Quaestio

The article analyzes the Heideggerian notion of Ereignis from the point of view of the fourfold resonance of this distinctive word, which indicates both four meanings and four moments of thought. Subsequently, the essay proposes to approach the Ereignis to the theme of the Fourfold as the gathering of earth, sky, mortals and divinities, suggesting not only the cruciality of the language of the Fourfold for thinking about the Ereignis, but also showing in which way Heidegger himself expressly underlines this cruciality.

Starting with two enigmatic statements from the Thor Seminar (1969): ‘With the Ereignis, it is no longer Greek at all’; ‘One of the best ways to access the Ereignis would be to look into the essence of the Gestell’ (the enframing, the device, the whole constellation of the Stellen, Bestellen), this contribution critically examines the interpretations/translations of the Ereignis in terms of an event. While Heidegger still thinks of the Ereignis in terms of the ‘destinical sending’ (Geschick, Schicken), this, far from being inscribed in a temporal dimension, opens up a space of joined relationships (the Ereignis understood as Verhaltnis aller Verhaltnisse) brought together in the crossing (Vierung, in the sense of the crossing of ogives) which holds and maintains together the agreement of the Four: Earth - Heaven, Mortals - Immortals). This explains how the Ge-Stell can be seen as the (photographic) negative of the Ereignis.

The essay proposes a reconstruction of the authenticity of Being as a teleological instance of the Heideggerian question of Being, followed by an interpretation of existential analytics as a preliminary way of finding an ontological grounding for this authenticity of Being. According to Heidegger, modern thought has failed to arrive at this ontological grounding of the authenticity of Being because it has sought this grounding in the sphere of subjectivity and moral personality (Kant). Instead, existential analytics (the Zeitlichkeit of Being) would arrive at it in its rootedness in the truth of Being (the Temporalitat of Sein und Zeit). An ontological rootedness that is nevertheless reduced in the communal inauthenticity of the Heideggerian Dasein, which in its authenticity remains confined in the interrupted paths of its ontic and ontological solitude.

The article analyzes Heidegger’s thinking of Ereignis, with particular reference to the unpublished treatise entitled Das Ereignis, which dates back to the years 1941/42. First, I show that in this text Heidegger begins to take leave of the attitude that was still marked by the confrontation with metaphysics which was present in the previous writings. Instead, he places himself in a different disposition, in which terms such as ‘thanking’ and ‘releasement’ are taking on ever greater importance. Furthermore, I argue that in Das Ereignis thinking is thanking or gratitude for a self-giving that withdraws, remaining other than what is merely present, and that the attitude towards beings consists in the renunciation of attachment and possession.

The paper aims at an in-depth examination of the relationship between Ereignis and Enteignis with particular reference to the treatises of the third section of the Gesamtausgabe. Enteignis does not only name the mode of manifestation of Being [Wesung des Seyns] as Machenschaft, but indicates, the ex-propriating valence that constitutively belongs to the event-appropriation [Ereignis]. It indicates the suspension [das Ansichhalten], the retreat [Entzug], the detachment [Abgechiedenheit] and the sunset [Untergang] that prevail in the thinning/revealing dynamic of the event understood as the initiation of the beginning. Through this interpretation of the Ereignis as the retraction of Being [Sein] in the dynamic of destiny, it is possible to characterise the unfolding of the Lichtung as an abysmal event of giving and as difference. The being’s abandonment of Being [Seinsverlassenheit des Seineden] – in which lies the non-metaphysical root of nihilism – and the consequent unfolding of Being as difference, would conceal a kind of paradoxical donating foundation that suspends Being in the event of the Gabe, of the donation as Lichtung. Jacques Derrida has likened this paradoxical form of gift without donor and without donee to the concept of the holocaust, finding in it the very beginning of the history of Being. The Enteignis refers, that is to say, to an absolute oblivion, deeper and more original than the metaphysical oblivion of Being, to a Verwindung not only of metaphysics but of Being itself in the direction of abyssal donation. As Jean-Luc Nancy has suggested, it is possible to link the abandonment of being to the abundance of donation and to trace, therefore, the supra-metaphysical meaning of Enteignis in the abandonment of and to the possibility of the beginning and the future, in the germinating ‘catastrophe’ of the giving of Being.

Although Hegel has been often dismissed by Heidegger as a representative of metaphysical “ontotheology”, a sort of crypto-Hegelianism can be discovered in his “History of Being”, where Hegel is neither criticized nor even mentioned anyway. Both authors share the basic idea of a higher design, according to which all main positions regarding Being, resp. the Absolute, follow each other in their proper place. Such a logical unfolding is nothing but the Being, resp. the Absolute itself. Yet the process includes in both cases the negative moment, appearing as the historical phenomenon of modern godlessness. On the higher order, both Being and the Absolute allow somehow to endure a refusal. Hegel and Heidegger differ insofar the former advises a philosophical solution of the “speculative Good Friday”, whereas the latter emphasizes the disastrous outcome of the Metaphysics, just waiting that a radical change maybe could happen.

