No More Learning

How do sky and earth dwell (sustained and made visible or meaningful as sky and
earth) in thejugness ofthejug? Things dwell or stay or linger (Weilen) in each other. At this stage in the essay Hiedegger has re-defined the Scholastic concepts o f existence and essence as the criteria for being:
1) Thingness, akin to quiddity, or essence: a thing is what it does as a functioning temporal entelechion (something is if it functions as part of a series of acts).
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
281
? 2) Existence, the potential to be 'in': an expression o f replacability, where the x=y describes the potential for x and y to replace each other within a common domain, that is, through mutual containment within a mutually describing category. The criterion used to determine if the sides and bottom of the jug hold the wine is whether "we pour the wine into [7/T] the sides and bottom" (169; underline added). Each element, wine and void, for example, is only identical through their mutual articulation o f a common space. Thus identity is determined as the
potential to be 'in' (in, into) the other; they are in each other without remainder, not as described by the phrases 'the book is in the library' or 'the piston is in the engine', but akin to Spinoza's use o f 'in' in his axioms concerning God: "All things which are, are in themselves or in other things" (Ethics).
The borders o f this usage are sketched by the use o f 'in' in 'the boy is in the man', 'in my life', 'in my heart', and even 'I was never in the in-crowd'. 'In', used in these ways, marks the relation between two logical or grammatical categories in which this relationship is both not reducible to the any one category and yet one o f the categories functions as a totality (as void does in Heidegger's jug). Heidegger's use o f 'in' describes the distance betweentwo ofEmerson'suseof'in'inthefollowingquotationsfromhisessay"Circles":
Menceasetointerestuswhenwefindtheirlimitations. Theonlysinislimitation. . . Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not ifyou never see it again. (169)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
282
? We learn that God IS; that he is in me; and that things are shadows of him. (170) This distance, between the social (Thoreau's "seeing through another's eyes'") and epistemological idealism pressures things-in-themselves back into our ordinary involvement with others. These others are, however, things. (Heidegger constructs humans as things, opposing the construction o f humans as objects).
Heidegger'suseofWeilenoverlapshisuseof'in'. "Thegiftoftheoutpouringisa gift because it stays earth and sky, divinities and mortals": the criterion for being a gift is this staying (it stays: weilt), and thus the outpouring can be justified as a gift if it stays these four. The justification o f a semantic distinction, "is this justifiably called a gift? ", resides in the use of 'weilt' (stays) in a novel fashion. One obscurity isjustified by another. We might ask, "how does this outpouring cause this staying o f the earth, sky, divinities and mortals? " Stays suggests an action or event that configures the world in a particularway. Whyaskifthisisagiftifthecriterionforbeingagiftissoobscure? What kind offunction is 'Weilen'?
How does an outpouring 'stay' these entities? (Thoreau would ask "why 'earth and sky, divinities and mortals? ' What are these? ") Heidegger can answer the 'how' but not the 'why' and the 'what': "Yet staying is no longer the mere persisting of something
that is here. Staying appropriates. " This staying, and therefore its function as the criterion determining something as a gift (this 'something,' however, is an aspect o f something: Whitehead's unity o f internal diversity), is not an apparent action. I can not say, let's make a test: 'Is this a staying? or is this? Does this stay or does this? ' Thus, its semantic
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
283
? obscurity marks it as a function different from the non-action of someone 'staying put' or from the action o f 'taking off. ' Staying happens as the world. It seems not to have a context in relation to which it can happen, except in its blinking away before the forms apparent in representation. Its failure happens as the loss o f the world. Does the radical skeptic really lose the world? Insisting on a real loss (really) can itself have no adequate criteria. We ask instead, can we exist ever outside o f a world? I f we lose the sense o f our categories or assertions o f existence, as both our existing and that which exists, we have lost the sense of existence. 8
