The History of Beyng belongs to a series of Martin Heidegger’s reflections from the 1930s that concern how to think about being not merely as a series of occurrences, but as essentially historical or fundamentally as an event. It builds directly on an earlier work in the series, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), and provides a pathway to the later text, Mindfulness.
Together, these texts are important for their meditations on the oblivion and abandonment of being, politics, and race, and for their incisive critique of power, force, and violence. Originally published in 1998, this English translation opens new avenues for understanding the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking during this crucial time.
The History of Beyng belongs to a series of Martin Heidegger’s reflections from the 1930s that concern how to think about being not merely as a series of occurrences, but as essentially historical or fundamentally as an event. It builds directly on an earlier work in the series, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), and provides a pathway to the later text, Mindfulness.
Together, these texts are important for their meditations on the oblivion and abandonment of being, politics, and race, and for their incisive critique of power, force, and violence. Originally published in 1998, this English translation opens new avenues for understanding the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking during this crucial time.
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Overview
The History of Beyng belongs to a series of Martin Heidegger’s reflections from the 1930s that concern how to think about being not merely as a series of occurrences, but as essentially historical or fundamentally as an event. It builds directly on an earlier work in the series, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), and provides a pathway to the later text, Mindfulness.
Together, these texts are important for their meditations on the oblivion and abandonment of being, politics, and race, and for their incisive critique of power, force, and violence. Originally published in 1998, this English translation opens new avenues for understanding the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking during this crucial time.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253018199 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2021 |
| Series: | Studies in Continental Thought |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 227 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Jeffrey Powell is Professor of Philosophy at Marshall University and the editor of Heidegger and Language (IUP, 2012).
William McNeill is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago. He has translated or co-translated several Heidegger texts, most recently (with Julia Ireland) Hölderlin's Hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine" (IUP, 2014).
Heidegger’s contribution to the growth and development of National Socialism was immense. In this small anthology, Dr. Runes endeavors to point to the utter confusion Heidegger created by drawing, for political and social application of his own existentialism and metaphysics, upon the decadent and repulsive brutalization of Hitlerism.
Martin Heidegger was a philosopher most known for his contributions to German phenomenological and existential thought. Heidegger was born in rural Messkirch in 1889 to Catholic parents. While studying philosophy and mathematics at Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Heidegger became the assistant for the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Influenced by Husserl, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, Heidegger wrote extensively on the quality of Being, including his Opus Being and Time. He served as professor of philosophy at Albert-Ludwig University and taught there during the war. In 1933, Heidegger joined the National Socialist German Worker’s (or Nazi) Party and expressed his support for Hitler in several articles and speeches. After the war, his support for the Nazi party came under attack, and he was tried as a sympathizer. He was able to return to Albert Ludwig University, however, and taught there until he retired. Heidegger continued to lecture until his death in 1973.
Read an Excerpt
The History of Beyng
By Martin Heidegger, William McNeill, Jeffrey Powell
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2012 Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am MainAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01819-9
CHAPTER 1
The History of Beyng
1. "The History of Beyng" Is the Name ...
"The History of Beyng" is the name for the attempt to place the truth of beyng as event back into the word of thinking, and thereby to entrust it to an essential ground of historical human beings — to the word and its sayability. Whether the attempted saying itself belongs to the event and thereby participates in the stillness of that which is without having an effect or requiring an effectiveness can never be discerned by calculation. But the attempt would necessarily remain entirely outside of its realm, if it were not to know that it would more appropriately be named: "To the very threshold." And yet this hint once more diverts us away from the issue and toward the attempt to approach it.
The simple, mature conjoining of the Contributions and Mindfulness; the Contributions remain a framework, yet without structural articulation; Mindfulness is a middle, but not the source.
2. The History of Beyng
to be told only in the simple word, as told by the in-between which, transforming all relation to being, bears abyssally the sustainment in a way that humans are in general able to sustain within this inceptual realm.
World.
Earth.
Strife.
Humans.
God.
Countering.
Clearing.
Sustainment.
History.
Opening of appropriation.
Appropriative event.
3. Western Philosophy
Why is Western "philosophy" in its essence metaphysics?
