The turn

Joan Stambaugh

pp. 209-212

in: Babette Babich (ed), From phenomenology to thought, errancy, and desire, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

Perhaps the only really certain thing about Heidegger's conception of the turn is its broad range of meanings. The second most certain thing lies in the fact that it did not represent some sudden change of mind, but in some significant sense was anticipated from the very beginning. In this brief essay I should like to examine what seem to me to be two possible basic meanings of the turn. The first is fairly uncomplicated: the turn around from the standpoint of the human to the perspective of being itself. The second is more problematic and cannot be exhaustively clarified because, as Heidegger says, we don't know what will happen: the turn of the forgottenness of being into the preservation of the presencing of being. These two meanings are by no means identical.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin