state and class (On the Nature of_T otalitariasm 357); non-people are in some sense worldless
The Q Non-people:
--
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Rootlessness as characteristic of all race organizatons (OT 196): Members of people who had no country, no state, no historic achievement to show but could only point to themselves"(OT 232), spirimal and social homelessness (OT 352); they enter the stream of historical necessity and become a functionary (OT 220) Isolated individuals in an atomized society": a state of affairs where people live together without having anything in common, without sharing some visible tangible realm of the world (On the Nature of Totalitarianism 356); politics made impossible by _ collapse of In-between web.
, ,
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The people share a human-built world through the three basic activities of vita activa: m i t includes all that we need to do to sustan and re-generate our body, includes consumption and reproduction, confoms to the unceasing natural rhythms of growth and decay; m, 'fabrication', bestows a measure of permarence and durability upon the futility of mortal life" (HC 8); action goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter; action is the political activity par excellence (HC 9). All three activities are rooted in_natalit&
The public realm & common world (HC: 50ft) Sharing durable world with pluralty of others; Speaking to and actingin concert with others in public space of appearance: h!manizing politics in In-Between web of human interrelationships
0
I..ogicality" appeals -to isolated human beings. (On the Nature of Totalitaranism 357) Supertluous men escape reality of civilization into - ctitious worlds of ideology
0
0ases: life-giving reservoirs allowing us to live in shifting desert; all those elds of life, which exist independently from political
Totalitarian movement with increasing speed in a certain direction (desert sandstorms of pseudo-action), where any form of legal or governmental structue is a handicap (OT 398) and the cttious world based on fantasies of racist ideology reigns supreme; totalitarianism in power establishes the ctitious world of theernovement as a tangible working reality of everyday life
Stateless people as the newest mass phenomenon (the end of the illusion ofthe Rights of Men (OT 276ff.), abolition of right of asylum, loss of protection of a national govermrent), who no longer belong to any community whatsoever and therefore are rightless (OT 295) -- (This phenomenon has become global in our
conditions; places, localities where the feeling of companionship is possible (WP? 183); - Isles of freedom practicing face-toface 'debate and direct action (soviets, townmeetings 1; - The common world, (which) gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other". (HC 52)
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The need to belong to a stable law-bound community: the right to h av e rights, private and public, to be a citizen of stable state.
times.)
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Total domination: Creates robot-like reactive animals (Pavlov) with anonymity & in unifornity, ghastly marionettes with human faces(OT 455), living "human" corpses; to destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity (OT 455); denial of giving birth (birth not only renews the world but, in human affairs, brings freedom with it) and personal death; ctitious-reality", that is establishing of a world according to doctrines (OT 343).
Er_e_edom of Movement in the_P_ublic Realm:

1
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1. destruction of the judicial person in man, by voiding all rights, both civil and political. 2.
destruction of the moral person ir man, by voiding every vestige of conscience.
3. destruction of individuality itself in man, by elimnating

the last vestiges of
identity, uniqueness, spontaneity,

,
and initiative (OT 447-456).
Liberates active spontaneous h u man s witl _ identity and uniqueness With the creation of man, the principle of beginning- [initiative) came into the world itself' (HC: 177) Freedom understood as a state of being manifest in action and not as a free will independent from others and eventually prevailing against them (What is Freedom? 163), becomes fully manifest only in the performing act. , Speech and action are the modes in which" human beings appear to each other,= not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. (HC: 176) Plurality is specically the [indispensable & enabling] condition of all political life." (HC 7) It is the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction (HC 175), which is contrary to sovereignty (HC 234). Beginning that arises out of the individual is pre-political sportaneity vs. political spontaneity: freedom to talk to each other and act in concert is freedom as a character of human existence in the wo-ld.(What is Freedom? 167) The Greek once was precisely that form of government' which provided men with a space of appearances where they could act, with a kind of theater where freedom could appear." (Freedom and Politics, 34) In politics, the capacity to begin something new is exhibited most clearly in the foundation of bodies politic - 'akind of creation ex n'hilo; with the American foundirg fathers, power came into being in a people who got together and bomd themselves through promises, corvenants,-and mutual pledges._ Such power, Which rested on reciprocity and mutuality, was real and legitimate power (OR 182).
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Predictable, totally reactive animals with fully conditioned reexes, acting in robot-like uniformity, devoid of all spontaneity & initiative, thus totally dominated and under
control. Total power is possible only in a world of conditoned reexes (OT 457)
i
Unpredi'ctability and boundlessness of
'
human action makes fences", human i1stintions, wall-like laws, necessary (HC 1901). In collective life, the remedy is forgiveness as opposed to vengeance (HC 236)
The [ideological] forceol' Nature or of History _. . races freely through manlcind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action. (Review ofPolitics, 1953, Strict obedience to anonvmous, impersoal 310) thus i n h u m a n ) Laws from above or below.(OT 461) I "Higher" legitimacy over man-made laws
' '
Lawful government: a body politic in which {man-made| positive laws are needed to translate and realize the imrnutable uis natn-ale". (OT 464) The as an ppgp _ society, ruling over a territoy where its power protects and makes the law", the state as a legal institution (. . _)(only) knows citizens no
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3
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Lawlessness: Right is what is good for the movement (OT' -391) "All laws have become laws of "movement" (OT 463), they have become a faade whose purpose is to keep the population constantly aware that the laws, no matter what their nature or origin, do not really matter.(Mank`na' and Terror 1953) The place of positive law is taken bv total terror..'(OT 464) Te rror as th_ejfrealization ot' th_e_l_a_vv_cn` movement(Ideo1agy and Terror, 1953, p. 310), the state, according to Hitler, is only a 'means' for the consevation of the race (OT 347)
Organized loneliness -total terror penetrates into private spheres of home &'heart breaching bonds of mutual trust in intimacy of household transformed into total suspicon and speechlessness (OT 474).
l I
1
matter of what nationalty; its legal order is open to all who happen to live on its territory" (The Nation 208). Stabilizing laws are the positively established fences which hedge in, protect, and limit the space, in which freedom is not a concept, but a living political reality". (Men in Dark Times 81) Without laws there is not a world but a desert." (Was ist Politik? 121) The law fullls two functions: it regulates the public-political Sphere in which men act in concert as equals and where they have a common destiny, while, at the same time, it circumscribes a |private| space in which our personal destinies" nfold - destinies which are so dssimilar that no two biographies will ever read alike. (The Nature ofTotal`taràm`sm 334)
Worldlessness: under totalitarian nle: this means the superuous men, who lack the 'web of relationships'. In non-totalitarian societies it means the animal laboran.r, who is caughtein the fulllment of needs (HC 118).
Worldliness is associated with accesslto reality, and because "our feeling for reality depends
I
Y
I
utterly upon appearance and therefore upon the existence of a public realm into which things can appear (HC 51), politics, a common world and *apublic realm depend entirely on pemianence (I-IC S5), Trust in the reality of the world derives from its.pe-manence and durability (HC 120). _
Eguality before the law is not only the distinguishing feature of modem republics, but also, in a deeper sense, prevails in constitutional governments as such, in that all people living under a constitution must equally receive from it what is rightfully theirs. The law in all
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Perversion of human egualiy: the camps establish a society of the dying, bundle of reactions that can always beliquidated and be replaced by others (OT 456); outside of the camps eguality ol' condition among the subjects", one of the foremost concems of despotisms and tyrannies (_._)is not sufcient for totalitarian rule because it leaves more or less intact certain nonpolitical communal bonds between the subjects, such as family ties and common cultural interests. (OT 322) Totalitarianism has to nish off the autonomous existence of any activity whatsoeven All humans are egnally snperl'luous leads to eguality
of uniform robots.
constitutional forms of government determines and provides suum cuique: through it everybody comes into his own. The suum cnique LQ' each his/her own] never extends to all spheres of life (On the Nature ofTotalitarianism 333). -Eguality of unegnals" (HC 215) with temporary equalization of differences" for the sake of acting in concert (EU 334).
w
The totalitarian dictator must practice the totalitarian _!=p'_1 of systematic lying to the whole world (OT 3921); the lies of totalitarian propaganda have as their goal not persuasion but organization" (OT 351); another goal is to suspend the citizen's ability to judge, by damaging the peop1e's 'eondence in the political body
The ability to unveil lies is linked to plurality, and thus to the public realm, because it is where people are with others" that the revelatorigiuality nfspeech andat i on comes to the fore (HC ISO).
*
Totalitarian power lies exclusively in the force produped through organization" (OTI 397), demand for "unlimited power" (OT 456)
No one individual owns power. Power is what keeps the public realrn, the potential space of appearance, between acting and speaking men, in existence (HC 200). People-power only exists among us, in-between., but only when we act in concert.
1
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Men's action in the public sphere is guided (Home to Roast SI), [1] [2] by taste (The activity of taste decides how this world, independent of its utility and our vital interests in it, is to look and sound, what men will see and what they will hear in it (Crisis in Culture 222)) and' [3] by ggLr|o5 or nsight (CiC 221) where men in the personal sphere re guided by principles", such as loyalty, honor,'virtue, faith". (On the Nature ofTotal'tarzànz'sm 335)
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2
Zetetic and Echonic Philosophy: A Platonic Rejoinder to Heideggeria Postmodernism