Because in the ground of its essence it is "physics."
And to what extent, and why, is Western philosophy "physics"?
"Physics" here means knowledge (preservation of the truth) of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is the determination of being found at the commencement, and that therefore reigns throughout the entire history of Western philosophy.
Yet, being is that which philosophy thinks.
Yet why does physics come to be meta-physics?
What type of variation and entrenchment of physics is that?
Above all else: what does [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] mean?
And is it the interpretation of the being of beings as a whole found at the commencement?
Is it even determinative for this interpretation?
And why?
Or is the why-question prohibited here, because it is profoundly inappropriate?
The history of beyng.
Is all this only the "philosophy of philosophy" and thus the degenerative outcome of an excess, which is the sign of an uprooting? Or, is something else imminent?
What speaks here is neither a "philosophy of philosophy" nor indeed a philosophy at all. Presumably, however, a readiness for philosophy enjoins its essence, a readiness that goes deep into its ground; and this is the grounding of a belonging to beyng. A rootedness opens up the path into the ground, an event propriated out of the refusal of beyng, neither fabricated nor thought up, yet thoughtfully attentive to the gentleness of the free, given over to the stillness that dwells supreme in the coming of that most in coming.
We appear to be inquiring about philosophy, yet in truth inquire only of beyng, for which philosophy remains the history of an essential belonging, one to which a thinker is from time to time admitted.
Philosophy as something contrived does not lie within the sphere of this reflection.
4. The Truth of Beyng
hitherto never yet recognized, even though it had to come to the fore within the open realm belonging to the commencement of Western philosophy itself, albeit not as the truth of beyng, and therefore it also never entered its questioning. Rather even its first, still entirely veiled apparition was henceforth buried — and yet it could not and cannot be eliminated.
Only from out of the need of beyng, however, can we first inquire after it.
Compare the interpretation of Aristotle's Physics B, 1 (first trimester 1940), p. 22ff.; a hint of the truth of beyng proceeding from Parmenides' [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ...; cf. its revised interpretation from summer 1940.
5. Are We?
Who are we?
Where are we?
In what moment are we?
Who are we?
A configuration of questions in which one question arises — never with regard to "us," but "after" beyng. A disconcerting state of affairs in which beyng propriates.
But never "dialectical," never as the play of opposites — entirely as propriative event, something singular.
6. "We Are"
Who are we?
And indeed, are we?
What does "being" mean? "Are" we, because and insofar as we come across ourselves, and do so in the way that we come across a tree or house? And do we come across ourselves in this way? And even if we do, do we thereby hit upon the way in which we are?
Who decides about "being"?
Or does being decide about every "who" and all questioning? And how does it do so? What is being? How should being be unveiled and be brought into its truth? What is truth?
We stand in the most extreme region of these questions.
* * *
Propriation and the gentleness of supreme sovereignty, which does not require power or "struggle," but originary critical setting apart. Power-less holding sway.
7. Da-sein
Who could say it!
The clearing of being. To be the grounding ground of this clearing.
This itself does not = being human, rather the latter as guardianship and founding.
* * *
The There [Da].
A trace of the There in the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].
But the trace has long since been extinguished — it can never simply be followed again, but must be found from one's own trail.
* * *
And what a jumble of misinterpretation the concept of Da-sein in Being and Time has assembled. Not least in Jaspers, the most desolate leveling-down. From where, then, can we still await an ear and an eye and — a heart?
8. Beyng
at its appointed hour will ward off human fabrication and take even the gods into its service, casting off the corruption of its ownmost essence — machination.
9. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Beyng
Because [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] remained but a resonance, and ungrounded, even the question concerning the clearing already appears entirely disconcerting to us. The question of beyng can be unfolded solely from out of this question. Beyng thus remains still more concealed and yet — the turn!
10. That Truth ...
That truth, in essence, is ungrounded and the human lays claim to truths without truth — will historical humankind ever comprehend this as the non-ground of all contemporary history?
CHAPTER 2Contra-diction and Refutation
11. Contra-diction and Refutation (Re-iteration)
1. to what extent refutation impossible in genuine philosophy; im-possible, because not attaining the realm of truth belonging to philosophy at all, which always decides the truth of being.
2. in what sense the impossibility may not be interpreted:
a) not as though it concerned the putative view once offered by an individual human being (an "I cannot do otherwise" on biological-historical grounds).
b) not as though every "rational" discussion were impossible here and the "system" and standpoint were to be accepted or rejected.
c) not as though the issue concerned the person of the thinker at all.
3. Rather, what is essential is the contra-diction (re-iteration):
a) this means a saying, fundamental assertion concerning being and its truth.
b) this requires the most profound knowing and requires a guiding reflection, which admittedly can never be accomplished by way of mere exposition regarding right and wrong, but rather as a questioning leading toward and into a fundamental experience.
c) accordingly, questioning in a manner never attained by a scientific "problem," because the latter precisely leaves unquestioned the being of beings (positivity of science).
d) this questioning — the supreme freedom and binding in the sense of steadfast insistence within the truth of beyng.
4. The saying is re-iteration:
a) in the double sense of the against and of inceptual renewal.
b) the "against" does not concern an un-truth in the sense of incorrectness and untenability, but rather a true-ness that is not sufficiently inceptual.
c) the "re-" says: that fundamentally it is always and ever the same thing that is thought, and that reciprocal irrefutability means not a sheer irreconcilability, but only an indication that it is always the same thing that is asked; which, however, simultaneously excludes any equalization and any diminution.
d) what is asked about — the truth of beyng — is what is most simple, this being what is most acute, which tolerates no diminution, such that the essential unity of thinkers consists precisely in their reciprocal irrefutability and separation.
e) to this belongs the deepest freedom, which is one with a steadfast insistence within the history of beyng.
f) for this reason, genuine contra-diction is not only that which is most simple, but as such, what is most seldom.
5. Contra-diction is historical, and for this reason its domain can never be attained historiographically, through acquaintance with an era and its affairs and views, but only from out of a questioning that seeks the truth of beyng. Cf. in this regard Mindfulness, §13, "Philosophy."
6. On "refutation," and that means "science," cf. Contributions, §75, "Concerning the Meditation on Science"; and §76, "Propositions Concerning 'Science.'" (Cf. also first trimester, 1940, "The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics," "Essence of Science," "Fundamental Concepts.")
7. Philosophy is not without grounds; yet its furnishing its grounds can never be the demonstration of some correctness, which necessarily has unquestioning recourse to an incommensurate truth concerning beings.
Furnishing grounds is grounding in the sense of a knowing transposition into a knowing (steadfast insistence) that concerns the truth of beyng, and that means: a readying for coming to be appropriated through the event.
9. All philosophy hitherto, however, in the form of metaphysics gives rise to the appearance of a "science," especially in that it even names itself this and considers itself to be this, and repeatedly sets itself standards that make inadequate demands.
And this is why an "effect" is expected of philosophy, one that it can never have. And that "effect" which is proper to it is not experienced in its abyssal character, or it is mischaracterized in a biological, psychological, or historiological manner.
Contradiction is not refutation, that is, not a presenting of, and giving grounds for, opposing statements about something objective, but rather fathoming the ground of an inceptual fundamental position within the truth of beyng and a steadfast insistence within it. Philosophy can never directly influence or alter beings — that which is actual — but it is capable of something more essential. It is, if and when it is, but this happens only seldom: a leap into the history of beyng, a leap that fathoms in a more inceptual manner the ground of the truth of beyng.
12. The Historicism of Modernity and the History of Beyng
"Stances" (another modern concept!) that modernity makes possible and on occasion necessitates; the freedom of the subjectum.
Meaning, stances toward a particular era in which a humankind and its generations live.
1. One goes with the "times." One wants to be with it, and to find oneself confirmed thereby. "Modernity"; one even must be with it. Here the "times," that is, the "present," are viewed differently each time (in their seeds, that is, in what is newest — coming) — in terms of the foreground or background.
a) shallow progressiveness} = new matter-of-factness
b) heroic realism}
2. One is constantly against the "times," insofar as one stands outside them, yet nevertheless uses them and casts them as opposition. Christendom, and in a historiological manner all "Renaissances."
