Heidegger on Presence (original) (raw)

Anonymous Presence. Towards a Phenomenological Account of Heidegger’s Ereignis

Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2023

This article aims to sketch a phenomenological approach to Heidegger's concept of Ereignis. In understanding Ereignis as the presencing of being, the fundamental question is whether and how this presence of being, i.e. presence as such, can be experienced. While this experience is incompatible with a transcendental approach, the suggestion here is that Ereignis can be experienced not as my own, but as an anonymous presence. To flesh out this suggestion, a close reading of Heidegger's critique of subjectivity in the Contributions will elaborate on why presence can belong neither to humanity nor to being. In a second step, a motif in Heidegger's reception of Schelling is discussed which clarifies that the experience of Ereignis involves a necessity that goes beyond subjectivity. In a third step, the idea of "letting-presence" shows how the coming into being of experience has to remain anonymous in order to be the experience of Ereignis.

Techno-phenomenology: Martin Heidegger and Bruno Latour on how phenomena come to presence 1

South African Journal of Philosophy, 2013

This article will set out to elucidate the ways in which the philosophies of technology of Martin Heidegger and Bruno Latour seek to explain how the phenomenal world of nature, objects and tools come to presence as events through their interrelations with each other and with us. Both thinkers seek to overcome a subject/object divide that they both understand as characterising modernity in order to reveal a greater interdependence between nature and culture, human and machine. Not only do they both seek to deconstruct the subject/object divide that techno-science has imposed as a paradigm dictating how we as subjects understand the world, but they both use a similar strategy to do so, finding a better means of allowing phenomena to come to presence by turning to premodern culture, ancient Greece for Heidegger, ‘primitive’, non-modern cultures for Bruno Latour. And both find in art the link to move beyond the modern paradigm to reveal technology’s hidden creative potential. By focusing on a shared problem, that of the subject/object divide that both thinkers understand as constitutive of modernity, and a shared strategy to resolve this problem, that of art, this article will set out to show how Heidegger and Latour’s strategies for revealing the co-constitution of Dasein and World as co-dependent agencies are more similar than is commonly held. But through this analysis of co-dependency, a central divergence between the two thinkers will come to the fore, that of singularity (Heidegger) versus multiplicity (Latour). It is this crucial difference, I will hold, that will prove critical in envisioning the future of phenomenology. To the extent that we are now living amongst hybrid entities, cyborgs and forms of intelligent emergence where subject and object, nature and culture, can no longer be so easily differentiated, it seems as though opening ourselves to what presences may entail heeding Latour’s call to embrace both mediations and multitudes. If subjects and objects have been replaced by mediations that can finally ‘show themselves in themselves’ and express their own agency, and transcendental consciousness has been abandoned for an emergence consciousness that is immanent, interdependent, and greater than the sum of all individual minds, we must finally question the impact of such a state of affairs on phenomenological perception itself.

Understanding the Concept of Being in general: From Being and Time back to Young Heidegger

Conatus, 2024

This paper exhibits a way of understanding Heidegger's concept of being in general [Sein überhaupt] -the central aim of Being and Time's questioning- by getting insight into his early years. I argue that the term "being" [Sein] as Heidegger understands it in the early 1920s describes the meaningful relation between humans and the things of their surrounding world which is given to us as a fact. I maintain that Sein überhaupt refers to this fact, i.e., the fact that every particular being is always with a certain meaning for us. I come to this conclusion by exploring (1) Heidegger's early analysis of Umwelterlebnis, (2) his early description of medieval transcendentia, (3) his critique of formalization and the introduction of formal indication. Lastly, (4) I observe the way Heidegger introduces the concepts of Sein and Sein überhaupt pointing to the simple fact of beings' being in meaningful relation to us.

Integrative Perspective MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND THE QUESTION OF BEING

Journal of Integrative Humanism (JIH), 2017

This work is a critical exposition of Martin Heidegger's life, times and exploration into the question of Being. The work surveys the background of Heidegger's philosophizing, his principal interest in ontology, his attack on traditional metaphysics, his adoption of the Husserlian phenomenology as a method and his use as his starting point Dasein, the only being who understands what it means to be, the being for whom his being is in question and is of special interest to him. The work also made an exhaustive critique of Heidegger's analysis of human existence especially with regard to Dasein's mode of being, its tripartite ontological structure of existentiality, facticity and fallenness; its authentic and inauthentic existence and the comprehensive concept of care. The work further examined Heidegger's other themes discussed in his search for the meaning of Being, these include: temporality, historicity and nothingness. The work observed that Heidegger's failure to rise above what he condemned in traditional metaphysics left him confused and unable to complete his major work Being and Time and forced him to make a turn. This turn (die kehre) which initiated his later philosophy, though still preoccupied itself with the question of Being , followed a less rigorous means. This new way is the use of poetic language to make Being unconcealed. The work in conclusion observed that Heidegger's preoccupation with the question of Being by his methods and themes left him a phenomenological ontologist, an existentialist, a humanist and an atheist while leaving the question of Being unanswered.

Preparation to the question of the sense of being in Martin Heidegger's thought

2004

In order to prepare the field for an analysis of the role played by Sein und Zeit inside Heidegger's pathway of thinking, it proves decisive to show the theoretical horizon from which this first fundamental work of his takes its start. That is why, on the basis of Heidegger's hypothesis that the experience of the 'forgetfulness of Being' constitutes the dimension from which Sein und Zeit originates, our aim is to supply a preliminary elucidation of the sense of this enigmatical locution. Therefore, our dissertation dwells upon the difference between philosophical investigation and modern scientific knowledge, insofar as the latter is methodologically grounded just on the forgetfulness of Being. Assuming that the aim of Sein und Zeit is to reawaken a sense for Being, the confrontation between the positivistic interpretation of the world and Heidegger's analyses contributes to point out the menace impending on the sense of scientific knowledge and of knowledge as s...