CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMATIC OF HEIDEGGER AND THE GREEKS
1. Heidegger and the Greeks
As Heideggerians, we seek to uncover Heidegger's relation to the Greeks. Was Heidegger a Platonist? To what extent can Heidegger's thinking be understood in terms of Plato's philosophy? Is there a proper sense to what we maycall a Platonic-Heideggerianism?
As Platonists, on the other hand, we seek to discover whether and theextent to which Plato's thinking can be understood in terms of Heidegger'sphilosophy. Is there a proper sense to what we may call a Heideggerian-Platonism?
Our research manifestly moves in a circle. We seek to understand Heidegger through Plato, and Plato, and the Neoplatonists, through Heidegger. Howthen are we to properly enter this circle?
We do not want to violate the matter by introducing our own, or others', interpretations of what Plato may have meant by his philosophy, or by introducing our own, or others', interpretations of what Heidegger may have meant byhis thinking. Nor do we want, on the basis of such presuppositions, tocompare and contrast different aspects of Heidegger, Plato and Neoplatonism.Rather, what we want is to questioningly enter the circle itself, so asto let the matters themselves show us the relation we seek between Heideggerand the Greeks.(1)
If we follow Heidegger's lead to the matters themselves, then the criteria by which we may take a proper orientation to our question of Heidegger'srelation to the Greeks can only be Heidegger's one and only question: whatis the meaning of Being? To questioningly enter the circle, we accordinglyask Heidegger's question of the meaning of Being in a threefold dispersion.1.) How did Heidegger understand what Plato thought by Being? 2.) How didHeidegger understand the relation of what he thought by Being to the thinkingof Being of Plato? And 3.) how did Heidegger understand the relation ofhis concept of Being to the philosophical research of the Neoplatonists?
In the winter/spring semesters of 1924-25, two years before the publication
of Being and Time,(2) Heidegger addresses
our questions in the Plato's Sophist(3)
lecture course, to which we now turn. Our purpose here, and throughout,is
not to evaluate the accuracy of Heidegger's understanding, but onlyto understand
it as clearly as we can.
2. How Heidegger Understood What Plato Thought by Being
The text of Plato's Sophist is in two parts; the first (4)treats Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (among othertexts of Aristotle), and the second, (5)towhich we limit ourselves here, the Sophist,(6) giving it an almost line by line exegesis. In the course of Heidegger'sdiscussions of Aristotle and Plato, both the Presocratics, and, as we shall see, the Neoplatonists, are touched upon.
We shall follow Plato's discussion of Being in the Sophist, and Heidegger's exegesis in Plato's Sophist, fairly closely, because it is here that Heidegger lays bare the manner that his question of the meaning of Being(7) joins the frameworkof Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy.(8)
The exhibition of Plato's concept of Being that Heidegger gives in the Plato's Sophist lectures proceeds in three major stages. The first stage considers the views of the "earth-born," (9) the second those of the "friends of the Forms," (10) and the third stage of the exhibition is given by way of a summary of the first two stages. (11) For each of the stages, we first present the relevant portion of the discussion from the Sophist, and then give Heidegger's interpretation from Plato's Sophist.
The first formulation of the concept of ousia Plato advances against the earth-born, those who hold that only what may be grasped by the hands is real (swma).(12) He asks them to admit that the moment of soul, in the conjoint of soul and body, is also to be understood as real, insofar as "whatever can come to be present in a thing or absent from it [to dunaton tw paragignesqai kai apogignesqai] is certainly a real thing."(13)
Heidegger interprets the sense of "reality" Plato expresses by the formula to dunaton tw paragignesqai kai apogignesqai as the "relational" character of the soul's ability to become present (or absent) to body: "They then will say -- and we must consider this sentence very carefully -- what is determined by the 'can,' to dunaton, in the sense of paragignesqai kai apogignesqai, in the sense of 'being able to become present and to become absent,' tini(tw), in relation to something else, is in every case something or other." (14)
And if they (the earth-born) admit that the soul is both ousia and without body, and already granting them that soma is ousia, Plato asks them to consider: "When they say that these bodiless things and the other things which have body are alike 'real' [einai], what common character that emerges [sumjueV gegonoV] as covering both sets of things have they in view?" (15)
Heidegger explains, that when they say "is " [einai], the common character [sumjueV gegonoV] they have in view is to be understood as that which at the same time is already there for both (the visible the invisible).
"This einai is characterized as sumjueV gegonoV. FusiV is that which is already present at the very outset. Sum- means for both together, for the visible and the invisible. GegonoV (perfect tense) means it is already there, before them. This gegonoV is related to genoV: that out of which they have their ontological provenance. And the sumjueV is that which for both at the same time, for the one and the other, is already there... ." (16), (17)
Plato advances to the first stage in his concept of Being in giving them the answer:
"I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else [eiV to poiein] or to be affected [eiV to paqein], in however small a degree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once. I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power [dunamiV]." (18)
Because the earth-born have nothing better to offer, Plato says they will accept that, (19) and concludes: "That will do, for later on both they and we may change our minds [eteron an janeh]."(20)
What, then, does ousia = dunamiV of this first formulation of the concept of Being of Plato mean? For those who admit that soma is ousia, what is there already is the ability to be affected by another, whereas for those who say that soul is ousia, in the conjoint of soul and body, what is there already is the ability to effect an other; what is common to both the ability to affect or effect is dunamiV, as ability towards.... . Heidegger interprets:
"DunamiV is related here eiV to poiein and eiV to paqein. ... Pasqein means here simply: to be determined by another. We already know poiein; it means agein eiV ousian, to bring something into being, to help something into being, to genuinely arrange for the Being of a being. What is capable of something like that, what has such a dunamiV, properly is. ... Because these people obviously do not for the moment have anything better at their disposal with which to answer the question of what is, they will possibly accept this determination." (21)
This dunamiV, as ability towards.... , Heidegger sees as "pure" relation, in the sense of the possibility for one thing and another. In this possibility for the "and," Being as dunamiV, Heidegger sees nothing other than the Being of what is not (eteron). Heidegger interprets:
"But perhaps, says the zenoV, what is given here in relation to Being will show itself afterwards, to us as well as to them, differently, (248a1). Plato discovers this eteron an janeh precisely in the Sophist, in a certain sense for the first time, as a particular kind of non-being and precisely as the kind that does not express a total difference from the other, or from the one in relation to which it is the other, but instead expresses the fact that every being, insofar as it is, is itself and something other." (22)
The second formulation of the concept of ousia is obtained in discussion with the friends of the Forms, who hold the always abiding self-same intelligible ideas (eidh) as what is real. (23), (24) After asking them to admit that "we have intercourse [koinwnein] with becoming by means of the body through sense, whereas we have intercourse with real being by means of the soul through reflection," (25) and to admit that "real being ... is always in the same unchanging state, whereas becoming is variable," (26) Plato asks them whether the meaning of this "intercourse" is none other than that found in the formulation of Being won against the earth-born, namely, "The experiencing an effect [paqhma] or the production [poihma] of one, arising, as the result of some power [gignomenon ek dunamewV tinoV], from things that encounter one another." (27)
Heidegger interprets Plato as offering to the friends of the Forms the same "relational" concept of Being (as dunamiV) as he offers to the earth-born; notices its three moments as relata, relation, and as a third thing, the possibility for the former two moments; and isolates the latter as nothing other than the meaning of Being:
"What is koinwnein in itself? Is it not precisely that which we have already said, namely in the determination of ousia as dunamiV? In fact the zenoV now gives each of the two modes of koinwnein, as koinwnia, the same definition he had previously offered for ousia: ...'a being affected, paqhma, or an affecting, poihma, that has gignomenon ek dunamewV tinoV, arisen on the basis of a certain 'can,' a certain possibility, and out of things that pass over into one another.' Thus again we have the being with one another, the being related to one another, and the possibility for that. This possibility is nothing else than the meaning of Being." (28)
The friends of the Forms, however, cannot agree with this formulation, "They reply that a power of acting and being acted upon belongs to becoming, but neither of these powers is compatible with real being." (29) To determine whether they have good grounds for doing so, Plato asks them to admit "that the soul knows and real being is known," (30) and gaining that, (31) goes on to show that if they admit that knowledge is either an action or experiencing an affect or both, (32) which they cannot, (33) that implies the co-presence of life, soul and understanding in ousia: "But tell me, in heaven's name, are we really to be so easily convinced that change, life, soul, understanding have no place [mh pareinai] in that which is perfectly real -- that it has neither life nor thought but stands immutable in solemn aloofness, devoid of intelligence?" (34)
Heidegger interprets:
"Note well that it is a matter of the pareinai of something, the co-existence of something, namely of zwh, Yuch, in what genuinely is. We can therefore scarcely believe that life and knowledge do not pertain to beings in the most proper sense; ... Plato has been interpreted to be saying here that the genuine beings, the Ideas, would have understanding, life, and the like. This is sheer nonsense. What the passage says is that fronhsiV, nouV and zwh keep company with the genuine beings; in other words, the meaning of Being must be conceived in such a way that nouV, kinhsiV and zwh can also be understood as beings. ... That is, it implies that what is moved and movement itself belong to beings and that the meaning of Being must be conceived on the basis of this constatation and in correspondence with these new facts." (35), (36)
Recapitulating his position with respect to each of the earth-born, and friends of the Forms, Plato, in a third, and culminating stage, (37) arrives at his final formulation of the concept of Being. Over and against the earth-born, knowledge is impossible of the ever-changing, (38) while over and against the friends of the Forms, knowledge is impossible of the never-changing, (39) which prompts Plato, "like a child," to call for "both"; namely, ousia = stasiV + kinhsiV. (40)
Of the character of this final formulation, Plato tells us that "reality is not motion and rest 'both at once,' but something distinct from them," (41) wherein reality is discerned as a "third thing," (42) one which arises from "taking [sullabwn] both movement and rest together as embraced by reality and fixing your attention [apidwn] on their common association with reality." (43)
Heidegger tells us how to apprehend this phenomenon of Being as a third thing in the following way:
"1.) the sullabwn, the taking together of both in view of something, 2.) kai apidwn, and intrinsically with the former, the pursuing which extracts in seeing. ... What is important ... is to grasp the apo- in the correct way as an extraction from something and a pursuit of what is thus extracted. In this pursuit, the apidein comes together with the sullabein, insofar as the taking together of kinhsiV and stasiV precisely does not mean to grasp them simply as two but to look away from them, in a particular way, such that in this looking away they are yet still there as those pregivenesses for which the en, which is supposed to be seen in this apidein, is determinative." (44)
If Heidegger is right that this en of the third thing of the Sophist presents Plato's concept of Being, and if we recall that stasiV and kinhsiV mean nothing else than the famous two-worlds, for kinhsiV here refers to the relation of sensual perception to the sensibles, (45) while stasiV refers tothe relation of intellectual apperception to the intelligibles, (46) then with this third thing the conclusion is inescapable that Plato himself was not beholden merely to a two-world doctrine. Rather, it is the third thing that remains determinative of both worlds in their already being pregiven.
In answer, then, to our first question of what Heidegger understood Plato's concept of Being to be, we can, in short, now say that it is Being as the "third thing." Because the discussion by Plato of the concept of Being involved here is motivated in a confrontation with Parmenides,(47) so much so that it indeed is one which involves an apparent patricide, (48) we call Plato's concept of Being, over and against the Parmenidean concept of Being, to which it always already belongs, the "Platonic/Parmenidean" concept of Being.
As distinguished from the Parmenidean concept of Being, the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being is first rightly seen as Not-Being, and indeed of the kind that"is." (49) Plato does not in the Sophist tell us more about this Not-Being that is, (50) but goes on to consider through the celebrated dialectic of the five highest kinds the concept correlative to Not-Being that allows what is not to be, namely, the eteron. (51)
We conclude the present topic with an indication of how Heidegger understood the nature of the eteron. For, as we shall see, the concept of the eteron plays a central role in our understanding of what is at stake in what we have called Heideggerian-Platonism and Platonic-Heideggerianism.
At the place of the Sophist where, after the dialectic of the five highest kinds reaches its end with the showing of the universal presence of the eteron in all things, Plato says of apojasiV: "So, when it is asserted that the negative signifies a contrary, we shall not agree, but admit no more than this -- that the prefix 'not' indicates something [ti mhnuei] different from the words that follow, or rather from the things [twn pragmatwn] designated by the words pronounced after the negative."(52)
Heidegger interprets this apojasiV, which is cognate to the eteron, (53) in terms of a "productive negation":
"This characterizes apojasiV explicitly as
ti
mhnuei, as 'showing something,' and indeed
twn
pragmatwn, 'of the matters themselves.' The mhnuein
of apojasiV is peri ta pragmata;
i.e., the mh has the character of dhloun,
it reveals, it lets something be seen. This denial is presentifying, it
brings something into view: namely the otherness of the pragmata,
which as such are encountered in a pre-given horizon of substantive nexuses.
