Heidegger's Poetic Projection of Being

Marius Johan Geertsema

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319780719
• eBook ISBN: 9783319780726
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Historiography

This book investigates the relationship between poetry and ontology in the works of Martin Heidegger. It explains the way in which Heidegger's dialogue with poetry forms an essential step on the path of overcoming metaphysics and thinking the openness of presence. Heidegger's engagement with poetry is an important moment in the development of his philosophy—or rather thinking of Being. Being speaks itself poetically in his view. Rather than a logician or a thinker, Being is the first poet.

© The Author(s) 2018

Marius Johan GeertsemaHeidegger's Poetic Projection of Beinghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78072-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Marius Johan Geertsema¹

(1)

Independent Scholar, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In thinking all things become solitary and slow.

Heidegger, From the Experience of Thinking

End Abstract

To present an introduction in philosophy means, in Heidegger’s view, to assume that the one who ought to be initiated stands at first outside of philosophy.¹ But in fact, the historical human being stands essentially and therefore ‘always already’ within philosophy, as Heidegger argues in line with a historization of Plato’s thought that to be human implies knowing ideas.² Hence, strictly thought, there cannot be an introduction to philosophy. The historical human being moves always already around in thought by ‘thinking of’ (andenken) and ‘thinking towards’ (zu-denken), which Heidegger calls the ‘wellspring’ of poetry.³ As a remembering (andenkendes) being, the human being philosophizes. Philosophy , that is to say the human being itself, has a Janus head that looks at once back and ahead. That which is thought towards and at the same time already thought before is the human’s area of abidance (Aufenthaltsbereich) as philosophy. This area has a poetic source, according to Heidegger. Since all human beings are essentially thinking beings, they cannot be ‘in’troduced into what they already are. Philosophy is, in Heidegger’s view, therefore rather the remembrance and appropriation of what one already is, namely a way, a becoming; that is, a historical self-appropriating being.

Although the human is a thinking being, not everyone is a thinker and at any given time already thinking.⁴ We should as thinking beings, according to Heidegger, therefore first become thoughtful. This means that one might be reminded of one’s thinking nature, like Heidegger intends to do by means of his writings and we attempt in his shadow in this ‘introduction’ as well. I say ‘we’, since it is essential that the reader is included in that contemplation. Thinking can only be disclosed by means of thinking itself, instead of mere representing, ordering or cataloguing. Let us not beat around the bush. What Heidegger calls ‘thinking’ has little in common with ordinary scientific and academic aspirations. In Heidegger’s view, thinking relates itself to that which is concealed from thinking by being reserved and still in store. In other words, thinking relates itself to that which is ‘withdrawing’ instead of that which is positively given. According to Heidegger, this is the originary way of relating to truth. Thinking should heed what it is given to think, which is, in his view, first of all something negative, manifest as the thoughtless condition of ordinary thought. As such, the term ‘thinking’ denotes an existential moment, and thinking itself is always directed towards the human existence. The reader of Heidegger’s work is therefore him- or herself at stake. In Heidegger’s view we are thinking beings, but we are not thinking yet. One might notice that it is not unusual for a philosopher to think that no one else is really thinking except for oneself, like a prophet often deems oneself the last loyal and true believer that has been left among one’s people. But presumably Heidegger experienced something critical, which his own speaking and its reception could not escape either, namely the planetary uniform transformation of thought into mere calculation and information technology. Thinking that is not useful or universally communicable comes in need of having its say when cybernetics renders all meaning information, as merely successful ‘feedback’ in a loophole of data. Consequently, the non-successful is simply selected out as senseless. Heidegger suspected that precisely the essential poetry and thought that are oriented by and towards the whole would suffer this fate. By giving rise to cybernetics, the language of traditional Western thought, namely metaphysics, has transformed into communication technology. Cybernetics takes being and meaning, in other words the ontological, exclusively as something ontical; that is, something present. About absence or nothingness one cannot be informed. Information is stocked being. In the age of modern technology everything becomes framed, in its secured place and present as orderable. But this view on the whole is itself nowhere present, ordered, produced, framed, secured, stored or stocked, but expresses the hidden historical essence of modern technology. Heidegger speaks in this regard of a ‘non-pictorial figure’ (bildlosen Gebilde).⁵ Cybernetics stems from the heart of modern technology to which contemporary science belongs, in Heidegger’s view, as well. However, within the uniformity of modern technology, a more primordial way of saying might be found. This saying is not representative, secure, exact, useful or informing, but rather hints and suggests. This saying is poetry. From Heidegger’s perspective, to hear poetry in the midst of the present technological world means to hear the voice of Being. Precisely the thoughtless and thought-repressing character of modern technology forms for Heidegger not so much material for an introduction (Einleitung) to philosophy, but a thought-provoking occasion (Anleitung), since modern technology remains after all an intrinsic part of humankind’s essential history. Nevertheless, such occasions wherein thinking emerges are rare, according to Heidegger. The path of thinking is abysmal, never a smoothly guided tour and constantly threatened by a relapse into the plain indifference of the ordinary. Heidegger pays attention in this regard to Nietzsche’s saying: ‘Philosophy means living voluntarily amid ice and mountain ranges.’⁶

