What, after all, was Heidegger about?

Thomas Sheehan

pp. 249-274

in: Jeffrey Bloechl (ed), Heidegger between Being and language, Continental Philosophy Review 47, 2014.

Abstract

The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger's interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein). The essay argues five theses: (1) Being is the meaningful presence of things to man. (2) Such meaningful presence is the Befragtes of Heidegger's question, not the Erfragtes. (3) Being and Time's goal was to articulate the openness that allows for all meaningfulness. (4) Ereignis—the appropriation of ex-sistence to sustaining the clearing—is the later Heidegger's reinscription of thrown-openness, der geworfene Entwurf. (5) Appropriated thrown-openness, as the clearing, is intrinsically hidden, i.e., unknowable. Some preliminaries

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin