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The New Heidegger
As the ‘there’ (Da) of being, truth unfolds ‘between’ clearing and concealing, world and earth, to which Heidegger associates the further concepts of ‘rapture’ (Entrückung) and ‘captivation’ (Berückung), ‘granting’ and ‘refusal’, to which I shall turn shortly. Truth itself, as the openness in which events and deeds take place, unfolds in the strife (Streit) between world and earth and in the en-counter (Entgegnung) between men and gods. As such, it is not so much a moment in time and a point in space as a region, a domain or a site prior to any objectification of space and time, prior to space and time having become the parameters for the representation and mathematization of nature. Heidegger calls this site the ‘between’ or the ‘in-between’ (das Inzwischen) where being unfolds, or, as he often says, ‘turns’. It marks the very emergence of time and space before any representation and mathematization; it characterizes the unity of space and time, the joint that joins together the tendencies in their strifely encounter. ‘Ereignis’ is the word Heidegger now uses to designate the spatial and temporal unity of being and beings.36 As such, mobilizing and somewhat reinterpreting a determination already thematized in Being and Time, Heidegger characterizes it further as ‘the site of the moment’ (die Augenblicksstätte): ‘The site of the moment unfolds from within Ereignis, as the strife of world and earth’.37 And if it coincides with the domain of decision (Entscheidung), it is insofar as it marks the space in which the fate of the world and of the human is being decided: in other words, the space of history.38
Heidegger gathers the various determinations of the Augenblicksstätte [the site of the moment], which we shall have to clarify one by one, in the following, arguably complex terms:
The site of the moment: uniqueness and assault of the greatest rapture [Entrückung] in the domain of the hint, out of the gentle captivation [Berückung] of that which refuses itself and hesitates, proximity and distance in the domain of decision, the 'where' and 'when' of the history of beyng, clearing and concealing itself from within the occurring of the fundamental attunement of reservedness--such is the fundamental experience of the there and thus of time-space.39'Rapture' and 'captivation', 'refusal' and 'hesitation', 'proximity' and 'distance', 'decision', and 'reservedness' are all terms, or concepts, which need to be clarified. They all point to a certain transformation of Heidegger's thought. This, of course, is making things more difficult for us: in connection with his early thought, and the project of fundamental ontology in particular, we witnessed a remarkable production of new ideas and concepts. We now need to familiarize ourselves with a new set of concepts, and with a decisive reworking of the assumptions governing the early work. Only later will we be able to ascertain the necessity of this new direction.
Let me begin by noting the fact that, in the passage I've just quoted, time and space are thought from out of what emerges as their originary unity, from the 'and' itself. This unity is the very movement of Ereignis. If I choose to leave this word untranslated at this point, it is for the same reasons that forced us
36 GA 65, 13/10.
37 GA 65, 30/22.
38 I shall attempt to provide a genuine understanding of history further on, once I have
clarified the nature of time–space. This understanding of history will turn out to be
not just different from, but entirely heterogeneous to history as chrono-logy.
39 GA 65, 375/261.