Acercamiento a la problemática de la emigración de los jóvenes espirituanos 32

In the previous section of this chapter the political was related to thinking in what was considered as a metontological-existentiell domain by focusing on those co- determining ways of being that make political life and engagement possible within a community, such as the πόλις. Heidegger’s active participation in politics was presented as a strong and motivated, yet ultimately failed, attempt to posit the problem of thinking through a reform of the German university.

In 1943 and 1944 Heidegger delivers two lecture courses on Heraclitus, which are a meticulous attempt to think the origin of Western thought. Rather unusually he starts by telling two anecdotes about Heraclitus which are not intended to transmit any biographical curiosity about the Ephesian thinker. The first anecdote tells of a multitude of foreigners who, looking for the great thinker, find him warming up beside a stove. The crowd, expecting to encounter an extraordinary man and hear words of wisdom, is disappointed at the sight of such a humble and ordinary situation. Nevertheless Heraclitus, noticing their shock, invites them in and says: “Here, too, the gods are present”. The second anecdote offers an analogous situation: here Heraclitus leaves the temple of Artemis in order to play dice with some young boys; to the astonished crowd he exclaims: “Why are you scoundrels surprised? Isn’t it perhaps better to do this, rather than taking care of the πόλις with you?”. What strikes us here is the apparently opposite attitude towards politics, if compared to the

κοινωνία, the being-with-one-another, which was encountered in the previous section. Here the co-determination with the others is broken by an abrupt disinterest

260 _{E. Husserl, The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. An introduction} to phenomenological philosophy, translated by D. Carr, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1970, p. 288.

in the public sphere and its implications, such as current affairs, success, career and, most of all, the expectations of the general public as to what a thinker should be, which are shown to be as far from reality as possible. What is expected of a thinker

by the general public is something extraordinary, uncommon, something exciting that would divert the public from ordinary life. Nevertheless, not only does Heraclitus present the foreigners and the Ephesians with something even more ordinary and less interesting than their own everyday life, such as sitting beside a stove and playing children’s games, but he relates such activities with the deities and puts them above the citizens’ political activity, which is the apex of the Greek man’s life. Heidegger argues that Heraclitus does not mean to refute the political but to claim that he actually practices it in its most essential, archaic form, which does not correspond to the everyday activities of his fellow citizens:

And what if – thinking in a Greek way – the preoccupation with the gods’ presence coincided instead with the highest preoccupation for the πόλις? That is actually the way it is: as a matter of fact the πόλις, always thought in a Greek way, is the centre and the

place around which revolves the manifestation of everything that is essentially being and therefore also the non-essence of everything that is. If it is so, then, […] the thinker who takes care of the essential proximity of the gods is the man who is authentically «political».261

Far from advocating a reactionary blend of politics and religion, Heidegger here is looking for an essential way of being-in-the-world and being-with-one-another, in other words, the essence of politics, which cannot be found in the everyday management of the affairs of the πόλις. When Heidegger talks of «thinking in a

Greek way», he does not refer to any ordinary Greek person’s thoughts but to the Greek thinker, incarnated by Heraclitus in this instance, who is not simply different

261 _{M. Heidegger, “Heraklit. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens”, in M. Heidegger,} Gesamtausgabe. II. Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1923-1944 [1979], V. Klostermann, Frankfurt 1994, pp. 11-12. My translation from the German: «Wie, wenn, griechisch gedacht, die Sorge um die

πόλις wäre? So steht es in Wahrheit; denn die πόλις ist, immer griechisch gedacht, der Pol und die

Stätte, um die sich alles Erscheinen des wesenhaft Seienden und damit auch das Unwesen alles Seienden dreht. Steht es so, dann ist, [...] der Denker bei seiner Sorge um die Wesensnähe der Götter der eigentlich “politische Mensch”».

from the οἱ πολλοί of his time as he does not engage in the Gerede of Das Man: he is

indeed a thinker whose thinking is not mediated by 2,400 years of metaphysics, and in whom, nevertheless, metaphysics finds its roots. The great challenge lies in the attempt of experiencing essential thinking from our modern and technological perspective. This is exactly why it would be wrong to understand the gods as a transcendent correlate of our physical world or, worse, as the ultimate objects of a religion. Religio, Heidegger argues, is an essentially Roman word; thus we can talk neither of a Greek religion nor of a Greek theology. In order to see why this is the case, we should explore the nature of the gods Heraclitus is referring to and see what significance they have for contemporary man.