Theworldemergesastheworldofearthandsky,divinitiesandmortals: "Yet staying is now no lnger the mere persisting of something that is here" (DD173; underline added). Heidegger creates a temporal confusion: does this now mean 'at this point in the lecture' or 'in our (his) thinking' or does it mean 'now that the jug emerges as a jug through its functioning as a jug'? In other words can we say that there exists two kinds of staying: (l)one as a function of form and representation called normally identity and determined by persistence and (2) another that underlies this one or emerges under the proper gaze as an appropriating? Or is there just one form o f 'staying' that is mistaken under the aspect o f representation. A "persisting o f something that is here" is no longer staying "now". This 'now' is not the 'here' determining staying as identity. 'Here' is construed here as the site o f the real, the present moment formed as the space o f the world in that moment. 'Here' functions as the criterion for being real. So why not say 'something that is here', what does 'persisting add'? Persisting links the phenomenal present spatialized as a 'here'to a chain of"here's", all ofwhich constitute both time and
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
284
? theworld. Howisthe'now'thatmarksthenewmeaningofstaying(asnotaformal identityofsomethingovertime)relatedtothispictureoftime? This'now'marksthinking as an outpouring, as a gift that appropriates. What this thinking appropriates and what the outpouring appropriates condense ontology away from the divisions between mind and world. Thinkingnowisnotdeterminedbyanadequacyofrepresentation,butthe belonging to the subject that allows it to emerge as such. Consequently, the confusion of the 'now' semantically marks this now as a point of condensation for two temporal series: the series defined by Heidegger's words and the series described by the functioning of the
jug. The jug, as a thing, builds its substance, if we can call it that, within the same 'now' of our thinking. Can thinking or a thinking or a thought exist in the same 'here' as a jug? Weareontheedgeofacategoryconfusion. Butifweaskcanajugexistinthesamehere of a thought, we are tempted to say the jug can exist in our thought, so that the thought becomesametaphoricalherethatcansupporttheimaginedjug. Thisshouldseema misuse o f 'here'.
All we can say is that 'now' has entered into the semantic matrix organized around Weilen. Heidegger continues to unfold this semantics. Staying "brings the four into the
light o f their mutual belonging" (DD173). Mutual belonging gives o f f some kind o f metaphorical light, or rather mutual belonging make the four visible as mutually belonging. The circularity here is exactly o f the sort as the confusion in the meaning o f the previous 'now'. The staying does not create their mutual belonging it makes what already exists visible. Visible to us? If the answer were yes, then we could still be confused about whether we create the belonging or if we just suffer from false consciousness about the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
285
? realnatureoftheworld. Thisvisibilityfunctionsforthefour,andforusifwefunctionas one o f the four. Heidegger says "the four" are brought into the light o f their own relationship. This is not light for them, but light caused by them. (The world both through thejug and as the quadrature makes itselfvisible. ) How does staying, pouring wineoutofajug,bringtheearthandsky,mortalsanddivinitiesintovisibility? Theunity o f the action o f outpouring that determines the jug as a jug ("staying's simple onefoldness") betroths and entrusts the four to each other.
At the level ofdescription ofthis betrothal all four are the same, "at one" Heidegger calls it. Their abstraction into a unity effect their unconcealment: their becoming true. True for us? Or true to us? The outpouring enacts this unity o f the four, that is, it abstracts them into a mutual belonging that determines the world as a world (as coherent and complete). But this outpouring acts upon this abstraction which it has itself created: "The gift o f the outpouring stays the onefold o f the quadrature o f the four" (DD173). Thisdoubleness,stayingintoaonefoldandstayingtheonefolditself,marksthe complexityofthesemanticandtemporalcharacterof'Weilen'. Theoutpouringdoesnot stay the earth and sky, divinities and mortals into a unity o f mutual belonging and then stay
this unity. Staying, therefore, does not enact anything, it does not make this unity or act in time as we understand it (as succession or even as a present).
Heidegger wants to pressure matter into function (a hyloentelechia). 9 This criterion o f being as that which acts and is by virtue o f turning 'into' (or maybe one should say being is what can function as a palimpsest: a palimpsest-being) allows the void, even in its absence to do the holding at every moment by being the wine as a holding. This
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
286
? distorts the criterion of presence, that Derrida attacks, into another axis where it remains one criterion for being, but within a matrix that includes the absence of the void, the a holding o f the jug, the wine itself. The semantic force o f holding as a partial entelechia (I use the plural here because nothing is itselfthe completion of a function, ofjugging) happens without being present as such. But we can say that the sides and bottom do not hold because they cannot enter into an identity with the wine being held in the way the void can (even though it is replaced). It's replacement is a categorical replacement. This is why Heidegger shows that the air within the jug is not a void. Both a void and holding function within the same logical category. Thejug as much as it does consist of clay can only be anything, let alone a jug, if it includes this logical category, that is, this relation
between void and holding. But what does it mean to 'include' here? How does a thing, a jug, include a conceptual semantics determining a void as a holding?
This is Heidegger's initial answer: "And in the poured gift the jug presences as jug" (DD173) ['7m Geschenk aber west der Krug als K r u g In the gift, however, stays
thejugasjug. ] Thecontradistinction,hereamockdialectic,between"stayingthe onefold" ["verweilt die Einfalf'], the acting ofthe outpouring determining the world as world, and the particularity of "the staying in the gift" ["/m Geschenk. . . west'] through whichthejugbecomesajugislostinHofstadter'stranslation. Isaythisisamock dialectic because not only is there no sublation (aufhebung), it is exactly the conception of matter as following a succession of states that disguises the jug as jug. What is is always
given. It is not made nor does it function as a cause or emerge as an effect. Heidegger is articulating a holism in which the semantics of our language open, in 'weilen' for example,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
287
? as a function of our dwelling in language,10condensing the categorical distinctions in our uses of 'to be' into or as things and the world. The functioning ofthejug, as an action, which at every semantic functor--taking/ keeping/ holding/ outpouring/ gathering-- completesbyimplicationallpreviousandfutureaspectsofthejugsfunctioning: tohold implies, by a kind of ontological or aesthetic [the distinction between these begins to blur] implication, outpouring. Time is condensed in the semantics o f things away from causal chains and into implicate unities:
W e view action only as causing an effect. The actuality o f the effect is valued accordingtoitsutility. Buttheessenceofactionisaccomplishment. To accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence, to lead itforthintothisfullness-producere. Thereforeonlywhatalreadyiscanreallybe accomplished, But what "is" above all is Being. Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man. It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from
Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house o f Being. In its home man dwells.
("Letter on Humanism", 193)
In "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger wants to distinguish the human from the inhumane in the way that he wants to distinguish between the animate and inanimate in "Das Ding" as determining the nearness of the world and our thinking within and through our actions, our speaking, and our stances toward ourselves, toward the things, and contexts presenting themselves to us.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
288
? Implication o f the 'to hold is to love' sort, an implication that functions as an answer to a question like 'how do I know I'm loving? ', Heidegger calls gathering:
The gift gathers what belongs to giving: the twofold containing, the container, the void,andtheoutpouringasdonation. Whatisgatheredinthegiftgathersitself in approriatively staying the fourfold. This manifold simple gathering is the jug's presenceing. (DD173)
"Belongs" asserts a totality called 'giving' that is the essence of the gift which means the outpouring from the holding, that is the taking and keeping, constituting the void o f the
jug as jug. That which is gathered also gathers--following the same pattern o f abstraction allowing Weilen to enact simultaneously the world and the jug. This gathering o f the aspects ofthejugs conceptual (how and for the sake ofwhich) functioning because it can function as itself, that is, abstracted from its material embodiment in the jug, can 'stay' the fourfoldpreviouslydescribedasstayedbytheoutpouring. Theoutpouringarticulatedthe doubleness o f 'staying', which defines the relation between particular and universal as holisticcontext. Outpouringexposes'staying'asthisrelationshipandinthisunconceals
the world (the quadrture) as a world. Heidegger's attempt to articulate the semantics of this use of 'Weilen', and, therefore, to describe the ontology ofthing and world requires a matching semantic condensation in the jug itself. This requirement is determined by the conception ofBeing as the condensation ofthe uses of'to be'into ontological force. The effect o f this is to allow things to mean, but at the cost o f losing the materiality o f substance and therefore requiring a conceptual identity determining the thing in relation to theconceptualidentitydeterminingtheworld: staying=gathering.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
289
? "The jug's presencing is the pure, giving gathering o f the one-fold quadrature into a single time-space, a single stay" (DD174): Das Wesen des Kruges ist die reine schenkende Versammulung des einfaltigen Gevierts in eine Weile. Der Krug west als Ding Der Krug is der Krug als ein Ding. Wie aber west als Ding? Das Ding dingt. ("Das Ding" 166).
