The Emergency of Being : On Heidegger's 'Contributions to Philosophy'

"The heart of history, for Heidegger, is not a sequence of occurrences but the eruption of significance at critical junctures that bring us into our own by making all being, including our being, into an urgent issue. In emergency, being emerges."―from __The Emergency of Being__ The esoteric __Contributions to Philosophy__, often considered Martin Heidegger's second main work after __Being and Time__, is crucial to any interpretation of his thought. Here Heidegger proposes that being takes place as "appropriation." Richard Polt's independent-minded account of the __Contributions__ interprets appropriation as an event of emergency that demands to be thought in a "future-subjunctive" mode. Polt explores the roots of appropriation in Heidegger's earlier philosophy; Heidegger's search for a way of thinking suited to appropriation; and the implications of appropriation for time, space, human existence, and beings as a whole. In his concluding chapter, Polt reflects critically on the difficulties of the radically antirationalist and antimodern thought of the __Contributions__. Polt's original reading neither reduces this challenging text to familiar concepts nor refutes it, but engages it in a confrontation―an encounter that respects a way of thinking by struggling with it. He describes this most private work of Heidegger's philosophy as "a dissonant symphony that imperfectly weaves together its moments into a vast fugue, under the leitmotif of appropriation. This fugue is seeded with possibilities that are waiting for us, its listeners, to develop them. Some are dead ends―viruses that can lead only to a monolithic, monotonous misunderstanding of history. Others are embryonic insights that promise to deepen our thought, and perhaps our lives, if we find the right way to make them our own." "The esoteric Contributions to Philosophy, often considered Martin Heidegger's second main work after Being and Time, is crucial to any interpretation of his thought. In it Heidegger proposes that being takes place as "appropriation." Richard Polt's independent-minded account of the Contributions interprets appropriation as an event of emergency that demands to be thought in a "future-subjunctive" mode. Polt explores the roots of appropriation in Heidegger's earlier philosophy; Heidegger's search for a way of thinking suited to appropriation; and the implications of appropriation for time, space, human existence, and beings as a whole. In his concluding chapter, Polt reflects critically on the difficulties of the radically antirationalist and antimodern thought of the Contributions." "Polt's reading neither reduces this challenging text to familiar concepts nor refutes it, but engages it in a confrontation - an encounter that respects a way of thinking by struggling with it. He describes this most private work of Heidegger's philosophy as "a dissonant symphony that imperfectly weaves together its moments into a vast fugue, under the leitmotif of appropriation. This fugue is seeded with possibilities that are waiting for us, its listeners, to develop them. Some are dead ends - viruses that can lead only to a monolithic, monotonous misunderstanding of history. Others are embryonic insights that promise to deepen our thought, and perhaps our lives, if we find the right way to make them our own.""--Jacket Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 12 Introduction: Thinking the Esoteric 16 The Esoteric Turbulence of the Contributions 26 Reading the Contributions 33 1. Toward Appropriation 38 The Giving of the Given 39 Givenness and Belonging in Early Heidegger 48 The Contributions on Being and Time 58 Be-ing as Appropriation 64 2. The Event of Thinking the Event 103 Be-holding, Representing, and the Identity of Knower and Known 105 Other than the Present Indicative 113 Bethinking as Be-ing-historical Thinking 122 Inceptive Thinking 130 Telling Silence 143 The Juncture and the Quarry 146 3. Straits of Appropriation 154 Be-ing: The Withdrawal, the Abyss, and the Fissure 155 Being-there: The Happening of Ownness 171 Time-space: Evoking the Momentous Site 195 Be-ing and Beings: Simultaneity and Sheltering 208 The Gods: The Ultimate Apocalypse 218 4. Afterthoughts 229 A Philosophy of Possibility? 231 Liberalism and Modernity 242 Reason and Logos 251 From Beings to Be-ing and Back 259 Bibliography 272 Index 290