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Returning the world to nature: Heidegger’s turn from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to an indwelling releasement to the open-region

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Abstract

The central issue of Heidegger’s thought is the question of being. More precisely, it is the question of the relation between being and human being, the relation, that is, between Sein and Dasein. This article addresses the so-called turn (Kehre) in Heidegger’s thinking of this relation. In particular, it shows how this turn entails a shift from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to “an indwelling releasement [inständige Gelassenheit] to the worlding of the world”. Although a wide range of pre- and post-turn texts are referenced, since this shift is explicitly thematized in Heidegger’s Country Path Conversations, these three fictional conversations from 1944/45 take center stage in this study.

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Notes

  1. Haar (1993), 16, 19, second ellipses in original.

  2. A list of abbreviations used for Heidegger’s texts can be found at the end of this article. The original German text will be cited first, followed by a slash and the corresponding English translation. In cases where I have modified existing translations, “tm” will appear after the page number of the translation. Where only the German original is cited, translations are my own. In the case of citations from Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Collected Edition), abbreviated as GA, the volume number will be followed by a colon and the page number.

  3. On the several senses of the Kehre in or at issue in Heidegger’s thought, see Davis (2007), 61–65, 321–23.

  4. In Country Path Conversations Heidegger characterizes “the essence of thinking” as “an indwelling releasement to the worlding of the world” (GA 77:151/CPC 99). In the excerpt from this text published in 1959, he modified the latter phrase to read: “the indwelling releasement to the open-region” (G 68/DT 87). We can infer that there is a close semantic proximity between “the worlding of the world” and “the open-region,” yet also that Heidegger found the latter a more apt expression of that with regard to which “the human dwells in nearness to farness” (GA 77:151/CPC 99). We might say that the worlding of a delimited world, a horizon of meaning, takes place within the undelimited expanse of an open-region, and properly takes place, not by way of transcendence or overstepping of limits, but rather by way of “going-into-nearness” (anchibasiē) to what nevertheless remains far, that is, by way of entering a relation of indwelling correspondence with what reveals itself in determinate, horizonal forms while at the same time and of necessity withholding itself in its indeterminate abundance (see GA 77: 101–2, 112–13, 116, 155, 182–84/CPC 65, 72–73, 75, 102, 118–20).

  5. At the edges of our human horizons we can sense, as John Sallis suggests, temporalities of nature—a “uranic time” and even a “lithic time”—that exceed and encompass the temporality and historicality of Dasein. See Sallis (2004).

  6. On the latter, see Davis (2007), chapter 3.

  7. The mode of being of “what is neither ready-to-hand nor present-at-hand, but merely ‘subsists’ [nur »besteht«]” (SZ 333/BT 318 tm) is announced in Being and Time, but its clarification is postponed until the third division of the book, which was never published.

  8. Derrida (1989), 37.

  9. Personal correspondence from John Sallis, dated August 26, 1996.

  10. See Davis (2007), chapter 2.

  11. See Dahlstrom (2007).

  12. See Capobianco (2010), Chaps. 5 and 6.

  13. This passing critique hardly does justice to Eckhart. See Davis (2007), Chap. 5.

  14. When the conversation goes on to say that, for Kant, “The horizon is constructed as construct [bildet sich als Gebild] in the productivity of transcendental imagination [Einbildungskraft]” (GA 77:101/CPC 65), one can hear, not just an echo of the thesis of Heidegger’s 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, but also an implicit self-critique of how in that book he viewed his own phenomenology of the “transcendence” and “world-projection” of Dasein as a development of this most radical insight of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. According to Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, “The transcendental power of imagination projects, forming in advance the totality of possibilities in terms of which it ‘looks out,’ in order thereby to hold before itself the horizon within which the knowing self, but not just the knowing self, acts” (GA 3:149/KPM 106). In this book Heidegger links his interpretation of Kant to his own thought at the time that “transcendence carries out the projection of the Being of the being” (228/160).

  15. I cannot discuss here the problematic assertion in these pages, penned at the end of the war, that the Germans are the destined teachers of this lesson to the peoples of the world, or the contrary implications of the fact that Heidegger nonetheless ends the conversation, and thus Conversations on a Country Path as a whole, by quoting, not a German such as Hölderlin, but rather a Chinese Daoist text that imparts this teaching.