Thus the enantion, as the empty 'opposite,'
is different than the substantive 'other.' ...Over and against a blind
addressing of something in merely identifying it by name, there is a disclosive
seeing of it in its co-presence with others. And in opposition to the mere
blind exclusion that corresponds to this identification by name, there
is, if our interpretation of apojasiV is correct,
a denial which discloses, which lets something be seen precisely in the
matters denied. Hence Plato understands the 'not' and negation as disclosive.
The denying in legein, the saying 'no,' is a
letting be seen and is not, as in the case of the mere exclusion corresponding
to the pure calling by name, a letting disappear, a bringing of what is
said to nothing. If these connections are pursued further, it becomes clear
that negation, understood in this way, as possessing a disclosive character,
can have, within the concrete uncovering of beings, a purifying function,
so that negation itself acquires a productive character."
(54)
3. How Heidegger Understood the Relation of What He Thought by Being to the Thinking of Being of Plato
Let us now turn to our second question, and ask, how does Heidegger understand the relation of his own concept of Being to what we have called the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being? If we use Being and Time, Heidegger's most celebrated work, as the measure of what Heidegger understood his own question of Being to entail, we know that Heidegger's project in that work is, as the caption of the published Division One reveals, to give "the interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being."(55)
If Heidegger understood his own question of Being in Being and Time in terms of 1.) interpreting Dasein in terms of temporality and 2.) explicating time as the transcendental horizon for the question of Being, how did he understand the relation of these tasks to the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being (the third thing)?
What Heidegger in Plato's Sophist says he sees at work in the third thing of Plato's Sophist two years before the publication ofBeing and Time is precisely Being as presence at work, though not explicitly questioned by Plato, and because of that, both 1.) the problem of time, and 2.) the problem of an ontology of Dasein -- the very matters which he later unfolded in Being and Time.
"What genuinely is at issue in this gigantomacia peri thV ousiaV? The issue is the disclosure of beings, the ones that genuinely satisfy the meaning of Being, and consequently the issue is the demonstration of the meaning of ousia itself. ...The question of the meaning of ousia itself is not alive for the Greeks as an ontological theme; instead they always ask only: which beings genuinely satisfy the meaning of Being and which ontological characters result thereby? The meaning of Being itself remains unquestioned. ...It is precisely the fact that the Greeks did not ask about the meaning of Being which testifies that this meaning of Being was obvious to them. ...The meaning of Being implicitly guiding this ontology is Being = presence. ...We will make use of this meaning of Being (which we ourselves first make visible, although of course we cannot discuss it further in this context), (56) namely Being = presence, because it includes the whole problem of time and consequently the problem of the ontology of Dasein. ...
"The battle is first of all over what primarily and genuinely satisfies the meaning of Being, i.e., presence. That includes a battle over which mode of access to the genuine beings is the original one. ...This question of the mode of access to what most properly possesses Being is not one the Greeks themselves raise as such. But, de facto, they do raise it, insofar as they ask what else still belongs to the Being of beings, whether, i.e., nouV would also belong to beings. This remarkable question ...means nothing else than this: if beings are that which always is, still the meaning of Being as presence can have legitimacy only if there is something in attendance on them. The meaning of Being is thus dependent on the possibility that beings can be encountered by a being which possesses something like the present in general" (emphasis mine). (57)
In answer to our second question, then, we can say that Heidegger understood
the relation of his concept of Being in Being and Time to the Platonic/Parmenidean
concept of Being in the Sophist as an unfolding, one that understood
itself as joining issue with the same matter (58) as
that named by the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being, and that understood
itself as exhibiting structures (59) that Plato necessarily
saw as such, but did not make, and perhaps could not make, into explicit
themes (60) for analysis.
4. How Heidegger Understood the Relation of His Concept of Being to the Philosophical Research of the Neoplatonists
Let us now turn to our third question, and ask, how did Heidegger understand the relation of what he thought by Being to the philosophical research of the Neoplatonists?
There are two places in his commentary on the Sophist where Heidegger addresses the relation of the Neoplatonists to what we have called the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being. At the place in the Sophist where Plato first brings to summary the results of the battle of the Titans concerning ousia in this "third thing" that is neither at rest nor in motion, nor both at once, (61) Heidegger says:
"To be sure, it is not that Plato was unaware of the difficulties here, but instead he asked: how can something be which is neither at rest nor in motion, and yet nevertheless is? This question is, for Plato and the Greeks, a very weighty one, if we realize that beings -- as before-- are necessarily either moved or at rest. And now there is supposed to be something which resides beyond these and yet is, and indeed not only is but constitutes Being in the proper sense. This questioning, as it occurs here in the Sophist, later became for the Neoplatonists a locus classicus. They derived from it the idea of the epekeina, of what resides beyond all concrete beings: the idea of the ti, of the en, of on. The Neoplatonic commentaries, above all the ones on the Parmenides, take their orientation precisely from this passage in the Sophist." (62)
From this we can immediately see that Heidegger understood that the research of certain, but unnamed, Neoplatonists, particularly those concerned with the Parmenides, (63) aligned itself precisely about the same state of affairs as Plato did in naming Being as the "third thing," so much so, that Heidegger referred to that alignment as a locus classicus.
The second passage in Plato's Sophist where Heidegger discusses the relation of Neoplatonic scholarship to that of the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being occurs at the place where Plato, in the concluding stages of the dialectic of the five highest kinds shows, using motion as the guideline, the ability of otherness to be co-present throughout all the kinds. (64) Heidegger interprets:
"He [Plato] demonstrates: 1.) over and against the complete difference of kinhsiV in relation to stasiV, that a certain tauton of kinhsiV and stasiV is indeed possible, 2.) over and against the co-existence of on, that kinhsiV is a mh on, and 3.) over and against the difference in regard to tauton, that tauton is also co-present in kinhsiV. In the fifth and sixth Enneads, Plotinus later took up this passage about the five genh and set it into a general metaphysical system with the aid of Aristotelian categories." (65), (66)
Immediately from this we can see that Heidegger understood Plotinus to have worked out in the fifth and sixth Enneads the same subject matter that occupied Plato in the concluding stage of the dialectic of the five highest kinds, and a fortiori, understood Plotinus as aligning himself about the same states of affairs as Plato did in naming Being as the "third thing."
In answer to our third question, then, we can now say that Heidegger understood that the Neoplatonists, like Plato, were concerned with thePlatonic/Parmenidean concept of Being, in such a way that it both motivated the researches of certain unnamed Neoplatonists into the epekeina, particularly those concerned with the Parmenides, and motivated the research of Plotinus to set forth his celebrated system in the "theological" Enneads. And since we have already seen that Heidegger understood his own research into the question of Being in Being and Time as so motivated in the matter named by the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being as to unfold certain structures necessarily seen, but left unsaid, by Plato, we can conclude that Heidegger understood that he, as well as Plato, Plotinus and certain unnamed Neoplatonists, each in their own way, were indeed concerned with the same, namely, the matter named by the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being.
