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Thomas Sheehan
Heidegger’s main topic was not “being”— and that for at least two reasons. First of all, when Heidegger uses the phrase “the being of beings” (das Sein des Seienden), he understands the phrase as das Anwesen des Anwesenden, the meaningful presence of things to human concerns. In other words, despite Heidegger’s employment of the surpassed ontological lexicon of “being,” there is, underlying all of his work, a phenomenological reduction of “being” to “meaning.” In his mature work, in fact, Heidegger shied away from the word Sein. “I no longer like to use the word ‘being,’” he said.
“Being” remains only the provisional term. Consider that “being” was originally called “presence” [Anwesen] in the sense of a thing’s staying-here-before-us in unconcealment [i.e. in meaningfulness].1
Thus Heidegger does not read the phrase “the being of beings” in terms of things existing “out there in the world,” so to speak, apart from human beings, as does classical realist metaphysics. Rather, he understands “the being of beings” phenomenologically , as referring to the meaningful presence of things to our corresponding needs and interests, whether practical or theoretical. At least initially, Heidegger focused on the correlation between whatever we encounter and the corresponding human concerns and intentions. Which is to say that the early Heidegger concentrated on the significance to us of whatever we meet in the world.
The second reason why being is not Heidegger’s main topic is the same reason why meaningfulness (Anwesen) was not his final goal but only his initial concern. Heidegger’s ultimate purpose was not to analyze the meaningfulness of things but to move beyond such meaningfulness to the “X” that makes it possible. Using the tradition’s ontological lexicon, he named this project the quest for the “essence” of being (das Wesen des Seins). This means not the definable “whatness” of being but, rather, what brings being about. To state the matter more properly in phenomenological terms, Heidegger’s sights were ultimately set on what allows for or makes possible meaningfulness (das Anwesenlassen), that is, the source and provenance of meaningfulness (die Herkunft des Anwesens).2 He called that enabling source “the clearing” (Lichtung), understood as the primal opening up of intelligibility at all (Verstehbarkeit) that lets us make sense of whatever we encounter.3
These two moments of Heidegger’s project— the analysis of the meaningfulness of things and the discovery of the source of that meaningfulness—correspond to what we may distinguish as his “lead-in question” and his “basic question.” In turn we might align those two moments with the earlier (1919–29) and the later (1930–76) periods of his philosophy.
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Like many of Heidegger’s key terms, “the turn” (die Kehre) is analogical rather than univocal: it refers, by way of an analogy of attribution (πρὸς ἕν), to at least three distinct but interrelated issues in Heidegger’s thought. We may call them (1) reciprocity, (2) reversal, and (3) resoluteness.4
The first and primary issue that bears the title “the turn” is what Heidegger calls the reciprocity (Gegenschwung)5 or back-and-forth oscillation between human existence (Dasein) and meaning. We can express that reciprocity in a chiasmic formula: Without human being, there is no meaning, and without meaning, there is no human being. This reciprocity of need is the core of Heidegger’s thinking, what he called “the thing itself.” Meaning needs us if things are to be intelligible; and we need meaning if we are to exist at all and as das Da, the locus of all possible sense. Especially in his Contributions to Philosophy (1936–8; published 1989), Heidegger declares that this reciprocity is in fact the proper sense of the turn, “the hidden ground of all other subordinate turns… .”6 It is the prime analogue that lends meaning to the other, subordinate usages of the term Kehre. Therefore, let us call this reciprocity Kehre-1.
The second and quite distinct issue that also bears the title “the turn” is “the reversal,” the de facto shift in focus that Heidegger carried out in his work from the 1930s onwards, a shift from his lead-in question about meaningfulness to his basic question about the “X” that makes meaningfulness possible. Most Heideggerians wrongly take this second and secondary meaning of the turn as the proper sense of die Kehre. As against that, and in order to emphasize its secondary nature, I will call this reversal Kehre-2.
A third and analogous meaning of the “turn” (Kehre-3) refers to the radical conversion in one’s self-understanding that ideally follows from realizing that Kehre-1/reciprocity is the basis of all meaningfulness and thus of human existence itself.7 This personal (“existentiel”) conversion in how one understands and lives out one’s life is discussed by the early Heidegger under the rubric of “resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit) and by the later Heidegger under that of “releasement” (Gelassenheit), understood as taking “the turn into Ereignis.”8 Both of these are understood as the entrée to what Heidegger called “authenticity” in the sense of living in terms of one’s true selfhood.