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Assistant Professor
Gregory Fried
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Philosophy Department Califomia State University, Los Angeles 5l5 1 State University Drive Los Angeles, CA 90032-8114 _ email: gfried@calstatela.edu tel: 323-343-5695 fax: 323-343-4193
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Dra (Feb. 2003) for submission to The Heidegger Conference: not for distribution without permission
Abstract:
Philosophy at its best, and in particular the philosophy of Plato as captured in the portrait ofSocrates in the Republic, has at its core a project of liberation, but not one that entails the hubris that Heidegger and postmodemsts ascribe to Platonism as the starting point of Westem nihilisrn. I describe two models of philosophy in the Republic, zetetic (seeking truth) and echonic (possessing truth), arguing that Socrates is best understoocl as a zetetic philosopher, and that through this distinction, Plato can offer a rejoinder to the critiques of Heidegger and postmodemists. _ _
It may seem strange, at rst glance, to tum to Plato for a defense against Heidegger's critique of philosophy and against the versions of postmodemism that have proceeded 'om it. But the choice makes
's e n s e
considering how Heidegger and much of the postmodem tradition that draws upon him (and Nietzsche) trace the purported nihilism of the West back to Plato and Plato's Socrates.
Both modernity and postmodernity have, at their core, a project of liberation. Of course, the postmodem departure from modernity entails a critique, if not a wholesale rejection, of the modem understanding of how this' Iiberation is to be achieved. The thesis I want to defend in this talk is that
philosophy at its -best, and in particular the philosophy of Plato as captured in the Platonic portrait of Socrates in the Republic, also has at its core a project of Iiberation, but not one that entails the hubris that Heidegger and his followers ascribe to it. I take the word project literally: philosophical liberation is a casting-forward, a wager into the future, and it is this trajectory of philosophy that I wili characterize as reconstructve. As apart of my thesis .I argue that the Platonic conception of philosophy anticipates (in principle if not in detail) the kind of critcisms deployed by Heidegger and the postmodernists.
ln my work on Heidegger, I have tried to show how I-Ieidegger's appropriation of a single word 'on' I-Ieraclitus, polemas, sheds light on Heidegger's understanding of what it means to be human as well as his understanding of the meaning of Being itself' Heidegger transiates the Greek polemos not as Krieg
'as
Kamp war or battle, but rather
or
Auseinandersetzung, that is, controntation, or more literally, a settingforth-and-apart-from-one-another. For Heidegger, both we and Being itself are essentally polemcal - in
an expanded sense of that word. As is well known, Heidegger rejects notions of Being as ultimate ground, a supreme reality, a thing by reference to whichwe might know all other things. Being is what grants the world as we nd it already given its pre-theoretical intelligibility, with beings set out into delineated unities that we can cognize and interact with. Being bestows meaning. But this meaning, this eld of intelligibility that constitutes our world, is always on the move. Tobe human (or Dasein, to use I-Ieidegger's term of art) to nd yourself cononted with a world is always already of meaning that you have not made and which is constantly presenting you with decisions of how you are to go about being in it. You can accept the
structures of meaning as given and go with the ow, or you can conont that structure and beat a course
within it. For Heidegger, I have, tried to argue, the latter route isthe proper burden of being human: to enter into a polemic with Being. This polemic is no cheap exchange of diatribes; it whenever a human
happens
being genuinely analyzes, interprets and reinterprets the structures inherited-'om the past in order to rework them into a new constellation of meaning. This polemcal work car transpire in something as as a dinner to ordinary preparing something as raried as Heidegges own reinterpretation of the history of Western philosophy. Both are modes of what Heidegger called_Destruktion or Abbau, dismantling or
creation ex nihilo. Every new departre is assembied from the dismantled elements of the old. Deconstruction' does not annihilate the past; it breaks the past's hold on the present and frees up possibilities Iatent within the past that can be projected on the future. For both Heidegger and the postmodernists who follow hirn, deconstruction must be the primary mode of liberation, because the given always tlreatens to become what is merely taken for granted. _. _
. _ _ . !
deconstruction. Crucial to Heidegger's idea of deconstruction is that all revolution is renovation; there is no
Gregory Fried, Heidegger 's Polemos: From Being to Politics (New Haven: Yale 2000).
1
l take it as relatively uncontroversial that for Heidegger and the postmodernists who follow him, of the notion destruction or deconstruction must be the primary mode of liberation. For Heidegger, course, turn rejects the kind of freedom advocated by Descartes in The The. of freedom is
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postmodem that if only we were to leam enough about the forces that rule physical reality, we might render ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature": This 'conception of eedom the realm of objective takes Being (under-stood here as the totality or substance of beings as a whole) to be face of which the absolute liberty of the nature; such a nature is a potential-and an actual threat in the for brnging Nature under its dominion. This subject would be consummated in the tools and method of liberation then entails om' progressive release 'om subservience tonature and modernist
complex. Discoui-se on Methodl
to the our progressive subjugation of it, including _ and perhaps above all -hum a n nattue. A corollary modern program ls that our liberation from nature to dominion over it demands that we also free ourselves from the dominion of tradition, for tradition as such involves the implicit assumption that the natural, given world must forever remain, in ways essentially hostile to our security, a mystery that cannotbe grasped and that mastered as a whole by the unaded human reason. Because we cannot so master it, tradition demands down to us by we maintain our humility and accept the accounts of our proper place in the whole as passed to the given. For revelation or the ancestors. For the traditionalist, freedom means a paradoxicai submission the the as both nature and tradition, must mastered whenever it inhibits our freedom.
understanding
given, neither This sketch may be broad, but let me work with it for a moment. For Heidegger, modemism because it presumes a traditionalism nor modemism captures the essence of freedom hubristic opposition of humanity to Being, and traditionalism because it attempts' to suppress the tragic (or later, thi1king') is necessity of the human confrontation with Being. For Heidegger, philosophy a tragic, polemical conontation with Being understood as the given realm of revolutionary In this sense, he is no traditonalist: to intelligibility within which we always nd ourselves already living. of the world we inhabit. This take on the burden of being human, we must con'ont the given understanding But nor is hc is how I have understood I-Ieidegges appropriation of I-Ieraclitts' agments about polemos. to a modernist: we never stand, as the Cartesian subject, against an objective reality that we .may aspire -4 be this only a provisional and clorrinate wholly. We always exist within a world whose intelligibility is already given to us. This giving is a historical-temporal phenomerion, the selfna''ve intelligibilityl itself we can never master; we cannot presenting of Being as an unfolding domain of meaning. This giving we make it our own in the sense creation exnihilo. And yet at the same time, as we inhabit the 'given world, we can make must confront that very givenness in developing our own projects for the future; in this sense wanton the given our own by appropriating it. Capitulation to the given leads to vegetative traditionalism; lies somewhere in between: in the aggression against the given leads to an uprooted hubris. Freedom the prior givenness of is recognition- that our very .ability to grasp and conont the given dependent upon and master. Freedom is both ours to claim and meaning, a givenness we can never, as it were, get behind between Being and ourselves. Being's to grant..For Heidegger, freedom resides in the polemical e.nc_ounter
modernist,
Ren Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Donald Cress,.4""ed (Indianapolis: I-Iaclkett, 1999), p. 62.
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For Heidegger, then, -human eedom is rst and foremost deconstructive because thinking must confront the given structures of intelligibility and dismantle them in order to unlock possibilities for a future irnplicit -but unrealized ir - and even ob-structed by the given state of affairs. He is no modemist, however, because he does not believe there is a transcendental position that we can occupy and
'om which we could oversee and master the ow of time and the ux of systems of intelligibility. We cannot take the seat of God and create ex nihilo a world whose unshakable foundations are constituted by our own absolute will, knowledge and power. All revoltionary thinking is precisely a re-tum, a revolving to elements of the deconstructed past that are given a new constellation' of meaning. Our conontations with the given are necessarily tragic: they may result in epochal shifts in meaning, but these revolutions
must always in tum succumb .to the ux of Being. At our creative best, we are at most, for Heidegger, the sacricial bearers of history, not its masters. . _
The essence of Heidegger's charge against Plato is that the doctrine (Lehre) of the ideas falsies Being and truth.3. By locating Being in an etemal and other-worldly domain of pure forms, and by making truth the conformity of our assertions with these forms, Plato has succeeded in transfonning Being from the of unfolding the eld of meaning as itis given temporally into a trans-temporal domain of etemally static absolutes. Truth as a ll] theia is no longer the free opening of a world of meanirg to us; truth is now the marker of our correct apprehension of a permanent, if transcendent, reality. According to Heidegger, with Plato philosophy begins its nihilistic decline into a forgetting of Being as the unfolding bestowal of
meaning; philosophy clegenerates into a search for the key for the nastery of Being itself. Truth now becomes located in statements, or assertions, about a xed reality; it is only a matter time (that is, until Descartes) before the connection is made between assertions about reality and assertions that both reect reality and permit us to assert ourselves upon reality as our dominion.
Socrates identies himself in Book 1 of the Republic as one who does not know. He says, after his
long struggle with Thrasymachus about the nature of justice, that as a result of the discussion I know nothing [mlden eidena (35415-c). This looks like a version of the proverbial expression of Socratic
ironizing is a kind of lying, then Socrates does indeed seem to know more than he says. Thisis clear to even the casual reader of the dialogues, and it is even more so in a dialogue as long and complex as the Republic: it is umnistakahle that Socrates has thought through the issues and arguments before, and that he oen sets up his opponents many moves ahead. But this is not, as Thrasymachus rnaliciously insinuates, .due to some win in the crafty strategy _to arena of elenchus and thereby fees for teaching. If Socrates prestige
ignorance: that human Wisdom consists in grasping that one is worth nothing with respect to wisdom." Of course, Socratic irony is as famous as this quip about Wisdom, and Thrasymachus is astute enough to call Socrates on his habitual irony (Republic 337a). And we have to give Thrasymachus his due: if
Martin Heidegger, Plato's Doctrine of 'I`ruth, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeil (Cambridge University Press, 1999). . _ 4 Apology, 23b". All translations om the Republic are from-Plato, The-epublic ofPlato, trans. Allan Bloom, 2" ed. (Basic Books, 1991); for the Apology, I rely onFour Texts onSocrates, trans. T. G. West and G. S. West, revisecl ed. (Comell University Press,Ì998). _,
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dissembies about the nature of his wisdom, it is because that wisdom is complex, and potentially . clisconcerting to precisely those about whom he is most concerned in his conversationwith Thrasymachus:
at the home of Cephalus, who are themselves 'on the cusp of making life-dening decisions about the nature ofjustice. _ _
tl1e young men gathered
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Thrasymachus does have a point, though: Socrates manifestly knows (I use the 'wo-dadvisedly) more than he lets on. In Book 6, he says, while diseussing what the good itself is, that it looks to me as though it's out of the range of our present thrust to attain the opinions I now hold about it.(506e). Socrates clearly has an agenda. That agenda is not the vulgar one Thrasymachus imputes, however, but rather the
nobler one of turning a group of promising young men away
'om_ the
ailures of a 'life of injustice.

