2.51
What thegestures to (including how it gestures) is more primordial than Being.
Heidegger opens our thinking to our openness to Being. He shows how dominant modes of thought emerged from decisions made by the Presocratics in differentiating Being and beings. This originary difference subsequently became concealed.[1] For Heidegger, there’s a quasi-teleological playing out of possibilities through the history of metaphysics until we arrive at its culmination in Nietzsche, where metaphysics is understood by Heidegger as the gradual forgetting of Being and the taking of Being as a being: through its various epochs, Being conceals and then reveals itself as this or that being.
For Heidegger, then, the meaning of the question of Being—the task for which Being and Time is a preparation, and the task that follows him throughout his life—needs to be revived or uncovered. This is done through a destruktion of metaphysics[2] to reveal the unthought in it: the originary difference that becomes concealed as it positivizes itself (the difference collapses and Being becomes a being).
For numerous reasons, in Being and Time, the path towards the question of Being works through rethinking what the being of humans is: i.e., Dasein, that is, being-in-the-world.[3] Da-sein, there-being, is the clearing,[4] the opening to and of world, to and of Being. This, for Heidegger, is reserved exclusively for humans. Thus, for Heidegger, Dasein leaps into beings and forgets the more primordial question of Being. Yet, in engaging with and turning towards beings, we already have an implicit understanding of Being.[5]
When Heidegger speaks of the importance of returning to the question of the meaning of Being, he does so within a particular, historical tradition. The thinking of Being derives its sense from within this tradition. This doesn’t mean it’s insular to that tradition, but it means that the way Being is thought makes sense only in the context of that tradition: for example, one first needs to think of beings as beings; i.e., things need to have revealed themselves as beings. Heidegger’s intervention is important: he opens the Western tradition in many key ways, but this doesn’t mean that, outside the tradition, thinking through Being is necessary, advisable, or even possible. To insist on the thought of Being as the most ‘real’ thought, the most basic, is to reassert a colonizing logic. There’s no superiority in thinking the question of Being, for it emerges as a particular response to a particular set of problems.
We can create signs to remind or indicate to ourselves that the thought of Being emerges from within our tradition. One way to do this (which isn’t why Heidegger did it) may be to cross out Being: Being. This gesture, however, is insufficient: not only because of the confusion over my use versus Heidegger’s use, but also and relatedly because with time such signs become forgotten and altered. There is no monument that can concretize its own meaning: there is no letter that can guarantee the delivery of a set meaning. We cannot guarantee or secure transmission of an insight.
It’s part of our ethical response to heed an insight, an utterance, in the most responsive way we can.
In his discussion of Being, Heidegger works through the hermeneutic circle. This circle describes the movement of understanding: the understanding of any given thing is bound up with our understanding of its being, the world in which it is, Dasein, and Being (‘in general’) (§2.4–2.5): “Things bear world. World grants things”[6] (§2.5). The mutual openness of world and things passes through our understanding of Dasein, the being that we ourselves are (in terms of our openness to beings and how such an openness gets construed in history, tradition, projects, and so on). How we understand Being—how Being is revealed to us—is bound up with how we understand beings, world, and ourselves, where ‘understanding’ is never purely intellectual, but has to do with how we are in the world. We are ‘within’ a relational nexus (we are a relational nexus) that is always revealing its own dynamic shifts, tensions, and stops and starts. – The
So, departing from Heidegger, how is the
The cube shares a structure with metaphor. Metaphors (§2.2) bring two (or more) things together on the hinge of what is common before releasing each to their own context, prioritizing neither similarity nor difference. This relational, resonant, and respectful process is at the heart of the
Being ‘is’ a dynamic process of shifting and transformation. Beings relate to each other metaphorically: when beings encounter, they come together on the hinge of what is common between them: this is a kind of dialogue. The leaf that falls to the ground is both open and closed to the wind, to the ground, to the one who sees it.
