Heidegger's Possibility

Heidegger's Possibility: Language, Emergence - Saying Be-ing

KENNETH MALY
Series: New Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
Copyright Date: 2008
Published by: University of Toronto Press
Pages: 192
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442688216
Search for reviews of this book
  • Cite this Item
  • Book Info
    Heidegger's Possibility
    Book Description:

    AlthoughBeing in Timeis the more recognizable of Martin Heidegger's many books, his second major work,Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)also had a substantial impact on twentieth-century philosophy.Heidegger's Possibilityis a careful and creative reading of this text by renowned scholar and translator Kenneth Maly. As someone who has translatedContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)into English, Maly has a unique grasp of the work as well as the philosophical dimensions that inform it, and applies his familiarity in this eloquent and fascinating study.

    Heidegger's Possibilityfocuses on issues of language and translation, which are both important formative aspects of Heidegger's work and which place his thought and writing processes in perspective. Maly's own philosophical understanding helps to illuminate such concepts as nondual thinking, a movement beyond subject-object and the being-beings difference, and an integral part of Heidegger's philosophy. In Maly's hands, this and other ideas emerge at the cutting edge of cosmology, ontology, and interpretive phenomenology. This study also includes the first English translations of two works by Heidegger, as well as an essay that takes a critical look at the controversy surrounding the translation ofContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) almost a decade ago.

    eISBN: 978-1-4426-8821-6
    Subjects: Philosophy

Table of Contents

  1. Front Matter
    (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Acknowledgments
    (pp. ix-x)
  4. Abbreviations
    (pp. xi-xii)
  5. Fore-word 1: Situating the Work
    (pp. xiii-xxi)

    Let me walk you, the reader, through the interwoven web that I have called ‘Heidegger’s possibility.’ Rather than being fenced in by Heidegger’s mistake with national socialism; rather than being misled by the English wordauthenticity(translating the GermanEigentlichkeitinBeing and Time) into taking Heidegger to be an existentialist (as if that thinking were dealing with the existing, concrete individual, i.e., always within subjectivity); rather than being mired in a loose-cannon template of ‘deconstructive strategies,’ which ‘finds’ but is actually constructing a metaphysics of presence in Heidegger (attempting thus to undo the radical collapse of the subject-object duality...

  6. Fore-word 2: The Word
    (pp. xxii-xxiii)

    Sitting down, mulling over, reading the text, opening to what the text says, what the text opens out to, trying to find the right word to say this (what the text says, what shows itself, textually and phenomenologically at the same time); and the word appears. It befalls one. And all we can do is say, ‘yes, that is the right word.’

    This is not the word of analytic or cognitive language, or of ‘linguistics.’ Rather it is the word ofpoiesis:the poietic word. From the Greek – пoεĭv to bring forth, to let emerge.¹ This is essentially different from...

  7. Fore-word 3: Giving Shape to the One Matter
    (pp. xxiv-2)

    One way to say what happens in Heidegger’s work of thinking (andin hisopus) is that his thinking continually, with undivided attention, passionately circles around the domain (called the ‘question of being’) that

    does not resideinhuman beings, even as humans participate in its make-up;

    is not conceived, created, or controlled by human reason;

    is not a thing, and entity, or a being – is rather nothing, no-thing;

    cannot be gotten at within or via analytic thought or the language of definition, literalness, or denotation;

    is other than the being of metaphysics.

    Named unconcealment, the temporality of being,...

  8. Introduction: Matters for the Opening
    (pp. 3-18)

    So – What are we doing here? In this book? In this writing? In this conversation? The framework of my work here isContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)by Martin Heidegger. I wish to share with the reader my understanding of this text and its import. I offer these thoughts and invite the reader to check them out. Hopefully something from my book will be helpful as each reader wrestles with what is a most difficult and exciting work of Heidegger’s.

    These thoughts of mine constitute a work of hermeneutic phenomenology, asHeideggeruses the word. This means phenomenology as a...

  9. Part One: Points of Departure
    • 1 The Necessity of Philosophy
      (pp. 21-41)

      Anyone who has read Heidegger at all will know that he sometimes uses the wordphilosophyto name what thinking needs to ‘leap’ beyond – as in the essay ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,’ where philosophy is named as metaphysics.¹ Philosophy as metaphysics needs to be ‘gotten over’(verwunden).And at other times the wordphilosophynames the richest and most question-worthy matter – as inContributions,where the word is used to name what thinking needs to do when it says or gathers the deep sway of be-ing. In this sense the wordphilosophysays the richness...

