Non-Being and Time

Abstract

Whatever one may say about Heidegger’s philosophy and whatever one thinks about it, there can be absolutely no doubt that today’s philosophy is, one way or another, a “philosophy after Heidegger.” Today’s philosophical thinking cannot ignore a strange and, at first sight, pretentious “philosophical myth,” stating that it is being¹ itself, that in a given epoch and historical time reveals itself in a certain way — thus and not otherwise — and simultaneously conceals itself, illuminates itself and hides itself. According to this mythologeme the occurrence of self-giving does not obey definite a priori laws (disclosed and established laws are only posterior glimpses of the primordial self-illumination of being). Perhaps, it is the arbitrariness of the will or incomprehensibility of fate (Geschick), rather than a priori laws, that should be considered as the analogy of this self-giving (Sich-schicken) of being in history (Geschichte). Here lies the essential character of history as the history of being (Seinsgeschichte), and here the word “epoch” (εποχή) lays bare its original meaning of “a stop,” “a pause,” “a suspension,” “a retention.” Actually, the deep sense of the “historical” and of the “epochal” is determined by the way being reveals itself during one of its many successive stops, residences, pres-ences. Heidegger has taught us not to neglect the opacity of the hidden backgrounds of this revelation, which means to be attentive to the erased traces of the fateful (das Geschickliche), to learn to abide by the totality of the historical (das Geschichtliche),² to stop searching within it for a kind of central point, a kind of spiritual άκμή where the closest proximity to the a-historical “eternal truth” has been achieved, in order to position oneself in that point and to take up residence there.

Φησί δέ [Ξενοφάνης] ούσίαν θεον σφαιροειδή [ε$\hat i$ναι]

Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum IX 19.