The article interrogates the reasons why phenomenology pushes Heideggerian thought towards the experience of the historicity of Being and later of its character as Ereignis. The answer is sought by insisting on the distinction between ‘the same’ and the ‘equal’ and on the possibility of not taking the obvious for granted.

According to Heidegger, with the circle we enter by asking about what is first, not only the way of proceeding changes, but also and above all the goal of philosophical investigation. The early awareness of the “metamorphosis” internal to the foundation of thought allows Heidegger to take up in an original way the metaphysical question of being qua being, that is “in itself” (the ousia). On the one hand, this results in a destabilization of the structure of philosophy: what is first enters in the thought as such, that is, distinguishing itself from it and escaping its grasp. But the result of this destabilization is neither the emancipation of philosophy from its task of foundation, nor the resignation to the impossibility of fulfiling it. Rather, it is the discovery that ≪asking arises from finding and develops “only” this≫; and that the principle of thought is essentially the “way to itself” and has its “proper” in “proximity”. Heidegger collects in the term Ereignis the internal logic of giving itself by the being, from which the philosophical question of the foundation arises.

This contribution bears witness to a path of semiotic-hermeneutic research aimed at addressing the notion of Event as firstness, in Peirce’s sense, and as retraction, in Heidegger’s sense. The ‘difference’ proper to the event is thought of starting from the concepts of ‘detachment’ and ‘rebound’ that allow us to think of its retroflexion and novelty, sameness and diversity at the same time, according to the ever-repeating figures of the Ancestor and the Infant. Truth itself must be thought of in this radical ambiguity, which nonetheless constitutes its irreducible life.

The article analyzes Heidegger’s notion of Ereignis as untranslatable. Based on the Heideggerian conception of translation, the article aims to clarify the meaning of the untranslatability of the word Ereignis and the unpublished 1941/42 treatise Das Ereignis. It is thus shown that the untranslatable is not that which is absolutely impossible to translate, but that which continues to (un)translate, that is, the condition of possibility of translation itself. In the conclusion, it is shown that the Ereignis as the untranslatable is rhythm and that is the relation that binds and disposes man for the truth of being.

This paper aims at questioning the possibility of thinking the Weg zur Sprache that characterizes Martin Heidegger’s thought after the turning/Kehre as a Weg zum Ereignis, i.e., the path towards language as a path towards the event in order to contextualize one of the fundamental theses of all of Heidegger’s Denkweg, ≪Das Ereignis wortet≫. The relationship between Ereignis and Sprache implies the conceptualization of fundamental linguistic plexuses such as those of Saying/Sagen, of Silence/Schweigen, and above all of Word/Wort. This is possible because the passage from the traditional Sprachphilosophie to a Wortdenken happens. From a methodological point of view, the question of the Wort will be treated in the light of an essential passage that takes place from the Zeichen of Sein und Zeit to the Zeige of Unterwegs zur Sprache. This passage is articulated in the Unpublished Essays, in which fundamental questions that Sein und Zeit left unanswered are explored in an extremely significant theoretical-conceptual laboratory that manages to elaborate the thesis ≪Das Ereignis wortet≫.

The contribution focuses on the Heideggerian tautology ‘Ereignis ereignet’ by meditating on the question Heidegger puts before it: ‘What is left to say?’ Emphasising the fundamental ‘positivity’ of the unconcealment of truth, the Author argues that in the Event, the world as such happens, in its indefinable mysteriousness and the extreme insecurity of its possibility. After the abandonment of metaphysics and the project of its overcoming, there is nothing more to be said.

As shown in Le principe d’anarchie. Heidegger et la question de l’agir (1982), Reiner Schurmann stands out as one of the few interpreters who consider Heidegger’s philosophy as a radical thought of praxis. This essay aims to highlight the relevance of the concept of praxis in relation to Ereignis by traversing some of the fundamental theoretical cores of Schurmann’s text. First, the transcendental dimension of Heidegger’s thought is emphasized, identifying the origin (Ursprung) of presence in Ereignis. Second, Schurmann’s interpretation of history as destiny (Seinsgeschichte) is examined, revealing the fundamental primacy of praxis over theory and thought. Finally, the anarchic sense of praxis corresponding to Ereignis is elucidated in light of the possibility of overcoming Geschichte, a possibility specifically given in the technological age.