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Thrasyrnachus has made a compelling case for the natwal goodness of a life of tyranny. So although Socrates knows nothing, he knows enough to know that it would be impious (3681:-c) to cede the eld to injustice. I-low can this be, if he means what hesays about his human wisdom'? Even in Book 6, when
Glaucon presses him in the name ofjustice to give his views of the good, Socrates asks if it's just to speak about what one doesn't know as though one knew7 (506c). _
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But these Socratic denials of wisdom do not amount to a nihilistic skepticism. The nihilistically -skeptical Socrates is the portrait one oen gets 'om enthusiastic but hasty rst readers of the dialogues,
usually when they are young and just entering into philosophy: the Wise-guy Socrates who wants to deate elenchus that he can beat anyone out of their anyone and everyone, who is so brilliant in the chess game of opinions. But Socrates does not beatjust anyone and everyone out of any and every opinion - and not
because he is at a loss for arguments. 'I`he_youths Glaucon and Adeimantus say they want to believe in
justice, yet confess that they are almost won over by Tlrasymachus; they Would like to have their wavering faith i.n justice restored by Socrates (3586:-d). Does he give that faith its fmal push? I-le does quite the opposite. Why?
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Because he is a zetetic skeptic. The term derives 'om the Greek zeren, meaning to search, to seek.5 Philosophy for Socrates is a searching, a seeking, a yeaming - an eros --forwisdom. Every hunt, as
Socrates famously impliesf must begin with the scent of the quarry. We must have some intimation of what we are seeking, or else the search quickly becomes meaningless and philosophy- gives way to nihilistic
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destruction of any and all belief. Socrates is not lying about the kind of wisdom he possesses, but he is dissembling. This is because an intmation of the good -- or of any anything decisive to the way we should live -- is by its nature elusive and hard to communicate. Socrates is willing to attest to his convicrion that
justlce, virtue, wisdom, and the like all exist. What he hestates to do is to state his opinion or even that he has an opinion - as to what these are, because to describe and defend an intimation concerning the
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decisive guides in life is to risk dispersng it altogether and thereby losing those listeners whose own convictions' are at their most delicate: the young. Nevertheless, Socrates understancis that there are times
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T112 Pyrrhonst skeptics were the rst to describe themselves as "zete.i" but 50C1'fS WBS 110i Skp in their sense, and so my use of this term should not be construed as an attempt to conate his thought with theirs. -_ _ -= 5 " Mem, sou-e.
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when one must run this risk; one cannot leave the young in the hands of a man like Thrasymachus. This is why zetetic philosophy is not_mysticism; while it adheres to a certain kind of faith in the meaningfulness of phenomena, it remains open to questioning and to reappraising all articulated intuitions about that meaning
and the theoretical elaborations of these
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intimations. Philosophy must remain open to rational debate
precisely because the souls of the young are at stake. Mystica! claims to gnostic insight will not win over Glaucon and Adeirnantus.
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Now, this portrait of a zetetic Socrates is admittedly at utter odds with the portrait that Socrates himself draws of the philosopher-kings - and queens! - ofKallipo1is. Socrates and his interlocutors give these people the right and the duty to rule because they are knowers: "Since philosophers are those who are able to grasp [echonras dunameno' ephapresthai] what is always the same in all respects, while those who are not able to do so butwander among what is many and varies in all way are not philosophers, which
should be the leaders ofa city? (484b). We know the answer: the philosophers should rule! These are echonic philosophers (om the Greek echein, to have, to hold). They possess the truth; they grasp what is
always the same and, presumably, can wield it. Theirs are not mere intimations. They know the fonns of justice and vi-tue; they have seen the good in its full glory and can understand and apply it without mediating metaphors like Socrates' sun or divded line. . To know such things is to understand fully what is best for human beings, just as to know how the body works is to understand when an operation should be performed. Just as we want doctors who are knowers to tend the body, we need philosophers who are knowers to tend the city. They have what it takesf'
The remarkable thing is that Socrates does nor present hms-eb'as an echonic philosopher, which is to say that Plato does not represent him as the type of philosopher that the intemal argument of the dialogue
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establishes as paradigmatic. This is nosmall irony: in the most famous philosophical work that makes the most famously exalted claims about philosophers, the famous philosopher making such claims does not
pretend to be such a philosopher himself!
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What are we to makeof this? Is it just Plato's little joke? If Sacra-res is not a philosopher, who can hope to be? Is Socrates in fact an echonic philosopher whose dissembling irony is so profound that we cannot see that he has just stepped into the cave aer a long sojoum in the light 'of the Good that is. beyond even Being? No. Plato is not playing the buffoon, and although Socrates knows more than'we may think, he is not a philosopher-king
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I have outlined this distinction at work in the Republic between zetetic and echonic philosophy becausel believe that the whole metaphysical-ontological-political-ethical-pedagogical teaching of Books
6 and 7
comprising the sun as an image of the good, the divded line as an for the articulation of Being, and the parable of the cave - takes on a different meaning depending on which account of the nature of
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philosophy you think is the right one. Heidegger and his postmodernist descendents have accepted the traditional view that Socrates and Plato cleave to the echonic model of philosophy: Platonism is a theory, or
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Indeed, they seem to have much of what' Descartes is seeking, ministieitechnological mastery - which meaning of Plato`s very seriousjoke about the failedtechnocratics of the infarnous nuptial number, a formula designed to produce ideal matings among theieitizens of Kallipoiis (546a-547a).
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is, J think, the
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more to the point, a doctrine, and a decisive one for theiWest, of how philosophy may come into possession of the truth. The divided lire shows how reality, or Being, is divided into separate realms, one worldly and
corrupt, one super-sensible and pure. The cave parable then describes how one may aseend tl1e divided line by correct representations of reality; this then is Plato's conception of the truth. Finally, the philosopher's
vision of the good, the sun that sheds light onall reality and serves as the foundation of Being, renders all' knowledge eohesive and secure. According to Heidegger, the good in Plato is the idea of the useful. To
'il
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know the good, to possess the ideas, is to understand howto make use of everything that is. Heidegger locates in Plato the onset of nihilism: the will to subject Being to a representablesystem that can by placed
at the service of the subjugation of nature. Such a conception of philosophy as possession is not far removed 'om the Cartesian vision of mastery over nature; it lacks only the Cartesian notion of a method to yield the data and the technology to bring the world to heel. .
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But the story of the eaveloolcs different depending on whether one accepts the echonic or the zetetic model of philosophy. The immediate context of the dialogue itself, of course, would lead one to apply
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echonic model. After all, the parable arises in a discussion of how to educate those worthy of rule: the phlosopher kings and queens. Whatever we may say about their process of education, its result is a vision of the fmal and absolute sotuce of all being, all reality, and more than this, it lends an understanding of how
reality is articulated, and in such a way that the student now becomes a possessor ot' an inerrant truth. He or she can see the reality present in all phenomena, even in the shadows in the cave. This ability to grasp the real in all its articulations is what entitles the echonic phlosopher to rule.
I-Iow would the zetetic model map onto the parable? The beginning of the story could be the same: the person enchained by the dominant opinions of his her circumstances may, under the inuencle of
the
or
some accidental experience of her own orthe deliberate questioning of the right kind of teacher, break the bonds of the given. She might then also ascencl a difcult path of education but towards what? Perhaps
--
towards the light at the end of the tunnel, but if being zetetic means to be seeking, then seeking can last only as long as the tunnel. emerge into the light means to reach the absolute truth, to have and to hold it, and to return with it into the cave as the power and the authority to rule.
To
It seems that someone like Socrates is condemned always to ascend the tunnel, never to emerge into the light. And yet he clearly does see light at the end of the turnel in two senses. First, he has his intimations of the truth. While these are not yet the full possession of the truth, they are hopeful
glimnerings that lead him onward and give the search meaning. Furthermore, he can imagne what the
echonic experience' of emerging into the full light of the sun might be like. In fact, this is precisely what Socrates is doing in recounting the parable of the cave. To merge I-Ieidleggerian and Platonic idioms: the world is the realm of the cave its beliefs, its its social and customs, political arrangements. To stand up, to tluow off the chains, is to deconstruct: to take notice of the unnoticed-structures that bind our thinking and to break their hold. Many postmodemists
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remain of-liberation from the bonds of - xatecl at this level: they become intoxicated with the initial thrili _ -Jtraditional structures, convinced that any new imposition of structure issimplya new style of ideological
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enchairunent. Yet they secretly long for the would-be tyrant to make the attempt because they are addicted to ghting all positing of structure. To the postmodern anarchst, this is eedom --ab purely negative dialectic, and it ever requires that unjust authorities arise so that freedom can manifest itself again through the deconstruetion of their doctrines and regimes. Liberation becomes a perpetual adolescence.
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I-leideggerwas not the anarchist that some of his postmodemist readers have become. He did believe, at least in his middle period, that great creators could serve asa conduit for a new dspensation of
Being, a new arrangement of the intelligible world, alter the past had been deconstructed. Construction might' follow deconstruction, but because Heidegger did not believe in the notion of a nal vision of Being,
there could be nostandard 'for what new construction would be best. I suspect that this faith in unhnged creativity is one reason for Heidegger's complete lack of practical Wisdom in siding with the National
Socialists.
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The Soeratic or zetetic model of philosophy, by contrast, does allow for guidance to action. The inimaton of a transcenclent truth gives us something to go on, but it demandsprecisely the modesty that
would counter the hubris that Heidegger at his best detects in the modem project. For it is not yet possession of the absolute; it isnot yet a doctrinef To coir a term, in zetetic philosophy, deconstruction is followed by preconstruction, the tentative construction of the outlines of an integrated account of
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something in the light of a truth only partially glimpsed. Such preconstruction must leave itself open to revision or even to complete rejection. _
Zetetic philosophy is bold enough to depart om the given but modest enough to retum to it without laying claim to the nal story. That is why it can also be recanstructve as well as preconstructive. It does
not remain xated on casting off the chains of the given past; it understands that attempts at an integrated understanding of the world, whether philosophical or traditional, must fail to attan the absolute.
even in preconstructng a better arrangement in the light of the best account we can give so far, we must always make what use we can of the ntimations of that truth which are latent in the tradition towhich we belong: this is reconstruction; it is also clearly what Socrates is attending to inthe new departure he
Therefore,
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describes inthe Phaedo: namcly, what people say about what matters? Surely this is what is going on in Socrates' enthusiasm .for Caphalus's belief that justice exists, even as Socrates demolishes Cephalus's
account of justice. And surely reconstruction is at work in Socrates' pious defense of the yotmg against Thrasyrnachus' praise of tyranry. . _
Why does Plato give us this double model of Socrates as a zeteticphilosopher and of theechonc philosopher as the ideal Socrates proposes? Precisely because of the need for preconstruction. Another
word for' it would be hypothesis. Without setting up (-thesis) something beneath (hype-) the unsatisfactory given as its support, however temporary a scaffold this may be, the search will lapse into despondency,
On this point, I amindebted to the work of Drew Hyland and Stanley Rosen and to conversations with David Roochnik as well as his tmpublished paper, Plato's Dialectical_Def_ense of Democracy and Diversity." See Drew Hyland, F initude and Transcendence inrhe RItitoiiic'Dialogies (SUNY, 1995) and Stanley Rosen, Nihilism.' A Philosophical Essay (Yale, 1969). _ 9 Phaedo, 9961-1003..
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hopelessness, and nihilsm. Ifthe given is unsatisfactory, and we seek to make it better, then some intimation of the good is needed as an indication that our searching is not meaningless. But this intimation need not be, indeed should not be, nal and absolute. _
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So Plato has even Kallpolis, the best city, clecompose. Absolute possession ofthe truth cannot be maintained absolutely, if at all. And in the cosmic parable of the Myth of Er, Socrates leaves the young
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men with a vision of the whole that is a mythos, not a full and thorough rational account, a logos. As a
myth, it is a substitute for the complete, echonic logos of the truth that he cannot provide. As mythos it
serves positively the goals of logos: as a modest condence in reason; it reinforces the intimation that the world does make sense, as a whole, and therefore that rational inquiry also makes sense - not absolutely of the whole as such, but precisely as inquiry guicled by the glimmering light at the end of the tunnel.
So, nally, I would say that Plato presents the two models of philosophy, the echonic and the zetetic, simultaneously, because the zetetic joumey (621d) needs, as its fuel, the echonic preconstructions of the
truth about the whole. But Plato presents these preconstructon as nyths (the Er story) or as unrealized ideals (Kallipolis and the philosopher-rulers) and what is an unrealized ideal but a myth? - precisely
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because they are only intimations, and as such, they must be deconstructed to serve as the very fuel for which they are intended in spu-ring on zetetic philosophy's search. Philosophy, then, is a jomney of
reconstructions that ends only with death, as Plato and Socrates tell us in so many ways. Far from setting up the goal of an absolute knowledge to which we may aspire as the tool of our dominaton over the whole, Plato's reconstructive vision of philosophy establishes areason for being modest even as we dare to recollect the pieces of the whole. Platonic freedom is to be found neither in anarchistic deconstruction nor
in the systematic imposition of a nal theory but rather in the outrageously' everyday dance between myth
and reason.
,Tl-IE GRAMMAR OF BEING AND _'l`HE BEING OF GRAMMAR
Dennis E. Skocz January 2003