3. A few leap ahead of the "times," not just into their "future" (that of the present), but into an essentially other history. The history of being. The "futural ones" in the essential sense.
CHAPTER 3Passage The History of Beyng
13. The Consummation of Metaphysics
Nietzsche not only constitutes an end, that is, the need for another commencement, but this very need only necessitates that even in its consummation, metaphysics itself — and that means the truth of beings as a whole — must at the same time, if only in an entirely veiled manner, become essential and force decisions. And precisely this is what is understood with greatest difficulty by the end of this era. For on the one hand, it clings to a rejection of metaphysics by way of positivism, and on the other hand, the affirmation of metaphysics is so alien (cf. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that it becomes terrifying.
14. Strife
The earth is not a sector cut out of beings as a whole.
The world is not a sector cut out of beings as a whole.
Beings are not distributed between these two sectors.
Earth is essencing of beings as a whole.
World is essencing of beings as a whole.
Earth and world belong to the being of beings as a whole, and for this reason there is between them the strife that we are never able to think if we represent to ourselves a conflict or a contestation.
The strife itself must be comprehended from out of the crossing through of their countering, and both must be comprehended in terms of the event.
15. Strife
for supremacy — wherein? In bringing about the essencing of beyng.
Only in strife is that which looms forth bound into supremacy, brought into its own.
Everything earth, everything world, and neither the essence, and both the essencing.
Supremacy — from out of the event!
16. World-relation
World-relation. Admitted into the "earth." Both on account of belonging to beyng, and with beyng, countering.
Earth and life (that which loves) the darkening, towering-exceeding earthly drive. As strife to world.
17. The Historical Moment
1. What rules: power as dictatorship?
2. Where is the "event" and the "strength" for overcoming?
3. Does a signpost already point the way?
4. What does overcoming of "power" mean? Is it not the declaration of im-potence with regard to the actuality of the actual?
5. Being led astray by the prevailing "present":
a) the disgruntlement of those who remain outside and those who come too late.
b) the vanity of those who find confirmation as fellow travelers.
c) the vacuity of those who take refuge in the past.
d) the noise of those who go along with the present.
Everywhere reckoned in a merely "historiographical" manner and thought in terms of subjectivity. History not experienced.
History not the secular replacement for a disintegrated "eternity" (historiographical esteem, accomplishment, memory), rather history as essencing of the truth of beyng.
Inceptual historicity from out of beyng is that which comes toward us.
18. The Other Sovereignty
Sovereignty over the essence of power.
The annihilation of machination through the event of appropriation.
The essence of sovereignty is changing. Yet why does "sovereignty" give the measure in general, and continue to do so even here?
Being and beings. The origin of sovereignty lies in this "distinction," that is, it is within beyng itself.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The History of Beyng by Martin Heidegger, William McNeill, Jeffrey Powell. Copyright © 2012 Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, Frankfurt am Main. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Translators' Introduction
The History of Beyng (1938-40)
The History of Beyng. Part I
I. The History of Beyng
II. Contra-diction and Refutation
III. Passage. The History of Beyng
IV. The Consummation of Metaphysics
Being's Abandonment
V. To Koinon
VI. The Sustainment. The Essence of Power
The Necessary
VII. The Essence of History. "Commencement." "Beyng"
VIII. Beyng and the Last God
IX. Essence of History
X. The Owned
The History of Beyng. Part II
XI. The Configuration of Saying
XII. The History of Beyng
(Da-sein)
XIII. Beyng-Historical Thinking
Koinon
Out of the History of Beyng (1939-40)
o Koivov. Out of the History of Beyng
Draft for oivov. On the History of Beyng
Appendix
Additional Materials for The History of Beyng (1938-40)
Additional Materials for . Out of the History of Beyng (1939-40)
Editor's Epilogue
German—English Glossary
English—German Glossary
What People are Saying About This
The History of Beyng is especially important because of its proximity to the very controversial Contributions to Philosophy. It will shed considerable light on the way Heidegger was thinking at the time.
Jeffrey Powell and William McNeill have provided a translation of enormous care, one that engages continuously and strenuously with the uniquely difficult balance between readability and fidelity.