We complete the present topic by referring to other works by Heidegger dating from the same period as the Plato's Sophist lectures, which show that Heidegger indeed understood his own research into the question of the meaning of Being to move in the same horizon as Plato's research into Being.
Heidegger, like Plato, claimed in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
(67)(285) that what he was after is nothing other than the "epekeina
tes ousias," "but in all sobriety and in the complete disenchantment
of purely objective inquiry," and in The Essence of Reasons (68)
(93-95), he "equated" therewith the transcendence of the Dasein:
"If we wish to clarify the agathon, then, we should take the hint
that Plato himself gives and hew to the task of interpreting the essence
of the connection of truth, understanding, and Being. Inquiring back into
the inner possibility of this connection, we see ourselves 'forced' to
execute explicitly the surpassing that happens necessarily, though
for the most part covertly, in every Dasein." Heidegger
adds: "We might point out here that the portion of the investigations concerning
'Being
and Time' published so far has as its task nothing more than a concrete,
revealing sketch of transcendence" (97 n. 59).
5. The Beiträge zur Philosohie (Vom Ereignis)
Being and Time appeared two years after Heidegger's Plato's Sophist course, and it presents the relation of "Being and time," adumbrated by his reflections on the "third thing" of Plato's Sophist, in terms of a fully worked out existential-temporal analytic of Dasein, that has the one aim of rendering temporality visible as the transcendental horizon for the question of the meaning of Being in general on the basis of that existential-temporal analytic of Dasein.
The published portion of Being and Time (that is to render temporality visible as the transcendental horizon for the question of the meaning of Being in general on the basis of an existential-temporal analytic of Dasein) fails, however, to make plain why such an investigation of Dasein, which is, after all, only an interrogation of a being as to its Being, should in principle be able to give any information about Being itself. What remains to be thought is the relation of "time and Being," which is to say, just how an existential analysis of Dasein in terms of time is supposed to uncover temporality as the transcendental horizon for the question about the meaning of Being itself and in general.
As is well known, Being and Time is a torso; the Third Division of its published Part 1, which was to turn things around under the heading of "Time and Being," (69) and its entire Part II, (70) were held back, and never published. (71) Needless to say, being held back, just what Heidegger supposed to be at stake in this reversal is difficult to fathom from Being and Time itself.
Heidegger's letter found in the preface to Richardson's Heidegger--Through Phenomenology to Thought (72) gives us the clue that what we are on the lookout for, this turn between "Being and time" and"time and Being," which would complete Being and Time,(73)and, with that, would give the fullest exhibition by Heidegger of the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being, is named the "Ereignis."
"Das 'Geschehen' der Kehre, wonach Sie fragen, 'ist' das Seyn als solches. Es läßt sich nur aus der Kehre denken. Dieser eignet keine besondere Art von Geschehen. Vielmehr, bestimmt sich die Kehre zwischen Sein und Zeit, zwischen Zeit und Sein aus dem, wie Es Sein, wie Es Zeit gibt. Überdieses 'Es gibt' versuchte ich in dem Vortrag 'Zeit und Sein', den Sie selbst hier am 30. Januar 1962 gehört haben, einiges zu sagen.
Setzen wir statt 'Zeit': Lichtung des Sichverbergens von Anwesen, dann bestimmt sich Sein aus dem Entwurfbereich von Zeit. Dies ergibt sich jedoch nur insofern, als die Lichtung des Sichverbergens ein ihm entsprechendes Denken in seinen Brauch nimmt.
Anwesen (Sein) gehört in die Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit). Lichtung des Sichverbergens (Zeit) erbringt Anwesen (Sein).
Es ist weder das Verdienst meines Fragens noch der Machtspruch meines Denkens, daß dieses Gehören und Erbringen im Er-eignen beruht und Ereignis heißt (vgl. 'Identität und Differenz', S. 30 ff.)(xxi-xxii)."
The 'happening' of the turn you ask about 'is' Being as such. It only lets itself be thought out of the turn. No particular manner of happening comes about by means of this. Rather, the turn between Being and time, between time and Being determines itself out of the way that there is Being, there is time. About this 'there is' I attempted to say a little in the lecture 'Time and Being,' which you yourself have heard here 30 January1962.
If instead of 'time' we put: clearing of the self-concealing of presence (time), then Being determines itself out of the region of projection of time. This arises though only to the extent that the clearing of the self-concealing takes into its use a thinking corresponding to it.
Presence (Being) belongs in the clearing of the self-concealing (time). The clearing of the self-concealing (time) brings presence (Being) about.
It is neither the merit of my questions nor the arbitrariness of my thinking that [accounts for the fact that] this belonging and bringing rests in [mutual] appropriation and is called Ereignis (cf. "Identity andDifference," p. 30 ff).
The Beiträge zur Philosophie are subtitled "Vom Ereignis." (74) Unlike other works that treat of the turning relation between Sein and Zeit in quite limited respects but otherwise maintain the Ereignis in almost full reticence, such as the "Es gibt" of Time and Being, (75)or the belonging-together that more originally is a belonging-together of Identity and Difference, (76) the Beiträge,as its head quote indicates, (77) present what Heidegger elsewhere long held back in hesitating refusal. (78)
The Ereignis as it is worked out in the Beiträge renders visible the matter to be thought of Being and Time, and with that, the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being in the fullest concretion to be found in Heidegger's works. To see if we are right, let us draw a preliminary orientation as to what the Ereignis ought to tell us about, by reminding ourselves what is at stake in the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being.
In distinction with the Parmenidean concept of Being, that holds only Being is and that not Being is nothing at all, the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being holds that Not-Being is, in the sense that the dialectic of the five highest kinds first proves the existence of a "not" that is not nothing at all (as the enantion to Being, the one or the other), but rather a not that is productive, insofar as it discloses the Being of what is not (as the eteron, the possibility for the one and the other).
As third thing, this existent Not-being is determined as the possibility for the one (rest) and the other (motion). Possibility is determined as the "relation," there in advance, wherein both "motion" (the mixing of the body through sense with the sensible) and "rest" (the mixing of the soul through reflection with the intelligible), are said to "be." In short, as dunamiV, the third thing is the possibility for the mixing of the seer and the seen, whether sensible or intelligible. Although Plato tells us no more in the Sophist about this Not-Being that is, it is precisely this relation of seer and seen that Plato further determines in the Republic in terms of the sun and growth analogies. (79)
Just as the light of the sun yokes the eye to that which is visible, so it is the Idea of the Good that gives their truth to the objects ofknowledge and the power of knowing to the knower. (80) And just as the sun gives growth without being itself generation so the Good gives the objects of knowledge their existence and essence but transcends essence in power and dignity.