"Essence is expressed by grammar. " Wittgenstein]
This paper explores the relationship between gramnar and being and suggests that granu'naritself is being-historical. If the paper makes goods on its ambition, we should come to s ee' that being reveals and conceals itself in grammar --not only in the grammar of the word "being" or, even more broadly, in the grammar of the many words forbeing, but in grarnmar as "applied" to all words, to grammar as the grammar of language per se. We will begin with "The Grammar of the Word 'Being'" ein Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysicsz but if granmar is being-historical, then we should lift the quotation marks around the word "being," dispense with the word "word" before "being," and hear Seinsgrammatik as we hear Seinsgeschckte. If grammar is historical in the Heideggerian sense ofgeschicklich, then weshould come to see how it is that granmar destines --or should say, how being destines in grammar?
we
"Ambition" describes well the undertaking set forth in this paper. We cannot hope to do justice to the theme or the "thesis" within the scope of a conference paper. At best, we may be able to suggest a way of thinking about the matter and lend oredibility to the thesis.
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"Why grammar?" one might ask.
"the being of language: the .language of being." We are accustomed to joining Heidegger in thinking being etymologically, as he does in the same section of the Introduction to 'Metaphystcs in which he addresses the grammar of the word "being" l-Ieideggefs etyrnologies of "being" and key words from the history of philosophy --or better, keys words in which Sensgeschickte speaks --are a hallmark of his style of thinking. Indeed, his critics nd targets of opportunity for attack when they perceive Heidegger to be bending philology to his purposes. Whatever validity a particular etymology may have or lack, it does not occur to students of Heidegger to question the utility of etymology as a way gaining access to the meaning of being perhaps because so many of the etymologies are so illuninating or perhaps because we have just become used to a "teclnique."
Students of Heidegger understand that language and being "go together." Heidegger reects on that relationship repeatedly and succinctly conjoins the two when he writes,
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Heidegger's extended reection on the relationship of being and language (speech) has included intensive exegeses of poems by such poets as Holderlin, Stefan George, and Rilke. These exegeses serve as occasions for profound meditation on the relationship between poetizing and thinking --both, in their relationship to' the saying ofbeing. Arguably, no philosopher before or after Heidegger has made as much "use" of poetry for
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the purposes of philosophy as Heidegger has. Nonetheless, for serious students of his work, it seems natural to plumb poetry and poetizing for an understanding of being.
The linking of language and being via etymology and poetry seems tting ard procluctive. But, grarnrnar would seem to be an unwelcome guest in the company of poetry and philology. It would seem that grammar just "doesn't t in." Poetry deals with the distinctive and sublime in terns that resonate with feeling. Etymology, asphilology, bespeaks a love of the word is this not what the etymology of "philology" tells us? -and it presupposes that language is historical. Grammar, by comparison, is cold and analytical. It presumes to a knowledge of language that is universal. It seems to be a technology for putting every word in its place. Grammarians succeed at clarifying meaning when they have dispelled' ambiguity. Surely, this is no way to let being be. Ultimately, however, the issue is not whether grammar. ts in with poetry and etymology, but whether its relationship with being is tting. On the face of it, it would seem n o t ;
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To be sure, Heidegger gives a chapter of the Introduction to a grammatical discussion. Does his attention to grammar not afrm its utility for ourunde-standing of being? A quick reading of that chapter suggests that it does not. Heidegger initiates his grammatical reec-tion by noting that "being" has become an "empty word."3 He goes on to observe that the "formal concepts and terms of grammar have become "totally tmcomprehended and incomprehensible shells."4 Striking as such characterizations are, it will not settle the matter to quote them and dismiss grammar. Among other things, Heidegger hints at the possibility that gramrnar might have "afrmative value." After noting the relationship between the "essenceof being" in "its essential involvement with the essence of language," Heidegger cautions us "not to mistake the linguistic and grammatical investigations for a sterile and irrelevant game."5 The sense of the statement seems to be that while grammar may have become a "game," it need not be such; it may be able to help clarify the relationship of language and being.
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Beinggs Innitve: Forgetting the E_nit_l_.lde of Being
So what does Heidegger say about the grarmnar of the word "being"?'
We may gist the interpretation as follows. "Being" is an innitive, a "verbal . substantive."" In the modus rnitivus, a verb becomes a substantive (noun). In the transformation of verb and noun into the innitive much is lost. Attributes of the noun -person, number, andcase --are left out. The tense and mood of the verb likewise disappea-.7 In this sense, the innitive is as much dened by what it lacks as by what it has or_ does. Etymologically considered, the innitive is not-nite, is without end, unlimited. This, according to Heidegger, does not "advantage" the innitive but rather disaclvantages it. For the Greeks --and it is with them that our gramnar has its origin" -"end" is not meant in a negative sense as something that has "failed" or "ceased." To be without an end is negative. Being without an end means being without denition (as delimtation), without intrinsic purpose (telos), and without fulllment. Thus understood, the innitive is constitutionally incapable of expressing _th__e^pas`s'age from possibility to fulllment, that "emerging placing-itself-in-the-limit," which Heidegger identies with
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entelecheia, a term he characterizes as the "supreme term that Aristotle used for being." In the iniinitive the "meaning is drawn out (abstracted) from all particular relations [those reected in person and tense, for example].""l Heidegger observes that "thai-nnitive no longer manifests what the verb otherwise reveals [e.g. who spoke when and how]." It "communicates the least of the verb's meaning."l2 As a late-developed lnguistic fom, the innitive expresses only a "general sense."13 In any word, language takes fonn as a being (essent), something nite. With the inntive, however, the "nitizing" forms which situate, number, date, modalize, and personalize are absent so that only the abstract and minimal representation of something is left. When it comes to the innitive "to be," all that is left is pure (i.e. mere) presence as present-at-handedness. What has been or will be, and therefore becoming, requires a tensed or nite verb to be manifested. With the innitive "being," then, something present~at~hand, a being, i.e. the word "being," _ comes to represent mere being-present-at-hand.
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One can trace a path to the present understanding of being in terms of the innitive, "being." Consider this narrative. T_he ea-liest understandings of being were diffuse. Being, insofar as it is understood linguistically, is expressed in nite forms of both verbs and nouns. These foms, modiniti, express concretely and fully the many Ways in which things are. The nite fonns, modinit, stabilize early in the development of language, and grammar expresses these fonns with the concepts of case and declension. But there is presumably need to speak of what is common to several nite forms of the verb "to be." Various candidates for what will become the commonly accepted innitive are thrown up by the base dialects, the ones which eventually coalesce to form a given language." The least determined and most general form emerges and endures. This form, the infnitive, becomes the standardfor understanding being, but it offers thought the least matter-for-thought. Forgotten in the development of the innitive, "to be" or simply "being," are those many ways of being expressed in the nite forms. The history of the word "being" is one of omission or forgetting, overlooking as disregarding, withdrawing from view. Heidegger would call that history by the name "enklz'sz's," a word translated as "declension" and used ordinarily and for a long time in a grammatical sense, but a word whose earlier sense is to incline, to fall from the upright andself-standing. If "enklisis" is the name for the history we have traced, then the history of "being" is the history of a _ falling off and away from an earlier and fuller understanding of "being." "Being" comes to express what is most common, the universal, the unlimited, pure presence itself. Absent nitude and temporality, however, "being" is empty of meaning and the process of emptying it of meaning is, may we say, the history of grammar.'4
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Does this sound like the history of being? May we lift the quotation marks around "being" and take the history of grammar in being-historical terms? In the above narrative, are We just talking about a word and its fonns or when we say "being," is being said? Does' the grammar of "being" constrain us in the way that we speak (ot) being? Is such "constraint" a trace of the "destining" (schicken) which makes for the historicality of history, the Geschicklichkeit of Geschickte?
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We shall return to these questions later. It surely seems thabgrnmar works against the understanding of being. If, as we noted initially, present grammatical forms are empty
and grammar isdevoid of an understanding of being, does mean that grammar does not offer a mode of access to being? Quite to the contrary, we must answer. Our reection on granrnar more specically, on the history of the grammar of "being" offers us a way of understanding how being has come to be understood in a way that leaves it empty of meaning. The history of the grammar of "being" at least parallels, if it does not express, the history of beingas Seinsvergessenheit.
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--
So far, we have dealt with grammar and being, and now beirg-history, without explicitly dening or characterizing being-history. If _we are to lend credibility to the notion that grammar is being-historical then weshould explicitly address being-history.
"Terms of Reference" and Method
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What is being-history? The question poses a "tall order." Atthe very least, what follows represents the understanding of being-history which informs the present reection on
gramrnar.
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The being in being-history refers to the how of beings, the truth of beings. Beinghistory unfolds in successive transformations in the truth of being. But the historical in being history means more than that being discloses itself differently through time. "History" in being history translates Geschickte. What is geschickrlich (historical) in Geschikre (history) is variously rendered by fate or the fateful, destiny, sending, mittance, directives, assignrnent. The English word disposition might serve to render Heideggefs Geschikte somewhat more accessible. Disposition refers to the how of beings, their order, arrangement. An archaic meaning is assigmnent. Disposition is also a mood, a readiness to take on a task or to regard things ina certain way. To say that being is historical or fatel or destines would mean that it is dispositive in all the above senses. Beings are disposed in a certain way. This clisposition of beings may or may not be the product of a human disposing. *What is decisive is that the disposition of being, the how of their being, itself disposes - disposes us to take them in a certain way, artitudinally and interpretively, and so to act accordingly. Disposition is not about compulsion or necessitation but rather tending a certain way in light of .._ What is historical in being-history sets us upon 'a certain course. In Time and Being, Heidegger offers a clue as to how the destinal character of history devolves from the truth of being or the way in which being unfoldsfs There, Geschickte is' linked to the giving of the Es gibt." Es gibt is German for there is, but translated word for word, it comes out, It gives." Heidegger will play on the Es and the gibt (the it and the . gives) and upon the geben ad the Gabe (or the giving and the given or "gift"). Indeed, the historical (geschicklich) in history (Geschickte) derives from a disposing or (schicken) in which the giving only gives the given and withholds itself as giving. Being-history is destinal in so faras it both reveals (the given) and conceals (the giving). Revealing and concealing are not two separate phenomena: in revealing itself, being withdraws, being is a concealing. This dynamic works to destine or dispose us toa forgetfulness of being. Given only what the giving gives,~__we take the given for giving, beings for being. __
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Let us Venture forth with this reformulation.
I)
is the being ofbeings or the truth of beingsw or the way in which beings Being are.' To say "truth of being" is to introduce notions of revealing and concealing, but not as distinct possibilities which apply as attributes to an already existent being. Rather, truth is a revealing/concealing, so that we should of a probably speak which conceals and a which reveals. revealing conccaling
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2) Being-history is not about a meta-entity, Being, which evolves through time. "History" takes-in all that wehave said about being and truth, revealing and concealing,-and introduces the notion of time. It is not that time measures events, as the common-sense notion of historiography would have it. Time is not extrinsic to the Lmfolding of being. Rather, temporality is intrinsicto the unfolding with its "whence" (having been) and' "whither" (approaching).2'
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3) Finally, being~history is not effected by human making or doing. Being destines, ir disposes. It "does" this not as the action of a meta-subject outside human affairs but precisely in its character as the "how" of beings.22 _
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Our discussion of the grammar of "being" implicitiy appropriates most, if not all, of these senses of being-history. Grammar is way of construing the being of the word "being" which 'reveals it as the universal meaning of being in all nite grammatical expressions of being. This revealing, however, conceals those very nite/manifold senses: in the unfolding of being in the innitive "being," its origin ("whence") in a manifold of nite being-fonns is lost and forgotten as the word evolves towards its telos as innitive, i.e. toward the "wh`ther" already implicit in the effort to come to an understanding of being common to its diverse senses. The forgetfulness of being that manifests itself in the innitive is no mere doing of speakers but arises from way in which the innitive is. The being of the innitive "being" continues to dispose us to forgetfulness of being
We will use these fom' senses ofbeing-history to identify elements of being-historicality in grammar as Heidegger speaks ofit and uses it. But one more setof clarications is needed --clarications regarding the ways in which Heidegger relates to grammar. At this point we need to distinguish (a) what Heidegger tells us explicitly about grammar, (b) Heidegger's use of granmatical analysis, and (c) grammatical imovations which __ Heidegger introduees into his language. _
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Heidegger's long discussion of the grammar of "being" is an example of (a). Heidegger Speaks about' grammar and tells us how it shapes our mderstanding of the word "being." The further elaboration of this paper, however, now requires that weattend to a couple ways in which Heidegger uses grammar to address aspects of being. The second approach, (b), differs front' "(a) in that Heidegger does not speak_ about grammar, but simply employs it as a tool to illuminate some aspect of ibeing. Here the role of grammar in shaping our understanding of being is implcit in a practice devoted to disclosing
being. In the third approach, (c), Heidegger takes us to "the limits of grammar and beyond." Heidegger stretches, and breaks the rules ofgrammar, inventing the grammatical equivalent of neologisms (neogrammisms?). Ostensibly, this approach suggests that grammar is a mere tool for disposing beingsto suit our human purposes. If we understand "what Heidegger is up to," however, we see that quite the opposite isthe case.
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We shall consider now prepositions and the proposition: prepositions afford an example of straightforwarcl revelation of being; the proposition illuminates the play of revealing/concealing and the dispositive force of grammar. From Preposition to World
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Very early in his philosophical. career Heidegger attends to grammar for clues to being. In Phenomenologcal Interpretations ofAristotle, for example, the grarnmar of prepositions provides access to -the worldliness of the wo_rld.23
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The critical transition from "life" to "world" occurs in a reection on the peculiar feature of the intransitive verb "to live":
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"The intransitive sense of the verb 'to live,' if presentifed concretely, always takes explicit form in phrases such as to live 'in' something, to live 'out of something, to live 'following' something, to live 'from' something. The 'something,' whose manifolcl relations to 'living' are indicated in these prepositional expressions (which to all appearances, have been casually heaped together), is what we call
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tw-0rld_24
Even though the intransitive as such lacks an object which "completes its action" or "transfers its action from a subject to an object," the intransitive "to live" exceeds itself, goes beyond itself, through its prepositional "sufxes" which link it to what Heidegger calls the "world." Even in the "subjective" sense of "to live" - i.e. to live through or end.u'e --there is yet something that one lives through; living through is not completely explained in taking account of the affective state of the subject. The transitive verb "to build" has its completion in something like "house." House' is what building builds. The intransitive "to live," although its does not have a grarmnatical object, nonetheless has its "completion" in a world: "The phenomenologicai category," world", immediately names - and this is crucial --what is lived, the content aimed at in living, that which' life holds to."25 The understanding of the phenomenon of world then arises from a reection on the phenomenon of life. It is essentially correlated to life. Their relatedness is one of referentiality: life refers to world. The n e x u s ' created by this referertality is indicated by the fact the one can substitute "world" for "life" in various expressions ("to go out into the world" vice "to goout into life"). World is "the basic category of content-sense in the phenornenon, life."26
As this paraphrase of the early Heidegger hopes to show;,-the grammar of transitve and intransitive verbs and the use of prepositions is deployfxlto illuminate the phenomenon
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of world from out of a reectionon the phenomenon of life. Heidegger does not thematize the role of g ram m a ' .in what is ultimately phenomenology, but his use of grammar allows us to make some observations. The being ofthe world --Heidegger's language in 1920 is the "phenomenon of world" is illuminated through gmmmar. If a mark of being-historicality is the revealing of a way of being, then wesee in the young Heideggerfs grammar of the intransitive verb "to live" taken with its prepositions, an element of being-history:_ a disclosure ofthe being ofworld. Interestingly, Heidegger begins with the innitive "to live." Unlike the innitive. '_'to be/being," however, "to live" achieves a kind of transitivity by virtue of the prepositions it takes. That transtivity allows the verb and the phenomenon it expresses -~ to mfold in the ensemble of meanngs and relations that is the phenomenon ofworld. Another aspect of beinghistory we identied is temporality as the passage from a "whence" to a l"whither." In this regard, we recall as well what Heidegger said about entelechea, an unfolding into fulllment regarded by Ai-istotle as the s u p i -eme name for-being. The transitivity given to an intransitive verb by prepositions is not only disclosive, as opening up the phenomenon of world, but also expresses the entelecheia of the phenomenon of life which achieves its fulllment in breadth of relationships that is world. There is nally this. In his reection from the Aristotle lectures, Heidegger passes from the "property" of a verb to the phenomenon of a being, world. More generally, throughout thediscussion he passes back and forth between grammaticaljverbal expressions and being-phenomena. This suggests an underlying relationship between word and being that plays out when the word is taken in its grammaticality. If wehave identied something beyond the particular clisclosing of world effected inthe grammar of prepositions, it may be this: that the word-being relationship, frequently reected in poetizing, evinces itself in the workings of grarnmar as well.
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Proposition, Thing, Being
Now, the proposition. The propositional form (subject-predcate; noun-verb) is one of the basics of grammar and is simple enough in itself. What it means in relation to being is another matter altogether. Heidegger denes the problematic in What is a Th`ng?:
"Has man [have hmnans] .read off the structure of the proposition from the structure of the things, or has he transferred the structure of the proposition into the things? Do the essences of the proposition and of the truth determine themselves from out of the essence of the thing, or does the essence of the thing determine itself from out of the essence of the propositior? "27
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What, may we ask, is the relationship between grammar of the proposition and the way in which being shows itself? _
We have said, perhaps incautiously, that the subject-predicate form is basic to grammar without acknowledging that there are many grammars. Our Indo-European grammar is the basic nature of the only one of many. We may nd validation for o u t conception of form in lingust Leonard Bloomeld's statement: "When alangage has more than one type of full sentence, these types may agree in showing eonstnctions of two parts. The
common name for' such bipartite favorite sentence-forms is predications"?2s This carefully guarded sentence, however, hardly manifests the necessity and universality _ philosophers trade in. And what are we to make of linguist-anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorfs observation that in the Nitinat language, "the tenns verb and noun ...are meaningless"?''9_ We will have to table the development of these points, letting them serve to circumscribe, provisionally at least, our reections. Our focus is Western thinking and in Western thought we may and m.st ask Heidegger's questions. Has the grammatical form, the subject-predicate or propositional form, shaped, reected, or deected our understanding of he being of beings? _
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At rst, it seems that however weassess the matter, the gramrar of this simple and basic form has worked in a being-historical manner. If, to use Heidegger's words, we have "read off the structure (grammar) ofthe proposition from the structure of things, then is this not to suggest that grammar is a revealing of the being of beings? If, on the other hand, we have "transferred the stmcture of the proposition into the things," does this not suggest that gramrnar has disposed us to an understanding of being?_ Are we not the beneciaries of a constructive dilemma, a "win-win situation"? Or, is our interpretation too hurried? Are we falling into a trap?
,
Behind Heide'gger's formulation of the issue, wemay hear the question: does the subjectpredicate distinction of grammar mirror the substance-accident distinction of ontology or is ontology a function of grammar? If the latter case is true, then should we not ask further: what is grammar the function of? Is it a function of human making and doing? Does the subj ect-predicate distinction point to the subject-obj ect distinction? And, in what does this latter distinction have its ground?
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I-Ieidegger's long reection "Various Ways of Questioning About the Thing," in What is a Thing? It repeatedly touches on the relationship of the subj ect-predicate distinction (grammatical) and the substance-accident distinction (ontological), but it never denes that relationship at least not in a concise and straightforward manner and in view of the alternatives (mirroring or projection) Heidegger draws in sharp relief. The opening discussion drops many hints along the way and ends by pointing to the need for a historical questioning --' "a setting free and into motion the happening which ist quiescent and bouncl in the question'."3_
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Whether we see grammar as _a copy or as a projection of reality, we take for granted that and stand grammar heings apart from each other as already established entities and that the issue is how to relate them. Perhaps the way to an answer outside these alternatives lies in tracing the emergence of the propositional forrr. Perhaps this would an be instance of the "setting free and into motion" which characterizes historical questioning.
Let us take a detour through Husserl. As early as his "Thing 1ect.r_es," Husserl provides the 'clue for understanding the matter. The thing, Husserl never seems ti_red of telling us, is never present all at once in its llness, but unfolds in perception over time. The grarmnatical si gnicance of this becomes quite evident irrecperience an d Judgment, whose project is to ground the form of j udgment, our grarn`matica_l form, in perceptual
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unfolding of the thing. Indeed, Experience and Judgement may be understood as one extended reection intended to trace the genesis of the propositional form.3 1
What happens in the articulation of a proposition is that the propositional forms of subject andpredicate are constituted or "accomplished" but only on the basis of a prepredicative synthesis of a "substrate" S and a "dependent ..moment" p of that substrate. This prepredicative synthesis is occurring all the time in perception. Prior to the articulaton of apredicative judgement, one cannot speak of either subject or predicate. What happens in prepredicative synthesis is that, "retaining [the substrate] S in grasp, we pass to its moment p," and we "witness this coincidence, this 'contraction' of S in p."32 From what has been said so far, we must rule out the idea that grammar projects its forms on' beings. The gramrnatical or propositional fonns have yet to make their appearance and among beings there is already a differentiation of beings --albeit as "undetermined substrates" and dependent moments of those substrates.
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In the execution of a proposition, "an active intention aims at apprehending what previously was a merely passive coincidence."33 When we accomplish the predicative synthesis, "we are directed objectively toward S in its partial identity with p."3'-4 The "accomplishment" here is neither the creation of propositional forms ex nihilo nor the mere repetition of what has been synthesized prepredicatively. Nonetheless, the predicative synthesis is "a new kind of activity" distinguished by its active explication of the difference of substrate and dependentmoment and, at the same time, "the active accomplishment of the unity of identity between S and p."35 What was implicity "determined" in the prepredicative synthesis is made explicit by an "apprehending consciousness."36 Husserl writes of "the .spontaneousfashoning ofnew thematic forms, 'theme-subject and theme-determination' [predicate]. they are new thematic forms, arsing from an original spontaneity."37 The emphasis on spontaneity and the newness of the propositional forms rules out the idea that the fonns of the proposition are merely read. off from the structure of being.
Grammar, if Husserl has it right, neither copies the structure of beings nor projects itself upon beings. Rather, it articulates and explicates, expresses the way in which beings present themselves in space and time via perception. The sense of what Husserl calls "double" formation" is that both the propositional forms (subject-predicate) and the "coreforms" (substantivity-adjectivity) are "accomplished" or obj ectivated in predicative 38 judgment. They are not pre-existent and detenninate entities or structures which come into relation "after the fact." The explication Husserl writes about "turns back" to the unity preoonstituted in passive synthesis --a unity which he descrbes as "concea1ed."39 That explication, then, can be characterized as a dsclosure or a revealng. The _ grammatical moment in which subject-predicate distinction becomes articulated would be a disclosing of the being of beings: in this case, the concealed unity (being) of the undetermined substrate S and dependent moment p (bengs). .
Notwithstanding the Husserlian framework --a phenomenology' of consciousness in which Sein ist Bewustsein --what remains from the Husseilian analysis is this: the subject-predicate distinction articulates, indeed cliscloses the being (unity or structure) of
beings. Subject and predicate are not just names for the grammatical constituents of a predicative judgement. They articulate the underlying unity and difference of substrate and dependent moment which give themselves as such in the passive synthesis of perception. If being historical refers to the disclosing of beings in their being, then it can be said that the subject-predicate grammar of the proposition is being-historical.
We come now to the last part of our reection. If the grammar of the propsition can reveal the being (i.e. unity or structure) of beings, it can also conceal being.
Heidegger is notorious for his neologisms and for what we may call neo-granmisms. . Parts of speech are trans-located. In Mitsein, for example, a preposition (mit) embedded in a substantive (Sein), derived om a verb (sein), has the force of an adjective (specifying kind of being) or should we say adverb (expressing mode of being)?
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position.
Heidegger could be charged with violating the rules of grammar when it comes to the subject-predicate/noun-verb distinction With expressions like "the thing things" and the "world wor-lds."4 "Thing" is a substantive. It belongs in the "subject" slot of the proposition. Only words expressing action or state~of-being belong in the predicate-Verb
i
What is the intent of this play with the forms of grarnmar, specically the subjectpredicate/noun-verb distinction? Could it be an oblique critique of the distinction? Might the "abuse" of the rule be a way ofrevealng something about the being of beings? Might the "abuse" be justied if the ordinary application of the subject-predicate distinction conceals something about being?
In his lecture, "The Thing," Heidegger reects on the jug as a way of coming to understand the being of the thing. Heidegger says, "the jug's essential nature, its presencing, [Wesen] so experienced and thought of in these terms is what we call thing. We are now thinking of this word by way of the gathe-ing-appropriating staying of the fo.n'folcl." Essential nature/presencing is the translator's expression for Wesen, which, Heidegger reminds us oen enough, is an expression for the being of beings, With this understanding, the quoted text tells us that the being of the being naned "thing" (Ding), is to be thought in terms of activities --gathering, appropriating, staying --activities _ expressed as verbals (two participles modifying a gerund). (We bracket here consideration of the fourfold. There is much Heidegger says about it and it is, of course, pertinent to a full discussion of the matter. Our interest, however, focuses on semantics and gramma-_) The thing is not a static object "out there." It is not something simply existent as present-at-hand. The thing as thing "does things": gathers, appropriates, stays. The Heide ggerian etymology which follows underscores the active/doing/verbal sense of thing: "To be sure, the Old High German word thing means a gathering, and specically a gathering to deliberate on a matter mder discussion, a contested matter."42 Heidegger notes analogous senses revealed by the etymologies of the Latin words,- res and causa. After several paragraphs of etymology, however, Heidegger singles out "one semantic factor" ("ein Bedeurungsmomem aus dem alten of the Old High _ .S;urcclge_lgr___'g.cf") German "thing," namely the sense of gatheringf' WhatHeidegger says in the sentence
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cited above about gathering, appropriating, and staying distills a poetic reection (meditation?) on the being of the jug: its holding and keeping,'outpouring and giving, the dwelling of earth and sky in its offering of water and wine, its use in quenching mortal thirst and in offering libations to divinities. All of these activities are not just adjectival or accidental to the being of the jug. In and through each, the jug is asjug: "the gift of the is what makes the jug a jug. In the jugness of the jug, sky and earth outppuring dwell."
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It does not begin to do justice to Heidegger's reection to .s.mmarize it so briey, but let us come' to the grammatical point. When Heidegger says the "thing things" or refers to the "thinging of the thing," it would appear that he is deploying a dstorted grammar to "set the matter straight." The (mis)formation verbalizes the noun, "thing," and it repeats the "semantic kernel" of the noun, "thing," in the verb position, signally the transformation of the n o t m into a verb by the addition of a "t" toDing to make "dingt" -and by the change of the initial letter, "D" from upper to lower case." What does this mean? 'Without Hegelianizing here, perhaps weshould understand the -move to mean that the substance (or substantivty?) expressed by the substantive is not just a being, a thing, but a way of being, be-ing; not a thing, but a thing-ing. In positive terms: a being is in be-ing. The repetition ofthe semantic kernel of the noun/substantive in the verb slot suggests that what-.it-is-to'-be a thing should be sought in the verbality of the verb, in expressing action, doing, and the state of being. "State of being" is a nod to the language of traditional gramnar, but if this analysis has merit, "state" cannot be *taken statically but must express the staying (staying power?) which Heidegger mentions along with gathering and appropriating as the essential natre of thing.
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If the rules of grammar have to be bent to express the being of beings, what does this say about grammar's way of articulating being? Does it not suggest that grammar distorts the being of beings and that the bending of grammar to articulate the being of beings truly is something like the negation of a negation?
How might the normal use of grammar distort the being of beings? And what are we now to make of what Husserl led us to see 4- or perhaps only to believe --viz., that grarnmar articulates and discloses the being of beings?
Surely the everyday use of grammar does not prevent us from saying correct things. Nor does the normal use of grammar "set us up" for being wrong in what we say. For the most part, Heidegger himself speaks in nonnally formed sentences. If we have come to understand Heidegger con'ectly, then we should say that the subject-predicate distinction --and probably the rest of grammar --is an adequate toolfor saying correct things about things. When it comes to expressing the being of things, however, it can mislead and conceal. Is it correct to say that "the jug pours water"? If the jug does pour water, then' the statement is correct. If the idea is to express the being of the jug, however, then-the subject-predicate formmay fall short. As such, the subject-predicate distnction does not distinguish between an essential attribute and an accidental feature; and, for its part, an essential attribute does not "dene" the essence of a thing-7*Heidegger, it seems, wants to jolt us from o.1r disposition to regard the being of beings -in tenrs of the forms we use to
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dispose and order beings. The "violation" of grammatical rules works to induce something like a paradigm shift in how we think about things. In the specic case noted here, Heidegger enlists established meanings of substantive and verb an_d the rules of _; word position in the sentence to effect an understanding of being. If this is so, then -must we not conclude that grammar s_erves to disclose being? It would seem so, but only ond' the condition that wenot acquiesce in normal usage but instead use ordinary forms in extraordinary ways to let being be. _
It should not surprise anyone by now that grammar both reveals and conceals. It is not just that, in some cases (prepositions and the phenomenon of world), grammatical forms reveal, and that, in other cases (the innitive for being), they conceal. In t_he last case, (the subj ect-predicate distinction), the revealing and concealing seem inteftwined in ways that do not allow for simple sumnation. We noted earlier that the historical (geschickl ich) in history (Geschickte) derives from a disposing (schicken) in which the giving only gives the given and withholds itself as giving. _This appears to apply to the subjectpredicate/noun-verb distinction, as discussed above. The grarrunar of the distinction, per Husserl, reveals the order of things (the being of beings, if being_is understood as order). We are given the gi,ven(s) (substrates and dependent moments), but the giv~ing itself, the being of beings, understood as the dispos-ing that results in a given disposition, withdraws. If we take the present-at-hand forms of the proposition -for the presencing which makes them present, then they can be said to conceal and even perhaps falsify the be-ing which withdraws.
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On this note of withdrawal, our reection ends. Having opened with Wittgenstein, shall we close with him? Is it appropriate to recall a famous saying of his, Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen": "What we cannot speak about we must_ pass over in silence"?46' _ _
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Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, Para 37l, p. 116 1963, _ 2 Heidegger, Martin, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheirn, Doubleday & Company, New 1961 York, _ 3 43 Heidegger, Introduction,.p. 4 44 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 5 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 45 6 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 45 7 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 54 8 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 47 9 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 50 1 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 56 Heidegger, Introduction, p. 56 'Z Heidegger, Introduction, p.57 U _ Heidegger, Introduction, p. 56 _ '4 56-57 Heidegger, Introduction, pp. _ _ 15 Heidegger, Martin, On 'Time und Being,' trans. Joan Stambaugh, Harper & Row, New York, 1972 '6 Heidegger, Time, pp. 8-9 '7 Heidegger, Martin, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Indiana University Press,'Bloomington, 1999, Para 34, p. 52 Maly, _ 5'S 'T Heidegger, Contributions, Para 44, p. 66 ,_ '9 Heidegger, Contributions, Para 2, p. 5 _
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' Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philasophical
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Heidegger, Martin, "The Essence of Truth," trans. John Sallis, Pathmarks, ed. William McNei1, 1998, p. 151 gambridge University, Cambridge, 14-15. _ Time, pp. 22 eiiegger, e egger, Time, p. 9 2:' Heidegger, Martin, Phenomenological Interpretations ofAristotle, Initiation into Phenornenolagical trans. Richard Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001 esearch, Aristotle, p. 65 25 Heidegger, p. 26 geigegger, ei egger, Aristot Aristote, e, p. 27 Heidegger, Martin, What is a Thing?, trans. W.B. Barton, Jr. and Ver Deutsch, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1967, pp. 46-47 Beemee, Leonard, Language, Heu, Rineim ane wmson, New York, 1933, p. 173 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, Language, Thought, and Reality, Selected Writings ofBenjamin Lee Whof ed. Carroll, The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1956, p. 99 !l ei egger, Thing, p. 48 3' Husserl, Edmund, Experience and Judgment, Investigatians in a Genealogy ofLogic, ed. Ludwig trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973 Landgrebe, 32 Hnsserl, Experience, Section 50a, p. 206 33 I-Iusserl, Experience, Section 50a, p. 207 3" Husserl,'Experience, Section 50a, p. 207 35 I-iusserl, Experience, Section 50a, p. 207 36 Husserl, Experience, Section 50a, p. 208 37 I-Iusserl, Experience, Section 50b, 209 3 Husserl, Experience, Section 50b, p. 210
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Experience, Section 50a, p. 208 2Husserl, Heidegger, Martin, "The Thng," Poetiy, Language, Thought, trans. Albert l-Iofstadter, Harper & Row,
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179 et._aI. hlew York, pp. 174, _ "'Thing," p. 174 42 Heidegger, 174 "Thing," p. 43 Heidegger, "Thing," p. 177 Heidegger, M pp. 45 _ . eiegger, e egger, " l!l-173 "$1ing," ing," p. 17 46 trans. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuiness, Routledge Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus Logica-Philosophicus, -. & Kegan Paul, London, 196i, Proposition 7, pp. 150, 151
T r acy Colony
Nietzsche
Time and the Work of Art: Reconsiderng Heidegger's Auseinandersetzung with

