The Event

HEIDEGGER, Martin. The Event. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013. xxiv + 311 pp. Cloth $45.00; ebook $38.99-The Event (1941-1942) belongs to the series of Heidegger's nonpublic writings that was initiated with Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (1936-38) and in which Heidegger meditates (sometimes only in sketches, outlines, and short reflections) on the truth of beyng as historical event. In The Event, Heidegger rethinks the event (Ereignis) in terms of the initiation of a historical beginning (Anfang). It is divided into eleven parts of unequal length: I. The First Beginning; II. The Resonating; III. The Difference; IV. The Twisting Free; V. The Event; VI. The Event; VII. The Event and the Human Being; VIII. Da-seyn; IX. The Other Beginning; X. Directives to the Event; XI. The Thinking of the History of Beyng (Thinking and Poetizing). As in Contributions, Heidegger attempts to think historical beyng originarily and in a nonrepresentational way in a saying that (similarly to poetry) speaks out of the happening of truth (appropriated by the event) such that in the saying the event occurs. More than in Contributions, in The Event Heidegger's thinking moves into the concealed dimension of truth as it is here that he finds possibilities for a historical beginning. Even in his rethinking of the first (Greek) beginning, Heidegger emphasizes not the emerging and presencing of being in the Greek notion of physis but rather the concealment that happens in physis: "33. Physis-aletheia. Emergence as the going back into itself of the disconcealment of the concealing." In thinking and following the "going-back-into-itself," that is, the concealment belonging to aletheia (truth), thinking enters the inceptual or inaugural dimension as which the event occurs. Heidegger makes it clear that there are not two beginnings of history one could represent in a linear way but that "the beginning" is one and occurs in an in-between. This in-between occurs as a differencing into a movement of arising in which Heidegger thinks the coming to presence of beings in the first beginning (metaphysics), and a movement of downgoing that initiates the other beginning. Heidegger calls the movement or arising Entwindung ("disentanglement") and the movement of downgoing Verwindung ("twisting free" of metaphysics). In twisiting free of metaphysics inceptual thinking does not resist the demise of metaphysics but rather "the demise and the transition [to the other beginning] pass each other by [Vorbeigang]." "Beyng overcomes the dominance of the distorted essence not by 'engaging' with it and overpowering it but, rather, by releasing the distorted essence into its demise." Heidegger lets go of a certain tension that marked his writing in the thirties and begins to move into thinking in terms of releasement. The grounding disposition of thinking is no longer that of restraint but rather pain, "the pain of enduring the differentiating-departing downgoing of inception." Thinking occurs as a departure and experiences "the pure essential occurrence of the difference . . . and this essential occurrence no longer needs beings." The difference "distinguishes being and what is the beingless [das Seinlose]." The beingless is not the abandonment of beings that happens in metaphysics, but rather more originarily "the inceptual dispropriation [Enteignis] in the sense of withholding." Inceptual dispropriation marks the most originary moment of the event and the difference out of which multiple dimensions or differentiations of the event unfold.