THINGS
The middle that is named here is the same middle misconstrued by Hegel in his own thinking of mediation.
Heidegger referred to the “floating middle” of the Phenomenology of Spirit (§61) in the Hegel seminar
of 1956, identifying this middle with the speculative “is,” and implicitly contrasting this with being
understood in terms of expropriative appropriation, i.e., with the event (Ereignis). The Hegelian
insistence on beginning with opposition means that the circularity of the round-dance is undermined from the
outset. Where there should be expropriation and play, there is “being circling within itself”
(GA 11:
62/ID
53, tm).
This leads Heidegger to briefly note in the seminar, “with Hegel the squaring of the circle!
[die Quadratur des Kreises]”
(GA 86:
509).
The expropriative dimension of the coming of the middle in the round-dance is overlooked. The circle is
cordoned off, squared (now truly “enframed”). Against this squaring of the circle with Hegel there is
Heidegger’s own apparent squaring, indeed, the presumably four-sided square of the fourfold itself (a point
against the translation of Geviert as “quadrate”). A note to the same seminar addresses this
directly:
The Squaring of the Fourfold [Die Quadratur des Ge-Vierts] not con-taining the absolute circle within
itself—as something classified and subordinated—but rather: letting free into what has-been [
ins
Gewesen
]—i.e. letting come! (GA 86:
508)
The round-dance of the fourfold is to be considered directly against the circling of the absolute circle in
Hegel, i.e., the appropriative oppositional dialectic of being’s speculative self-identity in reflection. As
we have seen, the difference lies in the expropriative nature of the middle that comes and allows what is to
stretch out beyond itself, rather than be retrieved and contained in a reconciliation of opposition.
b. The Slight (das Geringe)
The name for what is able to exist in this way, as participant in the rounddance, is the slight. For there to be a wedding, there must be a coming, and for there to be a coming, there must be something receptive, i.e., permissive yet resilient. The slight is what is able to receive this great beginning, withstand its attraction, and thereby enter the “in-finite” relation. The slight is what it is precisely through this inceptual relationality: “the coming of the great beginning first brings about the slight in its slightness [das Geringe in sein Geringes]” (GA 4: 175/200, tm).
To understand how this relationality could be called something slight, Heidegger notes that “slight [Gering] is the emphatic word for