With the sun and growth analogies the epekeina is determined as eteron. (81) What is beyond Being, and so is not Being, is not nothing at all. Nor is it determined as a transcendental other. Rather it is the Idea of the Good which gives objects of knowledge their essence and existence, giving truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower. As such it is a dunamiV, understood as the productivity of the eteron, the possibility for the one and the other, the co-presence in knowledge of mortal man (as seer) and God (as Idea of the Good), something prohibited by the Parmenidean concept of Being that holds that only Being is and what is not Being is nothing at all.
If Heidegger's thinking stems from concern with the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being, and if the Beiträge that treat of the Ereignis indeed represent the fullest concretion of that concern in the writings of Heidegger, then we should expect the Beiträge to conceive of the Ereignis in a way analogous to how Plato conceived Not-Being as Being, namely, in terms of a productive negation that does not exclude the other but rather first grants the possibility for the one and an other.
In section 7 entitled "Vom Ereignis," he gives this definition:
"Schließlich und zuerst kann das >>Ereignis<< nur er-dacht (vor das anfängliche Denken gezwungen) werden, wenn das Seyn selbst begriffen ist als das >>Zwischen<< für den Vorbeigang des Letzten Gottes und für das Da-sein."
"The 'Ereignis' can only be thought (compelled by beginning thinking) at first and last, if Being itself is conceived as the 'between' for the passing-by of the ultimate God and for there-Being."
At first sight, Being as the "between" for the passing-by of the ultimate
God and for Da-sein is so different terminologically that it may
seem that Heidegger's concept of Being in the Beiträge really
has little connection with the Idea of the Good or with the third thing
of Plato and the Neoplatonists. But in terms of the matter, what we have
called the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being, they are homologues.
For just as with the third thing that, as Not-Being, is not nothing at
all but grants, in knowledge, the possibility for the co-presence of the
one (rest) and the other (motion), and just as with the epekeina,
that as not Being is not nothing at all but grants, in knowledge, the possibility
for the co-presence of the one (Idea of theGood) and the other (man as
seer), so it is with Seyn as the between, that, "gleich dem Nichts,"
(82) is not nothing at all but grants, in knowledge (Ereignis in
anfängliche Denken), the possibility for the one (the passing-by
of the ultimate God) and the other (Da-sein).
6. Heideggerian-Platonism/Platonic-Heideggerianism
If Heidegger understood his question of the meaning of Being to have unfolded the same matter (the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being) questioned by Plato and the Neoplatonists, and if the unfolding of that question achieved its most perfect expression in the Beiträge, then we can claim that Heidegger's thinking in the Beiträge may indeed be understood as Heidegger's own brand of Platonism. But with that, we have already uncovered the Heideggerian-Platonism we are looking for.
What then is lacking in Heidegger's works is not a Heideggerian-Platonism, for we already have that, and indeed most fully, in the Beiträge, but rather, what is lacking is the proper sense to be given to what we have called a Platonic-Heideggerianism. Not in the impossible sense that Plato was a Heideggerian, but in the sense of a Platonic phrasing of what we have identified as Heidegger's brand of Platonism, which indeed is something that Heidegger himself never provides, but which, as we shall see, lies implicit in the matter of the Heideggerian-Platonism of the Beiträge. To this end of explicitly providing a Platonic-Heideggerianism, the investigations of chapters 3-5 are ventured. Since Heidegger himself nowhere makes any such venture, it is sure to be controversial, as every scholar necessarily must decide in original reflection on the matters themselves the truth of the Platonic-Heideggerianism we present in chapters 3-5.
If what we have called the Platonic/Parmenidean concept of Being forms the common core for the reflections of Plato, the Neoplatonists and Heidegger, and if Heidegger on this foundation gave what we have called a Heideggerian-Platonism, that does not mean that they were concerned about it in the same way.
Plato and Aristotle for the first time elaborated in scientific form the range and manner of questioning of what we today most concretely know as ancient philosophy. As the references in the Platonic dialogs and works of Aristotle show, they were aware of the thought of the so-called Presocratics, but for us, much of their thought is preserved only in fragments. The Neoplatonists already had that foundation, but it was mediated by the Middle Platonists, and by the schools of the Garden, the Cynics, the Skeptics and of the Porch.
Heidegger, more than two millennia later than the first Western philosophical researches, had available but a fragment of the materials presumably available to Plato, Aristotle, the Middle Platonists and the Neoplatonists, but also had what was not available to them, the reflections of the Church Fathers, medieval scholars, the German philosophical tradition, the philosophersof the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and Nietzsche. (83)
Heidegger outlines his own way through this mix of history in the Beiträge, using the history of the question of Being as the criteria. The Beiträge are in six parts, (84) together with an introduction, that serves as a preview of the six parts, and a concluding essay on Seyn. The inner movement of the six parts of the Beiträge articulates Heidegger's own way through the matrix of the history of philosophy and defines the jointure wherein Heidegger's thinking (the so-called "other beginning"), and the thinking of the tradition (the so-called "first beginning"), first play into one another. (85)
Being itself, as Heidegger understands the history of the question ofBeing in the Beiträge, was last seen by Plato (and Aristotle with him), (86) who thus stand as transitional figures(87) at the beginning of an epoch characterized by the collapse of truth and the abandonment of Being. (88) Modern Western society stands, Heidegger tells us, squarely within the epoch of the collapse of truth and abandonment by Being. (89)
Asking again the question of Being out of the experience of Being's abandonment initiates another beginning (90) in such a way as to reverse the collapse of truth and thereby retrieve and repeat the first beginning. (91)
To the extent that the Beiträge accomplish their stated
aim of letting the other beginning play out of the first beginning in the
articulated play of the six parts, at the same time, they also deconstructively
retrieve the first beginning. (92) And this deconstructive
(93) retrieve that lies in the setting of the other beginning out ofthe
first beginning constitutes the inner necessity that makes possible the
sketches of the Platonic-Heideggerianism that we attempt in chapters3-5.
