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What, After All, Was Heidegger About? Thomas Sheehan© Stanford 1 What, after all, was Heidegger about? Thomas Sheehan© Stanford University Abstract The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein). The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Such meaningful presence is the Befragtes of Heidegger’s question, not the Erfragtes. (3) Being and Time’s goal was to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4) Ereignis – the appropriation of ex- sistence to sustaining the clearing – is the later Heidegger’s reinscription of thrown-openness, der geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e., unknowable. Some preliminaries: (1) I cite Heidegger’s texts by page and line (the line-number follows the period) in both the Gesamtausgabe and the current English translations where available, all of which are listed in the bibliography at the end of this issue of the journal. I cite Sein und Zeit in the Niemeyer 11th edition and in the ET by Macquarrie-Robinson. (2) Sinn and Bedeutung are closely related, although Sinn is broader than Bedeutung. Sinn refers either to intelligibility as such or to the fact of something being intelligible, whereas Bedeutung is the specific meaning that a thing has. Sinn as intelligibility is generally interchangeable with Bedeutsamkeit and Verständlichkeit. Thus I translate Sinn as “intelligibility” or “meaningfulness.” Sinn in turn allows for Bedeutung as the particular meaning of a specific thing. (3) I take “intellect” in the broad sense of νοῦς and in the specific sense of λόγος understood as discursive intellect, whether practical or theoretical. (4) Dasein is translated as “existence” (= existentiel), and Existenz or Da-sein as “ex-sistence” (= existential). The word “man” refers to human being, not the male of the species. I render das Seiende as “beings,” “things,” and “entities” ex aequo. “Man” refers to human beings in general, not to the male of the species. * * * 2 What, after all, was Heidegger about? Let’s step back for a moment – way back – and ask: What was the final goal of Heidegger’s thinking? What was he ultimately after? Was his goal “being,” das Sein? Or was it something “being-er than being” (wesender als das Sein)?1 And might that be “being itself,” das Sein selbst, sometimes written as Seyn? Or was it rather, as Heidegger says, Seyn qua Seyn – and if so, what might that mean?2 Again: Was Heidegger’s main topic die Wesung der Wahrheit des Seyns?3 or was it die Wahrheit der Wesung des Seyns?4 Or was his topic Anwesung, “presencing”? Or the Lichtung? Or Ereignis as just another name for Being Itself? Or was it, rather, Enteignis?5 Or ἀλήϑεια? or perhaps the Λήϑη that lurks within ἀλήϑεια?6 Or was it the ontological difference, as some scholars hold?7 Or do all of these point to the same thing? And how exactly are we to distinguish (if we are to distinguish) one from the other? There is, in fact, considerable confusion at the heart of the Heideggerian enterprise, and it may not be the fault of Heidegger scholars. Just to stay with the term Sein: Heidegger himself said that “it remains unclear what we are supposed to think under the name ‘being.’”8 Are Heideggerians, then, subject to the Master’s judgment: “They say ‘is’ without knowing what ‘is’ actually means”?9 In any case, he may have known what he meant by the word Sein, but he didn’t always make that clear to the rest of us. So we might want to make our own the plea that the 1 GA 73, 2: 1319.23. 2 GA 73, 2: 997: “Seyn ist nicht Seyn.” Further on Seyn: ibid., 968.7; 1033.10; 1039.10; 1122.7; etc.; also GA 9: 306 (g)/374 (a): “Seyn ist . das Ereignis.” But cf. loc. cit., “Sein qua Ereignis.” At GA 81: 76.18, Sein and Seyn are equated, but at GA 76: 49.15-9 they are contrasted. 3 GA 65: 73.21 = 58.35-6. 4 GA 65: 78.26 = 63.4-5. 5 GA 2: 252, note a = 183.44; GA 11: 59, note 33; GA 76: 5.25. 6 GA 6, 1: 197.9 = 194.1. 7 “[The difference between being and beings] is the central thought of Heideggerian philosophy”: Haugland (2000, I, 47). 8 GA 40: 34.31-2 = 34.16-7. 9 GA 15: 277.17-8 = 5.7-8. 