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Nietzsche ist ein bergang-"I
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Pe-haps the most questioned aspect of Heidegger's 1936-37 Nietzsche lecture Der Wille zur Macht als Kims! is Heideggefs apparent reading of the will to power as an essential unity subvering every actual mltiplicityi Heidegger seems to read the meaning of will to power as a given essence in which all cleterminate individual
portrayed with the expression: what is owrunost Rather than a reduction of partcularity to a given essence, Heidegger's descriptions of the will to power as Wesen' should be understood as describing what is owmnost in will to power. Will to power is never the willing of a particular actual [I/Virklichen] entity. It involves the being and what is ownmost to beings [das Sein und Wesen des Seienden]; it is this itseIf.(`NI: 61; trans.
relations are grounded_ Unquestionably, this image has been fostered inpart by the translation of Wesen in Heideggefs reading of will to power as simply essence. instead of 1-endet-ing Wesen as essence, what Heidegger intended is better
ik
modied): By translating and reading the meaning of Wsen__in Heidegger's initial

Nietzsche engagement beyond its traditional determinations, a more profound rst of Nietzsche lecture Heideggefs and its intimate relation to Understanding
Heideggefs own thought can be brought into view.

Since the 1961 publication of Heideg_ger's Nietzsche, many comrnentators have criticized Heidegger for interpreting the meaning of will to power in terms of a traditional metaphysical conception of essence. Michel Haar and Wolfgang Mller-
Lauter are irepresentatve
proponen Ofthis Crifqllei
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[I-I,=!ideg5er's] reduction of the Will to Power toessence neglects and keeps silent about the Nietzschean critique of the traditional concepts ofessence, substance, subject and identity. For Nietzsche, there is no essence in the Platonic sense of szb, that is in the sense of a constant --` _ uniry which would precede every multiplicity ,--p-__?
According :Q [Heidegger's] interpretation, the will _t"o power is not directed against other powepq" anta, other wills to power, but rather develops intrinsically in its uriiquene5_ I: moves self-sufciently in the realm of its own being. [...] For Heidegger, then, the designatecl selt`~assertion" is nothing other than original assertior of essence." [...] Above all,
Heidegger's thesis that the will to power always is essential will...never the willing of a particular actual entity" must be contradicted decisively.
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In this essay, I will argue that such readings of Heidegger as reductively essentializing
the meaning of will to power are overstated because the way which Heidegger denes the will to power as Wesen, i.e., what is ownmost to willto power, is not a
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traditional sense of sro, but rather an ownness which has its origin' ir dièrence. The ownness which Heidegger accords will to power as art should be understood as
the sense of ownness which occurs in the moment of creation which grounds and denes a particular form of historical existence. This sense of ownness is neither static nor trans-historcally given. Rather, it is adically contingent and suspended
upon the creative rupture of all eidetc gvens in the icapo
ofder Augenblick
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Firstiy, I contend that the meaning of Wesen in Hedegger's reading of will to power as art should be interpreted within the context of Heideggefs understanding of the historical signicance of art This context for -interpreting Heidegger's reading of will to power is oen overlooked in the secondary literature. Unquestionably, one of the reasons for
Nie12sche's thought of etemal recurrence. My argumentation: for this reading is structured