The Hofstadter translation loses the continuing unfolding of the semantics of "weilen'by foreclosing how it enacts the jug (assuming it is through presencing). The essence (Wesen) of the jug is the pure (and perspicuous and offhand, ordinary or mere) giving of the gathering of the onefold (simple) quadrature in a singular Staying (under a temporal aspect)andDwelling(underaspatialaspect)[Weile]. If1Weilen'canfunctionasthe nominative Weile, then the functioning ofthejug can constitute what exists with the ontologicalforceofwhatAristotlecalledousia,substance. Themechanismforthis nominalization works through the semantics o f 'in' which determine the relations between and among whatever exists through appropriating and giving. 'In' could function as the criterion for being before because the economy of what in the "Letter on Humanism" Heidegger calls the subjective and objective genitive rests on the assumption that only what exists can be appropriated and given.
The gift stays the quadrature as its own: a gift can only function as a gift within an ontological context determining what it is and which it opens up as its own. In this dwelling it becomes a thing: Der Krug west als Ding. Heidegger is skirting tautology: it is what it is because it acts as it is in a world in which it can be what it is. In this picture what something is is already given, it is neither made nor does it emerge. Time has
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
290
? becomeanunfoldingofadynamicanalyticsemantics: Thethingthings. cTothing',asa verb, means 'to gather through appropriating the quadrature's staying (dwelling) in a lingering for a while: into [a] this, into [a] that thing; Essammelt, das Geviert ereignend, dessert Weile in einje Weileges: in dieses, injenes Ding ("Das Ding" 166). The demonstrative pair 'this . . . that' determines nearness and famess as a function o f this appropriating. The patterns of stability or of identity that are required in order for change to appear as change is translated into a structure ofbeing that allows for particular and thus unique relations within and toward the world. "Staying, the thing brings the four, in theirremoteness,neartooneanother. Thisbringing-nearisnearing. Nearingisthe presencing o f nearness, Nearness brings near--draws night to one another--the far and, indeed, as the far. Nearness preserves farness" (DD178). Heidegger translates identity
into a functioning that embeds particularity within a totalizing whole along a semantic chain o f equivalencies that determine what a thing is as a subjunctive configuration o f something as what it is within a world.
If the world is this possible state of affairs, how does one or does a thing get into it? InspiteofHiedegger'susageof'nearness'asakindofnominativeexpression,thatis, as a form of being, it is not a "container", [t]he thing is not 'in' nearness, 'in' proximity. Nearness is an activity, a "bringing near", and thus has no insides in the way that being a thing does. Nearness brings near in the way that thinging o f the thing does. Nearness is like thinging (verb) and not like the thing. But isn't the thing its thinging, and doesn't this thinging proceed through being entered? This seems to invoke a metonymic as opposed to a synecdochic function. The thing stays the quadrature "in the simple onefold o f their
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
291
? self-unified quadrature. " This seems to mean that one can put these into a description of an eco-system with semantic implications: Earth is the building bearer, nourishing with its fruits,tendingwaterandrock,plantandanimal"(DD179).
Canthisdescriptioncounter the indifference o f physical laws and the effects they describe (in very simplified forms)?
The onto-semantics o f 'in' translates intentionality (the aboutness o f language; in this case how language picks out or attaches to things) into a form o f possession: an ontological implication and metonymic nearness. Nearness describes a categorical proximity between intentionality (aboutness) and what is. This means that nearness descibes a unity o f categories (but not into meta-category). This preserves famess (relativedifference)throughinthedistinctionsdeterminingthesecategories. Thesepoints o f categorical unity are things. Thus famess functions not between things but within things: the distance between the taking and the keeping or the holding and the outpouring, between the giving (jug) and the gift (wine). Something cannot be 7<<' proximity. This is a category error: 'inness' is an expression of nearness. To be 7n' is to be replaceable. If we pour the wine into the void, can we justify this use o f in by saying they are equivalent at an ontological level? They are mutually implicating by functioning as a place holder for
the other. They are not, therefore, equivalent in relation to each other, but they are equivalent within a system o f mutual exchange stabilizing the jug as an intransitive holding.
A thing is not in nearness, but rather in thinging, which as we saw is analogous to nearness, is "in the simple onefold". This means a thing is what it is as a function of the semantic series determining a thing as a thing in the unity o f the world determined by the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
292
? same functional semantic series of the thing: the thing stays itself and in this staying stays the world. These functional semantic series at the abstract level o f their unity, and thus for Heidegger their level o f interaction or at the level at which they can replace each other, as the wine replaces the void, constitute the semantics and the referent organizing Heidegger's use o f'Weilen'. The aspect ofthis verb that suggests 'dwelling' captures this inness as both the expression and the criterion for Being. This might suggest the riddle, 'what is inside itself? ' with the answer: 'everything. ' I am not sure this captures the double-logic here; rather the riddle should be 'what is in what it itselfcontains? ' If I answer 'a jug' I'm not sure I know what I could mean. But if I answer 'the world', I can
makesenseofthat. Consequently,Icanonlyanswer'ajug'ifIcanmakethejugaworld. If everything functions as a possible world, and if such worlds constitute themselves as worlds (and thus they cannot reveal themselves as such but constitute themselves as worlds), then the distinction between particular and universal or context reduces to determiningthatwhichmakestheseworldsworlds. Theworldandthings-as-worldsare constitutedbysemantics. Thissemanticsdescribesaself-reflexiveteleologyorentelechia that at every point in the functioning of a thing condenses the entire series in the thing. The thing becomes a system o f possibilities, where unlike in Aristotle, these possibilities as
the unity o f 'to be' constitute actuality, the ontologically real. These possibilities are not actualized, as form or anything else, but used within an actualized totality. Thus the reality,theBeingofthingsmeansthepossibilitiesoftheiruse. Athingisfundamentally subjunctive. Thesubjunctivemodeofthingsisactualizednotinthemselvesorinobjects
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
293
? but in the totalities which they themselves are and in the totality o f the world (quadrature as onefold).
Each thing spatializes its function, that is, the changes which constitute its use, such that it exists through these changes as they reflect the totality o f changes. Thus things become the still-points for themselves and in this stability structure their changes as auniquetemporalsequence. Eachthingdeterminesaparticularkindoftimeexpressedas and expressing what they are. Time is scattered as condensates o f possibility throughout andastheworld. Theorderednatureandrelativeindependenceofthesethingsas condensates o f time determines them as controlled dynamic systems that constitute in their very nature the means by which time is expressed as time: their identity as things, which is totalized at any and every particular moment or aspect o f their functioning, in relation to whichtheunfoldingoftheirchangingpositionandfunctionisorderedastime. Thisisa descriptionofaliving,animatebeing: thusthingsthingandappropriateandgatherand dwell or stay or linger.
These verbs 'to appropriate" and 'to gather' and 'weilen' are descriptions, however, and it is exactly their ontological status that is at issue. They do not have any ontological force separate from our use o f them as descriptions. They are liable o f misuse, confusion, false attribution: language exists as much as anything else, but does it exist or function or mean in the way that jugs do? In Heidegger's attempt to replace the hylomorphic (matter/form) unity o f substance that Aristotle's constructs in order to counter Plato's reduction of matter to form he in effect reduces matter to a kind of functioning that replaces matter with a conceptual semantics constituting a temporal
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
294
? series. The interaction between user and use is dissolved into the idealism o f the pure function, such that the semantic description ofthis function reduces identity into a transcendent form; call this the point o f categorical unity or intersection (the metaphoric use of mathematical language is not arbitrary here), in this case designated by 'wer/en'.