Among these three analogical meanings of the word Kehre—the reciprocity of man and meaning, the reversal of perspective worked out in the 1930s, and the resoluteness that ideally follows from an awareness of the finitude of reciprocity—it is the first one, the chiasm of man and meaning, that ultimately controls the other two. On the one hand, the reversal of perspective (Kehre-2) that was planned for the unpublished part of Being and Time and that was de facto carried out in the mid-1930s, is only a means to arriving at a clear understanding of the reciprocity of man and meaning: Kehre-1. On the other hand, the resoluteness or releasement that can follow from insight into the reciprocity is the way that we personally enact the consequences of that reciprocity in our own lives. Thus, as is the case with the analogy of attribution, the second and third meanings of the turn gather around and derive their sense from the first and primary meaning, the prime analogue that is Kehre-1. In fact this reciprocity of man and meaning is the core of Heidegger’s thought, the “thing itself” (die Sache selbst).
We now take up the main characteristics of each of these three “turns.”
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Kehre-1, reciprocity. Only with the posthumous publication of Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy did it become clear that the primary meaning of “the turn” was the chiasmic reciprocity of human existence’s need of meaning and meaning’s need of human existence. The thesis underlying this position is that the very nature of human being is to make discursive sense of things, that is, to understand their meaning (to deny this thesis is willy-nilly to make sense of it and thus to confirm it). We do not first exist and only then, as an add-on, make sense of things. Rather, we are pan-hermeneutical: sense-making is our very existence. Even madness is a way of making sense.
To begin with the first moment of this chiasmic reciprocity: Contributions speaks of human existence as necessarily belonging (zugehörend) to meaning in the sense of sustaining the openness that is the condition of all discursive intelligibility. Meaningfulness requires a “space”—a possibilizing dimension— within which we can perform the twofold act of making sense of something, namely, distinguishing S and P (διαίρεσις: keeping distinct a thing and its possible meanings) while taking S in terms of P (σύνθεσις: unifying the thing and its meaning). The primordial openness of the clearing is what makes possible such distinguishing and synthesizing. Without that possibilizing “space” there could be no meaningfulness at all, whether practical (using this tool for that task) or theoretical (taking Socrates as an Athenian). The primary function of human existence, its raison d’être, is to hold open that space and to belong to meaning. Or to put it in terms of the second half of the chiasm: meaning requires (braucht) human existence to sustain the openness within which meaning can occur.
Heidegger often speaks of meaning as such (“being itself”) as taking the initiative of “calling” human existence to itself and as awaiting a “response” or “correspondence” to that call.9 He will sometimes say that being itself “throws itself forth” to human existence while at the same time “claiming” existence as its own “property” (Eigentum).10 Such metaphors risk serious misunderstanding, not only because they hypostasize being itself into an “other” that stands over against human existence but also because they attribute anthropomorphic agency to meaning (“being itself”), as if it had a mind and will of its own. The same anthropomorphizing hypostatization persists in Heidegger’s use of the faux reflexive voice when he speaks of being “hiding itself” from and “revealing itself” to human beings. The way to avoid these gross misunderstandings is first of all to read “being” phenomenologically in terms of meaningfulness and its enabling source, and then to understand man’s “thrown” nature (Geworfenheit) as the necessity of holding open the space for meaning.
In Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger equates such thrown-openness with what he calls the “appropriation” (Ereignis or Ereignetsein) of human being to sustaining the clearing. The term Ereignis/appropriation means the same thing as thrownness and has to do with human existence being “brought into its own.”11 Appropriation is the later Heidegger’s preferred term for the chiasmic reciprocity that is Kehre-1. One’s appropriation to holding open the clearing is one’s thrown-openness (with emphasis on the thrownness) as the clearing. Ereignis is thus the “thing itself” of Heidegger’s philosophy. It is the the opening of the openness that allows for meaningful presence (Anwesenlassen) and thus answers the question of how meaningfulness “is given.” Heidegger’s key phrase Es gibt Sein (“being is given”) now translates as: “Appropriation/ thrown-openness is what makes meaningfulness possible.”
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Kehre-2, the reversal. Heidegger’s shift of focus from meaningfulness to its source was already programmed into the 1927 outline of Being and Time. The book was projected in two parts, which we may abbreviate as BT I (fundamental ontology) and BT II (historical deconstruction), but only BT I interests us here. The first two divisions of part one (= BT I.1–2) were focused on how human existence is thrown open as the locus of all possible meaningfulness. The third division (= BT I.3) was then going to effect a shift in focus, a “reversal” (Kehre-2) from human thrown-openness as the locus of meaning to the question of how meaningfulness “is given” within the space of that openness. Whereas BT I.1–2 concentrated on human existence, BT I.3 would reverse things and concentrate on meaningfulness itself, with special emphasis on its source. In that sense, Kehre-2 was to be the “reversal” (William J. Richardson) of the trajectory of BT I.1–2.
