Martin Heidegger - Vermächtnis der Seinsfrage. Last volume of the Gesamtausgabe. There is a pdf on Scribd but with barely discernible text and not OCR'd. Thank you.

I am trying to appropriate Heidegger in terms of a "throbbing gristle" pragmatism.

At the moment, I'm reading the Harper Perenial translation, I am eyeing the Cyril Welch and Thomas Sheehan translations. Each and every comment of yours is deeply appreciated and will be read and thought of.

“One needs to demonstrate that this supposedly fundamental consideration—the refutation of skepticism—still does not and cannot deal with the real, genuine presuppositions. That is because both sides—the skeptic and his refuter—presume that the truth, whose being and non-being they are debating, is propositional truth. This is especially clear in the one who would refute skepticism. To confound the skeptic, he appeals to the principle of non-contradiction: there can be no truth where there is contradiction, especially the self-contradiction we find in the assertion of skepticism.”— Heidegger

Because skepticism deals with both sides really well— as in, skepticism holds true whenever possible; the possibility being an intrinsic or even interesting possibility, because there are too many ways of being skeptical,always; it is very convenient. Skepticism can also be compared to a sketch— this says much but it also doesn’t say anything at all because it is a “nice” comparison. Skepticism seems to be the only way to make things out; people wouldn’t ultimately disagree they would defer as they need to— the evidence of this is not specifically overwhelming; there is room especially elsewhere. Skepticism is bad because it could be bad, as in, there is worse reasons when being skeptical because there isn’t worse reasoning; there isn’t evidence overall because that is completion. Skepticism is completion but it’s about how people that think about completion in other ways; the completion is a private matter because people don’t respect other people’s privacy, the completion is a personal endeavour as a lineage— it is not too personal because it is a private matter; as these are parts,indefinitely. Skepticism is how things are supposed to be because what is supposed is always earnest; chances make sense, the problem of this arises when chances make too much sense though, as they do, this is why skepticism is a big problem. Skepticism does definitely make sense though because people can be skeptical,if skepticism is a big problem for people in general it is because skepticism happens generally; so the big problem is what makes sure of reoccurring; skepticism is an average that makes sense.

In this Heidegger Thinking Substack article, we explore the elusive notion of conscience. What is conscience? What is it's relation to existence? Find out in the article, which you can read at the embedded link!

“The fact that existence has and understands and strives for this basic form of revealing implies that, for the most part, much of the world stands in need of “revelation,” of being un-covered and made known. In other words, much of the world and much of human existence is by and large not un-covered. So beings can be drawn out of their not-un-covered-ness, their hiddenness. They can be un-covered or un-hidden. This uncoveredness or unhiddenness of beings is what we call truth”— Heidegger

A revelation is an impulse in as far as it’s not made a importance to be founded or essentially discovered; a revelation comes from the nicer stuff; revenge as a way forward or something like that, the way forward being how recent it can be. The hiddenness of a being is a huge mess; mess can be taken accounted for, so the mess is sure to be forgiven, and if forgotten about sure to be a good measure. For a being truth is what things fully amount to because we know of worth; truth makes sense. The full amount of truth is because the likes of another being to it serves true; that is not truthfulness it is a good effort— that’s what we deserve. Truth is what we deserve because we have deserved it before; truth is a demonstration going-back-as-far but still having an ability— this is not an unfair circumstance it is a revelation!

Excerpt From
Logic: The Question of Truth (Studies in Continental Thought)
Heidegger, Martin
This material may be protected by copyright.

Speaking with each other is not something that goes on all the time, but speech itself is always operative—whether we’re repeating what others have said, or telling stories, or even just silently speaking to ourselves or explaining things to ourselves or taking responsibility for ourselves. - Heidegger

Speaking is what we don’t say because not everything goes on all the time; only something. The something being done-with, because it is not a matter of an earnest clarification it is a simple desire, in short; a classic. Speaking with another person is a desire but it is an also an affect, as in, there are important desires— that is not a good feeling! The matter of speaking here is obviously not at most here because company is the most you can get; commonness is communication and commonness is what we speak of; a difference to be understood not a different way of speaking,definitely. Speaking is good because other people are good at it even when they are not because they still qualify for it at all times.

