Abstract
In this paper I seek to point out both the proximity and distance between Heidegger’s and Derrida’s understanding of time in their attempts to think difference. By showing how close Différance is to Heidegger’s structure of temporality of nearness, I argue how Heidegger’s understanding of truth in relation to time leads to an understanding of the history of metaphysics to a structure of possible revelation. However, if we are to understand Derrida’s Différance as a perpetually corruptive force, then how is it possible to ever conceive of Offenbarkeit in Being? The focus here will be set on the possibility of revelation as ‘event’ in Heidegger, and Derrida’s counterargument that the event is always impossible.
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Notes
- 1.
Alfred Guzzoni, ‘Summary of a Seminar’ on the Lecture ‘Time and Being’ in On Time and Being, p. 29. Also Werner Marx notes that in the early Heidegger: ‘The unveiling of Being is always the truth of the Being of being.’ Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), p. 125.
- 2.
‘There is’ is a translation from the German ‘Es gibt,’ which literally means: ‘it gives,’ but with the idiomatic meaning ‘there is.’
- 3.
ZS, p./trans, p. 5 From the time of Vom Wesen der Warheit [On the Essence of Truth] (1930), Heidegger describes the rapport between aletheia and unconcealment in an explicit manner. A translation of the Greek aletheia as unconcealment indicates for Heidegger that the early Greeks experienced presenting as an occurrence of truth in the form of a relationship to concealment.
- 4.
ZS, p. 10/trans. p. 7.
- 5.
ZS, p. 12/trans. p. 8.
- 6.
ZS, p. 13/trans. p. 9.
- 7.
Aristotle, Physics, 217 b 31w, trans. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 1, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995, rev. ed.), p. 369. It might be stated that Heidegger takes an oversimplified account of Aristotle’s understanding of time. Although Aristotle views time as the calculable measure of motion with respect to a before and after, implying time to mean the duration that is experienced between the beginning and the conclusion of a movement, the duration of time can be broken down into numerical units. As such, time for Aristotle is not a succession of atomic now-points, because according to his account time is continuous and infinitely divisible. See Physics 217b30-218a10, 219b1-30. However, if the now is not a real part of time, it still serves to identify the beginning, end and intervening stages of a movement. For this reason, Heidegger can plausibly hold on to the assumption that Aristotle tacitly takes the ‘now’ as the standard for understanding time. In and since Aristotle, on this revised account, there is a tendency to take the smallest numerical units with which one works - the practical terminus of some actual process of division - as denoting what is ‘currently-now’, ‘no-longer-now’ and ‘not-yet-now.’
- 8.
ZS, p. 16/trans. p. 12.
- 9.
ZS, p. 16/trans. p. 12.
- 10.
ZS, p. 19/trans. p. 14 This openness gives the space in which space can unfold itself, which implies that the opening up in terms of self-extending of future, past and present lies before space. We note that for Heidegger, man’s spatiality is ‘embraced’ by temporality. Already in Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], the representation of space is a temporalization. This however does not mean that space can be reduced to time. Each has its own essence. But exploring the essence of each, we see that their essence is a unified time-space. In Unterwegs zur Sprache [On the Way to Language], Heidegger states: ‘But already thinking time through in this way [as ecstatic] brings it in its relatedness to the There of Da-sein, into essential relation with Da-sein’s spatiality and hence with space.’ Unterwegs Zur Sprache, p. 213/trans. p. 213.
- 11.
ZS, p. 19/trans. p. 14.
- 12.
ZS, p. 20/trans. p. 15.
- 13.
ZS, p. 20/trans. p. 15.
- 14.
ZS, p. 20/trans. p. 15.
- 15.
This is a translation from the early German term Nahheit, a word used by Kant, as Heidegger points out. ZS, p. 20/trans. p. 15.
- 16.
ZS, p. 20/trans. p. 16.
- 17.
ZS, p. 21/trans. p. 16.
- 18.
ZS, p. 21/trans. p. 16.
- 19.
ZS, p. 22/trans. p. 17.
- 20.
ZS, p. 22/trans. p. 17.
- 21.
ZS, p.24/trans. p. 19 The term ‘Ereignis’ is commonly translated as ‘Event.’ Heidegger however thinks the word more fundamentally and in a literal sense in which the prefix ‘Er’- designates an executional character and where ‘-eignis’ refers to the adverb ‘eigen,’ meaning ‘own.’ As such, translating this term into Appropriation or propriation, as many translations of Heidegger’s use of Ereignis read, has the connotation of a ‘bringing into the own,’ or ‘enownment.’ There is a visual reference to term, as the German Auge means eye. Until the eighteenth century, Ereignis was spelt as Eräugnis, eräugnen, which literally means: ‘to place before the eye, to become visible.’
- 22.
ZS, p. 27/trans. p. 22.
- 23.
ZS, p. 27/trans. p. 22.
- 24.
ZS, p. 27/trans. p. 22.
- 25.
ZS, p. 28/trans. p. 22.
- 26.
Heidegger calls what is present das Anwesende [beings in their presence], and the Being of those beings die Anwesenheit [Being as what grants beings or what is present]. Heidegger finds that An-wesen, as well as the Greek ousia or parousia, is used both as ‘coming into presence,’ and a ‘self-contained farm or homestead See Einführung in die Metaphysik [Introduction to Metaphysics], p. 47/trans. p. 64. Heidegger finds that the term Wesen does not mean quidditas, but refers to ‘enduring as present,’ or presencing and absencing.’ (p. 55/trans. 76) Wesen as a noun, meaning ‘essence,’ is derived from the seldomly used verb Wesen, finds Heidegger.
- 27.
A preservation and a continuity that is found in language.
- 28.
ZS, p. 27/trans. p. 22.
- 29.
ZS, p. 27/trans. p. 22.
- 30.
ZS, p. 28/trans. p. 23.
- 31.
ZS, p. 29/trans. p. 24 Here comes to light the nuanced meaning of the Greek term aletheia. Aletheia means truth as unhiddenness. The verb aletheuein means ‘to speak truly.’ These words are related to lanthanein, with an older form lethein, meaning ‘to escape notice, to be unseen, unnoticed, and lethe, ‘forgetting, forgetfulness.’ It thus becomes clear that a-letheia as unconcealment implies a necessary concealment as expressed in the withdrawal of Appropriation.
- 32.
Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, p. 148.
- 33.
It is important to note that the realm of concealment must most surely not be understood as a ‘nothing’ in terms of a negativity. That which withdraws itself and remains hidden, provides the origin for a clearing or unconcealment understood in terms of aletheia. As such, the opening of Being is a process of presencing ‘as a creative relationship of concealment and clearing’ as Werner Marx points out. See Heidegger and the Tradition, p. 150.
- 34.
MP, p. 5/trans. p. 8.
- 35.
FA, p. 30/trans. p. 11.
- 36.
FA, p. 31/trans. p. 120.
- 37.
FA, p. 38/trans. p. 17.
- 38.
FA, p. 66/trans. p. 33.
- 39.
FA, p. 67/trans. p. 34.
- 40.
FA, p. 68/trans. p. 34.
- 41.
FS, p. 33/trans. p. 58/59.
- 42.
FS, p. 33/trans. p. 58.
- 43.
FS, p. 34/trans. p. 59.
- 44.
FS, p. 30/trans. p. 55.
- 45.
FS, p. 31/trans p. 56.
- 46.
FS, p. 31/trans. p. 56.
References
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Uljée, R. (2016). Metaphysics and Its Other. In: Foran, L., Uljée, R. (eds) Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida: The Question of Difference. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 86. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39232-5_14
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