References

  • Capobianco, Richard. 2010. Engaging Heidegger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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  • Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2007. Transcendental truth and the truth that prevails. In Transcendental Heidegger, ed. Steven Crowell, and Jeff Malpas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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  • Davis, Bret W. 2007. Heidegger and the will: On the way to Gelassenheit. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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  • Derrida, Jacques. 1989. Of spirit: Heidegger and the question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Haar, Michel. 1993. The song of the earth: Heidegger and the grounds of the history of being, trans. Reginald Lilly, foreword by John Sallis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  • Sallis, John. 2004. Uranic time. In Platonic legacies. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Bret W. Davis

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  1. Bret W. Davis
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Correspondence to Bret W. Davis.

Abbreviations used for citations of Heidegger’s texts

BPP

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. (Written 1927.)

BQP

Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic.” Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. (Written 1937–38.)

BT

Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh, revised and with a foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. (Written 1926.)

BW

Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper & Row, 1993. (Written 1927–1964.)

CPC

Country Path Conversations. Translated by Bret W. Davis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. (Written 1944–45.)

CP

Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. (Written 1936–38.)

D

Denkerfahrungen: 1910–1976. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983.

DT

Discourse on Thinking. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. (Written 1944–55.)

EHF

The Essence of Human Freedom: An Introduction to Philosophy. Translated by Ted Sadler. London/New York: Continuum, 2002. (Written 1930.)

EHD

Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. 6th ed. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996. (Written 1936–69.)

EHP

Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Translated by Keith Hoeller. New York: Humanity Books, 2000. (Written 1936–69.)

EM

Einführung in die Metaphysik. 5th ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1987. (Written 1935.)

FCM

The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. (Written 1929–30.)

FS

Four Seminars. Translated by Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. (Written 1976–77.)

G

Gelassenheit. 10th ed. Pfullingen: Neske, 1992. (Written 1944–55.)

GA

Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975–. Cited by the volume numbers listed below

3

Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. (Written 1929.)

5

Holzwege. (Written 1935–46.)

9

Wegmarken. (Written 1919–58.)

13

Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. (Written 1910–76.)

15

Seminare. (Written 1951–73.)

16

Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges. (Written 1910–1976.)

24

Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie. (Written 1927.)

26

Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz. (Written 1928.)

29/30

Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit. (Written 1929.)

41

Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen. (Written 1935–36.)

55

Heraklit. (Written 1943–44.)

60

Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens. (Written 1920–21.)

65

Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). (Written 1936–38.)

67

Metaphysik und Nihilismus. (Written 1938–39 and 1946–48.)

70

Über den Anfang. (Written 1941.)

77

Feldweg-Gespräche. (Written 1944–45.)

HL

Heidegger Lesebuch. Edited and with an introduction by Günter Figal. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2007.

HR

The Heidegger Reader. Edited and with an introduction by Günter Figal. Translated by Jerome Veith. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

IM

Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. (Written 1935.)

KPM

Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 4th edition, enlarged. Translated by Richard Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

LW

Letters to His Wife: 1915–1970. Edited by Gertrud Heidegger. Translated by Rupert Glasgow. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008.

MFL

The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Translated by Michael Heim. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. (Written 1928.)

N1

Nietzsche. Erster Band. 5th ed. Pfullingen: Neske, 1989. (Written 1936–39.)

Ni

Nietzsche, Vol. I, The Will to Power as Art. Translated by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

PM

Pathmarks. Edited by William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. (Written 1919–61.)

PRL

The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Translated by Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. (Written 1920–21.)

QCT

The Question Concerning Technology. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. (Written 1936–54.)

SZ

Sein und Zeit. 17th ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993. (Written 1927)

TB

On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. (Written 1962–64.)

VA

Vorträge und Aufsätze. 7th ed. Pfullingen: Neske, 1994. (Written 1936–54.)

WCT

What is Called Thinking? Translated by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. (Written 1951–52.)

WhD

Was heißt Denken? 4th ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984. (Written 1951–52.)

WT

What is a Thing? Translated by W. B. Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch. Chicago: Henry Regency Co., 1967. (Written 1935–36.)

Z

Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle—Zwiegespräche—Briefe. Edited by Menard Boss. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987.

ZS

Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters. Edited by Menard Boss. Translated by Franz Mayr and Richard Askay. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001. (Written 1959–71.)

ZSD

Zur Sache des Denkens. 3rd ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988. (Written 1962–64.)

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Davis, B.W. Returning the world to nature: Heidegger’s turn from a transcendental-horizonal projection of world to an indwelling releasement to the open-region. Cont Philos Rev 47, 373–397 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9304-2

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