Heidegger describes 'matter' in this way:
Earth is the building bearer (bauend Tragende), nourishing (nahrend) with its fruits, tending (hegend) water and rock, plant and animal. . . . The sky is the sun's path, the course ofthe moon, the glitter ofthe stars, the year's seasons, the light and dusk ofday, the gloom and glow ofnight, the clemency and inclemency ofthe weather, the drifitng clouds and blue depth ofthe ether. . . (DD178)
The earth is the source, the out of which (bauend) that upholds (Tragende) through its nourishing and tending, the organized forms of matter we recognize (mythically pictured). The sky is a path, a course, a glitter, the season's, light and dusk, gloom and glow, clemency and inclemency, drifting and blue depth. In all o f this the sky is used, and thus emerges as the sky as a function o f these uses. The uses o f both earth and sky are differentbutcomplementary. Theearthismothering,parentalandshepherding(inthe way that "Man is the shepherd o f Being" in "Letter on Humanism"): bearing, nourishing, and tending. The sky is that which the sun, moon, stars, year, day, night, weather, clouds, and ether (whatever that is) display it. This displaying, for the most part, enacts a system of oppositions (or negations) as the possibilities ofBeing for both the sky and its limiting or determining objects and concepts.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
295
? TeXsuiTi Kai 8vxeA^xeia (ct verbum temporale nomini)
They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death
as death. Only man dies. The animal perishes. (DD178)
Animals like things have only their functioning ahead and behind them; they do not have death, like humans do, "ahead of itselfnor behind it" (DD178). Did we not know that we die? Or that we are called mortals because o f this immanent and imminent death? Our education proceeds from the fact o f death towards the semantics o f death.
In Being and Time, Heidegger writes "By its very essence, death is in every case mine, in so far as it 'is' at all. And indeed death signifies a peculiar possibility-of-Being in whichtheveryBeingofone'sownDaseinisanissue"(BT284;240). Daseinis ontologically constituted in the "mineness and existence" determining the particularity of DaseinasDaseinforitself. Identityandexistencemeetindeathandnotingenesis:11
"Death is the possibility o f the absolute impossibility o f Dasein. Thus death reveals itselfas thatpossibility which is one's ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped [unuberholbare]. As such, death is something distinctively impending. Its existential possibility is based on the fact that Dasein is essentially disclosed to itselfj and disclosed, indeed, as ahead-of-itself.
(BT 294; 251).
Death exposes what in "Das Ding" should be understood as the semantical structure of 'in' and 'myness'. The possibility (Death) o f an impossibility (Dasein) describes a limit
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
296
? that determines death as absolutely interchangeable (that is, interchangeable without remainder): one forms the limit ofthe other as a totality.
Death is an ontological and grammatical limit determining our living, not only as dying, but as a limited totality, "as ahead-of-itself'. (It is this relation between ontology and grammar that I need here) Dasein is always an issue for itselfthrough the multiplicity o f its stances mediating between its throwness (enmeshed within the historical, social, existential givens) o f Being and being ahead-of-itself. The distinctiveness o f this fate which is never overcome/ outstripped can twist possibility into function such that Dasein functions always toward this death. The Cartesian jug head with its pineal gland attaching spirit to its mechanical arms, even if the possibilities o f our Being are not knowable, sketches being human as living like a jug as thing, unfolding at every point, as a temporal series attached to ontological possibilities (not just existential possibilities as in Being and Time). 12
If things become animate, if they are to us what they do (being acts through ontological implication), how are humans functional? If meaning is determined, or emerges, through use, then divinities function to use us, and through and in that use we gain a being as things analogous to how things function as things for us. Death is the limit of our functioning, in the way that becoming an object is the limit of a thing, forming itself outofuseintosubstance: "AstheshrineofNothing,deathharborswithinitselfthe presenceing ofBeing. As the shrine ofNothing, death is the shelter ofBeing" (DD178- 79). 'Nothing' is 'that which in every respect is never something that merely exists, but whichneverthelesspresences[west],evenasthemysteryofBeingitself'(DD178). Does
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
297
? nothing merely exist? Heidegger translates the Parmenidian One, constructed out o f the impossibility ofthinking ofanything (even ofnothing) that does not exist, into the functional implication that determines Being (or uses o f'to be') as a collection of collected (gathered) temporal series, hyloentelechia, emerging, or totalized as things, as determinate subjunctive modes. The world consists o f the collection o f these subjunctive modes. Heidegger is recasting what Duns Scotus, on whom he wrote his habilitation dissertation, and Peter Aureol call potential time, a domain oftime separate from physical and heavenly movement (as Being). Rejecting the Aristotelian picture o f time as determined and enacted by these physical changes, Duns Scotus followed Augustine's conception o f time as an internal measure separate as such from movement and the world. The developing realism of Scholastic philosophy, however, resisted Augustine's conclusion that time only exists within the mind. Potential time, therefore, describes both our measuring o f time and the possibility o f time which we find described in external movements and in things.