7. Preview of Chapters 3, 4 and 5
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 respectively present sketches of Ignorance, Blindness and Not-Being that draw on the Beiträge, Plato, Plotinus and Proclus. Each theme announces a peculiar "not." For Ignorance does not imply not knowing, nor Blindness not seeing, and Not-Being not nothing at all, as if the negations were to be understood in purely exclusionary terms. The negations suggested thereby are not negative, but rather the titles are meant to suggest the productivity of negation in the sense of the eteron, as Plato in the Sophist was the first to work out, and which, as we have seen, the Neoplatonists also made use. Each chapter takes up the eteron in another respect. In chapter 3, that treats of Ignorance, the eteron is taken up in respect to knowledge. In chapter 4, that treats of Blindness, the eteron is taken up in respect to truth. While in chapter 5, that treats of Not-Being, the eteron is taken up in respect to Being.
As the chapter headings indicate, the character of the sketches is "hermeneutical-philosophical." By hermeneutical, we mean that each of the chapters conducts an inquiry intended to allow each reader to uncover the matters for themselves in an original, interpretive seeing. As such, they are precisely not doctrinal. Rather, they are phenomenological.
By philosophical, we mean that each of the chapters conducts its inquiry in the form of a play of question and answer that, at decisive points in the retrieve of something of the matter to be seen in the lens of the first beginning, always only takes its guidance from Heidegger's repetition of the question of Being of the other beginning as it is presented in the Beiträge.
With so much said for the place where the investigations of chapters 3-5 are properly to be found, and their character, we now offer a preview of each of the chapters in order, on the one hand, to provide the reader an initial orientation, and on the other, to provide something like a standard of relevance that will permit us, in chapter 2, to discuss the state of present scholarship as it relates to the investigations of chapters 3-5.
In terms of textual materials, the Hermeneutic-Philosophical Sketch of Ignorance of chapter 3 draws freely upon Plato's dialogs, as well as from the "preview" of the Beiträge, where Heidegger presents a first view of the movement of thought of the Beiträge as a whole. In terms of thematic content and scope, it offers a sketch of the movement of Beiträge as a whole in terms of the problematic of Socratic ignorance.
The Hermeneutical-Philosophical Sketch of Blindness of chapter 4 draws upon the eclipse-analogy of Plato found at 99d of the Phaedo, as well as upon the central sections of the fifth part of the Beiträge, "DieGründung." In terms of its thematic content and scope, it offers an interpretation of the Lichtung für das Sichverbergen of the other beginning in terms of what Plato left unsaid in the eclipse-analogy, where he speaks of the truth of the origination of the Ideas.
Chapter 5, where the Hermeneutical-Philosophical Sketch of Not-Being is presented, draws upon Ennead 6.7 of Plotinus and Proclus' Commentary on the Parmenides, as well as upon the seventh part of the Beiträge, "Der letzte Gott." In terms of thematic content and scope, it offers an interpretation of the ultimate God of the other beginning in terms of the One in Us of the Neoplatonists.
The investigations allow themselves to be exhibited in the form of homologues,
which we present below.
8. Chapter 3: Productivity of Negation as Ignorance Giving Knowledge
With respect to the productivity of negation as giving knowledge, the left-hand column of the Table below presents our sketch of the Platonic-Heideggerianism of the first beginning as the homologue of the Heideggerian-Platonism of the right hand column. Our claim is twofold. On the one hand, we claim that the order of the terms arranged in the left-hand column is determined by the order of the terms of the right hand column. That is to say, we project a Platonic-Heideggerianism on the basis of the Heideggerian-Platonism that we believe, for the reasons presented above, to be present in Beiträge. On the other hand, we claim that the meaning of each ofthe terms of the left-hand column is determined by way of the meaning of the corresponding terms in the right hand column.
Paideia Ereignis
in in
Socratic Ignorance anfängliches Denken
as as
knowledge (virtue) Verhaltenheit
gives gives
eudaimonia Geschichte
and its and its
daimonion holy (Being as refused)
The left-hand column, which links virtue, as the arete of the soul, with the divine (daimon), is to be read as the Paideia in Socratic ignorance as knowledge (virtue) gives eudaimonia and its daimonion. The right hand column sketches the inner movement of the Beiträge taken as a whole, and is to be read as the Ereignis in anfängliches Denken as Verhaltenheit gives Geschichte and its holy (Being as refused). The left hand and right hand columns are homologues, which means to say, Paideia corresponds in meaning to the Ereignis, ignorance to anfängliches Denken, and so on.
Chapter 3 is divided under eight (8) headings.
In section one, the eu-poria to the a-poria of Socratic ignorance is said to lie in a paideia, one which manages to see a "presence in an absence," and therewith "something" in "nothing," in spite of its supposed Eleatic impossibility.
If this paideia is the Wissen of Wesen, the Ereignis as beginning thinking, as section two shows, then, as section three shows, the arete of those so instructed is a Verhaltenheit, one which preserves "not-knowing" positively, and indeed in a loneliness near to the self-hiding.
Then the paideia reaches its term, eudaimonia as Geschichte, as section four shows.
The daimonion of such eu-daimonia, that as daimonion is intermediate between the divine and man in such way as to "bring messages between" the divine and man, is, then, as sections five and six show, none other than the "futural" ones (die Zukünftigen) who, in the silence near to the self-hiding, stand in the coming of the holy (being as refused).
But such ones are the ones who live and grow truly, genesis as Entscheidung, as section seven shows.
Section eight then "rounds off" chapter 3, by showing the complement
of the matter treated in sections one through seven, and is limited to
showing that, just as eros is what Socratic ignorance is not, so
das Unseiende is what Being is not (the Enteignis in the
Ereignis).
9. Chapter 4: Productivity of Negation as Blindness Giving Realm of Truth
The Phaedo by the eclipse-analogy (99d) presents the theory of Ideas as originating out of a fear of being-blinded. The truth of the Ideas, as something positive, is thereby said to originate in something negative, the fear of blindness, but Plato only says that it is so, but leaves unsaid the sense of how it is so, beyond saying that the Ideas are "second best" when seen in such an origination.
With respect to the productivity of negation as giving the realm oftruth, the left-hand side of the Figure below [not reproducable on the web] presents our sketch of a Platonic-Heideggerianism of the first beginning as the homologue of the Heideggerian-Platonism of the other beginning of the right-hand side of the Figure. The top left figure illustrates the "ontic" aspects of the eclipse-analogy, showing the "sun," the concern for "seeing," and the "fearof blindness" that relates the two. The bottom left figure illustrates the "ontological" aspects of the eclipse-analogy, showing the "One," the "zugon," and the "negative-relation to the origin" that relates the two. The One corresponds to the sun, the zugon (as always-seeing-in-the-light of truth) corresponds to the concern for seeing, and the negative relation to the origin corresponds to the fear of blindness.
The right-hand side of the Figure illustrates the "Grund," understood as the "Lichtung für das Sichverbergen," that arises out of the "Sichverbergen" by way of a "presence of an absence," that relates the two.