Furthermore, I claim that Being opens in different ways, in and as different worlds: as different Beings. The difference at the heart of Being isn’t only between being and being, or, as Heidegger argues, between Being and beings, it’s primarily between Being and Being. This is how we have different worlds and different ontologies (§2.4). It’s as though different Beings leap from a platform. Being ‘is’ and ‘is not’ itself. Being metaphorizes itself, but let’s say that it metaphorically ‘is’ itself: that is, the disclosure happens differently everywhere in a ‘fundamentally’ non-‘fundamental,’ divergent sense—leaving space or room for encounters—and, for us, in our world or disclosure, this disclosure reveals itself as ‘Being.’
Thus, the cube is bound up within a world, within a disclosure of Being. Yet, it shows that Being ought to be thought by way of, is characterized as, and is always already subsumed entirely by metaphoric ontology. The ‘structure’ (the ‘release’) of Being is metaphoric.
And yet, Being is not the fundament. ‘Being’ is how—what shall we call it – the mystery? the disclosure?—the disclosure discloses itself. When I say that it “metaphorically ‘is’ itself,” “is” is a verb: Being metaphorically ‘‘is’ being, continually’ itself. Being ‘is’ being itself (but not necessarily as ‘Being’). But there’s no core, no thing, no actual platform, no singular Being or way of Being, that metaphorizes: there’s only metaphorizing. (Which provides another possible justification for the use of ‘Being.’) Metaphoric events transpire and then there are worlds, one of which enables the thought of ‘Being’; ‘Being’ is the theorization of this event from within a world.
‘Is this all just a game with words? Or are you purporting to describe something that’s real?’ – Words are caught in the same play as other beings, thrown and released, drawn and concealed. – There’s no way out. There’s no outside. ‘It’ metaphorizes. ‘It’ metaphorizes Being, for us. What’s real is that Beings ‘are’ and beings are:
‘You’re doing metaphysics!’
— And? I never said I was opposed to this. Actually, I don’t think we or anyone can avoid this. The goal is to do metaphysics and philosophy in a way that’s more responsive to our experience, and that gives more credence to our actual experience of things and world. (And what do you mean by ‘metaphysics,’ anyway? Certainly, you don’t mean it in Heidegger’s sense of the forgetting of Being!)
Let’s put it this way. Every throw of Being, every disclosure of Being, reveals different relations. Here, as always, I speak from within my world. I speak of other throws and disclosures of ‘Being,’ and I said ‘Being metaphorizes itself,’ which show how I’m still using the vocabulary of ‘Being.’ For us, worlds appear as other disclosures of Being. This is metaphoric ontology. One sees things this way, or one sees them that way.
But let’s return briefly to the Heideggerian issue of the human exclusivity of world and Being. For him, only Dasein, i.e., humans, open to world. This openness is closed to non-human animals (and certainly to stones).[7]
Heidegger, who thought humans and much more so profoundly, was lacking in his thinking of non-human beings, including animals. This isn’t a problem merely at the edges of his, and our, thought, but permeates it through and through, for not only is his overt thematic treatment of non-human animals poor, but also his thinking of humans needs revision. If none of world, language, understanding, interpretation, attunement, meaning, or being-with are limited to humans, if Being ‘is’ not exclusively open to and for humans, if so many of his concepts aren’t restricted to humans (which doesn’t entail that they apply in the same way to all others as well), then much needs rethinking. For his key terms can no longer be framed in a binary way: ‘on’ for humans, ‘off’ for non-human animals.
We need to rethink those sites where Heidegger privileges humans and rethink them as they apply to non-human animals or plants: for example, being-with (being structurally open to other beings) is an ontological structure belonging to many beings. In short, a metaphoric ontology requires us to refine, diversify, and rethink Heidegger’s key terms and assumptions.
[1] For instance, in how we understand truth and essences. See Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference,trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 50–1, 73; Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2004), p. 152, 222–4, 227, 242; Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” p. 153.
[2] Heidegger, B&T, 19–27/41–9.
[3] ibid, 191/235.
[4] ibid, 132–3/171; Heidegger, “Letter on ‘Humanism’,” p. 248.
[5] Heidegger, B&T, 5/25.
[6] Heidegger, “Language,” Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 199.
[7] Despite Heidegger’s provisos. Heidegger, FCM, e.g., p. 194, 211.