However, BT I.3 was never published, partly because Heidegger found the transcendental approach, with human existence as its centerpiece, inadequate to carry out the full project of Being and Time. The book remained a torso, and the reversal, at least in the transcendental form in which Heidegger had originally planned to carry it out, remained a road not taken. Nonetheless, still intent on carrying out the turn to meaningfulness and its source, Heidegger in the 1930s adopted a different approach to his project, one that he characterized as seinsgeschichtlich, which is best paraphrased as the “giving-of-meaning” approach.
Thus from 1930 on, we notice a remarkable shift in Heidegger’s lectures and publications. If his early work emphasized the first half of the chiasm—no human being = no meaning—his later work shifted its focus to the second half: no meaning = no human being. The focus now in Kehre-2 was on how the clearing, which it is our very nature to hold open, makes possible the meaning of all we encounter. But even with this shift, what remained constant throughout the earlier and the later work was the core of Heidegger’s thought: the reciprocity of need that we have called Kehre-1. In fact, Kehre-2, the reversal, was only a means to spelling out Kehre-1, the reciprocity that is the goal of Heidegger’s thought. So once again we state the chiasm—but now in the reverse order: The clearing-for-meaning is human existence’s raison d’être (in that sense the clearing has priority over existence); and human existence is the sine qua non of the clearing-for-meaning (in that sense, existence is the ground of the emergence of meaning).
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Kehre-3, resoluteness. Above I said that Kehre-1—the reciprocity of need between man and meaning—is the final goal of Heidegger’s thinking. But that is not exactly right. First of all, the final goal of his entire project is not theoretical but practical: a transformation in human being itself (eine Verwandlung des Menschseins selbst).12 Secondly, an effective and not merely theoretical understanding of the reciprocity of man and meaning issues in that very transformation. In the text cited below, Heidegger speaks of the “truth of being,” by which he means the opening for (or “dis-closure of”) meaningfulness, which equates with the appropriated clearing as the source that enables all meaning. The phrase “the meaning-process” in the following text translates the German Seyn. Note the relation between all three senses of the “turn.”
We must insist over and over that what is at stake in the question of the openness [of the meaning-process] as raised here is … a transformation in human being itself [Kehre-3: resoluteness]… . We are questioning human being in its relation to the meaning-process, or in the perspective of Kehre-2 [i.e. the reversal], the meaning-process and its openness in relation to human being. Determining the essence of openness [Kehre-1] is accompanied by a necessary transformation of human being [Kehre-3]. Both are the same.13
The whole of Heidegger’s work is a protreptic to accept and become what one already is: thrown open for the sake of meaningfulness. This means taking the reciprocity, with all its finitude, upon oneself as the basis for a new, authentic way of living. Before the reversal Being and Time culminated in an exhortation to resoluteness, to becoming oneself by taking over one’s thrownness (Übernahme der Geworfenheit).14 After the reversal Heidegger’s work is an exhortation to become oneself by taking over one’s appropriation (Übernahme der Er-eignung).15 In both cases (which are coequal) the issue is an effective acceptance of the “mystery” of one’s inexorable way of being, namely thrownness or appropriation for the sake of sustaining the clearing for meaning. The point of Heidegger’s exhortation is to “love our fate,” that is, to take upon ourselves (= Kehre-3) our finite appropriation (= Kehre-1) and to live in accord with it.
Thus Kehre-3 or resoluteness not only depends on insight into Kehre-1 but also is related to it in three other ways. The first deals with the threefold hiddenness of Ereignis (hiddenness, too, is an analogical term) and thus with the difficulty of personally realizing one’s thrownness as the basis of a possible conversion. The second concerns Heidegger’s so-called “history of being,” which he presents under the rubric of appropriation/ thrown-openness as the giving of “epochs of meaningfulness” (die Geschicke des Seins). The third is the virtual obliteration of all traces of Ereignis in the present age. In what follows, I gather these three issues together.