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inthree sections.
this neglect is that Heidegger chose to alter or omit many passages conceming this theme in his editing for the 1961 Neske version of the lectures. In order to present the actual centrality of this theme in Hedegger's account of will to power, I will oen
quote the more complete Gesamtausgabe version of the lecture manuscripts. Secordly, I demonstrate how this historical dirnension of art as will to power is grounded upon the experience of an originary temporality in Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence. Unfoldirg the meaning of art in terms oftime is required because, for Heidegger, the meaning ofwill to power is ultimately derived from the primordial
sense of ternporality described in'Nietzsche's thought of eternal recurrence: [...]wilI to power springs from nowhere else than etemal return, carrying thernark of its origin
always with it, as the stream its source." (N11: 81) Accordngly, the meaning of will to power art is ultimately structured in terms of the difference between 'a prosaic and
as
primordial sense of time. These two forms of timeare the prosaic "now" of the gpovog which is the basic unit for historiography, and mmore prirnordial moment
of der Augenblick in which the continuity of historical thematization is ruptured.
By interpreting the meaning of will to power in light of the tempomlity which denes it, I conclude that what is ownrnost to will to power, on Heideggefs reading,
does not contradict Nietzsche's understanding of will to power as a function of difference. The sense of difference which underles the continuity of an art-grounded historical existence is to be found in the kairological tenporalty of creation which is the ultimate basis for Heidegger's reading of the will to power as art. In light of these reconsideratons of the meaning of will to power as art, I then conclude with a suggestion for deciphering Heidegger's enigmatcxlescrip1i.ons.othe-i-nitia-l-Nietzsehee engagement as an artculation of difference [Auseinandersetzung] between Nietzsche and Heidegger's own thought.
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The meaning of Wesen in Heidegger's reading of the will to power has become more complex in light of the original lecture manuscripts which clièr
signicantly from the 1961 Nes/ce edition, yet todate, remain unavailable in English. In the above passage that Mller-Lauter quotes, there has been an important alteration
of the original. The passage should read: Self-assertion [...] is-always a going back into what is ownmost [Wesen], into the origin. Self-assertion is original transformation of what is ownmost. [Selbstbehauptung ist ursprngliche Wesensverwandlung.](NWM: 70) What is the meaning of Wesen here such that its assertion' is simultaneously a transfonnation? Understanding what Heidegger means
by this self-assertion is crucial becausethis sense of asserton is equated with the meaning of ernpowerment and creation in Hedegger's account of the will to power as
art. Heidegger states that with the description of will to power as creative: [...] it often seems to suggest that in and through will to power something is to be produced.
What is decisive is not production in the sense of manufacturing [Verjrtigens] but taking up and nansforming [Verwandeln], making something other [anders] than... , other in an essential way. For that reason the need to destroy belongs essentially to creation. (N`l: 61) This passage should not be interpreted at the level of a mere ontic sense of transformation, but instead, as descrbing the possibility of crossng from one
historical way of being to another.
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Heidegger's seemingly paradoxical description of the self-assertion of will to power as simultaneously a transfomation can be understood if 'amed in terms of the
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meanings of continuity and_transformaton present in Heideggers conception of the historical signicance of art. Firstly, thecontnuity of Wesen should be seen as the constant necessty for an historically grounded relation to beings. Secondly, the sense of transfornation within the meaning of Wesen should be understood as the passage
between different jbrrns of historical existence. This same sense of continuity, which rests upon a deeper capacity for transformation, mrrors Heidegger's own accomt of art. as a power for historical transformation in the rst presented version of Der
Ursprung des Kunsrwerkes, delivered in November 1935 and again in January 1936: The repetition of the beginning is always a transformation of the original beginning, the same and yet again something other." [Die Wiederholung des Argtnges ist immer
eine Verwandlung des anfnglichen Anznges, dasselbe und doch gerade wieder ein
Anderes.]5 The scope of this sense of transformation is thought at the level of the meaning of beings as a whole within a particular historical epoch.
The meaning of repetition [Wiederholung] in this passage is also apparently paradoxical because it seems to suggest a sense of repiication that is simultaneousiy a
transformation. This sense of 'repetition that is equally a transfonnaton should be mderstood as a creative engagement with the past from out of its ground in original tmporality. For Heidegger, this sense of Wieder-holung is never a simple recurrence of something past but is more essentaily a decisive confrortation with historicity that takes place in der Augenblick of the authentic present. This sense of confrontation With the past, which is equally a passage [bergang] toward new possibilites, is the .crucial point for understanding the proximity between Heidegger and Nietzsche. I will address this relation inthe nal section of this essay.
Heideggefs 'understandingof will to power as determining what is ownmost in the meaning of beings should be framed in terms of the way in which Heidegger,
and Nietzsche, understood art as a power to ground the continity of an historical period: [T]he rst and leading basic experience of art itself remains the experience
that it has a sigricance for the grounding of history, and that what is ownmost [Wesen] to art consists in such signicance. Thus, the creator, the artist, must be xed in view. Nietzscheexpresses the historical as what is o_w1rnost [Wesen] to art early on in the following words: Culture can proceed only onthe basis of the centralizing signicance of an art or an artwork.(`NÌ: l40;_"trans.. modiedf Heideggefs interpretation of the meaning of creation inNietzsche's thought upon art is based
upon Heidegger`s own understanding of art as inherently a power to ground history.
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This fundamentally temporal understanding of creation is most clearly drawn out in I-Ieidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche's description of art as a countennovement to nimism. The nihlism that Heidegger understood Nietzsche as witnessing to was not
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merely one-pessimistic Welrarschamng among others. Rather than a nihilism. based upon encounters with negativity and nothingness, Heidegger urderstood the meaning of nihilism in-Netzsche's thought as intimately entwined with the becoming of being and thus as the inner event of westem history itself: By nihilisn Nietzsche means the
historical development, i.e., event [das Ereignis], that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are annihilated[...](NI: 156) For Heidegger, Nietzsche's
understanding 'of art as a response to nihilism was not that of a merely artistcally informed ontology or insipid aestheticism. Rather, in the face of nihilism conceived as an ongoing' historical event, Nietzsche looked to art in its power to rnpture and reforge the grounds of historical existence itself For Heidegger, Nietzsche turned to: [...]art in_ its historical determination as the countermovement to nihilsm[...] (NI: 91) because the highest values were shown to lack the: _[...] creative force and cohesion in grounding man's historical existence upon beings as a whole.(N`l: 90) Art becomes a counterrnovement to rihilism because it counters the contemporaneous frag-mentation of existence in that it offers: [...] to prepare and ground standards and laws for historical, intellectual existence.(NI: 92) This radical sense of creation in Nietzsche's metaphysics is envisioned by Heidegger asthe capacity to shape and dene the unity of an historical epoch.
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On the basis of the history-grounding power of art, Heidegger' describes Nietzsche's thought upon the meaning of creation as a question: [...] for art history in the sense of what is ownmost to it, as a question that participates in the formation of the future history of Dasein.(Nl: 131; trans. modied) What Heidegger means by the historical ownmost of art is not that art can become the object of historical
study,
but rather, that art can open and preserve a particular epochal understanding of beings as a whole: Great art and its works are great in their historical ernergence and being
because in rnan's historical existence they accomplish a decisive task: they make rnarifest, in the way appropriate to works, what beings as a whole are, preserving
such manifestation in the work.(NI: 84) Although it is often overlooked in the Secondary literature, Heidegger understood Nietzscl-e's thought upon art as a: [...] struggle on behalf of the possibility of great art[...].('NI: 127) It was in terms of this
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same struggle for great art that Heidegger presented the question of art in the rst versions of Der Ursprung des Kunstwerlres. Unquestionably, Heidegger drew this parallel with Nietzsche on the basis of the ontological sense of struggle in Heidegger's own initial accounts of the creator as a virtually self destroying passage" [selbst vemichtender'Durchgang]7 which would ground a newform of historical
existence. In the opening paragraph of Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst, Heidegger announceshis focus on the historical aspect of Nietzsche's_ thought upon art by quoting one of Nietzsche's unpublished notes 'om 1872: _
e
There are times of great danger in which times when the wheel rolls philosophers appear _ever faster when philosophers and artists assume the place of the dwindling mythos. They are far ahead of their time, however, for the attention of conternporaries [Zeitgenossen] is only quite slowly clrawn to them. (NI: 3)
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The preceding sentences to this quote are: The sphere of the philosopher and the artist exists above the tumult of contemporary history [Ze'tgesch:'chte], beyond necessity. The philosopher as brakeshoe on the wheel of rime.s The meanings of artist and philosopher in this passage are dened in terms of the difference between the prosac thematization of historical progresson and a more ori ginary dimension of time which is not measured by a chrono-logcal thematzation. ln the last paragraph of the Iecture, Heidegger returns to this same contrast between historically thematized
temporalty and the deeper kairological moment in which such contnuity is destroyed and recast. However, this entire concluding paragraph was omitted from the Neske
edition:
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Only a knowing that comes from .originary grounds and questions grants a steady vision and decisiveness against the most dangerous nihilistic powers those, that is, which hide themselves behind bourgeois cultural activity" and artistic and religious reform movements. Those who appeal to what has been great up to now can do nothing for this greatness because they deny its innermost ground: the necessity of creating. For they cannot bear what is essential to creating: the necessity of destructon. And the greatest destru-ction lays hold ot' the -creator himself. He' must rst cease to be his own contemporary [Zer''genosse], because he belongs least of all to himself, but rather to the becoming ot' being. It was the knowledge of the i-'ate of ereators, in union with the knowledge of the death of God, that granted to Nietuche, to the Dasein of the thinker, his great assurance in the mdst of every upheaval and overturning. (NWM: 274)
The reason that Heidegger describes Nietzsche's creator as having to cease being hS OWH C0fmP0ff1fY iSOnly nterpretable in terms of the historical dirnension of great art that is the background for Heideggefs reading of will to power. In the
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rst delivered version of Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, Heidegger states: Great art is never an up-to-date [reirgeme] art. An art is great when, fully unfolding iu; ownmost in its work, it instils the truth that becomes the measurefor an historical perod.'_ What- is at issue in Heidegger's reading of the meaning of creation- in relation to Nietzsche's experience of the death of god is the sense of creation which
Nietzsche sought as a response to the dwindling power of myth to unify and ground historical existence. _
In another section that was omitted in the Neske version,_I-Ieidegger states: Nietzsche took as his starting point the knowledge that historical Dasein is not possible without God and without the gods.(NWM:- 191) What Heidegger intends by
this statement is not that the gpovo of historical time must be regrounded upon the eternity of onto-theology, but rather, that~Nietzsche understood art and religion as.
sources of rupture and regeneration vis--vis the closure that results when possibilities are calculated in the medium of chronological time. For Heidegger, the imiermost
meaning of art, .e., creation, as willto power is funclamentally a capacity for passage into a new historical form of life. It is with respect to this radical sense of passage
beyond the exhaustion of thecontemporary epoch, dened by the death of God, that Heidegger understood the sense of creation proper to will to power as: [...]prepaation of readness for the gods.(NI: 220) It is in this same sense of preparing for a new advent of divinity that Heidegger quotes from der Antichrist: Well-nigh two thousand years and not a single new godl as the guiding thought for
the entire lecture.
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Although, Heidegger reads Nietzsche's artist~phi1osopher as: [._..] an artist in that he gives form to beings as a whole." (NI: 73) this sense of formation is not to
be interpreted
as the product of an aesthetcally thematied subject. Heidegger does
not irterpret Nietzs_che's creator as an aesthetic subject because, earlier than any aesthetic thematiation of the creator, the historical rupture that the moment of creation opens is understood asa decision about the very meaning ofbeing itself. This is the reason that Heidegger describes art as suspending the totality of Dasein in a
creative risk: [...] art places the whole of Dasein in decision and keeps it there.(NI: 125) For Heidegger, the ontological constitution of the' creator camot be accourted for in terms of the meaning given to beings within the creator's
contemporaneous
epoch. Rather, the creator of history-detinig
an is inherently a gue of passage
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because the creator is always the rst to be transformed in light of the new historical measure that the creation instils. Heidegger can be seen to rely upon this same fomulation in describing the creator as will to power.
Heidegger idenes the gure of the creator in Nietmche's thought as ndamentally an ecstatic movement toward possibilities. This sense of ecstasis, which is ultinately the ecstatc character of an originary ternporality, is more essential than any specic ontic aspect of creation. Accordingly, Heideggefs reading of the
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meaning of artists and creation in Nietzsche is heir to the same systernatic displacement of all thematizations of the body, the living, and physical force that is the price for Heidegger's own privileging of the ecstatic character of human
being.
However, it is important to remember, the meaning of creation at issue in Heideggefs confrontation with Nietzsche is nothing aesthetic. Rather, what is at issue isthe transaesthetic sense of creation that Nietzsche understood as' proper to the human inherently a movement of transcendence toward new possibilitiesfz
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The reason that Heidegger does not ground the meaning of creation in any of Nietzsche's often physicalistic, and indeed physologcal, consturals of the artist is
that in the event of creation, these ontic depictions of the artist are themselves open for redenition in light of the new historical measure of beings that the creator
inaugurates. As such, they do not subvene the event of creation as its ground. Rather, all ontic thernatizations of the artist are redefned from out of the event of creation itsel It is in this sense that Heidegger understood the historical transformation that occurs in creation as equally a destruction of the contemporaneous meaning of beings.
This understanding of the creator as a capacity for passage and destruction is grounded in the originary openness of time itself
The tina] rorro upon which Heidegger denes the artist as will to power, is the pre-chronological site of the moment which, for the Heidegger of fundamental ontology, was the ecstatic essence of time itself. The. creator is a passage [bergang]
between specic forms of historical existence because the creator, as one who stands within the moment of originary temporality, is the ecstatic ground for the
commencement of a new form of historical existence. ,The creator of great art is not reducible to interpretation in terms of his contemporaneous epoch because in the moment of creation that contemporaneous understanding of beings is overturned and
replaced by a new historical determination of the meaning of beings. Nor is this sense
of destruction that the creator undergoes a mere inversion or reversal of the past. This encounter with the past, conceived as a transfon'nation [Verwandlung] which takes place in Nietzsche'_s vision of der Augenblick of originary temporality, can also be seen as the reason that Heidegger's initial lecturcs did not construe Nietzsche as a
mere inversion of the Platonisrn that denes the history of Western thought. With respect to Nietzsche's rhetoric of inverting the Platonic tradition, 'Heidegger asks: What metamorphosis tmderlies it?(NI: 21l)[Welche Verwandlmg liegt der Umdrehung zugrunde?] The reason that Nietzsche's thought is notmerely a reversal of the -Platonic subordinaton of art to truth is that Heidegger frames the
meaning of creation in Nietzsche as a transformation that is not captured by historical accounts of progression, reversal or renewal. Rather, Nietzsche's vision of a new
relation between art and truth is thought from out of the sense of transformation that opens a .newly grounded historical epoch: According to what is ownmost to them,
intrinsically, art and truth come together in the realm of a new historical existence.(NI: 161; trans. modied) This new relation is grounded in the capacity of the creator to inaugurate a new historical form of existence from out of the moment of
originary temporality. In order to arrive at I-Ieidegger's nal detenninatioi of the meaning of will to power as art, the gure of Nietzsche's creator, as passage and
destruction, must be explicated in tems of the temporality of der Augenblick in Netzsches thought of the eternal recurrence.
II
Heidegger's second Nietzsche Iecture, which focused onthe thought of eternal recurrence, was presented in the summer semester of 1937. However, the sense of original temporality urcovered in that thought can already be seen to determine the pr esentation of will to power in the initial lecture. At the opening of the rst lecture
Heidegger described the terrporalty of the etemal recurrence as uncovering: [. _ .] the hidden essence of time." (NI: 20) Unquestionably, this is a reference to Nietzsche's
vision of der Augenblick as the moment of decision which takes place in the ecstasis of originary temporality. Although Heidegger presented the second Nietzsche lecture in 1937,'the account of ecstatc temporality, which is the ground for will 'to power, already determines I-leidegges understanding of will to power inthe initial lecture.
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At the outset of the rst lecture, Heidegger states: Whoever neglects to think the thought of ete-nal recurrence together with will to power, as what is to be thought
genuinely and philosophically, cannot adequately grasp the metaphysical content of the doctrine of will to power in its full scope." (NT: 21) Heidegger unequivocally
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reterates 'this relation in the second lecture: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence ofthe same." (NH: 203) This
