The Middle Voice in Being and Time

Abstract

The task of thinking about Heidegger after Heidegger is not necessarily one of following the development and shaping of his various thoughts. We might also think back from where we are now or from one or another of his later works, reversing a forward, linear development, or we might follow the transformation of the question of being to something vaguely other than being that is both unknown and to be thought. We might depart from Heidegger and follow language and thought that have emerged from the impact of his work. Or we might follow his own language, its movements and developments. It often shows a way that Heidegger himself was not always clear about, a way that he found himself following as though something were emerging beyond his intentions and reflections, a language in which thinking changed as it felt the impact of other language and thought that were forgotten, set aside, or never quite articulated, but are now released in his writing. Heidegger’s way of thinking is not simply the totality of his own careful efforts. It is a way that spawns beginnings and departures. His ‘way’ passes on a preoccupation with what is in its own lineage and is also beyond the reach of clarity in our inherited language and thought. The task of thinking in this language is governed by what is to be thought and is not quite thinkable, like an enticement, oblique and hidden, but received now with a sense of quiet urgency, drawing and perplexing, upsetting our satisfactions and our sense of Tightness as we think.