The three analogical levels of the hiddenness of appropriation, and thus of the clearing, are (1) their intrinsic hiddenness, (2) the overlooking of that hiddenness, and (3) the present age’s virtual obliteration of both the intrinsic hiddenness and its overlooking. The second level corresponds to the history of metaphysics and the third to the current age of techno-think (Technik).
As regards the first level of hiddenness. Because our thrown-openness is the presupposition of all sense-making, it is opaque to any attempt to find out why that is the case. Heidegger expresses this opacity as the “intrinsic hiddenness” of the bond of man and meaning. Because that bond of appropriation is the presupposition of all sense-making, one cannot make sense of it —for example, trace it back to a reason or cause—without presupposing it and thus falling into circular reasoning. We can experience the fact that thrown-openness-for-the-sake-of-meaning is as far back as we can go, but we are unable to peek over its edge to find out why thrownness/appropriation is the case. We can discern that but not why we are thrown into the need to sustain the clearing-for-meaning. To try to make sense of this thrownness requires that we already use it as the basis of our effort to make sense of it—which comes down to the logical fallacy called “begging the question” (petitio principii), that is, already assuming and utilizing what we say we are trying to explain.16 This complete opacity to questions about the what and why of thrown-openness is what Heidegger means by the intrinsic hiddenness of the man-meaning reciprocity. It is the prime analogue for the other two meanings of hiddenness.
Metaphysics and the second level of hiddenness. Given its intrinsic hiddenness, the reciprocal man-meaning bond is easily overlooked and forgotten, and this constitutes the second level of hiddenness. For Heidegger, the history of Western philosophy is a history of overlooking human thrownness and the open region of possible intelligibility that it sustains. Metaphysics (1) has focused on the meaningfulness (“being”) of whatever is encountered within the clearing, while forgetting the clearing itself; and (2) has traced meaningfulness back to an ultimate ontic cause or reason, usually but not necessarily called “god.”
Thus for metaphysics the clearing is bracketed out (is subject to an epoché), that is, the fact of its intrinsic hiddenness is overlooked. Hence the history of meaning is parceled out as a series of metaphysical formations of meaning. These formations are distinct “gifts” (Geschicke) of the “giving of meaning” (Schenkung) that is made possible by thrown-openness. These individual formations— called “epochs” insofar as appropriation and the clearing are under epoché—can be distinguished by seeing how select Western philosophers, from Plato through Nietzsche, construed the basic sense of “being”/meaningfulness: for example, εἶδος in Plato, ἐνέργεια in Aristotle, esse in Aquinas, and so on. In all such historical cases—as well as in individuals today who are unable to see through their fallenness to the thrown-open clearing—the intrinsic hiddenness of Ereignis is doubled: Ereignis, the source of the clearing that allows for all meaningfulness, is not only ineluctably hidden, but that hiddenness is also overlooked and forgotten.
The result is that the ideal of traditional Western humanism is a conversion to a metaphysical understanding of man as the rational animal, capable of comprehending the meaning of things and its ultimate entitative cause, but blocked from an insight into, much less a conversion to, the mortal thrown-openness that is Kehre-1.
The present age and the third level of hiddenness. Heidegger holds that the current epoch of meaningfulness is characterized by techno-think (Technik) and its compulsion to construe everything, including human beings, as a resource to be exploited for capitalization and consumption. The danger haunting this age is that techno-think virtually blots out all traces of both the intrinsic hiddenness and the overlooking of Ereignis and thus leads to a “tripling” of the hiddenness of our appropriation. The age of techno-think and global exploitation is characterized by a virtually complete obliteration (third level) of our overlooking and forgetting (second level) of the intrinsic hiddenness of the reciprocity (first level).
However, Heidegger sees a glimmer of hope that at least some people (“the few”) could, at opportune moments, enjoy “a brief glimpse into the mystery”17—a moment of epiphany—and even further, might “turn into Ereignis. ” In his 1949 lecture “Die Kehre,” Heidegger held out the prospect that, in this age that virtually obliterates Ereignis, some might sense their profound alienation from the source of meaning. In a moment of sudden but decisive epiphany (Blitz, Blick),18 they might experience their mortal bondedness to meaning and thereby be drawn to a transformation of themselves and of the current oppressive formation of meaning.