ParmenidesandAristotledescribetimeasthatwhichisandthatwhichisnot. This definition is translated, following the theological pressure of Augustine (and Biblical descriptions o f the ontological possibilities exploited by God, especially in Joshua), into "[t]ime consists o f something that exists outside the mind and o f something that does not exist outside the mind" (300). Averroes elaborates in Commentarrii in Aristotelis libros de Physico audilu:
Time is composed of past and future; but the past has already stopped being and the future does not yet exist. Time is composed o f being and nonbeing . . . .
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
298
? Itisthesameformovement;nopartofmovementisinactuality. Whatever part one designates, it is already distant; therefore, it is also composed o f what has already ceased to be and what is not yet.
Such things do not possess a complete existence; these things receive a complete existence from the mind. The mind conceives the indivisible that exists in reality. 13
Averroes use o f exist, however, tied as it is to Aristotle's use o f ousia and energia (potential), Time and movement are continuous, and therefore indivisible, within the world.
Duns Scotus turns Augustine's reduction oftime to the mind back into the world. He locates potential time, a description of a time sense separate from physical change, in theworld. Similarly,Heideggerlocatesthecompletionoftherelationofbeingand nonbeing in the thing, and in so doing reforms this opposition as distorted descriptions that pretend to describe nothing or non-being outside ofBeing. We instantiate Death as Nothingbyenshriningitastheconditionofthebeyond. Nothingisenshrined,andassuch exists or functions in our world not beyond it. The riddle o f the beyond forms itself as a totality; or Nothing as a limit constitutes the world as a totality. This is the way in which
the god emerges as what cannot be compared. Heidegger answers Anselms riddle, in Proslogion,describingandformingthelogicalbasisforHisexistence, "Whatisthatthan which no greater can be conceived? ", with 'What exists. "
Everythingweighsonexistence. Theweightof'what'in"whatexists"canturn the answer into a question: "What exists? " and the answer "What exists" at least allows
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
299
? existence to mimic identity. (What the thunder said; is what we say--not what we say it said, but what we say. )
Heidegger describes animation as a therapy to undo metaphysics and its (or our) forming ourselves (as humans) into animals that perish; We must recover the way to our capability as mortals: not to make us anew, but for us to see ourselves as o f old. Under the aspect of what Heidegger calls metaphysics, in which being is determined as representation,humansaredescribedasanimals,"alivingbeing"(DD179). Lifeisadded to our being, as electricity animates Frankenstein's monster's body, or as holy words animate a golem, or as god breathes into the shaped dust to make man. Objects cannot
become things, however; nor can bodies become human. In Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik(? ? 44),14Heideggerdistinguishesbetweenmineral,animal,andman: astone
exists without a world ('weltlos), the animal exists within a diminished world (yveltarm: world-poor), and man exists within his world-making (yveltbildend).
In summarizing Heidegger's methodological introduction to an unpublished course on the Phenomenology o f Religion in 1920-21 Theodore Kisiel paraphrases Heidegger's phenomenological description of factic experience, both as an activity and as that which is experienced:
What is had, lived, experienced in factic life experience is more than a mere object for a subject and its theory-forming activity, it is a world in which one can live. (One cannot live in an object. ) This formal indication of the world can be further articulated formally as our environment or milieu, as that which encounters or confrontsus. Itincludesnotonlymaterialthingsbutalsoidealobjectivities,like
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
300
? those o f science, art and religion. In this environing world, there also stands the with-world, that is, other humans socially characterized, as relatives, superiors, peers,strangers,andnotasinstancesofthescientificgenushomosapiens. Finally, in the very same world also stands "I myself" the self-world. (154)13
Our factic life experience articulates three umwelten: the given environment o f material and ideal objects, the with-world o f social relations, and the self-world.