of course should not be read as merely equating will to power with eternal recurrence. Rather, the etemal recurrence detemines will to power in its inner possibility in that the sense of creation as passage from one historical form to another, relies uponthe-
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original ternporality of der Augenblick as its condition of possibility. In other words, the primordial ecstasis of time itself is the site for Heidegger's account of creation as
historical transformation and passage.
Heidegger bases' h.is reading of an orginary temporality in Nietzsche on the section from Thus spoke Zarathustra entitled: On the Vision and the Riddle. In this
section, Zaratlustra describes standing in a gateway upon which is inscribed the word Moment [Augenblick] and seeing .two pathways extending in 'ont and behind him as the unending paths of the future and past. What is signicant for Heidegger in this
passage is the fact that Zarathustra describes the two paths as ,colliding [zusmmenstoen] with each other. However, this sense of collsion is not discernible to those who would frame this vision of the relation between future and past within
der Augenblick in terms of a prosaic sequence of nows. On such an account, the future should ow through the present moment and into the past without any
possibility of coision."
Heidegger interprets Zarathustra's vision of a strife between ture and past within der Augenblick as a corfrontation with the past from out of its ground' in the
openness of originay temporality: Whoever stands -in the Moment iets what runs counter to itself come to collision, though not to a standstill, by cultivating 'and sustaining the strife [Widerstreit] between what is assigned him as- a task and what has been given him as his endowment. To see the Moment means to stand init." (NII: 57)
Interestingly, the text ofthe manuscript continues: To stand in the moment of vision is to stand out in the expanse of the fullled present and its historicality_. [Im]
Augenblick stehen,
eullten gegenwart und ihre Geschichrlichkeit hinaussrehen.] (NMG: 59) Ultimateiy, it is' in tenns of this capacity for a decision about historicality that Heidegger denes the innernost
ist aber gerade: in die ganze Weite der
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coherence of will to power and etemal rectu-rence: To create, in the sense of creation out beyond oneself, is most ntinsically this: to stand in the moment of decision [Augenblick der Enrscheidmg], in which what has prevailed hitherto, our endowment, is directed toward a projected task." (NII: 203)
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For Heidegger, the meaning of will to power as art is grounded ir the gure of the creator as the ecstatic opening of temporality itself. IfHeidegger'a1so describes the will topower as the Wesen of beings, what is the nature of Wesen in relation to its
inner determination by the creators capacity for historical transformation in the originary ecstasy of time itself? In contrast to the traditional image of an essence as
the wrorrer!evov which abides behind all changes and appearances, the sense of Wesen in Heidegger's descriptions of will to power is not a continuityin the sense of a traditional metaphysical essence. OnHeideggefs reading, the will to power as what
is ownmostfor beings is perhaps better expressed as particular historical continuity that is always suspended upon a deeper capacity and necessity for transformation. In other words, the historical continuity which isinecessary for the health of cultures and individuals is nhabited by a deeper necessity for destruction and reconguration in
the sense of creation-beyond the totalty an historical epoch. This power of metamorphosis is the ability of the creator to confront and reground history from out of the ecstatic .temporalty which opens the possibility of
of
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tradition itself. For Heidegger, this nexhaustible capacity for passage is also the basis for Nietzsche's depiction of what is ownmost for human being as bermensch. For
Heidegger, Nietzsche's vision of der bermensch is an expression of the temporal character of the human as a capacity for transition and passage. This' is ntimated at the end of the rst lecture when Heidegger amounces that it is the gure of der bermensch that: [...] grounds being anew - in the rigor of knowledge and in the
style of creation.(NI: 220) In light of the ternporality which, for Heidegger, denes the meaning of creation in Nietzsche's thought, the sense of passage which is implied by the ber of lermensch is no explicitly ontic movement, buterather, the
grand
tempo-al ecstasy of human being itself. This sense of transcendence can be seen as the
basis for Heidegges portentous reference to Nietzsche already in the Hlderlin lecture of 1934-35: When we question what is man's.owrr1ost we always sornehow think der bermensch. [Nach dem Wesen des Menschen -agend, denken wir immer
irgendwie den bermenschen.]'4
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The meaning of Wesen in Heidegger's understanding of will to power is not an eidetic reduction of particularity to an unchanging universal. Rather,
Heidegger
creator, deepest visibility of will to power, is a capacity for historical transformation and passage in the ecstatic essence of time, what is the difference between Heidegger's
reading of der befmensch and Heideggefs own concepton' of the creator in the period of later fundamental ontology, and specically, in the rst elaborations of Der
conceived what is ownmost inwill to power as the continuity that 'history grants existence. However, this continuity is one that is precaiously balanced upon the deeper necessity of life to fracture that existence that has built upon the ruins of the moment and move beyond itself. If the ultimate determination of the as the
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Ursprung des Kunsrwerkes? Inaddition to shedding light upon the meaning of' Wesen _ in this lecture, reading the will to power in terms of the ternporality which denes it also provides the proper context for interpreting Heidegger's account of the initial eNietzsche engagement as a liberating articulation of difference with his ,own
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thought.
III
In a marginal note from the rst Nietzsche lecture Heidegger wrote: The bittemess of the confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] is possible here only because itis
supported by the most intimate knship, by the Yes to the essentiai.(NWM: 277) What proximity -did Nietzsche pose to Heidegger in 1936 such that the initial
engagement could be mderstood as opening distance between Nietzsche and Heidegger? In light of my reading of the temporality which dened the sense of
creation that Heidegger encountered in Nietzsche, Heideggefs description of the initial Nietzsche engagement as an Auseinandersetzung can be seen to be based upon the necessity of taking distance from a Nietaschean sense of creation that was present inthe rst two elaborations of Der Ursprung des unstwerkes. '5 In the 1935 draft and Freiburg version of Der Ursprung des Kunsrwerkes, the ifnscendence of the creator is uderstood as the site of openness in which the dynamic Streit of the artwork is instigated and preserved. I-Iowever, in the -nal version presented in November and December of 1936, contemporaneously with Der
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Wille zu r Macht als Kunst, the gure of the creator is no longer the supporting site of the Lncorcealment that occurs in art. Rather, the ecstatic character of the creator is
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redened as an openness that is essentially outstrpped by the more primordial clearing opened by the original strife [Urstreit] of being itself. The term Ursrreir is not present in- the iritial versions but is introduced by Heidegger ingthe nal lecture to name a more fundamental dynamic of cleaing and withdawal which subvens and
exceeds the scope of creative Dasein's transcendence. If, as I have argued, the power of creation that Heidegger read in Nietzsche was essentially the capacity of original
temporality to support the dynamic of historical transfonnation, then this sense of creation can be seen to overlap with the meaning of creation in_ Heidegger's rst versions of Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. From this perspective, Heideggefs
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descriptions of the initial Nietzsche engagement as an Aus-einandeserzung with his own thought can be given a more literal signcance; When contextualized in terms of the meaning of creation that Heidegger presented in the initial versions of Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, Heidegger can be
seen to frame the initial Nietzsche lecture as a means for taking distance from his own earlier understanding of the ecstatic openness ofDasein as the most primordial ground
for creation as historical transfonnation In the Freiburg version, Heidegger states in a sentence that is not present in the nal version: Creation occurs only in the solitude of the individual one. Through this one, the truth of the historical Dasein of a people is decided." [Das Schqjfn geschieht nur in der Einsamkeit der einzelnen Einzigen. Durch sie wird die Wahrheit des geschichtlichen Daseins eines Volkes entschieden.]" This sense of radical isolaton in which creation occurs is not to be understood as a mere ontic distance. Rather, it is an expression of the difference that is opened when the creator ceases being his own contemporary and stands in the moment of decision
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whichinaugurates the meaning of beings for an historical epoch. Accordingly, the locus for truth in the Freiburg version is described as the originay temporality of the
moment in its capacity to inaugurate 'an authentic histoicalty. In the dra and Freiberg versions, the meaning of creation is equated with the capacity of historical
Dasein to stand within the openness of orginary temporality and project new possibilities from out of an engagement with its cultural inheritance. These versions retain an essential continuity with the meaning of Dasein in I-Ieideggefs earlier fundamental ontology in that the event of creation remains a herneneutic engagement
with the past which tums within the openness of Dasein's ownmost power of
transcendence.
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14
In the' nal version of Der Ursprung des Kunsrwerkes, the locus of the unconcealment that occurs in art is shifted beyond Dasein and into the more primordial revealing and concealing of being itself While the creator is still envisioned as sustaining the opemess of a specic historical relation to the
meaning of creation is rethought in terms of the ereator's deeper dependence upon an event of unconcealment which Dasein is no longer the ground for. Accordingly, the meaning of creation i the nal version is nolonger a decision about who we areI8 but is rather redened as: [...] receiving' and renoving within the relation to Unconcealment'9 and rnerely witnessing to the worlds recondite factum est.2 In the Frankfurt lectures, the Dasein of the creator is no longer the site for a decision about being, but rather, mdamentally rethought, indeed redened, from out of its dependence upon the more pimordial unconcealment of being itself. In the nal version, Heidegger has rearticulated the meaning of creation beyond any capacity for historical transformation in the crucible of ecstatic temporality and redened the passage~character of the creator as an ecstasis dependent upon and exposed to the more prmordial unconcealment of being itself. The understanding of creation which Heidegger presented in the nal hour of his F ranlcrt series of lectures Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes was no longer a power of human transcendence but rather a capacity [Vermgen] for questioning received and dened rstly from out of its inherence in being tsei By framing Heideggefs initial Nietzsche engagernent within Heideggefs contemporaneos development of the question of art, it is evident that Heidegger reads Nietzsche as a conontation with his own eariier conceptions of Dasein as a creative-destructive passage beyonditself and for being.
i
beings,
Heidegger's claim that the Nietzsche Auseinandersetzung turned upon a common point, is best interpreted in terms ofhis initial understanding of creative Dasein as a passage and destruction [bergang und Unrergang] beyond itself and its times. It was this understanding of the creative ownmost of human being that
Heidegger sought to engage in Nietzsche's thought: In order that through the confrontation we ourselves may become free for the supreme exertion of thinking."
(NI: 5) What Heidegger can be mderstood as taking distance from via this confrontation was a volitional and humanistc taint upon the Seins-tage still present in his thought in early 1936. This residual aspect of Heidegger's previous ndamental ontology was preserved in the thought that human transcendence could be a creative
.l5
1'
ground for the evocation of being. From this perspective, the supreme exertion of
thinking," which the initial Nietzsche engagement served to articulate, was the very re-thinking of human being as being-relatedness that would so guide Heidegger's later
N
Denl:weg.22
l
1
Notes
' Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (GA 43), p. 278.
2
References to Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures are given parenthetically in the text and signalled by (N) sequence and page number from: N'el:.rche. Martin Heidegger vol. 1 & 2, trans. David Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins) 1991. My own modications to this translation are signalled in the text and are exclusively restricted to Krell's translation of Wesen as essence which I translate with versions of what is ownmost." References to the Gesamtausgabe versions of these Iectures will be reserved for material that was omirted or altered in the 1961 Neske version and indicated by (NWM) and (NMG) which respectively refer to: Bd. 43 Gesamtausgabe, Nietzschez Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst" (Frankfurt: Klostermann) 1985 and Bd 44 Gesamtausgabe, Nietzsches metaphysische Grundstellung im abendlndischen Denken: Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (Frankfurt: Klostermann) -1986. All translations 'orn these Gesamtausgabe editions are my own. 7'Haar, Michel. Critical remarks on the Heideggerian reading of Nietzsche in Critical Heidegger. (ed.) Christopher Macann. (London: Routledge), 1996 p. 125.
4
his Philosophy ofContradictions and the Contradictions his Mller-Isauter, Wolfgang. Nietzsche :~ of David Parent Philosophy (trans.) Illinois Univ. (Champaign: _ Press), 1999 p. 20.
.
'
Heidegger, De l'Ongne de l':euvre d'art, Premiere version (1935), texte allemand indit et traduction Francaise par E. Martineau (Paris: Authentica), 1937 p. 46. All translations from this text and the draft version ane my own. Heideggefs description ofart as transforming and regrounding a specic form of historical existence is also clearly present in the earlier draft version: "Therefore there are no eontemporaneous works that could be artworlcs, but rather, works of art are only those that are so at work as to trarsforrn and instil the measure for their epoch itself" [Daher gibt eskeine zeitgemen' Werke, die Kunstwerke wren, sondem nur jene Werke sind solche der Kunst, die so am Werk sind, da sie 'ihre Zeit sich gem machen und verwandeln] Heidegger Studies vol. 5, 1989 p. 15.
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I-Ieideggefs quote is 'om the unpublished notes 'om 1873 collected under the title: The Philosopher as Cultural Physician. Nietzsche expressed the same position in publication one year earlier in e Birth qf Tragedy: But without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its creativity : only a horizon dened by rnyths completes and unies a whole cultural movement." Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ihe Birth ofTrageaj. (trans.) Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage), 1967 p. 135.
7'
1939. p. 6.
3
Heidegger, Martin. Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerkes Erste Ausarbeitng" Heidegger Studies vol. 5,
0
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Philosopher: Reections on the. Struggle Between Art and Knowledge in Philosophy ana' Tmth_Selecr1òrrsom Nietzsche 's Notebooks of the Eartv 18701: (ed. and trans.) Daniel Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press), 1979 p. 6.
9
For a provocative discussion of this passage see the appendix erititled: On the Editing of Nietzsche Lectures" in Gregory Fried's : Heidegger 's Polemos (New Haven: Yale) 2000. Heidegger's
'
'O
Ibid. De l'Origine de I'o:uvre d'art" p. 48.
2
ll
16
1
Through omitting and abbreviating passages ti-om the lecture manuscripts Heidegger covered over the degree to which he envisioned Nietzsche's thought upon art as reaching beyond aesthetics and describing a tratsfornation at the level ofbeing. For example. in the section on Grand Style the Neske version reads: "At rst glance, Nietzsche's thinking concerning art is aesthetic; according to its innermost will, it is metaphysical, which means it is a denition of the being of beings.(NI: 131) However, instead of: it is a denition of the being ot`beings," the lecture manuscript read: [...] it is to envisage, the thoughttl achievement of a transfonnation of being in which the ownmost of art itself is understood in terms ofthis determination [[...] es ist Er-denken, das denkerische Durchsetzen einer Wandlung des Seins, das Wesen der Kunst selbst angesetzt auf diese Bestimmung.](NWM: 160)
This sense of transcendence within the human is perhaps most clearly seen in Za.rathustra's description: What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across [ein bergang] and a down-going [ein Untergang}." Nietzsche, Friedrich. Titus Spalte Zarathtrtra. (trans.) RJ. I-Iollingdale (Baltimore: Penguin), 1961 p. 44. At the close of lis 192930 Iecture Die Gmndbegritfe der Metaplnsir, Heidegger clearly approprated the Nietzschean image ot`_ the human as a passage: Thus thrown in this throw, man is a transition [bergang], transition as the fundamental essence of cccurrence. Man is history, or better, history is man. Man is enrapttred in this transition and therefore essentially àbsent'. Absentin a ndarnental sense - never simply at hand, but absent in his essence, inhis essentially being away, removed into essential having been and ture[.. .]" Die Gruidbegrtfe der Metaplgsik (GA 29/30), p. 530; tr. Ihe Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, p. 366. Appropriately, in the Foreword to the Neslw volumes, Heidegger choose 1930 as the year, beginning from which, the Nietzsche confrontation could be seen as shedding light upon his path toward the Letter an Humcirisrn.
The sense of repetition [Wiederholung] that Heidegger read it Nietsche's thought of recurrence within the der Augenblick approximates the existential sense of repetition that characterized Dasein in dtefeod of early ndamental ontology. From this perspective, the signicance of the Nietzsche Aseinandersetzng can be seen as a conontation with the very constancy [Stndigkeit] of Dasein in its etistential capacity for decision. Cf. Sein, und Zeit p. 264, 308, 386.
[4
12
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I3
Ì;flderlins Germamèn und "Der Rhein" (GA 39) p. 166.
_
*
g
the 1989 publication of Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerlcesz Erste Ausarbeitung" in Heidegger vol. 5, the full extent of 'I-Ieideggefs reformulatin of the question of art in this period was Smgies into view. However, both this text and the manuscript ofthe Iecture as it was read in brotight on November 13, 1935 and again in Zrich onJanuary 26, 1936 remain ,unavailahle in English. Freiburg
.i!it _
' -
I,
I
I
shihas been noted by Franoise Dastur in Heideggefs Freiburg Version of the Origin of the Worlii of Art in Heidegger toward the Turn (ed.) James Risser. (New York: State Univ. Press), 1999. This.fsl1ii't has also been recounted by Jacques Taminiaux in The Origin of 'the Origin of the Work of in: Poetics, Speculatiott and Judgement: the Shadow of the Work Qf Art om Kant ta Pheiiomenalogy (trans.) Michael Gendre. (New York: State Univ. Press), 1993. While eachof their readings are accurate, both accounts fail to explore the relation of this shift to the intervening Nietzsche cnggement. .
16
'
W
118
De l'Origine de I'ceuvre d'art" p. 48.
Freiburg ver!ibn it is especially signicant because Heidegger chose it for the closing line of the Iecture: Dieses
p. 54. This expression occurs also in the dralt, yet is omitted in the nal version. In the
oder Nichtwissen entscheidet mit darber, wer wir sind."

