determining elements in Heidegger’s thinking from the early emphasis on the idea of our prior belonging to world, through the idea of the equiprimordiality of the structures that make up being-in-the-world, and thence to the concept of the Event.
Heidegger’s thinking is, in this latter respect, fundamentally holistic in its orientation. Yet the holism at issue here should not be construed merely in terms of the simple giving of precedence to the whole over the parts, but rather in the terms that were already indicated in the discussion of mutual dependence as illustrated through the example of hermeneutic circularity in section 3.5 above: the whole is understood as itself determined through the interplay of the parts that make it up, while those parts are in turn determined through their interplay with one another, and so also in relation to the whole. Such holism entails a necessarily dynamic conception of the unity of the whole as well as of the parts—a unity that is constantly being “worked out” or articulated in the interplay of elements. One further consequence of such holism is also a certain “indeterminacy” that pertains to the whole and to the parts since the unity that belongs to them is a unity that can never be given any complete determination or specification. That this is so follows from the thoroughly relational manner in which both whole and parts are determined. The mutuality that obtains between the parts, and between the parts and the whole, means that neither parts nor whole can be given any final or complete determination, since for such determination to occur would be for the structure to resolve into its parts, with the whole as merely the conjunction of those parts.61 Such a “resolution” would seem, in fact, to be characteristic of holism as it is sometimes applied in a methodological or epistemological fashion alone—thus it may only be possible to develop an understanding of the elements that occur within some domain through articulating the relations between those elements, but once that articulation is complete, the understanding arrived at is taken as indicating the character of those elements as they are “in themselves.” Heidegger, clearly, is no mere “epistemological” or “methodological” holist.
Inasmuch as the gathering of world is that by means of which all things, as well as the elements of the fourfold itself, appear as that which they are— the gathering of earth, sky, gods, and mortals is a letting be of earth as earth, sky as sky, gods as gods, and mortals as mortals; the gathering that occurs in and through the jug is a letting be of the jug as jug—so the gathering that occurs in the happening of place that is the Event is a gathering of that which already belongs with that to which it is gathered. This is one reason why Heidegger places so much emphasis on the echo of “own”
61. Such a shift is characteristic of what occurs when holism is taken as a feature merely of the epistemology of some domain. Understanding the structure of the domain may thus require the articulation of a set of relations between elements, but that holistic mode of proceeding finally resolves into an understanding of the elements that can then be taken in themselves.