Complicated Presence by Backman Jussi

Author:Backman, Jussi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2015-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

Beyng Is, Beings Are Not

Having elaborated the later Heidegger’s account of being3 as singularity, or as the singularization that situates presence in a spatiotemporal context, we are now in a position to address the core of Contributions to Philosophy: Section 267 of “Beyng,” titled “Beyng (Event).” This is one of the Heidegger’s most salient articulations of his “own matters.” Here, beyng (being3) is approached as Ereignis—a word that “names beyng in a thoughtful way and grounds its abidance in a framework [Gefüge] proper to this abidance, a framework that can be indicated [anzeigen] in the manifoldness of events [Ereignisse]” (GA 65, 470/CPFE, 330–31/CPOE, 369–70; tr. mod.).

Being3 in its uniqueness takes place in a multitude of singular events. The framework that makes this singularization possible is now articulated by Heidegger by means of eight numbered indications (GA 65, 470–71/CPFE, 331–32/CPOE, 370–71). As Jean Greisch has noted, these indications can be regarded as loosely corresponding to the indications (sēmata) of being1 in fragment B 8 of Parmenides’ Poem.25

(1) Ereignis is the event of appropriation or “taking-over” (Ereignung) that is articulated in the (Hölderlin-inspired) distinction between

(1a) gods, interpreted in Chapter 3 as the meaning-granting futural dimension of supreme ends or purposes (in Introduction to Metaphysics: the “ought-to,” Sollen) that furnishes situations with a meaningful orientation, and

(1b) the human beings as Da-sein, i.e., as the thinking recipients of this meaningfulness (Introduction to Metaphysics: thinking, Denken), as the cultural community for which there “are” communally shared gods, i.e., ultimate orienting meanings.

Formally speaking, in the event of being3, the gods “take over” or “appropriate” (er-eignen) the Da-sein in the human being to be their receptive context, thus “dedicating” (zu-eignen) themselves to themselves. This is to say that the orienting dimension of purposive relevance can only appear in its interplay with the receptive human dimension. This reciprocal interaction of orientation and receptivity constitutes the basic dynamic of Ereignis.

(2) This event entails a de-cision (Ent-scheidung), a taking apart or separation of the divine and human dimensions. Even though the divine dimension can only be given as such within the human context, it is given as a “transcendent” dimension of excess.

(3) This separation of gods and the human being brings about their “con-frontation” (Ent-gegnung) by setting them one against the other in an oppositional and tensional relationship. This opposition opens up a directionally tensional space of meaningfulness—“strife” (Streit)—between the human being, to whom meaningful beings are given as meaningful, and the gods, with regard to which meaningful beings are meaningful and toward which meaningfulness is oriented.

(4) To the emergence of this tensional space belongs the de-position (Ent-setzung), i.e., the deferral into the background, of the two tensional dimensions between which meaningfulness is extended. This is the original differentiation, the “complication” of being3 into the foreground of presence (being1) and its implicit background dimensions (being2). This makes the background “disturbing” or “unsettling” (entsetzend) with regard to the space of meaningful presence that it opens up.

(5) This deferral of the dimensional poles, the interplay of which generates the event of meaning, is the “with-drawal” (Entzug) of this event itself.

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