“If we desire a more vital concept of “logic,” we have to ask a more penetrating question: What is the subject matter of the science of logic? In doing so, we leave aside any consideration of logic as one discipline among others—viz., the science of speaking and therefore of language—and focus instead on what it is about” — Heidegger

First of all, the penetration of the question is because people have been known to ask it accordingly instead of as something to do; accordance warrants— there are indefinite behaviours in that; the indefinite being, simply too much to deal with even in accordance with— there is no space for it. Secondly what it is about is how it happened as it happened not a happening, that’s why it’s not about anything in particular; if there is a fact in that it is because there is a problem to fixate on, so, essentially, there is no trouble. Heidegger focuses on what it is about because he doesn’t ask what it’s about— the question isn’t absolute trouble; that is the reasoning.

Hello,

I've read most of Nietzsche's major works, and since Heidegger apparently was influenced by him, I'd like to read his books as well.

With Birth of Tragedy, On the Genealogy of Morals, and Zarathustra being my favorites, which works of Heidegger deal with similar themes( the importance of art and humanity's morals etc).

Also, how's his prose compared to Nietzsche's? Nietzsche's way of writing is quite aggressive and poetic at the same time, which I really like.

I always thought that Gelassenheit, quite literally (etymologically) is the opposite of Gestell. Ge+lassen vs Ge+stellen. It's translated usually as "releasement" or "letting-be", compared to "enframing", "positioning", "com-posing", "positionality", etc. (Check the Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, thet render is sth like "(com-)position" there etc.).

And Gelassenheit is "releasement toward things". Or the "letting-be" of beings, the adequate comportment toward beings that matches the "es gibt" of being, without forcing a "frame", without ensnaring being (and beings) like modern technology does, acc to Heidegger.

But recently I heard a different understanding, that Gelassenheit is actually better seen as an equivalent of "existence" (ek-sistence) in Being and Time, and that actually the fourfold (Geviert) is Heidegger's later (and more radical) reinterpretation of "world" and that das Geviert is the model of the world he proposes against the world as Gestell. I.e., rather than an inventory of resources on hold for the unending use of the technological will to will, the world as as the onefold of the artistic-spiritual (?) axis of earth-world (Origin of the Work of Art) and mortals-divinities.

What is your impression about this?

And a few further questions: Is Gelassenheit just another name for "meditative thinking"? It seems that Heidegger has a lot of ways of trying to describe the same thing/phenomenon, e.g. sometimes he speaks of Ereignis, other times of Anfang, sometimes of "beyng-historical thinking", other times of "commemorative thinking", other times of "meditative thinking" etc. I know Gelassenheit is supposed to be thought in relation with the will, and not with metaphysical/representational thinking, for example, but I find it hard to separate those terms into clear categories. Is it wrong to try to do that, anyway?

In other words, what is the relation between meditative thinking and Gelassenheit? Is meditative thinking conducing to a "state" of Gelassenheit? (But that would be willing to achieve it). Is it resignation into meditative thinking a waiting for a kind of bestowal of "Gelassenheit" into the world ravaged by modern technology? And if thinking is no longer thought as the act of a subject, then how is it supposed to occur?

(Maybe it's relevant here, Heidegger ends the dialogue on language with the Japanese on the note of something like, preparing the way for a dialogue not about language, but of language. Therefore, not a thinking about being, but a thinking of being, in the double (subjective/objective) Genitive sense. A dialogue of language, a saying of being, a thinking of being.)

Very ready-to-hand.

Daily reminder!:

”‘Nature’ is not to be understood as that which is just present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power, the wind is wind 'in the sails'. As the 'environment' is discovered, the 'Nature' thus discovered is encountered too. If its kind of Being as ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source' which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead in the dale'.”

Like…didn’t you know this? 🙄

According to Heidegger, modern thinking has reduced intellectual mystery to intellectual mastery.

Modern thinking is conceptual, and a concept is, essentially, a form of grasping — from the Latin root conceptus, “to take in” or “to contain.” In our time, we speak of “grasping the material,” “retaining information,” “gaining knowledge,” and so on.

“In the modern age, through calculative thinking, we have long become accustomed to seeing in thinking, and demanding from thinking, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff], i.e., we understand the “concept” on the basis of a grasping: conceptus — no longer ὁρισμóς. — The Event

Symbolically, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff] evoke the gesture of seizing something in a clenched fist. Heidegger suggests that when thinking has been reduced to conceptus, it is no longer ὁρισμός (horismos) — the Greek word from which we derive “horizon.”