    • 2 Own to Language: Word and Saying
      (pp. 42-57)

      Heidegger says that be-ing as enowning(Ereignis)must be ‘correspondingly thought and that meanssaid.’¹ All thinking involves saying – involves language in an essential sense, in the sense that is own to language. In his lectureWhat Is Philosophy?Heidegger says that in Greek thinking what is own to language manifested as lovgo" and that we need to have a dialogue with this Greek experience of language. ‘Why? Because without an adequate mindfulness on language we will never truly know what philosophy is as re-sponding speaking in return,Ent-sprechen> as outlined above, what philosophy is as an eminent way of...

    • 3 De-cision
      (pp. 58-66)

      At the end of chapter 1 we came to that place where Da-sein is addressed and is called to respond. Using Heidegger’s words, be-ing speaks to Dasein and Da-sein responds. He also names this dynamic as be-ing’s throwto Da-sein and Da-sein’s throwing-open. Be-ing enowns Da-sein; and Dasein, enowned, throws-open the dynamic. This isthedecisive momentsite opened up and said inContributions.It is the place of de-cision. This is the phenomenological dynamic of the originary enowning, be-ing as enowning.

      At the end of chapter 2 we came to that place where saying – as the own/owning of language – is ‘from’...

  10. Part Two: Reaching for the Full Context:: Heidegger’s Contributions
    • 4 Directives as We Begin
      (pp. 69-82)

      Indigenous within human thinking is the co-enacting knowing awareness, waiting to be unleashed and released, the affordance of enowning and being-historical thinking. This understanding lies dormant within human thinking, always there, like a hard-shelled walnut, waiting for the gifting that will rouse it anew. The ‘originary way’ lies deep within human thinking – a seed waiting to sprout, relatively undamaged, despite the many layerings of cultural constructs covering it over. Whether it is in a market economy that needs growth and unending progress; an overpopulated humanity that turns fangs in on itself, a move away from the emergence of things to...

    • 5 What Translation Calls for, Philosophically
      (pp. 83-100)

      Language, speaking, the word, saying.¹ Let me allow these words to provide the context for thinking translation – translating, being ‘translated,’ being transported unto the thought and to what is essential and possible within the ‘own’ language (translationwithinthe language), translating interpretingly from one language to another (translationbetweenlanguages).² Finally, let these leading movements in thinking guide us to the question of translating Heidegger’s text into English – what has been done, what we now know (and perhaps did not always know) could be done, what is now possible.

      How do we get ‘near’ language? How do we hear language...

    • 6 The Turning-Relation of and in Be-ing
      (pp. 101-117)

      Within the context ofContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning),one of the first things that we can say is that, however the ‘turning’(die Kehre)in Heidegger’s thinking has been read/interpreted up to now, it now calls for a rethinking. What the turning means must be thought to a new level. To begin with, all talk of ‘Heidegger I’ and ‘Heidegger II’ – along with the rather simplistic idea that Heidegger’s thinking moved from ‘Da-sein oriented’to‘being oriented’ (at times creating even more misunderstanding by calling that move a ‘reversal’) – is, once and for all, obsolete.

      What is the ‘Heidegger...

    • 7 Turnings in the Deep Sway of Be-ing and the Leap
      (pp. 118-137)

      Given all the warnings regarding the turning – as enumerated in the previous chapter – given that with the publication ofContributionsin 1989 the old ways of thinking the turning are obsolete, and given that a rethinking of the turning is called for, to a new level – what are the ways thatContributionsshows us? The pathway that I take here is to move through several radical openings that are thought in Contributions, thought within the joining called ‘Leap’(der Sprung ),for it is in this section that these matters come to the fore in a remarkable way. I will...

  11. Afterword: Returning, Thinking Possibility
    (pp. 138-144)

    This book is an attempt to interpret the thinking that is at the core ofContributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), paying close attention to the movement in Heidegger’s thinking namedEreignis/enowning and to how that thinking gets informed in language’s saying/showing. It is an invitation to check out how one reads and translates – thinks and interprets – and to match Heidegger’s possibility with the reader’s own intellectual and philosophical honesty.

    This study is a call to philosophical thinking. It includes personal narratives on the work of translating as well as a thoughtful exegesis – both of which challenge the translator and the...

  12. Appendix 1: Two Heidegger Texts
    (pp. 145-160)
  13. Appendix 2: Concentrating Gently on the Various Critiques of Our Translation of Beiträge
    (pp. 161-186)
  14. Index
    (pp. 187-191)