Heraclitus, as a citizen of Ephesus, lives under the wardship of Artemis, goddess of hunting, represented as carrying torches in both her hands (φωσφόρος). Both the

images of hunting and of light indicate that Artemis is related to Φύσις. In its

essence, we should not see hunting as a mere sport but as that event that brings together humans, animals and nymphs, Artemis’ companions representing the game of nature. Light (φῶς), on the other hand, should be interpreted as the manifestation

of nature, which, always understood in its essence, is that clearness that allows for the experience of Φύσις. Through the exercise, to which Bruno made a fundamental contribution in Chapter II, we understood that essential thinking does not occur through division and fragmentation but through bringing together, composing. From the perspective of the mortal, that means standing within the clearing [Lichtung] because that is the place where beings are revealed as particulars, yet through the concealment of their unity. Essential thinking tries to capture this unity that is not determined or measurable. Therefore, Heraclitus is not linked to Artemis according particular determinations, i.e. because he is a citizen of Ephesus, but because he is a thinker of Φύσις: it is this immediate relation to nature, incarnated by the goddess

Artemis, that makes of Heraclitus an essential thinker, as Φύσις is the Lichtung

where ἀλήθεια happens. Heraclitus’ being-in-the-world is thus divine and not

region of Φύσιςand the subsequent experience ofἀλήθεια, and that bringing forth is

identified with thinking. The god herself has no supernatural power or an all-powerful will; it is simply the ontological intimacy with nature. In addition, the god is also what is dearest to the πόλις and the thinker, who is the one that takes care of the god

in its essence and is the most essentially political citizen.

The presence of the gods, therefore, is revealed as a necessity on the way to thinking and poses a crucial issue for thinkers in the era of technology, who live in the absence of the gods. Heidegger precisely describes what this absence amounts to:

The default of God and the divinities is absence. But absence is not nothing. [The non- existent cannot be ‘absent’]. Rather it is precisely the presence, which must first be appropriated, of the hidden fullness and wealth of what has been and what, thus gathered, is presencing, of the divine in the world of the Greeks, in prophetic Judaism, in the preaching of Jesus. This no-longer is in itself a not-yet of the veiled arrival of its inexhaustible nature.262

Heidegger here traces a significant parallel between the gods and the question of Being, which has been concealed together with the memory of its concealment: pointing out the absence of the gods amounts to developing the awareness of the concealment of the Seinsfrage and it is exactly for us, men of the technological epoch, that this becomes truly relevant. As Young puts it: «The gods, therefore, must be present in modernity even though, as with the bridge, ‘their presence is obstructed…even pushed wholly aside’»263. Heidegger sees the poet as the only one capable not only of pointing out this absence but also of being able to experience the lost intimacy with the gods, which appears to be of an essentially linguistic nature; «holy names are lacking» says Hölderlin in his poem Homecoming, thus revealing exactly the absence of the divine and relating it to language at the same time. Heidegger is very explicit in drawing such a connection: «Since we have been a conversation – man has experienced much and named many of the gods. Since language has authentically come to pass as conversation, the gods have come to

262 _{M. Heidegger, “The Thing”, in M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, p. 182.} 263 _{J. Young, Heidegger’s Later Philosophy, p. 97.}

expression and a world has appeared. But again it is important to see that the presence of the gods and the appearance of the world are not merely a consequence of the occurrence of language; rather, they are simultaneous with it. And this to the extent that it is precisely in the naming of the gods and in the world becoming word that authentic conversation, which we ourselves are, consists»264. This is exactly the reason why thinkers like Heraclitus are essential and enjoy intimacy with Φύσις

through the gods. The gods also pronounce the words that give rise to Western thought but we are deaf to them as our intimacy with Φύσις has been jeopardized by

the development of a language that is not coessential with nature – the language of reason and logic – which is treated as «as something he [man: ed.] has in hand, like a personal belonging, and thus as a handle for his representation and conduct»265, which amounts to saying that language is a mere tool by means of which nature is objectified and dominated.

Objectification of nature occurs within the subject/object dualism, which is at the root of modern science266. We have addressed the shortcomings of the subject/object dualism; what is more difficult to grasp is how we could think of a thing without representing it as an object. Therefore, we should explain what, according to Heidegger, a thing is. Shortly after the end of World War II, Heidegger delivered a lecture at the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, entitled The Thing [Das Ding], which starts off by asking why, in spite of our technological development and the subsequent suppression of distances between places and people, we do not seem to enjoy any nearness with things. Heidegger denies the possibility of knowing what a thing is only by relying on its outward appearance, i.e. all those features that are necessary to the maker in order to make the thing. The maker of a jug only needs a few general notions, i.e. its being a vessel for liquids, in order to

264 _{M. Heidegger, Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, translated by K. Hoeller, Humanity Books,} New York 2000, pp. 57-58.