The particular occasion (Anleitung) that gives food for thought in this book is the ostensible lack of reference to poetry in Heidegger’s formulation of the futural task of thinking. The essay The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking (1966) is one of the few writings after Being and Time (1927) that lacks an explicit reference to poetry.⁷ In contrast with many of his later writings, Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time had not been principally concerned with poetry. Heidegger advocates in The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking that with the emancipation of the sciences, philosophy, as metaphysics, has come to an end and suggests that on the path of overcoming metaphysics, futural thinking should think ‘truth’ from its relation to aletheia; that is, un-concealment as the openness of presence.⁸ In the same text Heidegger claims that metaphysics knows nothing of openness. Because it is a late work, there is reason to assume that the text is based on a broad trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking, giving his exhortation a rather seminal character. Should one conclude on the basis of this text that the task of thinking openness and the overcoming of metaphysics are not related to poetry? In our view, the reverse is the case. The central question of this book is therefore: What is the relation between poetry and the openness of the truth of Being throughout the works of Heidegger? Our guiding thesis is: From the perspective of the later Heidegger, Being opens and appropriates itself first through poetry.

We will argue throughout the book that Heidegger’s dialogue with poetry forms an essential step on the path of overcoming metaphysics and thinking the openness of presence. Heidegger’s engagement with poetry is an important moment in the development of his philosophy—or rather ‘thinking’—of Being. Being speaks, in Heidegger’s view, itself poetically. In our words, rather than a logician or a thinker, Being is the first poet. In line with Heidegger’s attempts to let Being have its own say, this ostensible personification of Being rather means a poetization of Being.

A historical perspective on Being excludes mere empiricism. As the presencing abyss, Being can have its say, according to Heidegger, solely poetically. A denoting object language would fall short of signifying absence. If Being shows itself merely as refusal, denial and dissemblance, or as that which it is not, namely as entities, the language of Being must be an indirect language as well. Instead of a logical positivism, Heidegger’s onto-poetology forms a poetic negativism , which is, however, never a pure nihilism. Only the sense of poetic language fits a discourse on—or rather from—Being, if Being is never an entity, object or thing. Concerning thinking the truth of Being, a philosophical reflection on language becomes finally inevitable, if it is true that thinking cannot exist without language. The essence of language is poetry , according to the later Heidegger, which he characterizes not as an ontical structure or in terms of traditional poetics, but as an occurrence in terms of the ‘appropriating event’ (Ereignis), Heidegger’s final term to articulate the relation between being and time. The much-discussed ‘turn’ (Kehre) in Heidegger’s thinking is a turning of thinking towards Being itself. However, this turn happens, in Heidegger’s view, first from Being, as the appropriating event itself. The appropriating event is the historical way in which Being turns futurely towards its own origin through originary thinking, which the philosopher therefore determines as a ‘homecoming’. Homecoming must always first traverse its own alterity and therefore experience its own ‘uncanniness’ as the mood in which one finds oneself to be initially not at home in one’s own being. According to Heidegger, it is Being itself that by means of a historical dialogue between poetry and thinking poetically has its say in this turning. The self-appropriation of Being occurs in this very conversation, which consequently constitutes the historical essence of the human being. It is therefore not the human being, traditionally conceived as the animal rationale, who speaks, but Being itself, according to Heidegger. Human language remains always a response to a preceding claim by Being. As the language of a people, this conversation is in its primal character p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Ancient Quarrel
• 3. Heidegger’s Quest for Being: An Overview
• 4. A Battle of Giants: Being in Being and Time
• 5. The Turning
• 6. The Appropriating Event
• 7. Truth and Method
• 8. Language
• 9. Heidegger’s Concept of Poetry
• 10. Hölderlin: The Herald of the Mystery
• 11. The Elucidation: Snowfall on a Bell
• 12. On Distant Peaks
• 13. Founding and Grounding
• 14. Holy Names
• 15. The Fourfold: The Double Poles of the Poetic Projection
• 16. Poetry: Historical Topology
• 17. An Uncanny Feast
• 18. Conclusion
• Back Matter