3 Eleatic Stranger expresses in the Sophist: “So first teach us this very thing lest we seem to know what you told us when in fact we don’t” (244a8-b1). In the spirit of a medieval disputatio I propose to state and defend five theses in support of a paradigm shift in how to read Heidegger. This is an attempt to “make sense” of Heidegger, where I mean that phrase as a bit of a pun. I make sense of Heidegger by first of all following him in his crucial phenomenological reinterpretation of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden) as the meaningful presence of things to man (das Anwesen des Anwesenden). “Being” is usually and traditionally understood as the being-ness of things: the οὐσία of τὸ ὄν, the entitas of an entity, the realness of the real. (I use the word “realness” in what Heidegger calls its traditional sense of existentia as objective presence: Vorhandenheit.)10 However, Heidegger reinterprets all of that, including his own use of “the being of beings,” in a phenomenological mode such that being-qua- beingness11 comes out not as the ontological realness of the real but as the Anwesen of things, their presence to man. However, such Anwesen is not mere objective presence nor simply presence to our five senses12 but rather das daseinsmäßige Anwesen – the meaningful presence of things in conjunction with existence’s understanding of Anwesen/Sein/meaningfulness. It follows, therefore, that the being of things is their intelligibility, their ἀλήϑεια taken broadly. See, for example, Heidegger’s equation of Sein and intelligibility when he speaks of “the inquiry into the intelligibility of things [Sinn des Seienden], that is, the inquiry into being [Sein].”13 Or when he designates Sein as “the intelligibility [Sinn]” of phenomena.14 Or when he speaks of ontology as “the explicit theoretical question about the intelligibility [Sinn] of things.”15 However, I argue that this is only the first step. Heidegger’s project finally makes sense only when we realize that his ultimate goal was the source of intelligibility, “die Herkunft von 10 SZ 211. 22-7 = 254.28-33. 11 GA 66: 316.26-7 = 281.32-3: “Anwesung und d.h. Sein und d.h. Seiendheit.” Also GA 74: 6.3. 12 Cf. SZ 33.30-2 = 57.11-3. 13 GA 19: 205.13-4 = 141.33-4. 14 SZ 35.25 = 59.31. 15 SZ 12.14-5 = 32.23-4. This text has stood through some seventeen editions of SZ (thirteen of them during Heidegger’s lifetime). But GA 2, which claims to be the “unveränderter Text,” changes it without notice at 16.23 = 11.15 to “nach dem Sein des Seienden.” 4 Anwesen.”16 This source he denominated as “die ereignete Lichtung,”17 the appropriated or thrown-open “space” for possible intelligibility, which ex-sistence sustains and as such is. This clearing makes it possible for us to take Socrates as an Athenian, or this tool as suitable for that task, and thus to make sense of Socrates and the tool (traditionally, “to understand their Sein”). The premise of this essay is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaningfulness and its source. As Aron Gurwitsch pointed out years ago, once one has taken the phenomenological turn (the sine qua non of phenomenological work) “there are no other philosophical problems except those of sense, meaning, and signification.”18 In short, this essay is about Heidegger’s phenomenological reinterpretation of das Sein des Seienden as the significance of things, and his further tracing of such significance back to its source in appropriation. 1 Being (das Sein des Seienden) is the meaningful presence of things to man. Heidegger puts a twist on the word Sein and finally sets it aside. “I no longer like to use the word ‘Sein’” he said.19 “Sein” remains only the provisional term. Consider that “Sein” was originally called “presence” [Anwesen] in the sense of a thing’s staying-here-before-us-in-disclosedness.20 “Staying-here-before-us-in-disclosedness” (her-vor-währen in die Unverborgenheit) is Heidegger’s term of art for the meaningful presence of something to someone. The phrase expresses three things: (1) the relative stability and constancy of the meaningful thing (währen); 16 GA 6:2, 304.11 = 201.13-5. See GA 2: 53 note a = 37 note †; GA 10: 131.19-20 and .28 = 88.27 and .34; and GA 73, 2: 984.2. 17 GA 71: 211.8. 18 Gurwitsch (1947, p. 652). Italicized in the original. 19 GA 15: 20.8-9 = 8.34. 20 GA 7: 234.13-7 = 78.21-4. 5 (2) the locus of its meaningful appearance, namely the world of human concerns (-vor-); and (3) a certain movement into appearance, a thing’s being brought from an undisclosed but potential intelligibility into an actually operative one (in die Unverborgenheit).
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