Heidegger’s ontological reflection, throughout its development, focuses on some fundamental terms that are repeatedly elaborated and clarified by the author: λόγος is one of them. In fact, the German philosopher does not fail to tirelessly deal with this crucial concept of ancient philosophy, also for the repercussions it has on modern philosophy and on contemporary currents. On the other hand, the very term λόγος appears in one of the definitions that most characterize the human being from Aristotle onwards, i.e., ζῷον λόγον ἔχων, undergoing a stratification of meanings that gradually diverge more and more from the original. It is therefore possible to state that carefully following the development of the connotations provided by Heidegger on this topic represents to all intents and purposes a particularly profitable key to understanding the uniqueness of his thought. The Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), precisely due to the particular nature of its written form and its philosophical scope, is a crucial point both in the context of Kehre and, consequently, for understanding how the λόγος as an event is a significant and relational manifestation of Being. If we want to better understand the revolutionary scope of this position, it will be essential to briefly present what Heidegger means by λόγος in the first years of his philosophical production and, subsequently, to trace within the Contributions the changes with respect to the previous period. Finally, by showing the ripest fruits of his philosophical reflection in which thought and ποίησις are placed in intimate connection, it will be possible to highlight the important repercussions on the relationship between every human being, his own existence and philosophical reflection.

The article aims to shed light on Heidegger’s Ereignis by investigating it from the point of view of its ‘jointure’. Indeed, terms often associated with the Ereignis, such as Kehre, Kranz and Ring, are here read together from another fundamental concept, that of time-space. Thanks to the analysis of the spatio-temporal meaning of the ring structure that is outlined in this way, it is possible to exclude certain misunderstandings about the meaning of the Ereignis and to think adequately about its rigour.

This paper endeavors to explore the potential development of an ecology and an ethics tailored to the contemporary technological era, drawing upon Heidegger’s notion of Ereignis (Event). In pursuit of this objective, the study critically examines the alterations introduced by Heidegger’s work Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) within the framework of his preceding ontological ideas and the interplay between Sein (Being) and Dasein (Existence). Furthermore, the paper engages with Heidegger’s perspective on the history of metaphysics and the question of technology, with an aim towards elucidating the possibility of a “new beginning” in philosophical thinking. The conceptual framework that emerges from this exploration forms the basis for a novel post-metaphysical understanding of the world, shedding light on an alternative mode of human-thing relations, distinct from the prevailing instrumentalism inherent in the technological age.

In this article we present and historically reconstruct the problem and meaning of history in its relation to the question of being in Heidegger’s thought, in particular from 1927 to the philosophy of the event, a period that extends to 1944. The main works of these decades are then specifically analysed, from Sein und Zeit to the unpublished treatises on the event, including also Vom Wesen des Grundes and Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, as well as the Black Notebooks, with an emphasis on their essential fragments. The problem of history is shown as early as 1927 in close connection with the phenomenon of being, and they develop together up to the Heideggerian philosophy of the event. The origin of the problem is to be found in the connection that Heidegger establishes between history, existence and philosophy as unitary phenomena in relation to being that explain each other, thus passing from the existential historicity of Being and time to the history of being as Ereignis (or vice versa, to the Ereignis as history of being).

The article focuses on Rorty’s interpretation of Heidegger’s Ereignis in light of his philosophy of language. Rorty considers Heidegger, along with Dewey and Wittgenstein, the most influential philosopher of the 20th century because he proposed a ‘poetic’ or ‘pragmatistic’ alternative to the traditional ‘scientific’ view of language, jumping out of the clash between ‘Gods’ and ‘Giants’. However, according to Rorty, after the Kehre Heidegger would undermine this discovery by making the Ereignis an entity superordinate to the discursive practices of human beings, falling back into a form of metaphysics that conceives of Sprache as the ultimate substitute for God. This error would be due to a general underestimation of the Darwinian conception of an ever-evolving language in which no metaphors are more worthy than others. Rather than as the Event of Being, the Ereignis should be conceived as a linguistic space open to plurality and confrontation between different vocabularies, as a Happening in which speakers converse to find the most meaningful words for the development and well-being of humanity. Exploring the main junctures of this reading, the paper aims to reconstruct Rorty’s historical interpretation of Heideggerian thought, identifying some internal inconsistencies and suggesting that it may derive from a selective or even deforming reading of Dewey’s evolutionary pragmatism.

This text analyses some stages in the genesis and development of the problem of chance (Zufall) in Heidegger’s thought, showing how it runs through the philosopher’s entire oeuvre. In particular, after tracing the theoretical formation of the concept in the author’s youthful philosophy (whose main sources are the Neo-Kantianism of the Southwest School and the hermeneutic-phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle), I come to examine some passages taken from the works devoted to the problem of the event (Ereignis), in which Heidegger reconfirms the speculative centrality of the Zufall and its importance for the Ereignis-Denken.