Twenty years latter in a 1941 lecture course published as Grundbegriffe Heidegger translates these tripartite existential distinctions into the ontology o f Being:
To what "is" belongs not only the currently actual, which affects us and which we stumble upon: the happenings, the destinies and doings of man, nature in its regularity and its catastrophes, the barely fathomable powers that are already present in all motives and aims, in all valuations and attitudes o f belief.
(Basic Concepts I. ? 2)16
The actual describes the order o f the world presented earlier as "that which encounters and confronts us. " The actual also describes the normative powers in us, akin to the "ideal objectivities," understood as also a proximate order determining us. The limits of Dasein that allowed for Heidegger's existential analytic to describe its presence in its engagements have been dissolved, but not to expose the mechanisms of our being let alone our biology or consciousness. We are given to ourselves in and through the history o f our
embodiment within a world of beings, outside o f what being, existing, worlding, thinging means.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
301
? The actual slips into the possible, but not, however, through an Aristotelian dialectic, but as the description ofthe world towards-us. Ifthe actual is the descendent of the 'towards which', 'in relation to which' ofDasein, the possible describes the stances, the intentionality of Dasein:
To what "is" belongs also the possible, which we expect, hope for, and fear, which we only anticipate, before which we recoil and yet do not let go. To be sure the possible is the not yet actual, but this not-actual is nevertheless no mere nullity. The possible "is," its being simply has another character than the actual.
(Basic Concepts I. ? 2)
Possibility and actuality are not bound or determined by substance, but are rather the conditions or grammar of being: both the possible and the actual 'are'. The grammar of this 'being' is another semantic chain (best described, although the passage is rather long, in "Letter on Humanism"):
[T]hinking is the thinking of being. . . . Thinking is--this says: Being has fatefully embraced its essence. To embrace a "thing" or a "person" in its essence means to love it, to favor it. Thought in a more original way such favoring [Mogen] means to bestow essence as a gift. Such favoring is the proper essence o f enabling, which not only can achieve this or that but also can let something essentially unfold in its provenance, that is, let it be. It is on the "strength of such enabling by favoring
that something is properly able to be. This enabling is what is properly "possible" [das "Mogliche"], that whose essence resides in favoring. From this favoring
Being enables thinking. The former makes the latter possible. Being is the
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
? enabling-favoring, the "may be" [das Mog-liche]. As the element, Being is the quiet power" ofthe favoring-enabling, that is, ofthe possible. . Ofcourse, our words mogliche [possible] and Moglichkeit [possiblity], under the dominance of "logic" and "metaphysics," are thought solely in contrast to "actuality"; that is, they are thought on the basis o f a definite--the metaphysical--interpretation o f Being as actua and potentia, a distinction identified with the one between existentia and essentia. When I speak ofthe "quiet power ofthe possible" I do not mean the possible o f a merely represented possiblitias, nor potentia as the essentia o f an actus o f existentia; rather, I mena Being itself, which in its favoring presides over thinking and hence over the essence of humanity, and that means over its relation
to Being. (196-97)
The grammar o f 'possibility' is bound to that o f 'thinking'. These grammars pivot around a set of, what I think should be called, functions: embracing,favoring, enabling, and
possibility}1 Functions are transitive in that they can be used to link different aspects of being or different grammatical levels. 'Embrace', for example, relates being to essence through relating thing and person. This last use allows 'embrace' to be seen as love or
favor. Favor is a bestowing, but of essence. This essence understood as enabling redefines favoring' in relation to this 'enabling? . Such enabling presents being as
possibility because it is attached to letting being be, that is, the function is inverted so that it is directed not from us to the world but from the world toward us.