being itself. Indeed, Heidegger claims that ‘the sole purpose of this lecture was to bring before our eyes being itself [Sein selbst] as the event of Appropriation [das Ereignis]’ (TB: 21/GA14: 26). There remains a question about what ‘as’ means here, and Heidegger wonders whether Ereignis belongs to being or being to Ereignis (TB: 21/GA14: 26). But Ereignis is not clearly posited as the ground of being.
In 1936–1938’s Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), Ereignis is said to ground not being but Dasein: ‘Da-sein [. . .] is grounded abysally in the event [das Ereignis]’ (C: 220/GA65:280). But, as with temporality, it is important to understand precisely what type of ground Ereignis is.6 Heidegger says that Ereignis is a ‘turning [that] essentially occurs in between the call (to the one that belongs) and the belonging (of the one that is called)’ (C: 323/GA65: 407). Daniela Vallega-Neu explains that Ereignis or ‘[e]nowning occurs as turning in-between beyng’s own enowning call and Dasein’s enowned belonging’.7 This turning is a mutual appropriation in which, as Polt puts it, ‘we make being our own at the same time as it makes us its own’.8 Ereignis is the interfacing between disclosing and being, the two correlated dimensions of third-plank unconcealing. These two phenomena need each other in order to occur, and their coming-into-relationship is the event that allows third-plank unconcealing to obtain: Ereignis. Or rather—the coming-into-relationship of being and disclosing, Ereignis, is the happening of third-plank unconcealing. Third-plank unconcealing happens as being brings itself about (in relation to disclosing) and disclosing brings itself about (in relation to being). We can address that happening as a phenomenon of being, as a phenomenon of disclosing, or as a
6 My aim here is not to give a full interpretation of Ereignis and the difficult text of Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) but only to say enough to plausibly situate Ereignis with regard to the planks of the taxonomy. Thus what I say is necessarily schematic and—hopefully—as accommodating of different interpretations of Ereignis as possible. (One interpretation that is excluded is Capobianco’s. Capobianco thinks that ‘Ereignis conveys the simple and quiet but also profound and astonishing “coming to pass” of all things, such as the plum or cherry tree coming into luxuriant bloom’ (Capobianco, Heidegger’s Way of Being, 21). This interpretation places Ereignis on the second plank, as the unconcealing of particular entities in discovering. I think that this is a mistake and that Ereignis is a third-plank phenomenon).
7 Vallega-Neu, ‘Poietic Saying’, 72.
8 Polt, The Emergency of Being, 52.