265 _{M. Heidegger, “What are poets for?”, in M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, p. 130.} 266 _{“Science always encounters only what its kind of representation has admitted beforehand as an} object possible for science”, in M. Heidegger, “The Thing”, in M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, p. 168.

produce it but such notions do not say anything of the jug; they only express an idea of it, which annihilates the thing as something near to us and turns it into something that stands opposite us, thus increasing the distance:

That is why Plato, who conceives presence in terms of the outward appearance, had no more understanding of the nature of the thing than did Aristotle and all subsequent thinkers. Rather, Plato experienced (decisively, indeed, for the sequel) everything present as an object of making. Instead of “object” – as that which stands before, over against, opposite us – we use the more precise expression “what stands forth”.267

In Chapter I we saw how Plato incarnates the transition between truth as unconcealment and truth as correctness. By tracing this situation of distance between man and things back to Plato, Heidegger implicitly underlines the radical change that has taken place in thinking between Plato and the previous thinkers (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander), who could still enjoy that nearness and intimacy with

Φύσις, which belonged to essential thinking. According to Heidegger, Plato establishes the premises for what will be properly scientific knowledge of nature, which will turn it into something not simply opposite but also measurable and predictable:

It is said that scientific knowledge is compelling. Certainly. But what does its compulsion consist in? In our instance it consists in the compulsion to relinquish the wine-filled jug and to put in its place a hollow within which liquid spreads. Science makes the jug-thing into a nonentity in not permitting things to be the standard for what is real.268

What we consider to be most real, then, which is science, that knowledge that we deem to be the standard for reality, truly renders reality empty and abstract and covers up things by turning them into meaningless objects that count only in virtue of their measures and their general utility; it is a distance that resembles isolation, the isolation of the subjects that can relate to Φύσις only in terms of opposition.

267_{Ibid., p. 166.}

Overcoming this state of opposition and separation is one of the most genuinely phenomenological moments in Heidegger’s work, as he provides a content for the much celebrated motto «back to the things themselves!» by thinking a thing not as an object but as a thing that “things”. In the case of the jug we should not look for its essence – the jugness of the jug – in its apparent features of being a vessel for liquids of a certain weight and size but focus on the bringing-forth of the nature of gift that characterizes the outpouring of water and wine, a gift that remains even when the jug is empty, as it is the trace of that giving where earth and sky are let-to-dwell. That is the only way of making sense of Heraclitus’ presence in the oven: he is letting earth and sky as warmth (or bread) dwell beside the oven as a gift, which amounts to taking care of the gods. Why does Heidegger use the word “gift”? When we talked of thinking as memory, we understood it as what gives through retention: recalling the origin of such a gift means bringing together, composing, going back to the original retention that unconcealed the gift. According to Heidegger, we can only recognize such a gift within a fourfold of earth, sky, mortals and divinities. The fourfold amounts to the cancellation of any opposition or isolation, the ἁρμονία, the bringing togetherthat allows Φύσιςto appear as a holy activity. Man, the mortal, is not a mere

maker, Φύσις is not qualified as standing-resource and the gods are not supernatural

powers but that sacred intimacy between man and Φύσις, the divine «destinings»269,

the messengers of such unity, the point of intensity where the gift is delivered. This is the most advanced version of world Heidegger provides, as opposed to the one encountered in Sein und Zeit:

The tolling of the evening bell brings them, as mortals, before the divine. House and table join mortals to the earth. The things that were named, thus called, gather to themselves sky and earth, mortals and divinities. The four are united primally in being toward one another, a fourfold. The things let the fourfold of the fold stay with them. This gathering, assembling, letting-stay is the thinging of things. The unitary fourfold of

269 _{M. Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”, in M. Heidegger, The Question} Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by W. Lovitt, Harper Perennial, New York 1977, p. 34.

sky and earth, mortals and divinities, which is stayed in the thinging of things, we call – the world.270

It is now possible to deepen the notion of ethics that opened this chapter as a form of «residing» or «dwelling alongside» but which lacked a clear account of the world, without which the dwelling would hardly be thinkable. It is the practice of thinking that is essentially ethical, as it concerns man directly not as a Cartesian res cogitans but as the coessential side of the fourfold – the mortal – that lets beings dwell. Such dwelling amongst beings does happen through a knowing experience, which is not the one proper to modern science but the one that looks back to the essence of Science, which was identified as γνῶσις in Part II of this work. What γνῶσις stood for was the distinguishing of τὰ πάντα that happens by standing in the

openness of the open region, which «then comes into a connection with what we call world»271. In Bruno we saw how this notion amounts to the composition of relational minima that, from the perspective of the infinite, coincide with the One, as unity is contained in particulars. In Spinoza the knowledge of God, substance or nature, is achieved through the understanding of particular essences. The coincidence of the whole with the particular is a characteristic of the infinite and both Bruno and Spinoza operate through the infinite in which, Bruno held, there was no centre and no periphery, which is coherent with the following Heideggerian affirmation: «Man is, he dwells in the midst of the ens in its totality, without being its centre in the sense of a foundation that orders and supports the whole ens. Man is the centre of the ens but, at the same time, he is not himself the centre»272.

Thinking as dwelling is indeed the essence of man: only man can access knowledge but that does not provoke a rift between him and the world or, even worse,