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In summary: (1) A proper, phenomenological understanding of “the turn” begins with the realization that Heidegger’s discourse about “being” is to be understood as a discourse about meaningfulness, one that is ultimately focused on the source of meaningfulness. The traditional and easily misunderstood ontological terms for that source include “being itself,” “the essence of being,” and “the truth of being.” Phenomenologically that source is to be understood as “the clearing,” that is, our appropriation or thrown-openness for the sake of discursive meaningfulness. (2) The reciprocity of need—meaning requires us, and we require meaning, both moments at the service of our making sense of things—is what Heidegger calls the primary “turn” at the heart of his thinking (Kehre-1), an effective insight into which would constitute a resolute conversion to living an authentic life based on one’s radical finitude (Kehre-3). Heidegger’s change of perspective from human existence as the locus of meaningfulness to the clearing as the locus of human existence (= Kehre-2) was carried out in the 1930s and finally fulfilled the project that was announced for part one of Being and Time. (3) Heidegger’s history of philosophy reads all of Western metaphysics as oblivious of the intrinsic hiddenness of the reciprocity that is Kehre-1. While the present age of techno-think harbors the danger of obliterating any trace even of our obliviousness, Heidegger holds out the hope of a personal insight into the source of meaning and human existence, and a corresponding turn or transformation in how we lead our lives.
1 GA 15, 20.8–9/HS 8.34–5: “Obwohl ich dieses Wort nicht mehr gern gebrauche”; and GA 7, 234.13–17/EGT, 78.21–4: “… her-vor-währen in die Unverborgenheit.”
2 GA 14, 45.29–30/TB, 37.5–6: “Anwesen lassen. ” GA 6.2, 304.10–11 = NIV, 201.13–15: “Wesensherkunft,” “Herkunft von Anwesen.” See GA 2, 53.34–5: “Das Anwesen aus dieser Herkunft.”
3 GA 16, 424.18–22: “der Bereich der Unverborgenheit oder Lichtung (Verstehbarkeit).” See GA 9, 199.21/PA, 152.24: “… ins Offene des Begreifens.”
4 In this paper I put aside the hapax logomenon of the “metontological” turn that leads to metontology qua “metaphysical ontics” (GA 26, 201.28–35/MFL, 158.29–35). As far as I can see, Heidegger never again mentions this “turn.” I disagree with Theodore Kisiel that the metontological turn is referenced in Heidegger’s preparatory notes to GA 29/30: See Bret Davis, (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts (Durham: Acumen, 2009), 28.17.
5 GA 65, 251.24/CP2, 198.14; see ibid., 261.26/206.3: “gegenschwingende.” The new translation of CP (CP2) uses “oscillation” for “Gegenschwung.”
6 GA 65, 407.7–11/CP2, 322.32–4: “der verborgene Grund aller anderen, nachgeordneten … Kehren.”
7 Heidegger speaks of the goal of his work as the transformation of a person into Dasein , that is, into accepting oneself as thrown-open as the clearing for the sake of meaning. This, he says, is the same as Kehre-1. Hence I name this transformation Kehre-3. This turn is referred to in Heidegger’s lecture “The Turn” at GA 79, 76.3–4/BFL, 71.31–2: “sich ent-wirft, ent-spricht.”
8 GA 14, 50.23 and 51.33/TB, 41.24 and 42.30–1: das Einkehr in das Ereignis.
9 GA 9, 322.30–1/PA, 246.15–16; “Noch wartet das Sein, daß Es selbst dem Menschen denkwürdig werde.”
10 GA 65, 263.14/CP2 207.16.
11 GA 65, 239.5/CP2 188.25: “… geworfener … d.h. er-eignet”; ibid., 304.8/240.16: “Dasein ist geworfen, ereignet”; ibid., 34.9/29.7: “die Er-eignung, das Geworfenwerden in das eigentliche Innestehen in der Wahrheit von der Kehre im Ereignis.”
12 GA 45, 214.18/BQP, 181.7–8, italicized in the original. See the next note.
13 GA 45, 214.15–26/BQP, 181.5–15. Heidegger’s emphasis.
14 GA 2, 431.13/BT, 226.13–14.
15 GA 65, 322.7–8/CP2, 169.14.
16 Aristotle, Prior Analytics II 16, 64b 28–65a 9: τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ αἰτεισθαι: On circular reasoning, ibid., II 5, 57b 18—59b 1.
17 GA 65, 11.21ff./CP2, 11.38ff: die Wenige. GA 9, 198.21–2/PA, 151.36: “Der Ausblick in das Geheimnis.”
18 See GA 79, 74–5/BFL, 70–1. Note the equivalence of Einblitz der Welt, Lichtblick von Welt, Blitz der Wahrheit, and Blitz des Seyns.
Thomas Sheehan - The Turn: All Three of Them Original PDF version.