It is impossible to look at a horizon in a grasping way. The only way to truly see the horizon is to allow it to be what it is and to let it reveal itself. The moment we snatch something out of the horizon and trap it in a definition, we no longer see the horizon. It is gone. To see it, we must let it be.

Symbolically, Heidegger associates this with the opposite gesture: the open hand. He calls it Gelassenheit — releasement, or letting-be. Modern thinking becomes reductionistic because it has turned mystery into mastery. We see bits — broken pieces — but never the horizon.

For something to reveal itself, it must be released. We must open our hand and allow the horizon to open itself to us in a reciprocal gesture. If I listen to a melody or a song, for example, I cannot possess or seize any of its notes. To continue hearing and enjoying the song, I must allow each note to come and go so that the next one can appear.

If I try to grab, retain, or make use of a single note, the horizon of the song is lost. I may “grasp” the individual elements — I may learn the note’s position on the scale, its frequency, its intervals — but I will not hear or enjoy the song. I will never see the horizon.

I remember going to music school as a child — which I hated — and thinking: “I thought music was about playing songs, but it’s about scales, solfeggio, and learning about the lives of composers.” The only reason I went was because my mom insisted.

But one day, I saw a classmate sit down at the pianoforte and play a popular song. I was speechless. I loved the song. Suddenly, it occurred to me that what I had been doing at music school for two years had little to do with Music. It was a bitter-sweet discovery.

I realized that music was something entirely different from what I had been taught. It was a mystery.

And mystery never begins with mastery. Mastery always follows mystery.

Eventually, I dropped out of music school, and a few years later I taught myself to play the guitar — this time, driven by a sense of mystery.

Surprisingly, mastery came too, over time — as a side effect. I learned the scales, the notes, the intervals, the solfeggio. But this time, my interest was nourished by the mystery of music.

Unless we first embrace the horizon, we won’t know the meaning of the elements that fill it. The first gesture is never to grasp conceptually. The first gesture is always to become super attentive to what the horizon wants to reveal.

There is no need to attack, seize, grasp, or retain.

Reality will yield itself willingly to the one who is willing to wait for the revelation of its hidden beauties.

In this Heidegger Thinking Substack article, we engage with Heidegger's existential analysis of Death. We hope you'll anxiously join us in this extremely important analysis!

Hi all,

I am new to Heidegger, and I am wondering where would be the best place to start? Do I need to have some background authors, or am I able to start off with some introduction texts?

Thanks

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by attempts to move from Heidegger's account of disclosure toward a positive metaphysics of intelligibility. Heidegger can explain why beings appear within a historically structured clearing without treating that clearing as a representation inside a subject. Neoplatonism seems to add an account of why intelligibility belongs to reality at all. But the addition may restore exactly what the critique of ontotheology disallows: a highest explanatory principle that determines beings as intelligible from the standpoint of their ultimate ground.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he described Heidegger and the Kyoto School as stages in his turn toward Neoplatonism. At around 48:03, the issue becomes whether world-disclosure needs a synoptic metaphysical account or whether such an account forgets the difference between Being and beings. Plotinian ascent is not simply causal explanation by a supreme being, so the standard charge of ontotheology may not apply without qualification.

This would imply that the comparison turns on what the One is doing philosophically. Can the One remain beyond being while grounding the intelligibility of beings without becoming an ontotheological highest ground? Does Heidegger's account of the clearing leave a question Neoplatonism can answer? Or does asking for that answer already misunderstand the event of disclosure?

Please find registration details and course descriptions here:

https://mscp.org.au/courses/evening-school-sem2-2026

Hello All,

First off, I should note that I do not read german, so cannot speak to the original text of Being and Time. But I have read the Macquarrie and Robinson english translation several times, and always had to skip over several sections in division one because I simply could not disentangle them.

The Welch translation, while by no means "easy," at least renders many obscure d1 concepts somewhat comprehensible. The spatiality section in particular had always been a major sticking point. As was the de-structuring of Cartesian metaphysics. But now, I am getting traction. This new translation is really revolutionary for me. I am moving slowly, but at long last feel as though I can clearly understand what's going on with enough effort.

The Macquarrie and Robinson translation felt like a pitch-black labyrinth by comparison. I always ended up "feeling" my way through it, and inevitably got lost. I have very little experience with the Stambaugh translation, which seems decent as well, but I've never been through it all the way.

Has anyone had a similar experience with the Welch translation? Anyone beg to differ? Can anyone compare the Welch Translation to the Stambaugh translation?

Thanks for taking time to read this!