Just as the zugon (always-seeing-in-a-light) and the origin are
negatively related (fear of being-blinded), so the Grund, i.e, the
Lichtung
für das Sichverbergen, and the Sichverbergen are negatively
related (presence of an absence). Chapter 4 first recalls the place in
the Phaedo where Plato presents the so-called eclipse-analogy, and
seeks to find the euporia to the aporia of how the ideas
are second best if seen as originating in response to a fear of being-blinded
in thereby preserving, but otherwise leaving unsaid, what we call a "negative
relation to the origin." As Plato left unsaid the characterof this negative
relation to the origin, the fourth chapter goes on first to interpret section
110 of the Beiträge, that explicitly treats of the Platonic
ideas, in terms of the collapse of what we call the negative relation to
the origin, and then goes on to interpret the group of sections entitled
the "Essence of Truth," which group of sections occupy central place in
the fifth part of the Beiträge captioned "Die Gründung,"
in terms that reverse the collapse of the negative relation to the origin,
seeing the not of "not being-blinded" preserved in the "always-seeing"
in a light, which is to say, the zugon, as the Grund, the
Lichtung
für das Sichverbergen of the Da-sein.
10. Chapter 5: Productivity of Negation as Not-Being Giving the One in Us
Unlike for the investigations of chapters 3 and 4, the investigations of chapter 5 do not permit of graphical representation. In chapter 5, we claim that the time-space of the stillness of the passing-by of the Ultimate God of the Heideggerian-Platonism of the other beginning is the homologue of the negations of Being that give the One in Us of the Platonic-Heideggerianism of the first beginning. Once more, something negative gives the positive, but not the other way around.
Chapter 5 first investigates the earliest fragment of the Neoplatonists where the One in Us is presented; then, turning to Proclus to learn what light he may have to shed on the matter of the One in Us, finds that the negations of Being are for him "productive," and indeed of the Idea of the Good, and thereafter refers to Plotinus as confirmation of Proclus, both of whom make use of the image of a "choral dance" to preserve something of the way the productivity of the negations of Not-Being give the One in Us. Chapter 5 then turns to the seventh section of the Beiträge, finds that for Heidegger, as for Proclus, the refusal (negation) of Being is "productive," as "Verschenkung," the gift of the openness of the self-hiding as the no-longer and not-yet of space-time, which, for Heidegger, as for Proclus and for Plotinus, reveals itself as a "choral dance," indeed one where "belonging's encountering of need and need's looming in encountering so circle as to be something originating: Being as arrival, happening in itself, as fountain or wellspring, precisely as the tension between God and man, God's Vorbeigang and man's Geschichte" (Beiträge, 413).
1. A knowledge of Heidegger's philosophy and that of Plato, Plotinus and Proclus is presupposed on the part of the reader, and no survey of what is generally understood by their philosophies is presented here. For general surveys of Heidegger's philosophy, reference may be had to J. L. Mehta, The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (Varanas:Banaras Hindu University Press, 1967); Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, tr. Theodore Kisiel and Murray Greene (Evanston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1971); William J. Richardson, Heidegger--Through Phenomenology toThought (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974); and Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thought, tr. Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber (AtlanticHighlands: Humanities Press International, 1987). For Plato, see, for example,G. M. A. Grube, Plato's Thought (London: Methuen & Co., 1935); W. K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1962-1981); and A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967). For Plotinus, one may see W. R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus (London & New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918); Emile Brehier, The Philosophy of Plotinus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); and A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe (Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert,1967). For Proclus, see L. J. Rosán, The Philosophy of Proclus (New York: Cosmos, 1949); and Lucas Siorvanes, Proclus, Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996).
2. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962); first published in 1927.
3. Martin Heidegger, Plato's Sophist, tr. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).
6. Plato, "Sophist," tr. F. M. Cornford, in Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
7. Cf. Kisiel, who says of Heidegger's Plato's Sophist lecture course: "In the 'battle of the Titans over ousia' (246A) historically fought by the early Greek philosophers for the middle ground between matter and idea, the one and the many, being and non-being, he [Heidegger] sees the conquest of 'the milieu in which ontological research as such can operate. '"Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1993) 307.
8. Cf. Kisiel, who says the themes of Heidegger's Plato's Sophist lectures form a "kind of esoteric ontological purity to the ensuing drafts of BT [Being and Time] in 1925 and 1926." Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, 308.
17. With this Being that is the possibility for both the visible and invisible but is neither visible nor invisible, we glimpse a way of logic that lies outside the usual logic of opposition. That the middle is not excluded is the same principle at work in the understanding of Love in the Symposium (202b1ff), who is neither ugly nor beautiful, but rather is between these two poles. To this extent, both the Platonic concept of Being and the Platonic philosophy of Love belong together. Accord, Heidegger, "Plato saw the eteron very early [referring to Symp. 202b1ff]...," Plato's Sophist, 396.
24. With this opposition, the conclusion is inescapable that Plato himself was not beholden to Being simply as the eternity of the Ideas.
36. Hanna Arendt, who attended Heidegger's Plato's Sophist lectures, understood that what is here at stake is "an understanding of Being pertains to Being," Plato's Sophist, 334 n. 5. Cf. "Being-There as understanding," Being and Time, 182-188.
49. That is to say, the third thing, seen from the point of view of Parmenides, as not Being, would simply be nothing at all; seen from the point of view of Plato, that opposes Parmenides' viewpoint and at the same time belongs together with it, this not Being is necessarily the Not-Being that "is."
56. That must wait until Being and Time.
58. The "third thing" as the first properly existent Not-Being.
59. The meaning of Being as presence, in Plato's question of which beings satisfy this meaning of Being, and de facto, the question of the mode of access to the beings that satisfy this meaning of Being.
60. The question of the meaning of Being as such, and with that, both the problem of time, as the horizon for the question of the meaning of Being as presence, and the problem of Dasein, of that being that lets beings be encountered in the present.
63. Perhaps the most celebrated Neoplatonic commentary on the Parmenides is the one by Proclus, discussed in chapter 5, below.
66. Cf. S. E. Gersh, "Plato's celebrated discussion of the nature of Being and of the so-called megista gene inspired the analysis of the spiritual world pursued as such length by the Neoplatonists. Plato had associated Being with Life and Intelligence, and this authority was sufficient to link the three concepts together more or less permanently in the minds of Plotinus and his successors. ... Again, Plato had associated Being with, in the first place, Rest and Motion, and in the second place, Sameness and Difference, and these five became for the Neoplatonists the 'categories' of the spiritual world." Kinesis Akinetos, A Study of Spiritual Motion in the Philosophy of Proclus (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973) 3-4.
67. Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems Of Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).
68. Martin Heidegger, Essence of Reasons, tr. Terrence Malick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969).
69. Early in January of 1927, as Kisiel tells it, "Heidegger comes to the realization that the composition of the Third Division of the First Part of BT, bearing the title 'Time and Being' (cf. SZ 39), was 'inadequate' (unzureichend). The later Heidegger (in 1941) recalls this decision in the following words: ... 'The decision to postpone came to me in the last days of December of 1926 during a visit in Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers. Out of our friendly but lively disputes over the galleys of Being and Time, it became clear to me that the elaboration of this all important Division (I, 3) drafted up to that point had to be incomprehensible. The decision to discontinue publication took shape on the day that we got the news of Rilke's death. -Of course, at the time I thought that in thecourse of the year everything could be said more clearly. That was a delusion.'" Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, 485-486.
70. Which was supposed to present a deconstruction of the history of metaphysics in light of the newly won meaning of Being.
71. Heidegger upon its first publication in 1975 adds a footnote that identifies the Basic Problems of Phenomenology as a "new elaboration of the Third Division of the First Part of Being andTime" (1 n. 1). But this course too remains a fragment of what was originally projected; the last three Divisions of the existing Part II, and the entire Part III were never presented.
72. "Letter to Father Richardson," in Richardson, Heidegger--Through Phenomenology to Thought, vii-xxiii.
73. "Diese Kehre ist nicht eine Änderung des Standpunktes von >>Sein und Zeit<<, sondern in ihr gelangt das versuchte Denken erst in die Ortschaft der Dimension, aus der >>Sein und Zeit<<erfahren ist und zwar erfahren aus der Grunderfahrung der Seinsvergessenheit. "This turn is not an alteration of the standpoint of "Being and Time," the attempted thinking rather first arrives in it at the locale of the dimension from which "Being and Time" is experienced and experienced indeed out of the basic experience of Being's forgottenness. Martin Heidegger, Brief Über den Humanismus (Bern & München: Francke Verlag, 1975) 72.
74. Heidegger himself on the title page of the Beiträge characterizes the subtitle as the "essential subtitle."
75. Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, tr. JoanStambaugh (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977) 5.
76. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, tr. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1969) 29.
77. "Hier wird das in langer Zögerung Verhaltene andeutend festgehalten als Richtscheit einer Ausgestaltung."
78. It is interesting to note that just as the unpublished portion of Being and Time was held back, so the Beiträge (written in 1936-1938) were held back by a provision of Heidegger's will unto the occurrence of the 100th anniversary in 1989 of Heidegger's birth.
80. Cf. Proclus, "For the full participation of true wisdom is affected through truth, since this every where illuminates intellective natures, and conjoins them with the objects of intellection, just as truth also is the first thing that congregates intellect and the intelligible." Proclus, The Platonic Theology, tr. Thomas Taylor (Kew Gardens: Selene Books, 1985) 78.
81. Cf. Proclus, "For in the Republic, indeed, he indicates the ineffable peculiarity and hyparxis of the good, through analogy to the sun. ... For on this account the first cause is exempt from all the natures produced by it because every where cause is established above its effects; and on this account the first is nothing of all things, because all things proceed from him. For he is the principle of all things, both of beings, and at the same time of non-beings. ... For negations, as it appears to me, extend a triple peculiarity in things. And that one time, indeed, being more primogenial than affirmations, they are procreative and perfective of the generation of them." Proclus, The Platonic Theology,118-119. Also compare the "ontogenetic" character of negation for Armstrong and Trouillard, discussed below in chapter 2, section 2.3.1.
82. For it is said to be "gleich dem Nichts" in section 256 entitled "Der letzte Gott," Beiträge, 415.
83. Not to mention Luther and the thinkers of the Reformation, and, among others, German mystics, Zen thinkers and Taoist thinkers.
84. Respectively, "Der Anklang," "Das Zuspiel,""Der Sprung," "Die Gründung," "Die Zukunftigen," and "Der letzte Gott."
85. In section 2 entitled "The Saying of Ereignis as the First Answer to the Being-Question," Heidegger tells us that the thought of the Ereignis is motivated precisely in that: "Was gesagt wird, ist gefragt und gedacht im >>Zuspiel<< des ersten und des anderen Anfangs zueinander aus dem >>Anklang<< des Seyns in der Not der Seinsverlassenheit für den >>Sprung<< in das Seyn zur >>Gründung<< seinerWahrheit als Vorbereitung der >>Zukünftigen<< des letzten Gottes<<. "What is said, is questioned and thought in the "play" of the first and other beginnings towards one another out of the "beginning sound" of Being [that resounds] in the need of Being's abandonment for the "spring" into Being [that springs] towards the "foundation" of its truth as the preparation of the "coming" of the "ultimate God" (Beiträge , 7).
86. Beiträge, sections 210, 211.
93. "Aber deshalb ist dieses Nein, äußerlich gesehen: die Ab-setzung des anderen Anfangs gegen den ersten, niemals >>Verneinung<< im gewöhnlichen Sinne der Abweisung und gar Herabsetzung. Vielmehr ist diese ursprüngliche Verneinung von der Art jener Verweigerung, die sich ein Nochmitgehen versagt aus dem Wissen und der Anerkennung der Einzigartigkeit dessen, was in seinem Ende den anderen Anfang fordert. Solche Verneinung freilich genügt sich nicht mit dem Absprung, der nur hinter sich läßt, sondern sie entfaltet sich selbst, indem sie den ersten Anfang und seine anfängliche Geschichte freilegt und das Freigelegte zurücklegt in das Besitztum des Anfangs, wo es, hinterlegt, alles auch jetzt und künftig noch über-ragt, was einstmals in seinem Gefolge sich ergab und zum Gegenstand der historischen Verrechnung wurde. Dieses Erbauen des Ragenden des ersten Anfangs ist der Sinn der>>Destruktion<< im Übergang zum anderen Anfang." "But for this reason, this no, externally seen: the setting-off of another beginning over against the first, at no times means a 'negation' in the familiar sense of a rejection and indeed of a debasing. Rather, this original negation is of the kind of that refusal which denies itself out of the knowledge and recognition of the uniqueness of that which in its end demands another beginning. Such negation certainly does not content itself with a spring away which only lets behind itself, rather it unfolds itself, in that it lays free the first beginning and its originary history and puts back what is laid free in the possession of the beginning, where it, lying under, looms-over everything now and still to come, what at one time could ensue in its train and become the object of historical calculation. This construction of the looming of the first beginning is the meaning of 'destruction' in the transition to another beginning" (Beiträge, 178-179).