Rouectge), 1996 p. sr.
I9
Pl!idegger, Martin. Ihe Origin ofthe Work ofArt inBasic Writings (trans. and ed.) D. Krell
-1
(I.:-ii1<1:_
2
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p. 190.
2'
thoseisections of the Beitrge composed in the rst half of 1936. For example: "Dasein is the ndamental occurrence of future history. This occurrence emerges om enowning and becomes the
can be seen to make use of this image of the human as a passage and a going under in
[7
poesible site for the moment of decision regarding man - his history or non-history, as its passage to 30'318 def fbefgg rum Un_tergmg]. Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65)' 32 ' tr. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), p, 23_
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a

Welcome by Roseann Runte, President of Old Dominion University

University) Commentary: Allen Scuit (Drake University)

Business Meeting Reception at Hotel

2:00 -3:45 l2:00-2:00

The Prevalence of Truth By Daniel O. Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/l)ahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence ofTruth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

' g3r1;)i;(< 24 _ _. :ore

The Prevalence of Truth/Dahlstrom

Beitrge 338. 4"

Beitrge 339. 51 W.V.O. Quine, The Pursuit

ofTruth, rev. ed.

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp.

1b1a.,'n. 72 see, fer example, 73

E_voking the Momentous Site: 'Time-Space in the Contributions 'to -Philosophy

2. The coming event of appropriation

in einer Not (97).

as the momentous site

Contributions to Philosophy, xxi.

4. Beitrge 242: the enticements and raptures of the abyss

(a) Ground as abyss (379~380)

(b) Emptiness as opermess (380-382)

(c)_Pr`mordiaI timing und spacirg (382-6)

(Heidegger has already used the word 'gathering' (Samrrlung) in

(d) Derivative time and space (386-7)

nonmeasurable site for the moment.)

(e) The fertility

(f) From time und space to time-space (388)

27Theodore Ksiel, "Heidegger's Apology," in Kisiel, Heidegger's Way cfThought, ed.

Transcendental Synthesis, Imagination, Intertwinng

possibility of interpretation at the intersection of Heidegger and late Merleau-Ponty,)

reachesits key aim is Kant and the Problem

articulate to one another in the schematc syntheses of apprehension (direct givenness),

Transcendental imagination congures a structured space of possibility within which to

Phenomenologcal Interpretation ofKant 's Critique

ofPure Reason is chronologically

thus rooted in temporality (q.e.d.).

Metaphysical Foundations ofLogic specically acknowledges the concrete and dierential

in a specic language and community, but its concrete

congurations are not even formally indicated.

Cartesian underpinning of the problem of transcendence, the model of a self-possessing subject

world, remains in play. (Heidegger's treatment of being-in-the-world

does deconstructs Descartes, in principle, but I am argung

practice, and his focus on the

I suggest that the project of a phenomenological reduction of rnetaphysicsmust revisit and'

embodiment, of discursivity, including language acquisition, and of dierence and relationality in

there is the always-already where there is anything at all.

ofthinkers have presented accounts of the prehistory of something ke subject,

phenornenology of being there. These also can be taken as contributions

historiography of imagination, as phenomenologically exhibiting aspects of the synthesis of

apperception and of appearances. I will focus prirnarily on Merleau-Ponty's chapter on The

other thinkers that contribute to the topic.

2The Visible and the Invisible, chapter 4.